I agree that the problem of police brutality and corruption is a huge problem, with the May Day incident being the latest example. However, at least in this case, Bill Bratton, Chief of the LAPD, is attempting to turn the department around. So far his office has been very honest and forthcoming about their efforts to figure out what happened that day, to make heads roll, and to condemn what was obviously wrong (I've seen public officials refrain from commenting on obvious events far too many times, claiming to wait for the "official investigation").
Yes, HD does make XP systems wince, but my Athlon XP 2200+ and 1 GB RAM does an o.k. job with it (slow disk I/O is the bigger problem). I think the bigger thorn in MCE's foot and perhaps the thing that keeps it from realizing it's true potential (to have DVR in addition to the Media Library) is the lack of cable card support. In order to control cable STBs, one needs to put IR blasters between the STB and the comp. There is the option of getting dual ATSC tuners, which would be lovely, but one needs a big aerial to get OTA HD reception in Los Angeles and I live in an apartment. The entire TV interface within MCE is amazingly well done and it's a shame that it's very difficult to put it to use. So right now, it's merely a video player on my TV, and it's a crashy one at that. Wonderful piece of software, but almost half of it can't be appreciated because of the BS that cable/satellite/media companies put us through with cable cards.
About four hundred years from now, we will see a group of starships from competing civilizations warping from one planet to the next in a grand race to solve a genetic puzzle encoded in the language of life, DNA. Except this time they'll be disappointed to find that instead of finding a new source of energy, the secret of life, or an all-powerful weapon, they found the encoded archives of the Slashdot message board.
There is something worrysome about having a government mandating that parents will pay for an immunization, but is it wrong for Merck to recoup it's costs and make a profit? They've made a drug that can PREVENT a certain type of LETHAL CANCER. Merck and the developers need to be rewarded for their invention; to deny them profit for such an important contribution to science is anti-capitalistic.
The big thing for me, if there is a port, is that they bring over co-operative play via LAN or the net. Halo's port was a huge disappointment to me because they dropped co-op play. For me, especially with games such as these that have weak stories, co-op is a deal breaker.
I am still using FF1.5 because of all the problems with 2.0. Not just bugs like these, although they are disappointing, but reports of the ever present memory leak and the annoying revamps to the tabs bar. Then again, I am eagerly looking forward to upgrade to a better version so I can get some of the improvements, like crash restoration.
I was at a friend's family event this weekend and at one point we had a conversation about the new consoles. They were asking me questions about the system, and the intelligence of Nintendo's position can be seen here:
"My nephew was asking me about those new game machines that came out."
"Oh yeah, both the Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii came out!"
"So how much are they?"
"The PS3 is $600."::gasps and foreign lang. cursing::
"What about that Nintendo thing?"
"$250, with a game included, just like they used to do with the NES and SNES."
"Ok, that's cheap! I'll get him that for Christmas."
Miyamoto's genius: Reasonable pricing, availability, and an appeal to the memories of when consoles could play something right out of the box.
What pisses me off is that Palm isn't that big of a company nor is it the healthiest. If they weren't lucky enough to get Handspring, which gave them a big heads up on the upcoming smartphone market, they might have been crushed by now by the declining PDA market and Microsoft. NTP is just grabbing at every straw it can for money. Why don't they try sueing MS for doing email over wireless? Probably because MS has enough money to slap them back with a legal team worth more than RIM's settlement itself.
How often do people have to take their cell phones, even expensive ones like the Razr, in because components fail? Or how many of us are dissatisfied with voice quality? Every once in a while, my cell phone just locks up, crashes, or displays some other outrageous bug despite the relatively simple coding needed to just make a phone call. Cell phones - surprisingly buggy.
Yeah, but even "living" is expensive today. Produce is climbing higher and higher at supermarkets, not even counting the ridiculous prices on organic foods. Sleeping in a house is tough, as housing prices are astronomical compared to what our predecesssors were paying for it as a percentage of their income. And even breathing is difficult in our polluted cities- I spend $60 a month on medications for asthma (due to pollution) just to stay alive and off a respirator, despite having health insurance! Sure, I can buy a computer for much less than twenty years ago and it's more powerful, but many of society's essentials are not improving with that tech curve.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that the problem of police brutality and corruption is a huge problem, with the May Day incident being the latest example. However, at least in this case, Bill Bratton, Chief of the LAPD, is attempting to turn the department around. So far his office has been very honest and forthcoming about their efforts to figure out what happened that day, to make heads roll, and to condemn what was obviously wrong (I've seen public officials refrain from commenting on obvious events far too many times, claiming to wait for the "official investigation").
Yes, HD does make XP systems wince, but my Athlon XP 2200+ and 1 GB RAM does an o.k. job with it (slow disk I/O is the bigger problem). I think the bigger thorn in MCE's foot and perhaps the thing that keeps it from realizing it's true potential (to have DVR in addition to the Media Library) is the lack of cable card support. In order to control cable STBs, one needs to put IR blasters between the STB and the comp. There is the option of getting dual ATSC tuners, which would be lovely, but one needs a big aerial to get OTA HD reception in Los Angeles and I live in an apartment. The entire TV interface within MCE is amazingly well done and it's a shame that it's very difficult to put it to use. So right now, it's merely a video player on my TV, and it's a crashy one at that. Wonderful piece of software, but almost half of it can't be appreciated because of the BS that cable/satellite/media companies put us through with cable cards.
About four hundred years from now, we will see a group of starships from competing civilizations warping from one planet to the next in a grand race to solve a genetic puzzle encoded in the language of life, DNA. Except this time they'll be disappointed to find that instead of finding a new source of energy, the secret of life, or an all-powerful weapon, they found the encoded archives of the Slashdot message board.
There is something worrysome about having a government mandating that parents will pay for an immunization, but is it wrong for Merck to recoup it's costs and make a profit? They've made a drug that can PREVENT a certain type of LETHAL CANCER. Merck and the developers need to be rewarded for their invention; to deny them profit for such an important contribution to science is anti-capitalistic.
The big thing for me, if there is a port, is that they bring over co-operative play via LAN or the net. Halo's port was a huge disappointment to me because they dropped co-op play. For me, especially with games such as these that have weak stories, co-op is a deal breaker.
I am still using FF1.5 because of all the problems with 2.0. Not just bugs like these, although they are disappointing, but reports of the ever present memory leak and the annoying revamps to the tabs bar. Then again, I am eagerly looking forward to upgrade to a better version so I can get some of the improvements, like crash restoration.
I was at a friend's family event this weekend and at one point we had a conversation about the new consoles. They were asking me questions about the system, and the intelligence of Nintendo's position can be seen here:
"My nephew was asking me about those new game machines that came out."
"Oh yeah, both the Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii came out!"
"So how much are they?"
"The PS3 is $600." ::gasps and foreign lang. cursing::
"What about that Nintendo thing?"
"$250, with a game included, just like they used to do with the NES and SNES."
"Ok, that's cheap! I'll get him that for Christmas."
Miyamoto's genius: Reasonable pricing, availability, and an appeal to the memories of when consoles could play something right out of the box.
What pisses me off is that Palm isn't that big of a company nor is it the healthiest. If they weren't lucky enough to get Handspring, which gave them a big heads up on the upcoming smartphone market, they might have been crushed by now by the declining PDA market and Microsoft. NTP is just grabbing at every straw it can for money. Why don't they try sueing MS for doing email over wireless? Probably because MS has enough money to slap them back with a legal team worth more than RIM's settlement itself.
How often do people have to take their cell phones, even expensive ones like the Razr, in because components fail? Or how many of us are dissatisfied with voice quality? Every once in a while, my cell phone just locks up, crashes, or displays some other outrageous bug despite the relatively simple coding needed to just make a phone call. Cell phones - surprisingly buggy.
Yeah, but even "living" is expensive today. Produce is climbing higher and higher at supermarkets, not even counting the ridiculous prices on organic foods. Sleeping in a house is tough, as housing prices are astronomical compared to what our predecesssors were paying for it as a percentage of their income. And even breathing is difficult in our polluted cities- I spend $60 a month on medications for asthma (due to pollution) just to stay alive and off a respirator, despite having health insurance! Sure, I can buy a computer for much less than twenty years ago and it's more powerful, but many of society's essentials are not improving with that tech curve.