Movies seem fishy.
on
Apple PDA?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Admittedly I'm a conspiracy theorist, but with one hoax after another, I've become a bit gunshy. Some points:
-Okay, about 7 seconds into bootup.mov, the guy starts turning the jog dial... for about 4-5 frames, his finger is turning the jog dial, but the Apple logo on the dial *ISN'T TURNING* as well. Then all of a sudden on frame 6, the Apple logo appears rotated 20 degrees. At first I thought it could be a simple glitch in the compressed video, but the guys hand which should be moving in sync with the jog dial does not suffer the same glitch. It seems like somebody spliced to pieces of video together. Why?
-There's a video of the guy handling the device(picking it up, flipping it over, etc..) and videos of him using the device (turning it on, writing on the screen), but no videos of him handling *and* moving the device. Bluescreening would be a pain in the ass if the device were moving.
-This point is purely an ergonomic issue, but wouldn't you constantly be moving the jog dial if you were holding the thing in your left hand and writing with the stylus with your right hand?
If it is a hoax, spymac.com definitely had their hand in it.. but why would a rumor site cash in credibility in the future for 15 minutes of fame? I guess we'll all find out in a few days.
I played a demo of wc3 at E3 last year and the year before that. Don't know if it was a top of the line machine last year, but even if it was.. how top end would that be now?
Let it be known that I don't really have any axe to grind for any particular system. I'm an avid gamer, and I like all three systems.
That said, the xbox runs hot and is prone to nervous breakdowns. The nearby Toys R Us received a Xbox kiosk about mid-november. When I came by on December 1, I noticed the Green Screen of Death. According to an employee, it was the *second* Xbox to bite the dust since they got the kiosk.
Same story at Game Crazy. The system would go for a few minutes and die (regardless of the game). Same with Fry's Electronics. And Gamestop.
So, while one incident would be enough to dismiss, I have seen enough fried xboxes to assume that something is up with the first batch (or at least the batch that retailers where getting for demos).
Alot of people have faulted the kiosk for poor cooling. The kiosk has *three* cooling fans, and the xbox has about 3 inches of clearance on any side. Far better than what you typically see with consoles in the home. Furthermore, I have only ever seen one fried PS2 kiosk, and haven't seen a dead N64/Dreamcast/Gamecube kiosk *ever*. I don't buy the kiosk excuse. I do think there are alot of zealots who like to play up Microsofts misteps, but the overheat issue is for real.
I've heard talk of "line doublers" for standard TV's, though I know very little about how they work. Do these things work (how?), and are they a good crutch until I break down and buy HDTV?
We know capitalism works. We know businesses make alot of money by selling what is essentially free.
Where in the name did you study economics? Seriously, I'd love you to back this statement up with something more than a soundbite.
However, this is all about the economy, and rich CEOs making billions of dollars off of us. It doesnt really help the people, it helps just a few rich CEOs have a few more million dollars.
Hell, why limit this thinking to just SOFTWARE? I mean, those big, bad, CEO's run all sorts of companies. Next time I'm at the department store, I'll just SHOPLIFT whatever it is I need. And while we're at it, William Clay Ford makes far too much money so I'm just going to STEAL a shiny new Mustang GT.
Grow up. Software piracy is stealing. It hurts far more people than just CEO's and you are only fooling yourself if you think otherwise. How many industries would be absolutely destroyed if they suddenly had to deal with over 25 percent of their product being STOLEN? It would be capitalism's rendition of the apocalypse.
Rubbish. Under this mode of thinking, Books would be sold by weight, or by the amount of pages, rather than the content of the book itself.
Face it. We sell ideas all the time. Books are one example. Art is another. When you buy a piece of art, are you suggesting that you are merely buying the the canvas, frame and paint? Of course not. It's monitary worth was based upon the fact that enough people liked how the various colors of paint were arranged on the canvas.
Even using your example of food. People frequent their favorite restaurant because that restaurant knows how to make it just the way they like it. It's not so much the ingredients, but the *idea* (manifest in this example as a "recipe") that makes the food valuable.
Oh god.. this must be what happens when you fuse rabid "Pro-life" fervor into an "Open-Source" zealot (and add a splash of socialist dogma).
Piracy has absolutely NO effect on programmers salaries.
Wrong. Both directly and indirectly. You see, usually I get a bonus. I say usually, because some quarters my company does really well. Other quarters... not as well. Now, if everyone thought like you and figured the only person they were sticking it to was Bill G. when they stole software, well I doubt I'd be getting a bonus for a very long time.
Indirectly, my company likes to hire what on my planet we refer to as "people". These "people" are sustained, indirectly mind you, on a substance called "money". Now take away the money. You see where I'm going here?
I hate responding to trolls, but DAMN the temptation is too great!
Well... if "Joe Customer" implies your core ps2 buyer, then I don't think that ps2linux is that compelling(yet). If Sony dumbs it down to WebTV level then I think it might appeal to the mass market (which is the direction I thought they were headed, as they were demoing AOL on the ps2.. don't know if that's still a plan).
However, I for one am intrigued with the idea of a low-cost ps2 game development platform. At the very least, you can write SDL games for it. Admittedly a lot of my interest is simply curiosity -- Dreamcast Linux is even more impractical but I'm still going to install it.. just to say I did.
I never challenged the 2:1 figure, but rather the inference you could take from it. The original poster claimed that the 2:1 ratio was due to the fact that the gamecube was more popular. When both systems sell out on the same day, you can't make such an assertion. If inventory levels had nothing to do with it, I'd agree and say that Gamecube was more popular.
And yes, the systems did in fact sell out on the same day (as backed up by Nintendo/Microsoft press releases and most news reports). The fact that you may see some in store is due to the fact that both companies are still manufacturing them and attempt to replenish inventory levels.
And lest I get labeled some kind of zealot... I'm not fond of Microsoft either. Hell... I'll buy an Xbox as soon as I can install linux on the thing!
Maybe it's because Nintendo released 750,000 gamecubes and Microsoft only released 350,000 Xbox units? So, when you consider that both consoles sold out, your factoid amounts to exactly jack shit.
As long as they both sold out, it's pretty hard to guage which has greater demand at this point, so stop spreading your Microsoft-bashing FUD.
Make a DVD or VideoCD home video for mom&dad
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Geek Gift Ideas 2001
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· Score: 4, Interesting
My parents got a DVD player last year, so I think it would be a cool idea to take the dozens of tapes of raw home video and burn them a slick VideoCD with sappy music and titles. 75mins for VideoCD is plenty of time for home video stuff, and most DVD players can play videoCD.
Pretty sure it would make me a hero... on the cheap!
This device hardly seems like it was very well thought out, and not at the execution stage but at the *concept* stage.
I can see the pointy-hair-boss speaking with the hardware group: "People love email. People love surfing the web. People love home videos. I've got it!" This device illustrates the problem with convergence today -- a rapid advance towards bundling more and more technology into a smaller and smaller space with little thought given to the utility of the device.
I'm surprised they didn't decide to incorporate a recepticle to hold 44oz beverages. After all... "people love thirstbusters".
I know it's jumping a ahead a bit to talk about computers assembling computers (this really only talks about the assembly of wires.. but its the direction they want to go). But haven't we covered the major properties by which we define life?
Metabolism
Growth
Reproduction
evolution
With reproduction added to the mix, it can be argued that 3 of 4 of these benchmarks are covered. Whose to say that the fourth, evolution, wouldn't follow naturally?
ps: Once these nano-machines develop opposable thumbs, I think we could be in trouble.
I think this device shows of the potential for some new approaches towards model and level design. Instead of an artist trying to actualize his vision with a pointing device like a mouse or stylus, why not "scoop" out sections of an area when making a new map for quake?? At the very least, it sounds like it would make a great prototyping tool.
On a semi-related note... I wonder if anyone has tried to use a gestural interface with this task in mind. I heard of an interesting project at Brown called Sketch, but haven't seen anything go mainstream. Anyone know?
The funny thing is, this is Panasonic's *second* foray into licensing game player technology. The first time around was with their 3DO player (marketed as the "R.E.A.L 3DO Multiplayer" I think). And we all know what happened there. The content was okay (I seem to remember), but the hardware was way too expensive because the hardware manufacturers needed to turn a profit on the console.. something that Nintendo and Sony didn't need to worry about. When they came out, I think the cost was something like $600.
It seems like they might have a better shot this time around. They can ride off of Nintendo's marketing, and the system is more reasonably priced. Plus, seeing as how Matsushita (Panasonic's parent company) created the special format dvd-drive, I'm speculating that the Nintendo got a sweet licensing deal in exchange for providing an equally-sweet licensing deal to Matsushita.
What are you talking about? Did you play Star Wars? How about Madden 2002? Resident Evil? Wave Racer? Yes there were some kiddie games, but why is that such a bad thing? Kids have to have fun too. Pikimin was good? Are you on crack? Star Wars was the Killer App, hands down
I never said kiddie games are "bad", I just said it's not my thing so I might be wrong about which games will be popular. The only M-rated game on display was Eternal darkness (didn't see Resident Evil there). And like I said... I never played Pikmin... but it looked interesting.
I actually played the Star Wars game. The graphics were good, but it simply didn't have that much appeal for me. It's the same 2nd-person-view-shoot-at-everything premise as Rogue Squadron and Starfighter. Is it good? sure. Killer App? I don't think so.. but I could be wrong.
The Gamecube is the leader in all areas except clock speed, which in reality doesn't matter because it has the highest processing power, it just takes less clock cycles to produce it. It runs off of a PowerPC-type RISC chip that was designed specifically for gaming (not watching DVD's). The most important areas are PPS (polygons per second) and Colors, and the GameCube has the lead in each of those categories.
If you go by published specs, the ps2 pumps out around 66-75 million pps, and the cube does 6 -12 million (I think you get more polygon effects on cube though.. so I don't put much stock in this). The cube has a faster (not slower, as you claim) cpu, but I don't think that you can say that it was designed "specifically for gaming". I'm sure it's tweaked in some way, but it's based on the PPC 405x core, which IBM pushes as an embedded general-purpose cpu.
However, we both agree that stats are largely irrelevant. I'm sure Nintendo will do well and that many of games will be great, but my impressions were that the current line-up was not overwhelming.
Phoenix ended last week. I played each of the games for around five minutes with the exception of Pikmin (which was in use each time I came by). Anyway... I didn't get a good chance for some thorough report, but here are my thoughts:
1. No killer app. While most of the games seemed entertaining enough, none really struck me as a stand-out hit. Pikmin looks like it has potential, but strikes me as more of a sleeper-hit. Then again, as the games are clearly targeted at a young audience, they may appeal more to kids than me.
2. The controller feels great. As wierd as it looks, I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable it felt (I guess I have "average" adult-sized hands). Much better than the N64 controller, which allways felt somewhat awkward. All of the buttons are easily accessible, and the analog have better grip than the ps2 dualshock.
3. Graphics on par with PS2. In spite of specs that don't look as good on paper as ps2 ('cept RAM, I guess), the EA games (NBA and Madden) looked every bit as good as the ps2 versions.
Overall, I think nintendo stands a good chance in the long run based on it's core demographic and the strong titles in the pipe -- Mario Sunshine, Zelda, Metroid(yes!) -- and the pricepoint is good. However, I don't think that Christmas is gonna be that strong compared to their other launches.
did you even READ the post you replied to? they didn't modify the card to work "better" with quake three, they modified it to work "faster"... at the expense of image quality. Not an improvement, if you ask me.
I'm not sure I understand where this "Just Say No didn't work" attitude comes from. Many independent studies show that teenage drug use was on the DECLINE during the Reagan-Bush era (1980-1992). I don't think it's a coincidence that teenage drug use went on the rise soon after Clinton was elected (who incidentally did not inhale) and Anti-drug advertising had it's budget chopped.
Now.. I'm not here to post a republican diatribe (I'm an independent), but rather to expell this notion that television has no effect/influence on children. The scary thing about Disney's propaganda cartoon is that it can have an influence on children. If television did not have an affect on the minds of those who watched it, then advertisements wouldn't exist!!
Rather than dismiss all of this, Disney should be called to the mat for such a shameless attempt to further their political agenda.
The information contained in the articles you cite (an article written by yourself, I might add) is filled with misinformation possibly even lies. Ranging from the estimate of 3,000,000 killed by the US (80% of this you attribute to vietnam, which is a tough sell) to the quote "The US has the highest percentage of citizens in prison of any country ever, in the history of the world." (which is just plain wrong, and you don't bother to back it up).
If the United States did indeed "Sow" this act, it is for the simple reason that we support a country and a people that Osama bin Laden believes must be exterminated.
Objviously not all Palestinians are denouncing bin Laden. On television, people in Palestine were cheering at what had happened. People passing out candy. Tears of joy.
Slashdot Mirror
Admittedly I'm a conspiracy theorist, but with one hoax after another, I've become a bit gunshy. Some points:
-Okay, about 7 seconds into bootup.mov, the guy starts turning the jog dial... for about 4-5 frames, his finger is turning the jog dial, but the Apple logo on the dial *ISN'T TURNING* as well. Then all of a sudden on frame 6, the Apple logo appears rotated 20 degrees. At first I thought it could be a simple glitch in the compressed video, but the guys hand which should be moving in sync with the jog dial does not suffer the same glitch. It seems like somebody spliced to pieces of video together. Why?
-There's a video of the guy handling the device(picking it up, flipping it over, etc..) and videos of him using the device (turning it on, writing on the screen), but no videos of him handling *and* moving the device. Bluescreening would be a pain in the ass if the device were moving.
-This point is purely an ergonomic issue, but wouldn't you constantly be moving the jog dial if you were holding the thing in your left hand and writing with the stylus with your right hand?
If it is a hoax, spymac.com definitely had their hand in it.. but why would a rumor site cash in credibility in the future for 15 minutes of fame? I guess we'll all find out in a few days.
I played a demo of wc3 at E3 last year and the year before that. Don't know if it was a top of the line machine last year, but even if it was.. how top end would that be now?
Let it be known that I don't really have any axe to grind for any particular system. I'm an avid gamer, and I like all three systems.
That said, the xbox runs hot and is prone to nervous breakdowns. The nearby Toys R Us received a Xbox kiosk about mid-november. When I came by on December 1, I noticed the Green Screen of Death. According to an employee, it was the *second* Xbox to bite the dust since they got the kiosk.
Same story at Game Crazy. The system would go for a few minutes and die (regardless of the game). Same with Fry's Electronics. And Gamestop.
So, while one incident would be enough to dismiss, I have seen enough fried xboxes to assume that something is up with the first batch (or at least the batch that retailers where getting for demos).
Alot of people have faulted the kiosk for poor cooling. The kiosk has *three* cooling fans, and the xbox has about 3 inches of clearance on any side. Far better than what you typically see with consoles in the home. Furthermore, I have only ever seen one fried PS2 kiosk, and haven't seen a dead N64/Dreamcast/Gamecube kiosk *ever*. I don't buy the kiosk excuse. I do think there are alot of zealots who like to play up Microsofts misteps, but the overheat issue is for real.
ps: What sadist designed the xbox controllers?
I've heard talk of "line doublers" for standard TV's, though I know very little about how they work. Do these things work (how?), and are they a good crutch until I break down and buy HDTV?
Where in the name did you study economics? Seriously, I'd love you to back this statement up with something more than a soundbite.
However, this is all about the economy, and rich CEOs making billions of dollars off of us. It doesnt really help the people, it helps just a few rich CEOs have a few more million dollars.
Hell, why limit this thinking to just SOFTWARE? I mean, those big, bad, CEO's run all sorts of companies. Next time I'm at the department store, I'll just SHOPLIFT whatever it is I need. And while we're at it, William Clay Ford makes far too much money so I'm just going to STEAL a shiny new Mustang GT.
Grow up. Software piracy is stealing. It hurts far more people than just CEO's and you are only fooling yourself if you think otherwise. How many industries would be absolutely destroyed if they suddenly had to deal with over 25 percent of their product being STOLEN? It would be capitalism's rendition of the apocalypse.
Rubbish. Under this mode of thinking, Books would be sold by weight, or by the amount of pages, rather than the content of the book itself.
Face it. We sell ideas all the time. Books are one example. Art is another. When you buy a piece of art, are you suggesting that you are merely buying the the canvas, frame and paint? Of course not. It's monitary worth was based upon the fact that enough people liked how the various colors of paint were arranged on the canvas.
Even using your example of food. People frequent their favorite restaurant because that restaurant knows how to make it just the way they like it. It's not so much the ingredients, but the *idea* (manifest in this example as a "recipe") that makes the food valuable.
Piracy has absolutely NO effect on programmers salaries.
Wrong. Both directly and indirectly. You see, usually I get a bonus. I say usually, because some quarters my company does really well. Other quarters... not as well. Now, if everyone thought like you and figured the only person they were sticking it to was Bill G. when they stole software, well I doubt I'd be getting a bonus for a very long time.
Indirectly, my company likes to hire what on my planet we refer to as "people". These "people" are sustained, indirectly mind you, on a substance called "money". Now take away the money. You see where I'm going here?
I hate responding to trolls, but DAMN the temptation is too great!
However, I for one am intrigued with the idea of a low-cost ps2 game development platform. At the very least, you can write SDL games for it. Admittedly a lot of my interest is simply curiosity -- Dreamcast Linux is even more impractical but I'm still going to install it.. just to say I did.
I never challenged the 2:1 figure, but rather the inference you could take from it. The original poster claimed that the 2:1 ratio was due to the fact that the gamecube was more popular. When both systems sell out on the same day, you can't make such an assertion. If inventory levels had nothing to do with it, I'd agree and say that Gamecube was more popular.
And yes, the systems did in fact sell out on the same day (as backed up by Nintendo/Microsoft press releases and most news reports). The fact that you may see some in store is due to the fact that both companies are still manufacturing them and attempt to replenish inventory levels.
And lest I get labeled some kind of zealot... I'm not fond of Microsoft either. Hell... I'll buy an Xbox as soon as I can install linux on the thing!
As long as they both sold out, it's pretty hard to guage which has greater demand at this point, so stop spreading your Microsoft-bashing FUD.
Pretty sure it would make me a hero... on the cheap!
I can see the pointy-hair-boss speaking with the hardware group: "People love email. People love surfing the web. People love home videos. I've got it!" This device illustrates the problem with convergence today -- a rapid advance towards bundling more and more technology into a smaller and smaller space with little thought given to the utility of the device.
I'm surprised they didn't decide to incorporate a recepticle to hold 44oz beverages. After all... "people love thirstbusters".
With reproduction added to the mix, it can be argued that 3 of 4 of these benchmarks are covered. Whose to say that the fourth, evolution, wouldn't follow naturally?
ps: Once these nano-machines develop opposable thumbs, I think we could be in trouble.
On a semi-related note... I wonder if anyone has tried to use a gestural interface with this task in mind. I heard of an interesting project at Brown called Sketch, but haven't seen anything go mainstream. Anyone know?
It seems like they might have a better shot this time around. They can ride off of Nintendo's marketing, and the system is more reasonably priced. Plus, seeing as how Matsushita (Panasonic's parent company) created the special format dvd-drive, I'm speculating that the Nintendo got a sweet licensing deal in exchange for providing an equally-sweet licensing deal to Matsushita.
fuck I hate it when I forget to close my html tags... perhaps someday I'll hit the "preview" button (but I doubt it).
I never said kiddie games are "bad", I just said it's not my thing so I might be wrong about which games will be popular. The only M-rated game on display was Eternal darkness (didn't see Resident Evil there). And like I said... I never played Pikmin... but it looked interesting.
I actually played the Star Wars game. The graphics were good, but it simply didn't have that much appeal for me. It's the same 2nd-person-view-shoot-at-everything premise as Rogue Squadron and Starfighter. Is it good? sure. Killer App? I don't think so.. but I could be wrong.
The Gamecube is the leader in all areas except clock speed, which in reality doesn't matter because it has the highest processing power, it just takes less clock cycles to produce it. It runs off of a PowerPC-type RISC chip that was designed specifically for gaming (not watching DVD's). The most important areas are PPS (polygons per second) and Colors, and the GameCube has the lead in each of those categories.
If you go by published specs, the ps2 pumps out around 66-75 million pps, and the cube does 6 -12 million (I think you get more polygon effects on cube though.. so I don't put much stock in this). The cube has a faster (not slower, as you claim) cpu, but I don't think that you can say that it was designed "specifically for gaming". I'm sure it's tweaked in some way, but it's based on the PPC 405x core, which IBM pushes as an embedded general-purpose cpu.
However, we both agree that stats are largely irrelevant. I'm sure Nintendo will do well and that many of games will be great, but my impressions were that the current line-up was not overwhelming.
1. No killer app. While most of the games seemed entertaining enough, none really struck me as a stand-out hit. Pikmin looks like it has potential, but strikes me as more of a sleeper-hit. Then again, as the games are clearly targeted at a young audience, they may appeal more to kids than me.
2. The controller feels great. As wierd as it looks, I was pleasantly surprised by how comfortable it felt (I guess I have "average" adult-sized hands). Much better than the N64 controller, which allways felt somewhat awkward. All of the buttons are easily accessible, and the analog have better grip than the ps2 dualshock.
3. Graphics on par with PS2. In spite of specs that don't look as good on paper as ps2 ('cept RAM, I guess), the EA games (NBA and Madden) looked every bit as good as the ps2 versions.
Overall, I think nintendo stands a good chance in the long run based on it's core demographic and the strong titles in the pipe -- Mario Sunshine, Zelda, Metroid(yes!) -- and the pricepoint is good. However, I don't think that Christmas is gonna be that strong compared to their other launches.
did you even READ the post you replied to? they didn't modify the card to work "better" with quake three, they modified it to work "faster"... at the expense of image quality. Not an improvement, if you ask me.
Now.. I'm not here to post a republican diatribe (I'm an independent), but rather to expell this notion that television has no effect/influence on children. The scary thing about Disney's propaganda cartoon is that it can have an influence on children. If television did not have an affect on the minds of those who watched it, then advertisements wouldn't exist!!
Rather than dismiss all of this, Disney should be called to the mat for such a shameless attempt to further their political agenda.
...maybe I can download from Kazaa! Ooh the irony!!
Guess the FBI can cross out "Photoshop Skills" from their Al Qaeda dossier.
If the United States did indeed "Sow" this act, it is for the simple reason that we support a country and a people that Osama bin Laden believes must be exterminated.
Over 5,000 people dead. Jokes hardly seem appropriate.
Objviously not all Palestinians are denouncing bin Laden. On television, people in Palestine were cheering at what had happened. People passing out candy. Tears of joy.