i thought this was particularly worth copy & pasting...
regarding the recently announced ridiculous specs of the 2007-2008ish microsoft longhorn project, which will be the successor to XP:
Those specs will still be for your more expensive PCs (i.e. $1500+ in 2004 dollars), but it seems Bill is pursuing his vision of making Windows be everything to everyone. For any of you classic SNL fans... Longhorn is supposed to be a floor wax AND a dessert topping. Longhorn will be your media server (replacing the cable box, VCR, Tivo, and DVD player), play games via your television (replacing game consoles), interface with any networkable appliance in your home (refrigerator, heating and cooling system, alarm system) and provide a centralized control panel...
That high-end PC will sit in a closet and be accessed via 5.8ghz wi-fi through a set-top box attached to your HD capable TV, thin client portables, and touch screens on your "Longhorn Enabled" appliances.
Your Longhorn PC will be on the net and everything connected to it will be accessible (i.e. check your refrigerator inventory via a personalized web-based panel so you can prep a grocery list to pick up on the way home). Eventually, you'll walk into your house on a 48 degree (farenheit) winter day, and your home will be a sweltering 95 degrees (farenheit) inside, courtesy of the W64.HVACdemon virus, written by some pointy-headed 15 year old in Holland.
That's Bill's ultimate goal: to squeeze Microsoft "technology" into every nook and cranny of your life until everything you do has some Microsoft code enabling it or making it inaccessible unless you pay Bill. And that's why such huge specs are needed.
obviously from a dude on slashdot. just thought that was a funny/interesting perspective.
please, go on with your daily lives.
--the damaja
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
ladies, gents.
well, it's fuckin... may, dude. may is like, the month. it is the month of all months really. may's a little scary cuz i know i'm done with college and that means i'm about a month away from working as a real employee, although i've kinda done that for a while. although i've got a lot of little shit tasks and crap to complete this month, i'm also making sure that i still collegeboy it up this month since i ain't no collegeboy after this. this week should be good for that since i've got one lecture tomorrow and then nothing for a week. and you can kinda imagine with 3 finals and graduation on the horizon no ass-busting will occur for those finals, boy.
so this week's gonna kinda be half productive half lazyass really. i've got some things on campus i gotta do, as well as some shit around the city, but other than that i'll be fuckin around at home. the only real good thing about having actual tasks to complete is it will at least sorta prevent me from really shifting hours and sleeping all day. don't really bet on seeing me awake before noon though i'd imagine.
i never really have any problems keeping busy during times like this. i'm almost halfway through ender's game, which has been okay so far, not really spectacular but not boring either. i've been really slow on, which never helps. i had intended to read that and pattern recognition before i moved out of CS, but that's not gonna happen. i'll be lucky to finish ender's game in the next week or so at this pace.
it's funny how i've got all these tv and anime series to watch, but when i find something i really like i watch it way more than everything else. sorta outta nowhere i just watched all 6 episodes of the first season of the office, and enjoyed the hell out of it. at first i didn't like the show, and most people i know don't really seem to "get it" either, but if you give it a bit of a chance and get thru the thick british accents i'm sure you'll enjoy it. i've just got the 2nd season and the xmas specials left to watch, but i'm debating on scrapping my tvrips of it and just getting the dvd set, both seasons. i also enjoyed the hell out of the significant others semi-mini-series, at least the 4 out of 6 episodes i could grab. luckily, bravo decided to make a few more episodes, so i'll keep an eye out for those.
now and then i'll watch a home movies episode, those don't really get old. i have plans to start watching alias from season 1 to see if it's any good, but i might save that little endeavor for the middle of the summer if we're at a real lack for decent tv. i have an assload of MST3K episodes to watch, which will take fuckin forever given that each ep is an hour and a half long. i still say i'm gonna try to watch that traffic mini-series that hit the USA network a few months ago.
i've been pretty bad about anime lately. although to give myself credit i think i needed a bit of a break from it since i went through the whole cowboy bebop series. i'm over halfway done with hellsing, but i've found that's not a great series to watch spread out over a long time cuz you kinda forget about some of the overall plot and lose interest in the characters. it's a solid action-based anime but i'm glad i didn't fork over all the cash for the dvd set, woulda been mostly wasted money. i've got a few other series (that i've mentioned here before) that i could tackle if i really wanted to, but for now they're kinda on the backburner, since i've still got hellsing, noir, gun slinger girl and possible full metal panic! shit to tide me over for quite some time.
as far as tv series, i'm mostly content to kinda catch up on a lot of stuff over the summer when there's a lot less new programming on. i might try out a few episodes of the shield to see if it's worth the hype. i intend to go back and watch the entire maxx series since i thought the animation style was so damn brilliant. i've also got the first season of strangers with candy, chappelle's show, first couple years of mr. show, dead like me, curb your enthusiasm and sealab 2021 to fill my time.
but believe it or not, i am trying to get myself to do what i can to get off my computers and do something else. that kinda narrows it down to 3 options: tivo, reading, or video games. as i mentioned above i haven't really been reading that much, although i think i'll knock out a few books this summer since i'll need something to put me to sleep every night when i have to hit the sack at such ridiculous times. i've found that tivo actually works perfect if you want a meal in front of the tv and need like 20-30 minutes of definite entertainment while you eat. i've gone back and played a few more hours of star fox adventures, with a strategy guide luckily it wasn't too tough to get back into the flow of it, although i wouldn't be surprised if it had been a year since i had last saved my previous game, heh. it is sorta depressing though that i've put like 6-7 hours into it and i'm only like 22% or something finished with it. i think as a kid i prolly coulda accomplished that over a day or so. and last week at one point i played a little f-zero gx, so i'm trying to get my ass off the web and in front of the cube.
it's completely backwards given my difficulty in convincing myself to sit down and play a game consistently, but i'm actually strongly considering purchasing another console, maybe not quite right now but within a few months. i really never would have thought i'd be saying that like a year or 6 months ago, but it's kinda true. it's not really even about me being at all unhappy with the gamecube or anything, it's just i'm seeing more and more this drought the cube's going through as far as big releases. in some ways it doesn't completely affect me as i still have plenty of shit from 2002 and 2003 to tide me over, but it does sorta suck knowing that if i did wanna go out and buy another game there's not much to choose from currently.
it was for that reason that i used a rent 1 get 1 game coupon at blockbuster -- and got 2 xbox games. normally i like to bash the xbox just cuz i'm a former playstation fan and a current nintendo backer, but with the gc drought and an xbox in the apartment, i had to seize the opportunity. i rented ninja gaiden and max payne 2. only played ninja gaiden so far, and it's been really nice. it's tough getting used to the controller (i've really barely ever played xbox or ps2 ever) but it's a fun game and that's a good sign that i've already put several hours into it. i love my cube and look forward to future releases on it until this generation of consoles rolls over into the next, but i'm also thinking if i can convince myself to up my amount of gameplay, i shoulda prolly invest in another console in addition. i like some of the things i've seen so far in the xbox and i know the ps2 would rock as well. what really attracts me to an additional console is cost. ps2 will prolly fall in price soon, and an xbox can be had for a relatively cheap $150 these days. i'm also really interested in ps2's greatest hits series, which a lot of games are between $20 and $40, which beats $50 for almost every damn gamecube game. it's taken me about a year and a half to see some of the holes in nintendo's offerings.
as cute and innovative as the cube is, it's a bit troubling that 3rd party vendors are somewhat rapidly dropping support for it. i'm seeing more and more games come out for ps2 and xbox but NOT for the gc, which is sad. gc's mainly missing out on a lot of sports and adult-themed action games, which i kinda feel i'm missing out on a bit myself. the cube is still all around the best match for me, cuz i like to play a lot of nintendo's own franchise games, as well as some of the multiplayer games their famous for. but more and more i play video games by myself, sorta from a growing lack of interest in other people i'm close to lately. so that kinda tailors my tastes to more single player type stuff, of which i think those more adult and sports games are geared to. i'm also a little peeved at nintendo's decision not to try out anything online yet. at first i didn't care cuz i didn't think i'd be interested anyway, but this xbox live shit is really starting to get popular, and i'm seeing more and more online games that just look fun. that would be the biggest thing to provoke me to add an xbox to my entertainment arsenal, the ability to play great online games if i so desired.
i don't get some of nintendo's decisions, man. i'm a big supported of theirs and can't stand reading about other people constantly bashing them, but their decision to push gameboy advance - gamecube connectivity is just... weird. it sounds novel in theory, but the biggest problem is... i don't fucking have a gameboy advance. that's like asking me to go buy a $100 accessory just to be able to play a game properly. GBA's are cool and all, but where the fuck would i use one other than for that connectivity? in my cubicle at work? in bed at night? portable gaming has its place, but it's typically for the under-18 crowd in my opinion. i'm not buying a $3500 DLP tv so that i can sit on my couch and play GBA games. i bought final fantasy crystal chronicles knowing it was really hyped and shit, but not realizing several other people all with their own GBA's was required to really have fun with it. nintendo's fucking ridiculous for thinking that a high percentage of their cube owners have several friends willing to bring their own goddamn GBA's just to have fun with a game.
i think the bottom line is the gamecube is a hell of a little system, and i've loved all the legacy-based games... mario, zelda, f-zero, metroid, etc. that's why i bought the system. great graphics, cool technology overall. but i'm thinking more and more if i want much better game selection i need the cube with something else in addition. it would really all come down to which system has more games i'm interested in, ps2 or xbox. i haven't done that research, so i don't know who'd come out on top there. like i said, i don't see it as happening within the next month or so, but don't be surprised if it's the end of the summer and i'm going on and on about some great game i just played on ps2 or xbox.
heh, it's funny how i've just been a little too high-tech for too long. it's harder and harder for me to break things down for people when it comes to explaining something i'm doing remotely high-tech. seems like several people i've told so far about building my home theater PC don't seem to understand what the hell it's for. i can only really hope that they'll see exactly what i'm trying to do when everything's actually set up.
it's not gonna help being a full-time software engineer, but i do plan on making a conscious effort to spend considerably less time on my computers, at least online. i have all these internet and AIM problems lately (not sure if they're related to the recent worm) and it's funny how disconnected i feel when i'm not connected to AIM. when you've relied it on for so long and it's your main method for communicating to other people, you're not really entirely sure how to find out what everybody else is up to, heh. it's hard not to just sit there now and then and wonder what everyone's away message says or at least what they're generally doing.
the thing that scares me is that i have IM access up at work, and i can pretty easily punch through the firewall to have AIM run as part of my work IM service, i've done it in the past. but i kinda wonder if i *want* to do that, y'know? sure, i can be at work all day and be online, but... why? the main people i talk to will most likely be busy themselves, so why bother? i would kinda prefer to at least seem unavailable during the day while i'm at work, even though i could prolly often field messages during the day. i'd kinda rather make up for my always-on status throughout college and just be online every night through maybe like 7-11pm just for casual conversations and shit. and i'd prolly hafta make an effort to go offline more often than just put up away messages, in the interest of trying to keep myself from having the AIM excuse to sit at the computer.
i don't know if i'd go as far as saying i'm addicted here. that could either be me realizing i'm not addicted, or that i'm actually denying it. it's not so much that i think i'm doing anything particularly unhealthy being online and at the computer so often, it's moreso that i feel it detracts from other things i could/should be doing instead. it's not even so much that i have more productive things to do, like cleaning or anything, i get that done pretty well, it's more like the watching/playing/reading alternatives that i mentioned earlier. as corny as it is, i think that'll be my main "resolution" for the summer.
guess i'll take my own advice now, huh? ;)
peace,
justin
well, it's fuckin... may, dude. may is like, the month. it is the month of all months really. may's a little scary cuz i know i'm done with college and that means i'm about a month away from working as a real employee, although i've kinda done that for a while. although i've got a lot of little shit tasks and crap to complete this month, i'm also making sure that i still collegeboy it up this month since i ain't no collegeboy after this. this week should be good for that since i've got one lecture tomorrow and then nothing for a week. and you can kinda imagine with 3 finals and graduation on the horizon no ass-busting will occur for those finals, boy.
so this week's gonna kinda be half productive half lazyass really. i've got some things on campus i gotta do, as well as some shit around the city, but other than that i'll be fuckin around at home. the only real good thing about having actual tasks to complete is it will at least sorta prevent me from really shifting hours and sleeping all day. don't really bet on seeing me awake before noon though i'd imagine.
i never really have any problems keeping busy during times like this. i'm almost halfway through ender's game, which has been okay so far, not really spectacular but not boring either. i've been really slow on, which never helps. i had intended to read that and pattern recognition before i moved out of CS, but that's not gonna happen. i'll be lucky to finish ender's game in the next week or so at this pace.
it's funny how i've got all these tv and anime series to watch, but when i find something i really like i watch it way more than everything else. sorta outta nowhere i just watched all 6 episodes of the first season of the office, and enjoyed the hell out of it. at first i didn't like the show, and most people i know don't really seem to "get it" either, but if you give it a bit of a chance and get thru the thick british accents i'm sure you'll enjoy it. i've just got the 2nd season and the xmas specials left to watch, but i'm debating on scrapping my tvrips of it and just getting the dvd set, both seasons. i also enjoyed the hell out of the significant others semi-mini-series, at least the 4 out of 6 episodes i could grab. luckily, bravo decided to make a few more episodes, so i'll keep an eye out for those.
now and then i'll watch a home movies episode, those don't really get old. i have plans to start watching alias from season 1 to see if it's any good, but i might save that little endeavor for the middle of the summer if we're at a real lack for decent tv. i have an assload of MST3K episodes to watch, which will take fuckin forever given that each ep is an hour and a half long. i still say i'm gonna try to watch that traffic mini-series that hit the USA network a few months ago.
i've been pretty bad about anime lately. although to give myself credit i think i needed a bit of a break from it since i went through the whole cowboy bebop series. i'm over halfway done with hellsing, but i've found that's not a great series to watch spread out over a long time cuz you kinda forget about some of the overall plot and lose interest in the characters. it's a solid action-based anime but i'm glad i didn't fork over all the cash for the dvd set, woulda been mostly wasted money. i've got a few other series (that i've mentioned here before) that i could tackle if i really wanted to, but for now they're kinda on the backburner, since i've still got hellsing, noir, gun slinger girl and possible full metal panic! shit to tide me over for quite some time.
as far as tv series, i'm mostly content to kinda catch up on a lot of stuff over the summer when there's a lot less new programming on. i might try out a few episodes of the shield to see if it's worth the hype. i intend to go back and watch the entire maxx series since i thought the animation style was so damn brilliant. i've also got the first season of strangers with candy, chappelle's show, first couple years of mr. show, dead like me, curb your enthusiasm and sealab 2021 to fill my time.
but believe it or not, i am trying to get myself to do what i can to get off my computers and do something else. that kinda narrows it down to 3 options: tivo, reading, or video games. as i mentioned above i haven't really been reading that much, although i think i'll knock out a few books this summer since i'll need something to put me to sleep every night when i have to hit the sack at such ridiculous times. i've found that tivo actually works perfect if you want a meal in front of the tv and need like 20-30 minutes of definite entertainment while you eat. i've gone back and played a few more hours of star fox adventures, with a strategy guide luckily it wasn't too tough to get back into the flow of it, although i wouldn't be surprised if it had been a year since i had last saved my previous game, heh. it is sorta depressing though that i've put like 6-7 hours into it and i'm only like 22% or something finished with it. i think as a kid i prolly coulda accomplished that over a day or so. and last week at one point i played a little f-zero gx, so i'm trying to get my ass off the web and in front of the cube.
it's completely backwards given my difficulty in convincing myself to sit down and play a game consistently, but i'm actually strongly considering purchasing another console, maybe not quite right now but within a few months. i really never would have thought i'd be saying that like a year or 6 months ago, but it's kinda true. it's not really even about me being at all unhappy with the gamecube or anything, it's just i'm seeing more and more this drought the cube's going through as far as big releases. in some ways it doesn't completely affect me as i still have plenty of shit from 2002 and 2003 to tide me over, but it does sorta suck knowing that if i did wanna go out and buy another game there's not much to choose from currently.
it was for that reason that i used a rent 1 get 1 game coupon at blockbuster -- and got 2 xbox games. normally i like to bash the xbox just cuz i'm a former playstation fan and a current nintendo backer, but with the gc drought and an xbox in the apartment, i had to seize the opportunity. i rented ninja gaiden and max payne 2. only played ninja gaiden so far, and it's been really nice. it's tough getting used to the controller (i've really barely ever played xbox or ps2 ever) but it's a fun game and that's a good sign that i've already put several hours into it. i love my cube and look forward to future releases on it until this generation of consoles rolls over into the next, but i'm also thinking if i can convince myself to up my amount of gameplay, i shoulda prolly invest in another console in addition. i like some of the things i've seen so far in the xbox and i know the ps2 would rock as well. what really attracts me to an additional console is cost. ps2 will prolly fall in price soon, and an xbox can be had for a relatively cheap $150 these days. i'm also really interested in ps2's greatest hits series, which a lot of games are between $20 and $40, which beats $50 for almost every damn gamecube game. it's taken me about a year and a half to see some of the holes in nintendo's offerings.
as cute and innovative as the cube is, it's a bit troubling that 3rd party vendors are somewhat rapidly dropping support for it. i'm seeing more and more games come out for ps2 and xbox but NOT for the gc, which is sad. gc's mainly missing out on a lot of sports and adult-themed action games, which i kinda feel i'm missing out on a bit myself. the cube is still all around the best match for me, cuz i like to play a lot of nintendo's own franchise games, as well as some of the multiplayer games their famous for. but more and more i play video games by myself, sorta from a growing lack of interest in other people i'm close to lately. so that kinda tailors my tastes to more single player type stuff, of which i think those more adult and sports games are geared to. i'm also a little peeved at nintendo's decision not to try out anything online yet. at first i didn't care cuz i didn't think i'd be interested anyway, but this xbox live shit is really starting to get popular, and i'm seeing more and more online games that just look fun. that would be the biggest thing to provoke me to add an xbox to my entertainment arsenal, the ability to play great online games if i so desired.
i don't get some of nintendo's decisions, man. i'm a big supported of theirs and can't stand reading about other people constantly bashing them, but their decision to push gameboy advance - gamecube connectivity is just... weird. it sounds novel in theory, but the biggest problem is... i don't fucking have a gameboy advance. that's like asking me to go buy a $100 accessory just to be able to play a game properly. GBA's are cool and all, but where the fuck would i use one other than for that connectivity? in my cubicle at work? in bed at night? portable gaming has its place, but it's typically for the under-18 crowd in my opinion. i'm not buying a $3500 DLP tv so that i can sit on my couch and play GBA games. i bought final fantasy crystal chronicles knowing it was really hyped and shit, but not realizing several other people all with their own GBA's was required to really have fun with it. nintendo's fucking ridiculous for thinking that a high percentage of their cube owners have several friends willing to bring their own goddamn GBA's just to have fun with a game.
i think the bottom line is the gamecube is a hell of a little system, and i've loved all the legacy-based games... mario, zelda, f-zero, metroid, etc. that's why i bought the system. great graphics, cool technology overall. but i'm thinking more and more if i want much better game selection i need the cube with something else in addition. it would really all come down to which system has more games i'm interested in, ps2 or xbox. i haven't done that research, so i don't know who'd come out on top there. like i said, i don't see it as happening within the next month or so, but don't be surprised if it's the end of the summer and i'm going on and on about some great game i just played on ps2 or xbox.
heh, it's funny how i've just been a little too high-tech for too long. it's harder and harder for me to break things down for people when it comes to explaining something i'm doing remotely high-tech. seems like several people i've told so far about building my home theater PC don't seem to understand what the hell it's for. i can only really hope that they'll see exactly what i'm trying to do when everything's actually set up.
it's not gonna help being a full-time software engineer, but i do plan on making a conscious effort to spend considerably less time on my computers, at least online. i have all these internet and AIM problems lately (not sure if they're related to the recent worm) and it's funny how disconnected i feel when i'm not connected to AIM. when you've relied it on for so long and it's your main method for communicating to other people, you're not really entirely sure how to find out what everybody else is up to, heh. it's hard not to just sit there now and then and wonder what everyone's away message says or at least what they're generally doing.
the thing that scares me is that i have IM access up at work, and i can pretty easily punch through the firewall to have AIM run as part of my work IM service, i've done it in the past. but i kinda wonder if i *want* to do that, y'know? sure, i can be at work all day and be online, but... why? the main people i talk to will most likely be busy themselves, so why bother? i would kinda prefer to at least seem unavailable during the day while i'm at work, even though i could prolly often field messages during the day. i'd kinda rather make up for my always-on status throughout college and just be online every night through maybe like 7-11pm just for casual conversations and shit. and i'd prolly hafta make an effort to go offline more often than just put up away messages, in the interest of trying to keep myself from having the AIM excuse to sit at the computer.
i don't know if i'd go as far as saying i'm addicted here. that could either be me realizing i'm not addicted, or that i'm actually denying it. it's not so much that i think i'm doing anything particularly unhealthy being online and at the computer so often, it's moreso that i feel it detracts from other things i could/should be doing instead. it's not even so much that i have more productive things to do, like cleaning or anything, i get that done pretty well, it's more like the watching/playing/reading alternatives that i mentioned earlier. as corny as it is, i think that'll be my main "resolution" for the summer.
guess i'll take my own advice now, huh? ;)
peace,
justin
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