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It was 1984 at Carnegie Mellon University... in this era the cutting-edge Microsoft (PC) operating system was MS-DOS 3.0.... it looked like this: http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/gfx/logo/msdos_screenshot.jpg . In this era, when using Microsoft PC's with MS-DOS it was quite common for people to lose hours of work unless they manually saved their work constantly, even if they did nothing wrong because the the computer often "froze up" with no warning. Anyway, I was trying out the Paint software on the new Mac, which looked like this: http://www.forevergeek.com/wp-content/media/2010/08/MacPaint-Japanese-Girl.png . Keep in mind that at this time there were no hard disks in PC's or Macs... just floppies. I had spent about an hour drawing a picture on the Mac but had not saved my work at all. I stretched my legs a bit under the computer table and my foot accidentally kicked the power cord out of the socket. The computer instantly died. I was bummed that I had lost my picture but I plugged the computer back in and watched it boot up again from the floppy. Did it come up with an error message "your computer was not shut down properly" (which you will see with a Microsoft Windows computer to this very day). No. Did it just boot up normally as if nothing had happened? No. Without a single message and without asking me a single question, it booted directly into the Paint software WITH MY ENTIRE PICTURE INTACT.

but it has it's own share of UI disasters.

Like what?

Some like having the Trash and Eject be the same UI target were a dumb idea from day one. Some, like having all of the menus at the top of the screen made sense when we were on low resolution single screen systems, but are detriments in multi-monitor high resolutions systems, and some of them are brand new bonehead decisions like choose to use a green plus for a button that will shrink the screen.

Those are all person preferences. Some like you have problems with them but others may like them.

And the so called "maximize" green button is not a maximize button at all, it resizes the current window to its optimal width and height. Personally I'd rather it maximize windows but I don't have a problem grabbing a corner and dragging it to make it bigger, or smaller. And that was a problem I had with MS Windows, if a window were maximized it couldn't be made smaller simply by grabbing a corner. It had to be reduced in size by clicking the reduce button first. Only then could a corner be grabbed to make it the size the user wants.

Falcon

Oh, btw when I said that about MS Windows I meant those versions I've used however I have not used any version in more than 3 years. The last I used was XP.

It's not the first time though, so I'm kinda being a hypocrite.

http://www.forevergeek.com/wp-content/media/2007/09/super-mario-bros.gif
http://www.studio-quena.be/cyborgjeff/blog/wp-content/uploads/games/giana.gif

It's cool that it found its way into the DS though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9YUX1zjnR4

Does this look like a blaster from Star Wars? Or this? They have heatsink-looking elements and rings, but they would never be confused for a blaster from the Star Wars movies.

There's a difference between adding heatsink-looking elements and rings to a laser's case, and making the style of the case match that of a lightsaber.

Firefox has over 10,000 open bugs. Stop using it.

I'm not going to say you're wrong, but at least rephrase what you said so that it sounds like some general Microsoft fud. How many of those are untriaged? How many will turn out to be dups? How many bugs were fixed for firefox 3?

Here are some tips to make Firefox use less memory. And for the love of god and all that is holy, I hope Tab Mix Plus isn't the memory leak it used to be.

People are doing it with SD: http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2007/05/sd_to_ssd_conversion_made_easy.html
Here is the CF version: http://forevergeek.com/gadgets/compact_flash_to_ssd_converter.php
If you are not limited to the 2.5" form factor of a laptop chassis, there are better/faster ways of doing this: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/242281-32-drives

I often think this same thing about all bipedal walking robots. It's neither the easiest way to make things mobile, nor does it provide the most mobility. If you're dealing with uneven terrain, something with six legs would probably work a lot better, or if you want to cover lots of land, then something with wheels or tank track works better. I can't see two legged robots offering any serious commercial applications, apart from the novelty of having something that looks human. Would you rather have a robot maid that could do all the housework, or a robot maid that could only do half of the housework, but walked on two legs?

By American standards, games might generate of few meloncholy moments. But only if your current emotional state is receptive to sad thoughts. Most western games are all about fear, animated violence, and unreal situations so a gamer can barely identify with the hero of the game. This is what the majority of the American public wants, escape and the adrenalin rush that comes from a 'fight or flight' response.

Japanese games on the other hand are more realized to be a meduim to communicate adult concepts. The game Kana: Little Sister http://forevergeek.com/articles/kana_little_sister .php is more for adults and it explores real emotional situations dealing with life and death. Unless your a stone, I guaren-damn-tee you there will be at least a big lump in your throat. Most reviewers report plenty of water works.

Go on - read the reviews. That game is one a million. A true gem.

That is indeed a beautiful scene. I think it was the first video game scene that made me cry.

The most emotional game I have ever played must be Kana, Little Sister (Review at http://forevergeek.com/articles/kana_little_sister .php/. It is a less well known game due to it being an adult (hentai) game, but it has an excellent and sad story that captivates the player.

The example I gave is a Visual Novel, which comes very close to being a book/movie. The same can be be said about cutscenes like in Wing Commander or Final Fantasy. There is however one big difference between watching a movie and playing a cutscene in a game. In a game, there is a much closer and personal relationship between the player and the antagonist. It is a relationship formed because the player is choosing the actions of antagonist. The antagonist's experience can actually become the player's experience.

This is of course very much dependent on the player. There are some people who never seem to get any closer than a third person view (like in books or movies), while other players actually take the role of the antagonist when playing. Most are probably somewhere inbetween. Even in pure fps games, it is possible to get this kind of emotional state. It is a matter convincing oneself that one actually is the character. It can raise the experience of a game with a captivating environment to a whole new level.

Yes, they edited my comments, and the comments of others. I am not the only one who has noticed this abuse of power at Digg. It isn't every day, but it happens, and I have talked to a few others who have experienced this, and no longer digg. There have been other editorial abuses, such as the same 16 people digging articles, in the same order (which is obviously impossible) to get articles on the front page. They can't even follow their OWN rules.

The sad thing is, the comment I had edited was not even controversial or questionable. It seems to have been edited "because I can". A single editor abusing power? Perhaps, but they don't acknowlege it, so we can only assume it continues.

So yes, with all it's flaws, at least Slashdot is "open".

Yeah, the house arrest must be for their own protection. Is Steve Baller so careful with his? Will Bill keep his own safe from Ipod and Google?

Inside the Baller residence, Steve is fishing around under his son's bed. His son fidgets helplessly.

Steve finds a CD, pulls it out and thrust it in his son's face. "What's this, son?!"

Steve Jr: "It's ... it's my homework."

Steve: "No it's not. I can tell you are lying to me. What is it?"

Steve Jr: "It's porn. I'm sorry, and I won't do it again. Let's just throw it away and forget about it."

Steve, now spitting: "What kind of moron do you think I am? Do I have to boot it? You though you were using an anonymizer to download this filth, but it was my proxy. Now tell me what it is!"

Steve Jr, now crying and crushed: "It's Linux."

Steve falls on the floor, clutching his chest.

Steve Jr, hysterical: "Dad! no!

Steve, weakly: "I thought it was Firefox, I saw the signatures. Oh. my. God. How long has this been going on?"

Jr: "Not long. I swear, I only booted it once. A developer told me -"

Steve grasps his son by the shirt, regaining strength: "That's it. I'm going to give you all the tools you will ever need. Developers are what is going to save this family. I love this family! Developers, Developers, Developers!" Rising now with his fist in the air, "With God as my Witness, you will never be hungry again!"

Linux:
Their hardware is unlikely to ever support my os, because (perhaps because they're a giant popular corporation) they like to keep it all closed up.

Let me get this straight, you download an anoying browser toolbar and you get free software with it? Usually it`s the other way around...

But please, can we stop comparing google and microsoft already? The only similarity they have is that they are both in the nasdaq... I understand that makes them competitors for people who don`t look further than stock markets but can can we, at least in the "news for nerds" world, look for the real wars? Like, I don`t, know sun, apple and all the other vertical unix guys? Remember "small but unix" is a market IBM got out of because it saw no future. Do you see any "redhat declares war on sun" speculation? The "netcraft confirms, bsd dying" comments are the closest we get I am afraid.

Also the nasdaq has nothing to do with innovation... Sorry folks. Business and innovation are a great mix, kinda like wodka and coke... but in real life they are just as separate things most of the time. Sorry nasdaq guys, but just becouse you don`t understand something doesn`t mean it`s new. Everyone knows new ideas always come from people who are bored and have some darpa funded time to waste at university/school. These Ideas then go through a standard body that does the engineering work, then businesses f@#$ it up and the biggest guy buys the business the fu$#%ed up the least or just patents the idea and clones it... and then you can buy it as a product or service. Thats how innovation works... as you can see, there is a bit of nasdaq right at the end of the chain there.

Microsoft is the living proof that its cheaper to buy innovation than it is to have a dedicated innovation staff.

• They bought dos
• basic wasn`t new
• bought the vms people to do windows NT
• cloned the gui idea
• bought internet explorer (when they tried to do their own internet)
• rip of java with .net (They might even do a better job of what java does. Ofcourse java is great for what it was intended (embedded stuff) in theory...)
• bough SQL server (sybase)
• the centralised authentication in NT wasn`t new, dcom wasn`t new
• Active directory does the X.500 directory idea (using kerberos and ldap) just like novell did (btw, did microsoft declare war one novell back then?)

One offers search and ad services, the other software products you buy once and use for a long time (no matter how they bundle, licence and shrink wrap them into offers you can`t refuse) Its amazing that the nasdaq talking heads seem to have missed the part of their education where the diffrences between services and product you can break by hitting them with a hammer were discussed.

Google offering an openoffice mirror doesn`t change a thing, even if they bundle desktop search and/or toolbars... (Did anyone notice all this still runs on windows and *needs* ms office import filters?) If microsoft stopped trying to imitate and buy its way into markets, then wake me up.

Apparently, it is. Windows is supposed to be extremely modular, or so I read from the anti-trust case a while back. It would probably be quite trivial to replace IE with a regular file manager. In fact, I think LiteStep does it (can anyone confirm or deny that?).

There's also this.

$3bln in PROFITS!? That means that it can afford to pay their ~1500 programmers an additional $500,000 a year and still have $2bln in profits, or hire additional employees. EA's business practices have been blatantly attacked by their own employees, so much so that they are sueing them. This is retarded and should be foremost in the investor's minds. Too bad the profit motive doesnt include any motive for humane working conditions.

It's unlikely you'll have somewhere for a PS2 to go that wouldn't also accomodate an Xbox, except if you were planning to put the PS2 vertically.

http://forevergeek.com/images/xbox-pstwo2.jpg

Instantiates multiple http "GET" requests so that the browser establishes multiple TCP connections to the webserver to pull pages down faster. I believe the proprietary browser "Opera" does this as well.

http://forevergeek.com/open_source/make_firefox_fa ster.php

That's previous link is mine, I first saw it in forevergeek.com.