The coolness is in another castle…

alternateorg on August 23, 2001

Dear lord. Have you all seen the 8meg Zelda movie? I feel seriously betrayed. I mean what the fuck? That old dark Zelda tech demo shown a year ago with Link and Ganon locking swords got *everyone* excited. It was one of those linchpins to making people believe that Nintendo isn’t a “kiddie” company anymore.

And now we get this shit. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it is incredibly technically impressive. Cel-shading is an awesome technology, albeit more fitting in a Mario game, in my opinion. It’ll probably be a badass game. But the humor of it just seems off. This is the videogame equivalent of Jar Jar. A slap in the face to fans who GREW UP with the series.

I’m also upset that Gamecube is delayed two weeks, and the one game that I desparately want (Smash Bros. Melee, with an awesome, traditional Link btw) is being pushed back til December. Plus, controllers are more expensive, and what the hell is up with Spicy Orange? I dunno, I’m getting disappointed. Goto IGN’s extensive Gamecube coverage and revel in the mixed feelings.

Mass Suicide Occult Figurines

alternateorg on August 22, 2001

I saw John Vanderslice play live about a year ago and like the sucker that I am, I actually paid for his album Mass Suicide Occult Figurines because it’s good. Now he has the entire album in MP3s on his site. Even CD quality sound and two lower quality ones for people with “lesser” connections. Get the song Bill Gates Must Die.

Dum dum da-dum…

alternateorg on August 22, 2001

According to WiredNews, Napster is going to return later this year!

Did I get your hopes up yet? Sorry, that was a cruel joke. What is going to happen, it seems, is that Napster will go live later this year, but as a subscription-based service and you still won’t find any copyrighted material on there. So Napster has essentially been reduced to an utterly impotent service, capable of delivering and providing absolutely nothing. I’ve had high hopes for what Napster could become, and I’ve not agreed with people in the past who said that Napster was dead. At this point though, Napster is worse than dead. It’s walking around okay, but the flesh is rotting off its body left and right like some sort of super-leper. So Limewire and Aimster await.

Mac OS 9.2.1 Update

alternateorg on August 21, 2001

Haven’t seen this mentioned very many places yet but the update to Mac OS 9.2.1 is available via the Apple Website. It updates 9.1 and 9.2 to 9.2.1. Its 80+ Megabytes and supports only G3 and G4 machines (read as: not *any* of the older PPC 60x machines). Here is a direct download link.

I didn't know viruses could do that

alternateorg on August 21, 2001

I cannot believe how fucking retarded this is. It’s a flash animation/movie presented by the Business Software Alliance about a girl graphic designer who happens to be a malicious evil software pirate by night. And one night (apparently via Hotline) she downloads ‘a virus that steals her design portfolio.’ Then she’s transported inside her computer to fight off the virus. She magically picks up money on the road video-game style and uses it to buy liscenced software, which both kills the virus and enables her company to become a giant corporation. Where, I’m assuming, her young slave-like underlings who make minumum wage must illegally copy her software for their own freelance gigs on the weekend. Or something similar, I’m sure.

Don’t get me started on how making money for a real designer isn’t just like driving down the road, let alone that the tiny amount of money our heroine pays and the massive library of software she ends up owning don’t even come close to matching.

It's going to happen anyway

alternateorg on August 21, 2001


“My keynote will focus on Mac OS X v10.1, the super-fast new version of Mac OS X, and our revolutionary new iDVD 2 software, which lets users create their own custom DVDs that can be played on consumer DVD players,” Jobs said. “This has been an incredible new product year for Apple, so we don’t plan to launch any new hardware products in Paris this year.”

So Apple’s trying to keep Mac users’ hopes from getting too high for the Apple Expo in Paris this year, but you know that those morons on MOSR and the MacNN forums are going to say that this is just a ploy to get us down so that when they announce the Dual 1.7 Ghz G5 Platinum Powerbook with SuperDrive and 200GB hard drive running MacOS XI, we aren’t expecting it.

A Tale of Xerox, Apple & Microsoft.. among others

alternateorg on August 18, 2001


At any rate, Jobs decided that he wanted to bring a team of Appleniks into PARC to see what was causing such a buzz – but again, the idea of Jobs coming in like a kid on tour at Epcot with a tape recorder hidden under his shirt is far from the truth. Apple negotiated a deal with Xerox; in return for a block of Apple stock, Xerox allowed Jobs and his team to tour PARC, take notes, and implement some of the ideas and concepts being bounced around at PARC in their own creations. I’m not sure how Xerox felt about Apple subsequently hiring half — the better half — of PARC’s staff away from them, but the process was relatively above-board – no night kidnappings or bribes under the table at Jack In the Box. Xerox allowed Apple to use their ideas in Apple machines.

This is a really great article/narrative about the history of the GUI and why the simplistic view of Microsoft stole it from Apple stole it from Xerox really isn’t all that true. Just skip the first part about the cavemen.