MBCook - Slashdot User

Submission + - Donkey Kong and Me (dadhacker.com) 1

Submitted by

MBCook

on Saturday March 08, 2008 @12:43PM

MBCook writes: "A man named Landon Dyer posted an entry on his blog the other day entitled Donkey Kong and Me describing how he was offered at job at Atari after writing a Centipede clone and ended up programming Donkey Kong for the Atari 800. The article describes the fascinating stuff he found there that were indications of what to come.

It was a portent of things to come. My first officemate didn't know how to set up his computer. He didn't know anything, it appeared. He'd been hired to work on Dig Dug, and he was completely at sea. I had to teach him a lot, including how to program in assembly, how the Atari hardware worked, how to download stuff, how to debug. It was pretty bad.
"

Submission + - The Latest "Science": Kinoki Foot Pads (consumerist.com)

Submitted by

MBCook

on Sunday January 27, 2008 @10:56PM

MBCook writes: "What removes toxins from your body, cures headaches, causes weight loss, lowers high blood pressure, and more? Why Kinoki Foot Pads, of course. I was floored to see an adversitsement for this product on TV the other day. When I went online I found The Consumerist has posted a link to the commercial and some of it's amazing claims.

How does it work? Well, the pads have "all-natural tree extracts and powerful negative ions," and um. "When the blood circulates to the soles, the Kinoki Detox Foot Pad can absorb toxins released from the acupuncture points."
Reading the comments on the article are great as well. According to commenter gitemstevedave, the address in the commercial is a UPS store, and jurisenpai points out that the Japanese characters in the ad aren't even pronounced "Kinoki"."

Submission + - When Movies Don't Live Up to the Trailer (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by

MBCook

on Thursday January 03, 2008 @06:22PM

MBCook writes: "David Pogue of the New York Times has published a piece in which he asks "Just how different can a trailer be without becoming false advertising?" He relates taking his children to see Nation Treasure: Book of Secrets, and just how amazingly different it is from the trailers. "On the way home, what [my children and I] discussed wasn't the plot or the shaky grasp of history. It was all the good stuff we'd seen in the trailers (the ads) that weren't even *in* the movie.""

Submission + - "You Don't Understand Our Audience" (technologyreview.com)

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MBCook

on Wednesday January 02, 2008 @06:46PM

MBCook writes: "Technology Review has a fantastic seven page piece titled "You Don't Understand Our Audience" (printer version, summed up by Ars) by former Dateline correspondent John Hockenberry. In it he discusses how NBC (and the networks at large) has missed and wasted opportunities brought by the Internet; and how they work to hard to get viewers at the expense of actual news. The story describes various events such as turning down a report on who al-Qaeda is for a reality show about firefighters, having to tie a story about a radical student group into American Dreams, and the failure to cover events like Kurt Cobain suicide (except as an Andy Rooney complaint piece)."

Submission + - Honda Insight Battery Packs Still Going (freep.com)

Submitted by

MBCook

on Tuesday October 09, 2007 @08:16PM

MBCook writes: "The Detroit Free Press is running a piece about the 8th anniversary of the US release of the Honda Insight. Honda rated the battery pack to last 8-10 years, a number that we have now reached. Many people were worried that the battery packs, which cost $3000 to replace, wouldn't last very long. "Hybrids also held up well in J.D. Power and Associates' three-year durability survey, with about 10% fewer problems than gasoline-engine cars, said Joe Ivers, Power's executive director of quality and customer satisfaction." However, the cars have lost 6% more of their value than a comparable Civic."

Submission + - Washington Post Notices Ron Paul Exists, Won Poll (washingtonpost.com)

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MBCook

on Sunday September 09, 2007 @05:55PM

MBCook writes: "Today the Washington Post printed an article titled "Ron Paul Takes the Ribbon in State Fair's GOP Straw Poll" in which they point out that not only did he win the Maryland straw poll by 43 votes, but how well his grass-roots campaign is run. The article quotes state Republican party vice-chair Chris Cavey: "The final vote showing Ron Paul won is a lesson for all campaigns of how grass-roots politics can make all the difference.""

Submission + - TiVo 3 & HD to get TiVoToGo and Multi-Room Vie (tivocommunity.com)

Submitted by

MBCook

on Friday September 07, 2007 @10:45AM

MBCook writes: "A post on the TiVo Community Forum by TiVoPony this morning confirmed that the Series 3 and TiVoHD boxes will receive a software update (planned for November) allowing both Multi-Room Viewing and TiVoToGo. The update will also contain a feature letting you move videos from your PC to your TiVo so you can watch them on your TV, unofficially named TiVoToComeBack."

Submission + - XBox 360 and PS3: They do HD? (1up.com) 1

Submitted by

MBCook

on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @09:08PM

MBCook writes: "Microsoft has just confirmed that now both the Elite and Premium XBox 360 models include HDMI. However, that probably doesn't matter to many consumers as according to a survey done by NPD, 70% of XBox 360 owners were unaware HD capabilities in the console. The PS3 is doing better at 50%, but only 40% of PS3 users knew they could play Blu-Ray discs on the machine. Only half of those have used that ability, meaning 80% of PS3 owners aren't watching Blu-Ray discs."

Submission + - Broadband Data Improvement Act Clears Committee (arstechnica.com)

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MBCook

on Thursday July 19, 2007 @10:06PM

MBCook writes: "Ars Technica is reporting that the Broadband Data Improvement Act has left committee with a unanimous vote. Among the changes proposed are requiring the definition of "second generation broadband" (enough to carry HDTV) instead of the current definition of broadband as 200Kbps, and aggregating the data by ZIP+4 instead of just the full ZIP code. The act can now move to the full Senate."

Submission + - Thompson Says Florida Bar Requested Psych Test (joystiq.com)

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MBCook

on Tuesday July 03, 2007 @12:32PM

MBCook writes: "The referee for Jack Thompson's Florida Bar issues, Sheila M. Tuma, has allegedly requested that Thompson seek psychological testing and accept a 91-day suspension of his law license. The e-mail explaining the situation was sent to GamePolitics by Thompson himself. The claim could not be verified as the Florida Bar did not respond to requests for comment. The recommendation comes following issues stemming from Thompson's Bully case last year where there were issues regarding his professional conduct."

Submission + - SWSoft Not Complying with GPL (winehq.org)

Submitted by

MBCook

on Saturday June 30, 2007 @09:18PM

MBCook writes: "According to the Official Wine Wiki, SWSoft's Parallels 3.0 contains LGPL code. It seems that the new 3D acceleration features of Parallels 3.0 is based on Wine code (SWSoft isn't hiding this), but despite repeated requests they have not yet released their changes for the Wine developers. It has now been 22 days since SWSoft was first contacted on this issue, promising the code within 1-2 days at the time. They have been contacted numerous time and currently say that they are waiting on "legal department approval"."

Submission + - iPhone Launch: AT&T Vs. Apple Store (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by

MBCook

on Saturday June 30, 2007 @05:36PM

MBCook writes: "A Gizmodo reader named Frank Beacham wrote in with his experience with the iPhone Launch, having visited both an AT&T store and an Apple store. Gizmodo "thought his piece was well-written and quite telling about the difference in customer service between the two companies". The experiences of those in the comments seems to mostly echo Frank's. His conclusion? "Day one revealed what all Apple aficionados fear. That AT&T, through the depths of its incompetence, could derail the iPhone.""

Submission + - Reasonable Pre-Paid Cellphone in the US?

Submitted by

MBCook

on Monday December 04, 2006 @02:39PM

MBCook writes: "I've been with my current cell provider for a few years, and never been terribly happy with them. They lock and cripple their phones, but their coverage has been decent. However in the last month I have experienced having my phone telling me it had voice mail when it didn't for about 2 weeks (little icon was there, but calling in said "No messages"). Then today (Dec. 4th) it notified me of a very important call I missed. On November 19th.

Since my contract expires next month I've been looking at pre-paid cell phones and their plans. My problem is that I'm not a big talker, by any stretch. It would take me a while to use up 100 minutes. All the pre-paid plans seem to like to expire your minutes relatively fast (30 days) unless you buy a large number like 1000, then you get 90 days. Add to that the daily access fees some of them want to charge you ($1 per day you use your phone) and I may as well be paying $40 a month to one of the big boys.

Is there any way to get cheap pre-paid cell service in the US? I don't care about ring tones, and while I'd like to be able to get games I can survive without 'em. I can't be the only one in this boat, what have others found?"

Submission + - Java To Be Opened For Christmas

Submitted by

MBCook

on Thursday October 26, 2006 @05:19PM

MBCook writes: "At the Oracle OpenWorld conference, Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced on Wednesday morning that Java would be opened with 30-60 days, which would would mean about Christmas Day at the latest. Sun first announced they would do this back in May at JavaOne but didn't give a date. We've seen rumblings before on this topic. Schwartz also commented on the companies Sun Fire servers, Sun's relationship with Oracle, and general trends."

Submission + - Apple's Xserve Xeon: Built to fall apart

Submitted by

MBCook

on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @03:17PM

MBCook writes: "Tom Yager of InfoWorld's Enterprise Mac has written a piece about his tour of a new Xserve based around a Xeon processor. He offers quite a bit of praise about how well it's deisgned.
Xserve Xeon is[...] built to be user-serviceable. You can buy packaged spare parts kits [or] you can scavenge and swap parts [between Xserves], just as God intended.
He mentions the ease of accessing the fans, processors, motherboard, and more. It should be noted that this is a piece strictly about design, and does not test or mention the performace or operating system."

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