Don't forget Sony's price move with the PS1. It was $250 for months but the DAY before the N64 was officially announced Sony dropped
the price to $200.
And they dropped it to $100 unannounced on the day that Dreamcast shipped. For this reason, I was expecting a price cut on PS2 in November; didn't see it, but still knew it was coming.
A few years ago I saw a news report where several teams of Iranian women had spent years pieceing the slices back together, and had actually managed to rebuild quite a few documents.
I talked about that incident once with my father, who worked for years in US Army offices dealing in sensitive information -- sometimes sensitive of the "I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you" variety.
In any case, as a result of some documents being pieced together after the Iranian embassy incident, the government -- well, the intelligence community anyway -- changed it's standards on shredders. The output of shredders is now about the thickness of coarse thread. And then all *that* gets bagged and burned at the end of the day anyway.
Dismiss my opinions as you will, but please give this article some thought.
I am sure this was unintentional irony, but that article is illegible(microscopic fonts) in Netscape on a Macintosh. So I'd like to give the article some thought, but it appears that choosing an alternative platform is not an option.
Gosh, it's almost as though the Microsoft monopoly had a deleterious effect on consumers.
(Yes, I do know how to fix this. Just thought it should be pointed out.)
John Tower? I don't remember hearing the term used at that time, but I don't find it hard to doubt. That seems an inappropriate usage, though; Tower really did have no business anywhere near a government position. The classic half-bright, all-corrupt Texas pol.
"Borking" was defined by George Will, specifically, as the knowing distortion of a political opponent's views. He is the first person from whom I heard the term; this was in 1992, and he was using it to describe the falsehoods then currently being spread about Hillary Clinton. This is significant, obviously, since Will and Mrs. Clinton share approximately zero political views.
This is a tough one...how do you choose between covering your own ass and covering the ass of your company? Which one is more important to you?
Um, let me think about that.
For about a tenth of a second.
That would be my own ass, Bob.
Re:Forever War == Starship Troopers after Vietnam
on
The Forever War
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· Score: 2
BTW, Haldeman used to teach a science fiction class at M.I.T., and for all I know he still does.
No, he teaches at Indiana University. My friend Lucy Snyder and her friend Nalo Hopkinson took his course. This left me starstruck, as I am a fan not only of The Forever War but of his Worlds series.
Lucy has great stories about Haldeman...he got shot in the ass by some gangbanger a few years back(just some random violence) and got rushed to the hospital. When the doctor X-rayed him, the bullet fragments were so indistinguishable from the rest of the chunks of metal in him -- relics of his Vietnam tours of duty -- that the doc said, "What's one more stripe on a tiger?" and sent him home.
Really, is it worth our while to have to watch the hero in SoulReaver 2 open and close doors, or can he just open and close doors during game play? "More matter, less art" -- Gertrude to Hamlet
It could be worse - some people turn to alcohol, drugs, or gambling, all much, much, MUCH more destructive than games or work
I have a very intelligent uncle who is an addiction counselor. He was explaining some of the metabolic triggers behind gaming addiction. One of the frustrating things about them from a treatment standpoint is that they are making their own smack: their addiction is to the adrenaline rush of plunging when they're hot.
Note that if society decides gaming addiction is a real problem -- I don't think it has yet, but it might be coming -- then gaming addicts will be more or less in the same boat. They are not addicted to any external substance, from which they can be weaned. They're addicted to the "natural" chemicals their bodies produce while gaming.
I'm told by quite reliable sources that, for many other people, cigarettes make them feel awfully good indeed.
Cigarettes make me feel great. I started smoking when I was 19, and I just took to it like a duck to water. Within a year was smoking two packs of Marlboros a day. Just cutting down from that point over a period of some years was difficult. Now I smoke half a pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights a day, and come this Saturday, it's time to quit again.
You know what my plan is to help me quit? Buy a new game. I'm thinking the first Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment(my computer is kind of old). But I've got to quit smoking -- it already screws with my health in a big way. I cough and wheeze every morning, and if I get a cold, it takes me three weeks to get over it since my lungs are so fucked.
So we'll just see how potent gaming addiction can be, won't we?
I've heard Rush Limbaugh say much more "threatening" things during the Clinton years.
Well, recall Jesse Helms -- damn his twisted, evil heart -- stating that if Clinton came to North Carolina, "he'd better bring a bodyguard." I believe he was warned by the Secret Service in some way to watch it. (It was a few years ago, and I can't find good cites for it on Google.) So there is a history for the SS taking non-threat threats seriously, regardless of the source.
This is all getting pretty seriously OT, of course...
One could also note from the report that teachers in the U.S. work an average of 185 days. If you take a mid-career teacher making $30K, divide by 185 days, is $162/day, or $16/hour if they worked 10 hours a day, or $20/hour if they work 8.
This statistic got thrown around a lot during the 1996 campaign by various factotums in the Dole campaign, who were embarked on a (largely unsuccessful) attempt to demonize teachers, in part by painting them as "union thugs." The gist is, hey, teachers don't get paid that much, but wow! They only work nine months a year!
While I'll grant you that this might be an attractive aspect of the teaching profession for some people, the fact is that their salary has to last them the whole year. They don't hibernate from June to September, as Tom Tomorrow put it.
Isn't it about time for Asus to release a new driver to "aid inexperienced players in single player games"?
Oh, good news! That's not necessary! See, now punk bitches of the non-Asus card-owning variety can enjoy all the benefits of superpowers in online games!
I'm not implying that ATI did it in a selfless manner; enlightened self interest is a good thing. ATI does well in reviews and Quake III players that buy ATI cards get faster operation. Other than the competition, who loses here?
It is in fact their motivation which is questionable, and it does not appear to be enlightened self-interest.
If they were optimizing for Quake 3 because that is where their largest audience was, and therefore they could satisfy the greatest number of their customers in that way, then yes, I would have a hard time faulting their actions from the standpoint of the free market(although I still wouldn't buy an ATI card, because that is a stupid engineering decision). However, this is not why they optimized for Quake 3.
Confining the dicussion solely to first-person shooters, it should be pointed out that Quake 3 is *not* the most popular game in this genre. Gamespy.com tracks playing statistics -- the numbers they display for today have been consistent for some months(excepting the addition of RtCW). I presume Carmack didn't want to dwell on this at great length in his.plan, and who can blame him? Quake 3's failures are not failures of technology(for which he is responsible) but of gameplay(for which he is not).
The reason that ATI optimized for Quake 3 is that it is used as a benchmarking tool. Their expectation, probably, is that gamers will see relatively high benchmarks for Quake 3 in reviews of ATI cards, and generalize from that to assume that all OpenGL games will enjoy excellent performance on ATI's card. This is likely a false assumption for anything other than Quake 3 or a Quake 3 mod. (Even games based on the Quake 3 engine will not share the performance benefits, unless you rename their executable -- and possibly not even then, depending on how modified the engine is.)
So in other words, the problem is not that ATI has cheated on their drivers to please the massive Quake 3 community. The problem is that they have cheated on their drivers to deceive reviewers, and(they hope) customers who read reviews. This is "self-interest," to be sure, but I do not find it to be "enlightened."
I found the tape with the OS on it and the manual for installation, and began my life as an admin by rebuilding the server. 11 years later, I am still at it.:)
Dude, if it's taken eleven years so far, don't bother finishing. The box is actually kind of outdated now anyway.
The lead editorial [dispatch.com] in today's Columbus Dispatch, (the main newspaper for the 12th largest city in the US), clears up all of this confusion:
Indeed, Microsoft single-handedly revolutionized the world economy by making powerful and inexpensive computing technology available to all.
Ah, my hometown paper. We call it the Columbus Disgrace for a reason.
FTR, it's owned by a local family of powerful Republicans, and they have not been secretive about their political affiliation. They have very little credibility with the average resident around here(ironically, even die-hard Republicans assume that they represent the "liberal media conspiracy").
Quake 3 is fun in its own respect, but slapping a World War 2 mod on top of it and marketing it as something brand new is pushing it a little, methinks.
Well, the retail version of RtCW is going to include extensive single player action, unlike Quake3, which really only allowed mulitplayer and playing against the bots.
Of course my gameplay has been slightly limited - I certainly haven't logged more than a few hours at most
When I had only played Wolfenstein for a few hours, I didn't like it either. It grew on me.
- but I can't help but compare it to the superbly executed (and free) Day of Defeat. I guess it has more to do with realistic damage than anything else; I like the (generally) one shot one kill rules of DoD,
Really? That just frustrated me about Day of Defeat. Especially as most servers have friendly fire turned on; the complete and utter cockmongers who plague most online games tend to blast you before you ever even see an enemy. Even if you don't get tagged by a teammate, though, I still find it frustrating and not fun -- but realistic, I'll grant you that! -- that so much of the action consists of "walk three steps, get fragged by an enemy you never saw."
and it seems silly that in Wolfenstein I have to shoot you with a Thompson or MP40 many times before you go down.
Yes, this is one of the sillier things about Wolfenstein. Example: it takes about nine body shots at close range with the Colt.45 to frag an enemy. The clip holds eight rounds. This makes the weapon less than useless, and not terribly realistic either. I suspect that there will still be some rebalancing coming on the weapons -- I'll probably try the test out later today and see how it goes.
Michael Moorcock is a very ambitious writer, adored by both high-falutin' literary critics and the mass market. I would be very surprised if his work did not live on after his death.
I keep thinking that people will, someday, notice that Cerebus the Aardvark is probably one of the greatest narrative acheivements of all time; I think Dave Sim's frank misogyny is a significant barrier to entry for some people, though. OTOH, it didn't hurt William S. Burroughs much. And Cerebus is such an astonishing work; pop culture, high culture, satire, parody, love stories, social criticism...Sim chose early on in his work to simply respect no boundary, ever. Consider Melmoth, a retelling of the last days of Oscar Wilde, incorporated without apology into the narrative of Cerebus. Amazing, entertaining, and audacious.
King puts his efforts into crafting characters that appeal psychologically to his audience as having truth beyond the genre.
I have always felt that the reason for King's appeal is the great empathy he feels for his characters, and his success at imparting that to his readers. He genuinely feels for these people, and for people in general, and this is imparted to his mass audience.
Dickens had much the same quality. Compare Clive Barker; he is certainly a better craftsman -- his prose is tremendously effective -- but his tone can be very icy.
Would it be possible to have lagrange points between the earth and the moon,
The Lagrange points are present anywhere you have one body orbiting another, though only L4 and L5 are stable enough for real permanence. (My astronomical knowledge is rudimentary; anyone with real training is welcome to jump in.)
Did you see the movie _2010?_ (It was the sequel to _2001._)The monolith at Jupiter is parked at, I believe, the L2 point in the Jupiter-Io orbital system.
Or, alternatively, you mention Heinlein. Did you read _Friday?_ The idea of space colonies at L4 and L5 comes up tangentially there, as does the idea of collecting solar energy in space for transmission to Earth.(If you haven't read _Friday,_ read it. It's one of his most fun books.)
I remember watching Discovery channel where they discussed the space junk floating out there. I would think that would be a major
hinderance to having a reliable power supply.
Well, you don't put it in low earth orbit where the junk is; you put it in geosynchronous orbit or, better yet, one of the Lagrange points, where it can be tended by the residents of O'Neill colonies. (I have now posted this link twice in two days. Funny old world.)
Slashdot Mirror
In any case, as a result of some documents being pieced together after the Iranian embassy incident, the government -- well, the intelligence community anyway -- changed it's standards on shredders. The output of shredders is now about the thickness of coarse thread. And then all *that* gets bagged and burned at the end of the day anyway.
Gosh, it's almost as though the Microsoft monopoly had a deleterious effect on consumers.
(Yes, I do know how to fix this. Just thought it should be pointed out.)
John Tower? I don't remember hearing the term used at that time, but I don't find it hard to doubt. That seems an inappropriate usage, though; Tower really did have no business anywhere near a government position. The classic half-bright, all-corrupt Texas pol.
"Borking" was defined by George Will, specifically, as the knowing distortion of a political opponent's views. He is the first person from whom I heard the term; this was in 1992, and he was using it to describe the falsehoods then currently being spread about Hillary Clinton. This is significant, obviously, since Will and Mrs. Clinton share approximately zero political views.
For about a tenth of a second. That would be my own ass, Bob.
Lucy has great stories about Haldeman...he got shot in the ass by some gangbanger a few years back(just some random violence) and got rushed to the hospital. When the doctor X-rayed him, the bullet fragments were so indistinguishable from the rest of the chunks of metal in him -- relics of his Vietnam tours of duty -- that the doc said, "What's one more stripe on a tiger?" and sent him home.
</pedantic>
Note that if society decides gaming addiction is a real problem -- I don't think it has yet, but it might be coming -- then gaming addicts will be more or less in the same boat. They are not addicted to any external substance, from which they can be weaned. They're addicted to the "natural" chemicals their bodies produce while gaming.
You know what my plan is to help me quit? Buy a new game. I'm thinking the first Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment(my computer is kind of old). But I've got to quit smoking -- it already screws with my health in a big way. I cough and wheeze every morning, and if I get a cold, it takes me three weeks to get over it since my lungs are so fucked.
So we'll just see how potent gaming addiction can be, won't we?
Tenure leads to abuses, but it was put in place to prevent a worse problem: teaching jobs as political spoils.
While I'll grant you that this might be an attractive aspect of the teaching profession for some people, the fact is that their salary has to last them the whole year. They don't hibernate from June to September, as Tom Tomorrow put it.
Oh, good news! That's not necessary! See, now punk bitches of the non-Asus card-owning variety can enjoy all the benefits of superpowers in online games!
If they were optimizing for Quake 3 because that is where their largest audience was, and therefore they could satisfy the greatest number of their customers in that way, then yes, I would have a hard time faulting their actions from the standpoint of the free market(although I still wouldn't buy an ATI card, because that is a stupid engineering decision). However, this is not why they optimized for Quake 3.
Confining the dicussion solely to first-person shooters, it should be pointed out that Quake 3 is *not* the most popular game in this genre. Gamespy.com tracks playing statistics -- the numbers they display for today have been consistent for some months(excepting the addition of RtCW). I presume Carmack didn't want to dwell on this at great length in his .plan, and who can blame him? Quake 3's failures are not failures of technology(for which he is responsible) but of gameplay(for which he is not).
The reason that ATI optimized for Quake 3 is that it is used as a benchmarking tool. Their expectation, probably, is that gamers will see relatively high benchmarks for Quake 3 in reviews of ATI cards, and generalize from that to assume that all OpenGL games will enjoy excellent performance on ATI's card. This is likely a false assumption for anything other than Quake 3 or a Quake 3 mod. (Even games based on the Quake 3 engine will not share the performance benefits, unless you rename their executable -- and possibly not even then, depending on how modified the engine is.)
So in other words, the problem is not that ATI has cheated on their drivers to please the massive Quake 3 community. The problem is that they have cheated on their drivers to deceive reviewers, and(they hope) customers who read reviews. This is "self-interest," to be sure, but I do not find it to be "enlightened."
FTR, it's owned by a local family of powerful Republicans, and they have not been secretive about their political affiliation. They have very little credibility with the average resident around here(ironically, even die-hard Republicans assume that they represent the "liberal media conspiracy").
I keep thinking that people will, someday, notice that Cerebus the Aardvark is probably one of the greatest narrative acheivements of all time; I think Dave Sim's frank misogyny is a significant barrier to entry for some people, though. OTOH, it didn't hurt William S. Burroughs much. And Cerebus is such an astonishing work; pop culture, high culture, satire, parody, love stories, social criticism...Sim chose early on in his work to simply respect no boundary, ever. Consider Melmoth , a retelling of the last days of Oscar Wilde, incorporated without apology into the narrative of Cerebus. Amazing, entertaining, and audacious.
Dickens had much the same quality. Compare Clive Barker; he is certainly a better craftsman -- his prose is tremendously effective -- but his tone can be very icy.
Oh, c'mon. *This* made it past the lameness filter, but nobody's C code ever does?
No. The physics is beyond me, but I've always understood if you stick something in the L4 or L5 point, it's there for good in any orbital system.
The Lagrange points are present anywhere you have one body orbiting another, though only L4 and L5 are stable enough for real permanence. (My astronomical knowledge is rudimentary; anyone with real training is welcome to jump in.)
Did you see the movie _2010?_ (It was the sequel to _2001._)The monolith at Jupiter is parked at, I believe, the L2 point in the Jupiter-Io orbital system.
Or, alternatively, you mention Heinlein. Did you read _Friday?_ The idea of space colonies at L4 and L5 comes up tangentially there, as does the idea of collecting solar energy in space for transmission to Earth.(If you haven't read _Friday,_ read it. It's one of his most fun books.)
Well, you don't put it in low earth orbit where the junk is; you put it in geosynchronous orbit or, better yet, one of the Lagrange points, where it can be tended by the residents of O'Neill colonies. (I have now posted this link twice in two days. Funny old world.)