...thier pride lies in thier stock price. Which used to be over $120/share, is now a mere $4/share.
Someone high up has to make a state of the organization address to some REALLY unhappy investors that were hoping that the $120-$16 run would come bouncing back.
Nope, this is Win2k, and an NTFS drive. What happens is multiple tiny files are created (less than 1MB each). iirc (this was 4 months ago), at 2047MB ir worked correctly, at 2048 it would not (and upon re-entering the options it would say "-1". At 4095 it would work out to -2047, and 4096 would be back to 0, 4696 would create 600MB files.
I'd have to go home to re-do the experiments to say the effects with 100% certainty. But I am 100% sure that it acted like an overflow error, and not a file size limitation.
...and immediately reported a rather signifigant bug in thier file exporter, they still have yet to fix it. The exporter allows you to specify a split size in the options (0==no split), however all sizes above 2GB appear to have an overflow into the sign bit error. This includes thier own DVD-RAM setting (5.2GB). The only driver release since the originals (for Win2k atleast) was to add a digital signature. Another glitch is the occasional too-jumpy-to-watch picture. And it's not consistant enough to blame one thing easily. The startup delay is also extremely long, to the point that I often question if the double click registered.
While the card does have some impressive upsides, don't expect to be able to convert the outputted MPEG2 files, I have yet to successfully convert one to Divx. I did get one to VCD after using TMPEG, MPEGcorrector, and Nero. In the feedback on VCDHELP.com there is some posts in the feedback of what people have gone through to get the files converted. Typically this involves splitting, then remerging the files.
My result? The third tuner card in a row w/o any support and a signifigant need for it. (previously I had an STB and 3DFX card that were bought only months before thier demise)
It's my strong belief that software should be able to be put on a disk, stuck in a drawer for 5 years, watch the company die, wait another 5, then still work. The problem is that companies have the "we'll be around forever" idea that just doesn't work.
Also, what brand of dog food I use is NOT important for you to know. Let me try the software, and if I wanna pay for it you'll have my billing information shortly. And yes, I do pay for shareware (Nero, Musicmatch Jukebox, mIRC, Opera...). They got my info after I decided to buy.
The DMCA had the intentions of eliminating piracy, however it ended up being used to fight battles that never should have been fought. If MS releases an OS with a known backdoor, does that count as malicious? If someone makes a program that utilizes this backdoor in a way that MS did not intend (regardless of in a good way or bad way), can MS claim this as malicious? Would NTFSDOS be considered malicious since it bypasses NTFS's protection?
This is one of those issues where a law cannot be both effective and fair. And possibly not either.
It has been determined that schools are a haven for anarchists. We believe this is due to the fact that an unusually large percentage of high school students are anarchists. If we want any safety from these anarchists we must somehow eliminate schools.
...then how come I've been able to DO IT many times? I have an MP3 player system that I built that runs Win95B w/ IE uninstalled (no internet anything required) and Outlook Express was nothing but an added hole for me as I use a third party client, so I removed that from my Windows 2000 machine.
According to that chart he got $19,435 from the TV/Movies/Music group. THAT'S IT?! Hell, if we get every/. reader to pitch in a couple bucks we could buy the house of representitives!
The Senate looks a bit more expensive with Feinstein pulling down $214,638 and Hollings getting $264,534. But due to her support of the bill in the Senate I WILL be voting for her competitor when the next election comes up.
Thanks Diane for making that voting decision just a little bit easier!
I think the hardest part to catching spammers is finding out and proving who they are. They do damn near every trick in the book to hide thier identity.
What might be more effective is to go after the people hiring them. Spam usually gives you a phone number (that's the only piece of reliable information) to call so you can get scammed. Don't buy anything from someone who won't tell you who they are. Call them up, find out as much information as possible, then rip them a new hole. Post the information on the internet, let the trolls troll the spammers.
Serial ATA won't replace SCSI
on
Serial ATA Coming
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Why? Because Serial ATA is still ATA and SCSI is still SCSI. All the inherant benefits of SCSI are still limited to SCSI and all of the inherant drawbacks of ATA is still in ATA. Serial ATA doesn't really change the protocol, just the interconnects.
And Ultra320 is on the horizon already. And by the time Serial ATA reaches 600MB/sec I'd expect SCSI to have continued to grow.
Just because you can put two cows side by side doesn't make them an ox team.
I think they misunderstand Matrox's position...
on
7 Years of 3D Graphics
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Matrox isn't going away because of the following key features:
1: The best multimonitor around They starting it, they perfected it, they can do different resolutions under Windows 2000 (they were the first, if not only)
2: Excellent overlay charactaristics Wanna use a TV tuner card at high resolutions? Ignore nVidia. From my experience programs that run overlay really like Matrox's card, w/ the DVD max feature that allows any overlay to be displayed on the secondary monitor you can port divx video out to the TV. Also, overlay works at much higher resolutions than nVidia solutions have. I don't want to turn my 19" down to 1024x768x16 bit just to watch a DVD, my 14" runs more than that.
3: Acceptable 3D performance, exceptional 3D quality Although it's not the fastest card on the block, it will still play virtually all games atleast acceptably. And when you are playing them, they have a low amount of artifacts and the textures are well drawn.
4: 2D quality Although it's much overlooked, it's what most people stare at a majority of the time. Matrox makes thier own boards so they can have a tight control over the filtering components.
I've used a couple S3 cards (low end), Permedia 1 and 2 cards, Riva128ZX, TNT, and TNT2, Matrox MGA, G400 and 450 cards. And so far I have to give props to Matrox for a product that matches my needs. Granted my needs are different from most. (triple monitors w/ TV tuner and alot of video player programs)
Well duh global warming is happening... (ice age)
on
Larsen Ice Shelf Collapses
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A mini-ice age ended around 1850. The earth has been warming up ever since. Before that it was cooling down. Now it's really convinient that the industrial revolution just happened to start around the same time. Makes it easy to point the finger at us because you KNOW that the earth's climate is 100% stable! (sic)
Scientists have predicted that the earth will continue to warm up for the next 300 or so years. And there's not much we can do about it. And lets face it, the earth's climate is about as stable as an interview with Robin Williams. It's been ever changing and will continue to be ever changing regardless of the numbers that we generate.
Remember, humans didn't cause the global warming that cleared up the glaciation that was as far south as the south western US.
...I'm glad to see this trend started where labeling similar to software packaging is required and the companies are required to take some reponsibility and provide a kind of warentee on this disk (even if it's just 30 days). I hope that it'll convince other companies and CDs to adopt these policies and not just stick with the Charley Pride album and blindly continue ignoring the consumers.
To me the best word processor ISN'T Word, Wordpad maybe but not word. In my opinion the best software isn't the one that has the most features, but the one that does it's job the best. I don't use a web browser to make spread sheets, I don't use a spread sheet to write a document, and I don't use a word processor to browse the internet.
As soon as you try and integrate everything you end up with a horn button in the glove compartment and a gas gauge on the steering wheel. Look at the car stereo market, the aftermarket has alot of wonderfully complex stereos that will do everything, but what do 90% of cars have? The factory deck that is simple, well layed out, with easy to use controls. Can you think of anyone who hasn't programmed thier clock on thier VCR? I bet you can think of someone. Maybe that's why some VCRs now set thier own clocks.
If I could change one thing about MS software what would it be? To disable the f'ing autoformatting! They say you can do it, but it doesn't. Here I am rewriting a document for work and what is step number two? Save it as.txt and break out notepad. Notepad doesn't think it knows better than me, it just does it's job.
When you consider how much paperwork is generated in an effort to yeild the paperless office you'll realize that it's possible to build a house with the amount of paper that is used by a medium office every year. Maybe paperless isn't the right way to go? Has anyone ever looked back?
I'm fedup with crapware. When a high end piece of software gets out performed by freeware/adware/shareware I like to point it out by supporting the little guy.
I own valid keys for:
mirc
Nero
Opera (yes, I paid them)
Music Match Jukebox
Instead of Winzip I use EasyZip, I have successfully exorsized outlook from my Win2k machine and stuck Pegasus Mail in it's place. Office 2000? Uninstalled after finding my version has the registration deal and installed 602 Pro Suite. No regrets, it's faster and cleaner. Even if it doesn't have every little feature.
What I would like to see more of is manufacturers either support and release thier hold on older software. MS has basically stated that 3 years is the lifespan of a product. If the company that I work for could get away with that we could make a killing on releasing new, incompatible products. Guess what? We can't. We MUST support a product for 5 years after the last date of manufacture.
Currently the software industry as a whole is doing something that only they could get away with. And that is forced reliance. If your can breaks down do you have to get new parts from the manufacturer? Do you have to buy your next car from the same brand? Do you HAVE to buy a new one in a couple years?
This is where the little guys come in. They provide enough options that the bigger guys can't realistically buy them all off. So support these guys, you're benefiting from them being around.
As far as CDs go, it looks like I'll be going back to my old buying habits unless they change thier direction. I can go without buying CDs and relying on my current collection and the radio. My car CD player most likely won't play the protected disks. And if I can't rip the disks, I won't carry them around or listen to them regularly. And I'm not gonna pay $17 for a CD that I don't listen to. I have well over a thousand MP3s, and of the ones I have downloaded, the artists know that I did. It was thier sites which had them available. The rest came from CDs. A small stack of CD-rs is a hell of a lot easier to carry around than I binder full of CDs, and a lot less of a risk of theft. $10 loss vs. $2k? I'll take that one any day.
Even though I don't support piracy, lately I'm having a harder time scolding it. Quality has gone down, concern for the user has gone down, quality of service has gone down. If they want me to support them again they're gonna have to fix these things, just like the little guys.
Pay for the shareware that doesn't suck. Uninstall the crapware.
Would it be concievably possible to use mixed architectures and assign certain tasks or routines to the architecture best suited for them.
Rough example:
200MHz Pentium and 200MHz Cyrix system in the same cluster. Two calculations need to be performed, one interger, one floating point. Send the interger to the Cyrix and the floating point to the Intel.
Rather than fight with some platforms being better than others at certain tasks, work WITH that fact.
I've been wondering why this worm doesn't exist:
It sends itself to everyone in your email list
It disables outlook running.vbs,.com,.pif, and.exe attachments
It disables.vbs files for the whole system
What really chews me up is programs that require having IE 4 or later that shouldn't need to access the internet at all. Musicmatch Jukebox just bit me when I tried to upgrade and wouldn't run because I had IE3 and NS4.7 (not to mention M0.6 and Opera5) instead of IE4. when I tried to de-upgrade all hell broke loose and it forgot how to rip and burn. I had to basically delete the directory (losing my settings) and restart.
This is going to go against most of the posts here, but I think that a setup where it's free w/ ads until you pay is an excellent option. It allows them to get more coverage without bankrupting themselves. The decision to go from a strictly "for pay" to a "for pay or ads" is a good one (IMHO).
Slashdot Mirror
...using #include
All your code are belong to me!
...thier pride lies in thier stock price. Which used to be over $120/share, is now a mere $4/share.
Someone high up has to make a state of the organization address to some REALLY unhappy investors that were hoping that the $120-$16 run would come bouncing back.
Too many falls like this may prove fatal.
Opera's had MDI browsing for quite some time. I still don't know why IE doesn't. It keeps all those popups under control.
Damn, the last time I checked was monday :/
Nope, this is Win2k, and an NTFS drive. What happens is multiple tiny files are created (less than 1MB each).
iirc (this was 4 months ago), at 2047MB ir worked correctly, at 2048 it would not (and upon re-entering the options it would say "-1". At 4095 it would work out to -2047, and 4096 would be back to 0, 4696 would create 600MB files.
I'd have to go home to re-do the experiments to say the effects with 100% certainty. But I am 100% sure that it acted like an overflow error, and not a file size limitation.
...and immediately reported a rather signifigant bug in thier file exporter, they still have yet to fix it. The exporter allows you to specify a split size in the options (0==no split), however all sizes above 2GB appear to have an overflow into the sign bit error. This includes thier own DVD-RAM setting (5.2GB). The only driver release since the originals (for Win2k atleast) was to add a digital signature. Another glitch is the occasional too-jumpy-to-watch picture. And it's not consistant enough to blame one thing easily. The startup delay is also extremely long, to the point that I often question if the double click registered.
While the card does have some impressive upsides, don't expect to be able to convert the outputted MPEG2 files, I have yet to successfully convert one to Divx. I did get one to VCD after using TMPEG, MPEGcorrector, and Nero. In the feedback on VCDHELP.com there is some posts in the feedback of what people have gone through to get the files converted. Typically this involves splitting, then remerging the files.
My result? The third tuner card in a row w/o any support and a signifigant need for it. (previously I had an STB and 3DFX card that were bought only months before thier demise)
It's my strong belief that software should be able to be put on a disk, stuck in a drawer for 5 years, watch the company die, wait another 5, then still work. The problem is that companies have the "we'll be around forever" idea that just doesn't work.
Also, what brand of dog food I use is NOT important for you to know. Let me try the software, and if I wanna pay for it you'll have my billing information shortly. And yes, I do pay for shareware (Nero, Musicmatch Jukebox, mIRC, Opera...). They got my info after I decided to buy.
The DMCA had the intentions of eliminating piracy, however it ended up being used to fight battles that never should have been fought. If MS releases an OS with a known backdoor, does that count as malicious? If someone makes a program that utilizes this backdoor in a way that MS did not intend (regardless of in a good way or bad way), can MS claim this as malicious? Would NTFSDOS be considered malicious since it bypasses NTFS's protection?
This is one of those issues where a law cannot be both effective and fair. And possibly not either.
It has been determined that schools are a haven for anarchists. We believe this is due to the fact that an unusually large percentage of high school students are anarchists. If we want any safety from these anarchists we must somehow eliminate schools.
...then how come I've been able to DO IT many times? I have an MP3 player system that I built that runs Win95B w/ IE uninstalled (no internet anything required) and Outlook Express was nothing but an added hole for me as I use a third party client, so I removed that from my Windows 2000 machine.
...can it run Linux? :)
According to that chart he got $19,435 from the TV/Movies/Music group. THAT'S IT?! Hell, if we get every /. reader to pitch in a couple bucks we could buy the house of representitives!
The Senate looks a bit more expensive with Feinstein pulling down $214,638 and Hollings getting $264,534. But due to her support of the bill in the Senate I WILL be voting for her competitor when the next election comes up.
Thanks Diane for making that voting decision just a little bit easier!
I think the hardest part to catching spammers is finding out and proving who they are. They do damn near every trick in the book to hide thier identity.
What might be more effective is to go after the people hiring them. Spam usually gives you a phone number (that's the only piece of reliable information) to call so you can get scammed. Don't buy anything from someone who won't tell you who they are. Call them up, find out as much information as possible, then rip them a new hole. Post the information on the internet, let the trolls troll the spammers.
Why? Because Serial ATA is still ATA and SCSI is still SCSI. All the inherant benefits of SCSI are still limited to SCSI and all of the inherant drawbacks of ATA is still in ATA. Serial ATA doesn't really change the protocol, just the interconnects.
And Ultra320 is on the horizon already. And by the time Serial ATA reaches 600MB/sec I'd expect SCSI to have continued to grow.
Just because you can put two cows side by side doesn't make them an ox team.
Matrox isn't going away because of the following key features:
1: The best multimonitor around
They starting it, they perfected it, they can do different resolutions under Windows 2000 (they were the first, if not only)
2: Excellent overlay charactaristics
Wanna use a TV tuner card at high resolutions? Ignore nVidia. From my experience programs that run overlay really like Matrox's card, w/ the DVD max feature that allows any overlay to be displayed on the secondary monitor you can port divx video out to the TV. Also, overlay works at much higher resolutions than nVidia solutions have. I don't want to turn my 19" down to 1024x768x16 bit just to watch a DVD, my 14" runs more than that.
3: Acceptable 3D performance, exceptional 3D quality
Although it's not the fastest card on the block, it will still play virtually all games atleast acceptably. And when you are playing them, they have a low amount of artifacts and the textures are well drawn.
4: 2D quality
Although it's much overlooked, it's what most people stare at a majority of the time. Matrox makes thier own boards so they can have a tight control over the filtering components.
I've used a couple S3 cards (low end), Permedia 1 and 2 cards, Riva128ZX, TNT, and TNT2, Matrox MGA, G400 and 450 cards. And so far I have to give props to Matrox for a product that matches my needs. Granted my needs are different from most.
(triple monitors w/ TV tuner and alot of video player programs)
A mini-ice age ended around 1850. The earth has been warming up ever since. Before that it was cooling down. Now it's really convinient that the industrial revolution just happened to start around the same time. Makes it easy to point the finger at us because you KNOW that the earth's climate is 100% stable! (sic)
Scientists have predicted that the earth will continue to warm up for the next 300 or so years. And there's not much we can do about it. And lets face it, the earth's climate is about as stable as an interview with Robin Williams. It's been ever changing and will continue to be ever changing regardless of the numbers that we generate.
Remember, humans didn't cause the global warming that cleared up the glaciation that was as far south as the south western US.
...I'm glad to see this trend started where labeling similar to software packaging is required and the companies are required to take some reponsibility and provide a kind of warentee on this disk (even if it's just 30 days). I hope that it'll convince other companies and CDs to adopt these policies and not just stick with the Charley Pride album and blindly continue ignoring the consumers.
A guy can't wish, can't he?
Do we have to dress up like native americans while we remove them? :)
To me the best word processor ISN'T Word, Wordpad maybe but not word. In my opinion the best software isn't the one that has the most features, but the one that does it's job the best. I don't use a web browser to make spread sheets, I don't use a spread sheet to write a document, and I don't use a word processor to browse the internet.
.txt and break out notepad. Notepad doesn't think it knows better than me, it just does it's job.
As soon as you try and integrate everything you end up with a horn button in the glove compartment and a gas gauge on the steering wheel. Look at the car stereo market, the aftermarket has alot of wonderfully complex stereos that will do everything, but what do 90% of cars have? The factory deck that is simple, well layed out, with easy to use controls. Can you think of anyone who hasn't programmed thier clock on thier VCR? I bet you can think of someone. Maybe that's why some VCRs now set thier own clocks.
If I could change one thing about MS software what would it be? To disable the f'ing autoformatting! They say you can do it, but it doesn't. Here I am rewriting a document for work and what is step number two? Save it as
When you consider how much paperwork is generated in an effort to yeild the paperless office you'll realize that it's possible to build a house with the amount of paper that is used by a medium office every year. Maybe paperless isn't the right way to go? Has anyone ever looked back?
Sometimes the past holds the future.
I'm fedup with crapware. When a high end piece of software gets out performed by freeware/adware/shareware I like to point it out by supporting the little guy.
I own valid keys for:
mirc
Nero
Opera (yes, I paid them)
Music Match Jukebox
Instead of Winzip I use EasyZip, I have successfully exorsized outlook from my Win2k machine and stuck Pegasus Mail in it's place. Office 2000? Uninstalled after finding my version has the registration deal and installed 602 Pro Suite. No regrets, it's faster and cleaner. Even if it doesn't have every little feature.
What I would like to see more of is manufacturers either support and release thier hold on older software. MS has basically stated that 3 years is the lifespan of a product. If the company that I work for could get away with that we could make a killing on releasing new, incompatible products. Guess what? We can't. We MUST support a product for 5 years after the last date of manufacture.
Currently the software industry as a whole is doing something that only they could get away with. And that is forced reliance. If your can breaks down do you have to get new parts from the manufacturer? Do you have to buy your next car from the same brand? Do you HAVE to buy a new one in a couple years?
This is where the little guys come in. They provide enough options that the bigger guys can't realistically buy them all off. So support these guys, you're benefiting from them being around.
As far as CDs go, it looks like I'll be going back to my old buying habits unless they change thier direction. I can go without buying CDs and relying on my current collection and the radio. My car CD player most likely won't play the protected disks. And if I can't rip the disks, I won't carry them around or listen to them regularly. And I'm not gonna pay $17 for a CD that I don't listen to. I have well over a thousand MP3s, and of the ones I have downloaded, the artists know that I did. It was thier sites which had them available. The rest came from CDs. A small stack of CD-rs is a hell of a lot easier to carry around than I binder full of CDs, and a lot less of a risk of theft. $10 loss vs. $2k? I'll take that one any day.
Even though I don't support piracy, lately I'm having a harder time scolding it. Quality has gone down, concern for the user has gone down, quality of service has gone down. If they want me to support them again they're gonna have to fix these things, just like the little guys.
Pay for the shareware that doesn't suck. Uninstall the crapware.
Would it be concievably possible to use mixed architectures and assign certain tasks or routines to the architecture best suited for them. Rough example: 200MHz Pentium and 200MHz Cyrix system in the same cluster. Two calculations need to be performed, one interger, one floating point. Send the interger to the Cyrix and the floating point to the Intel. Rather than fight with some platforms being better than others at certain tasks, work WITH that fact.
I've been wondering why this worm doesn't exist: It sends itself to everyone in your email list It disables outlook running .vbs, .com, .pif, and .exe attachments
It disables .vbs files for the whole system
...I hope I don't have to listen to a bunch of people whining that they can't use something they have been stealing.
What really chews me up is programs that require having IE 4 or later that shouldn't need to access the internet at all. Musicmatch Jukebox just bit me when I tried to upgrade and wouldn't run because I had IE3 and NS4.7 (not to mention M0.6 and Opera5) instead of IE4. when I tried to de-upgrade all hell broke loose and it forgot how to rip and burn. I had to basically delete the directory (losing my settings) and restart.
Thanks IE -sic
This is going to go against most of the posts here, but I think that a setup where it's free w/ ads until you pay is an excellent option. It allows them to get more coverage without bankrupting themselves. The decision to go from a strictly "for pay" to a "for pay or ads" is a good one (IMHO).
If you don't like it, there is other options.