Uhh, Windows 7 is just a codename, the version number always refers to the version of the NT kernel. Vista was 6.0, 2003 was 5.2, XP was 5.1, 2000 was 5.0. Apparently Windows "Seven" will be NT 6.2 signifying that it contains minor kernel changes. As far as I know, MinWin is developed under the 7.x build version, as a huge departure from how the current NT kernel looks and behaves, and Windows Seven is probably going to have MinWin as the kernel... So I just don't see a way how Windows Seven would be build 6.2.x -- unless it's going to be Vista with some more polish (knowing Microsoft, it's possible), but then you can rule MinWin out. Seven is supposed to have been named like that exactly because of the new 7.x kernel, it's not a random codename.
If Seven is going to be based on MinWin, it's going to be 7.x.
If Seven is going to be based on the current Vista kernel, it's going to be 6.x.
If someone only bothered to spend two more minutes investigating...
Windows Seven with a build number of 6.1.6519.1? The Windows Seven that is currently in the kernel-only, text mode, MinWin phase?
This was probably some kind of a Vista SP2 build, something that will be released next year and is in heavy development. That, or the guy was given a modded/themed current version of Vista and was fooled.
It's funny you mention that. I'm not sure about PVA, but if I got S-IPS instead of S-PVA I'd be pissed. The original S-IPS is worse at color reproduction, has over twice the black level, and much smaller viewing angles than a S-PVA or S-MVA screen. Some of the extremely high end IPS types (AS-IPS and H-IPS) come pretty close to a good S-PVA/MVA in black level and color gamut, but still not quite there. You also still get bad viewing angles. Sort of. It's true that IPS is worse when it comes to black level and contrast (gamut is irrelevant for anyone but photo professionals), but the viewing angles are much better than on VA panels.
TN panels mostly suffer from vertical shift. Even when you look at the monitor dead-on, the top of the screen is darker, and the bottom is lighter. You cannot move your head in such a way to prevent it from happening.
VA panels have horizontal color shifting. When you look at the monitor dead-on, the sides will be coloured differently (the right is usually OK, but the left is washed out - you won't notice it THAT much on a 20", but go 24" or larger, and it's always there). There is another problem with VA, and that's the disappearance of dark details at the part of the screen you are looking at perpendicularly.
Yeah, what's far more important to me than "how fast does this browser run Javascript?" is "how easily does the browser non run Javascript?" As far as Opera goes - press F12, uncheck "Enable JavaScript".
Then whitelist sites you trust through site preferences.
I just said that I got to the third advanced challenge and gave up after a couple of dozen tries to portal-push myself over the wall and through a field:)
We might have different ideas about replayability, but mine certainly doesn't include "I know exactly what to do, but I think I've placed the portal three pixels too far to the right or clicked 0.1 seconds too late, so I'll try again for the 50th time".
It might be my age, though. I finally got Far Cry recently and resorted to the god mode cheat after half a dozen levels because I've *really* had enough of choosing the wrong path through the bushes or being ambushed by a horde of mercs that accurately shoot at me from where I can't see them.
When I started playing Portal, I liked it very much. The slow progression, the impossible becoming possible, the wacky AI... And then came the last level and the great escape, which seemed like it lasted for ages. It was 1 AM already and I found myself irritated by the longevity of the escape, so I went and found a walkthrough for the few spots I got stuck in. I got tired of experimenting. I wanted it to be over. The very final thing in the game was something I did the next day, and it came down to trial and error. I knew what to do, but I got tired of it all. It wasn't the levels I've been playing earlier, where I had to think and actually have fun.
Then I ventured into the advanced chambers. The first two were easy, the next (15?) I once again knew what to do, but couldn't do it without dozens and dozens of tries to get enough momentum and jump through the field.
Finally I deinstalled the game.
Don't get me wrong, Portal is a fun little game and it was money well-spent, but it has no replayability. I'm not quite sure additional map content would help - once you get the hang of it, there is no challenge in terms of thinking, it's just reflexes and automated portal shooting. Portal here, portal there, ball goes in the collector, elevator comes down, then you shoot around to gain momentum and jump somewhere up high... One interesting little factoid is that several times I found myself saying out loud "How the hell did I just do that?" - I wasn't thinking, I was just doing stuff. (Don't give me any psychobabble about GlaDOS wanting me to do exactly that.)
Dunno... To be honest, the only FPS I've ever played more than once (four times, in fact) was Deus Ex. Maybe merging Portal and Half-Life would be a great game, as others have said already.
The "C" fonts - all of them - look absolutely horrible if you don't have ClearType enabled.
They are quite nice (I think they replace the default Times New Roman and Arial in Office 2007) and very legible by design, but totally useless for CRT owners and LCD owners who don't like ClearType.
I don't think we're yet at the point of assuming that the vast majority of people have ClearType enabled, and won't be there for another half a decade. So, if you are making a web page of some sort, please refrain from using these new fonts - you might scare away a lot of your visitors. Verdana and Georgia (hell, even Trebuchet) are much better choices for the time being.
Maybe there's more to this than meets the eye? WinAmp (still widespread) has had multiple arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities in the past, through ID3 tags, the mp3 stream itself, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if someone found similar things in iTunes or Windows Media Player as well.
Company of Heroes doesn't require [the disc], and is A-list. Unfortunately, that is not true anymore. With the recent release of an expansion (Opposing Fronts), Company of Heroes was retrofitted with DRM and now requires you to either login to Relic Online or use the DVD for authentication. The game also sends various statistics back to Relic, and you cannot opt out of that. It gets worse: if Relic's authentication servers are offline, you have to *disable* your network connection to have the game check your DVD. If it detects a network connection but cannot connect to the servers, sorry, you are not allowed to play.
CoH on Wikipedia also says this: "Patch 2.102, released on October 12, 2007, revealed that the preceding 2.101 patch introduced a requirement of having the game patched up-to-date if the user has an active internet connection - users are not allowed to play the game at all until they download and apply patch 2.102, as the game never even enters the activation phase."
nLite can also completely frak up an XP install. One specific instance that we encountered when someone in our office used nLite was the inability for anyone who was not an administrator to use USB devices. None. The only way Windows would recognize and install the drivers for things like mice, keyboards, and flash drives was if you were an administrator. I've seen others, but this was one of the most problematic. It was a group policy setting of some kind (a quick search should reveal how to deal with it and what nLite did exactly). Windows allows you to disable that stuff - from all USB devices, to just USB removable storage, or even have USB drives write-protected.
Problematic? Maybe in this case, but it's very easy to think of many reasons why you wouldn't allow user accounts to install, access and use non-approved USB hardware.
If you look at "Company of Heroes - Image quality", the first "grass effects" comparison shows am octogonal wheel. To be fair, the viewport is VERY zoomed-in for the purpose of that screenshot.
Keep in mind that this is an RTS, not an FPS. There are rarely any reasons to zoom-in that close when you are actually playing. Take a look at the first and the third screenshot above, the "green" and the "brown" ones; that's what you look at in-game. Notice the overall amount of detail. Now, is a perfect wheel on a jeep important? You won't see it... Unless you play in a crazy resolution with 1600 pixels vertical. Even then you won't really notice it because you'll be overwhelmed with the atmosphere, the gameplay, the excellent sound, and the drop-dead-gorgeous graphics on top of everything... Not to mention the depth of the combat system.
I think that the "realism" isn't worth it. Go out and create DX7 games that are fun:P "Company of Heroes" wasn't accidentally a Game of the Year. And it's unbelievably fun. The demo is free, so if you have the machine good enough to run it, I recommend you take a look. I'm not much of a gamer, but I have been playing CoH for almost a year now, and I'm nowhere near getting tired of it - I must have had a thousand hours of gameplay so far, more than with anything else.
CoH is quite simply the best game I have ever played, and every single friend I showed the game to went out to buy it. It's that good.
Your comment wouldn't exist had you actually played CoH, I guarantee that:)
Try this (sorry, no capital letters, typing out of my head):
dim sb as new stringbuilder sb.append("http://your_long_url_but_possibly_broken_down_into_logical_parts_like_below") sb.append("&1g=&1pl=&1v=&1n=&1pn=") sb.append("&2y=US&2ffi=&2l=&2g=&2pl=&2v=&2n=&2pn=") sb.append("&panelbtn=2") sb.appendformat("&1a={0}&1c={1}&1s={2}&1z={3}", sAddress, sCity, sState, sZip) sb.appendformat("&2a={0}&2c={1}&2s={2}&2z={3}", eAddress, eCity, eState, eZip) dim url = new system.uri(sb.tostring)
StringBuilders and String.Format() are your friends:) Don't concatenate like this.
ISDN is what you need. It sucks, it is expensive, but it is much, much better than 26k dialup. It depends. A lot of times, there is no compression on ISDN - I've never heard of any ISP doing it. If you are on a 64 kbit/s link, that's it... 26.4 kbit/s dialup with compression would be faster when dealing with compressable content, such as remote text-mode administration. Something like 4:1 to 6:1 (I can't remember the exact ratio) could even go over a 128 kbit/s ISDN.
When I switched from 33k6 dialup to 64k ISDN, I was frustrated with how slow browsing the net was. Sure, loading images was much faster, but loading HTML was dog-slow. One particularly frustrating thing was USENET. Downloading messages was easily three times slower than on dialup.
Well, "futureproofing" in this context means replacing your E4400 @ 200 MHz FSB with a new quad-core Penryn that has an FSB of 333 MHz. It would be a noticeable upgrade for gaming, development, video encoding, etc. I agree with you that trying to buy the latest and greatest is a bad idea; my old PC lasted since 2000, and it was only replaced this year with medium-range components.
Anyway, the point is that if you buy that Penryn, your "good enough" DDR2-533 (266 MHz FSB) you bought with the E4400 isn't guaranteed to work as DDR2-667 needed for the new CPU. If you have an "overkill" DDR2-667, it'll feel right at home with the Penryn... Except that you might even be able to get higher performance with a 4:5 ratio and a "totally unneeded overkill for the E4400" DDR2-800 working at 416 MHz FSB (doable for most memories).
I've just checked DDR2 memory prices where I live. Believe it or not, DDR2-800 is *cheaper* than DDR2-667, and I can only find one vendor with DDR2-533. So, if you are buying a DDR2-based system these days, the choice is clear. Actually, there's no choice.
Intel's C2Ds love their memory bandwidth. Even the extreme low end, such as the E4xxx, can profit from something like DDR2-800 and an asynchronous 1:2 FSB:RAM. The E6xxx with their 266 MHz FSB can run at 2:3 with DDR2-800 and perform better than with 1:1 and slightly lower latencies.
Besides, the price difference between DDR2-533 and DDR2-800 is really small. You might as well go for it, if only for futureproofing your system.
The problem is that it's based on KHTML (from KDE where it's used in Konqueror) which has always been goofy. It is just buggy and doesn't render stuff correctly all the time. Apple has certainly improved it but they should have just went with the Gecko (Firefox) engine for Safari instead of the broken KHTML. Often it's hard to tell what's broken, and what's not.
For example, yesterday I read a blog post from one of Opera's employees, outlining a debug session with Yahoo! Mail, which stopped working in Opera 9.5 alpha. Yes, there's a bug in Opera which makes Y!Mail broken. However, there is also this:
This breaks Y!Mail because they take a string of perfectly fine XML, wrap it in HTML comment tags, put it inside an <XML> tag, add it inside the BODY tag with that horrendous IE thingy called insertAdjacentHTML, serialize the DOM of said tags by reading.innerHTML, strip away the comment tags again and send the string to the DOMParser.
That's how most "brokenness" happens... As you can see here, they have used a proprietary IE method, and they have used a proprietary Gecko object, the DOMParser, which is buggy by itself. So, if Opera or KHTML-based browsers want to make Y!Mail work, they have to emulate both IE and Gecko - and their emulation of what Gecko does must adhere to DOMParser being broken (the bug is present since 2000, Bugzilla entry linked to in the blog post in this paragraph).
Don't be so quick to blame KHTML - there's plenty of "Yahoo Mails" out there, and web coders who aren't doing things in the standard way.
My block list in Opera is a many years old - most of the stuff was done when Firefox wasn't even on the horizon. I maybe see one ad per month. Why are auto-updating block lists so important? It looks just like paranoia to me - "zomgz, I *need* to update, or there will be ads!". No, there won't really be.
There is a UserJS somewhere (userjs.org?) to introduce Flashblock-like functionality.
Opera 9.x natively supports per-site JS and plugins blocking, and CSS as well. But OK, there is no status bar icon.
You don't need the "Down Them All" plugin. Press Ctrl+Alt+L and you have a new tab with links on the current page. You can even filter them. Then just select whatever you want and download.
I've tried just about every available mail client - Calypso, PocoMail, The Bat, Thunderbird, Outlook, you name it... And I still come back to Eudora.
It totally sucks with anything that isn't us-ascii, it's ugly as hell, but it works. I have hundreds of filters set up, but it's Eudora's simplicity and the MDI that are the killer features as far as I'm concerned. MDI is especially important. I like having multiple mailboxes open. While I have something close to a hundred of them and half have "unread" mail, there is about a dozen mailboxes that I keep open at all times because they either contain useful information, or are my own "priority system", in the sense of "you have to reply to those ASAP".
If Penelope gives Thunderbird the totally awesome Eudora filters (and yes, I do need filtering of sent items, damn it!) and the MDI (okay, and the excellent search as well), they have me as a new user. Unfortunately, in its current state, Penelope is really nothing like Eudora, not in appearance, not in functionality. I hope that will change one day.
CPU FSB and RAM speeds have been confusingly "marketingized". RAM is presented as double actual speed, while CPU FSB is quadrupled.
The E6600 therefore has an actual FSB of 266 MHz, and people are going even up to 500 ("2000") MHz on quality i965 motherboards. Nothing is locked, except for increasing the CPU multiplier (you can only decrease it). There are some confusing issues with FSB straps and what is known as "FSB holes" - basically, the area between 350 and 400 MHz FSB is often unstable because the NB is heavily overclocked in that FSB strap, so it makes a strange situation in which boards become more stable with higher overclocks due to a higher strap chosen and relaxed NB speeds and timings... I don't know the exact details, you will have to ask a hardcore overclocker:)
DDR2-800 runs at a real 400 MHz, so it actually needs to be downclocked to 266 (DDR2-533) if you want it to run in sync with the E6600 FSB, but it usually gives worse results than asynchronous FSB:RAM, as C2Ds like memory bandwidth more than tighter latencies.
If you want to push your E6600 from 9*266=2.4 GHz to 3.2 GHz, you can run at 8*400 with 1:1 FSB:RAM. It is even possible that it will work on that frequency with close to stock voltage (usually around 1.3V). I personally have my E4300 overclocked to 2.4 GHz and undervolted to 1.1V from the stock 1.25V (IIRC). It's a nice compromise between power consumption and speed, especially since EIST can only drop the CPU multiplier to 6, which means that my CPU runs at 1.6 GHz in idle. Higher FSBs obviously increase the idle speeds. In the 8*400 scenario, the CPU would idle at 6*400=2.4 GHz. AMD's Cool'n'Quiet is still better regarding idle power consumption, though.
I go into my Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe BIOS and change the clock rate of my CPU from 1.9Ghz to 2.4Ghz with no ill effects and get the same # of 3D Marks as them because I have the same kind of video card (8600 GTS PCI-E). He goes into his motherboard's BIOS, changes the clock rate of his CPU from 2.4 to 3.2 GHz with no ill effects, he wins. He buys a better cooler, goes to 3.6-3.8 GHz, he wins by a lot more. Not a good comparison, as you see;)
That said, yes, AMD provides very cheap CPUs, fast enough for anyone apart the most hardcore gamer, who is always on the lookout for that virtual orgasm caused by 10 3DMarks more.
I did buy a C2D (E4300, the cheapest) and a P5B Deluxe, however, for two reasons:
1) I needed RAID-1, which was provided through Intel's ICH8R. For some reason, I don't trust Nvidia to be up to the task.
2) Future compatibility. I started "hating" AMD when they dumped S754 for S939 and S940 in a very short timeframe. Then they dumped those for AM2, and they are already talking about AM3 and AM4! I can put a 1333 MHz FSB CPU on my motherboard, and I'm quite sure that I'll be able to use the Penryns one day as well. I personally consider the motherboard to be the second most important thing in the computer; which is the first? The power supply.
I love how the article glosses over Opera. It's barely mentioned once, and certainly not looked at. Yeah, it's silly. Of course mobile browsing comes on top using - surprise! - the iPhone, when the other tested alternatives are absolutely horrible. Makes me wonder about the article's agenda, especially with the mention of "trouble installing a third-party browser"...
Opera Mini already has 0.24% of the entire browser "market share", according to some statistics. Now, that's impressive, especially when you convert that percentage to something more absolute. For example, there is one Opera Mini user for every 19 Safari users, or one for every 60 Firefox users.
But is it surprising? No. Opera Mini has become the mobile browser of choice for a lot of people. It was the first browser to make a real push on the mobile market and truly bring the web to mobile phones. And it shows - not only does Opera Mini often come preinstalled on a lot of phones (as does its more capable older sister, Opera Mobile), but you have people wanting to install it before anything else.
Quite frankly, I think JPEGs as they stand are too far along now for something that, with modern CPU power, offers an almost imperceptible advantage, to get any traction. Ten years ago, when computers and the Internet were slower, they might have had a chance, but now, no way. FTFA:
Microsoft has sunk a great deal of work into HD Photo/JPEG XR and is aiming it specifically towards digital photography and other image capturing devices.
I'm not an expert when it comes to cameras, but the way I understand it, any camera can store JPEG files on its memory cards, and some offer a way to store device-specific RAW. Some even allow you to store the same picture in both formats at the same time, in case you aren't satisfied with the JPEG version and want to process the RAW data.
Now, the problem with RAW - again, I stress that I'm far from being an expert - seems to be that each manufacturer has their own format, which also changes in different camera models. There are many different RAW-editing programs, which feature support for a subset of different cameras. It's common to have, say, five programs that support your particular camera, and each of them will load and display the picture *differently* for some reason - either because of incomplete support, or because of bad (reverse-engineered?) specs, or the phase of the moon.
What HD Photo seems to be aiming at is unification of digital camera storage formats, not to be a generic JPEG replacement - it's silly to even think about that. The HD Photo taken on your Canon should thus be compatible with Fuji's own "RAW" image editing program, for example, and there would be no need to have a trillion camera drivers/plugins/whatever just to support the trillion cameras' native storage format.
There are also some other things that I think HD Photo does. For example, some cameras allow you to take the same picture with different exposure settings (usually three), so you could do some HDR stuff with that. Instead of getting three files, you could have it all in just one. Also, when zooming in a section of a photo on your camera, you wouldn't need to decode the entire (JPEG) file into the camera's internal memory, because HD Photo seems to allow fast decoding of a particular area instead of the whole thing.
That's at least how I understood it. I definitely like the idea, but they need to open it up and get rid of the patents.
Slashdot Mirror
If Seven is going to be based on MinWin, it's going to be 7.x.
If Seven is going to be based on the current Vista kernel, it's going to be 6.x.
If someone only bothered to spend two more minutes investigating...
Windows Seven with a build number of 6.1.6519.1? The Windows Seven that is currently in the kernel-only, text mode, MinWin phase?
This was probably some kind of a Vista SP2 build, something that will be released next year and is in heavy development. That, or the guy was given a modded/themed current version of Vista and was fooled.
TN panels mostly suffer from vertical shift. Even when you look at the monitor dead-on, the top of the screen is darker, and the bottom is lighter. You cannot move your head in such a way to prevent it from happening.
VA panels have horizontal color shifting. When you look at the monitor dead-on, the sides will be coloured differently (the right is usually OK, but the left is washed out - you won't notice it THAT much on a 20", but go 24" or larger, and it's always there). There is another problem with VA, and that's the disappearance of dark details at the part of the screen you are looking at perpendicularly.
Someone uploaded four videos about PVA color shifting to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pva+color+shifting&search=Search
Dell 2007FP S-PVA (look at the left): http://i.pbase.com/o4/04/606404/1/59768645.PVA_Shadow.jpg
More S-PVA: http://www.charmainemk.com/Testing/dellCenter.jpg
2007WFP S-PVA: http://img108.imageshack.us/img108/9021/dell2007wfpwithspvapanesu5.jpg
PVA left, S-IPS right: http://www.albedo-cg.de/Monitore/dell-3007wfp-vs-eizo-s2410w-k.jpg
2007WFP S-IPS left, 2007WFP S-PVA right: http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/8641/032007wfpx2tb7.jpg
Apple displays are all IPS. The older ones are S-IPS, the newer ones are H-IPS.
Then whitelist sites you trust through site preferences.
I just said that I got to the third advanced challenge and gave up after a couple of dozen tries to portal-push myself over the wall and through a field :)
We might have different ideas about replayability, but mine certainly doesn't include "I know exactly what to do, but I think I've placed the portal three pixels too far to the right or clicked 0.1 seconds too late, so I'll try again for the 50th time".
It might be my age, though. I finally got Far Cry recently and resorted to the god mode cheat after half a dozen levels because I've *really* had enough of choosing the wrong path through the bushes or being ambushed by a horde of mercs that accurately shoot at me from where I can't see them.
There. I said it.
When I started playing Portal, I liked it very much. The slow progression, the impossible becoming possible, the wacky AI... And then came the last level and the great escape, which seemed like it lasted for ages. It was 1 AM already and I found myself irritated by the longevity of the escape, so I went and found a walkthrough for the few spots I got stuck in. I got tired of experimenting. I wanted it to be over. The very final thing in the game was something I did the next day, and it came down to trial and error. I knew what to do, but I got tired of it all. It wasn't the levels I've been playing earlier, where I had to think and actually have fun.
Then I ventured into the advanced chambers. The first two were easy, the next (15?) I once again knew what to do, but couldn't do it without dozens and dozens of tries to get enough momentum and jump through the field.
Finally I deinstalled the game.
Don't get me wrong, Portal is a fun little game and it was money well-spent, but it has no replayability. I'm not quite sure additional map content would help - once you get the hang of it, there is no challenge in terms of thinking, it's just reflexes and automated portal shooting. Portal here, portal there, ball goes in the collector, elevator comes down, then you shoot around to gain momentum and jump somewhere up high... One interesting little factoid is that several times I found myself saying out loud "How the hell did I just do that?" - I wasn't thinking, I was just doing stuff. (Don't give me any psychobabble about GlaDOS wanting me to do exactly that.)
Dunno... To be honest, the only FPS I've ever played more than once (four times, in fact) was Deus Ex. Maybe merging Portal and Half-Life would be a great game, as others have said already.
The "C" fonts - all of them - look absolutely horrible if you don't have ClearType enabled.
They are quite nice (I think they replace the default Times New Roman and Arial in Office 2007) and very legible by design, but totally useless for CRT owners and LCD owners who don't like ClearType.
I don't think we're yet at the point of assuming that the vast majority of people have ClearType enabled, and won't be there for another half a decade. So, if you are making a web page of some sort, please refrain from using these new fonts - you might scare away a lot of your visitors. Verdana and Georgia (hell, even Trebuchet) are much better choices for the time being.
I cannot find more details...
Maybe there's more to this than meets the eye? WinAmp (still widespread) has had multiple arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities in the past, through ID3 tags, the mp3 stream itself, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if someone found similar things in iTunes or Windows Media Player as well.
Are those mp3s sound recordings only?
CoH on Wikipedia also says this: "Patch 2.102, released on October 12, 2007, revealed that the preceding 2.101 patch introduced a requirement of having the game patched up-to-date if the user has an active internet connection - users are not allowed to play the game at all until they download and apply patch 2.102, as the game never even enters the activation phase."
Reading Relic's forums confirms the above.
Company of Heroes seems to be the first game ever to be retrofitted with DRM... I hope enough people get to read this.
Problematic? Maybe in this case, but it's very easy to think of many reasons why you wouldn't allow user accounts to install, access and use non-approved USB hardware.
Keep in mind that this is an RTS, not an FPS. There are rarely any reasons to zoom-in that close when you are actually playing. Take a look at the first and the third screenshot above, the "green" and the "brown" ones; that's what you look at in-game. Notice the overall amount of detail. Now, is a perfect wheel on a jeep important? You won't see it... Unless you play in a crazy resolution with 1600 pixels vertical. Even then you won't really notice it because you'll be overwhelmed with the atmosphere, the gameplay, the excellent sound, and the drop-dead-gorgeous graphics on top of everything... Not to mention the depth of the combat system. I think that the "realism" isn't worth it. Go out and create DX7 games that are fun
CoH is quite simply the best game I have ever played, and every single friend I showed the game to went out to buy it. It's that good.
Your comment wouldn't exist had you actually played CoH, I guarantee that
Ouch.
:) Don't concatenate like this.
Try this (sorry, no capital letters, typing out of my head):
dim sb as new stringbuilder
sb.append("http://your_long_url_but_possibly_broken_down_into_logical_parts_like_below")
sb.append("&1g=&1pl=&1v=&1n=&1pn=")
sb.append("&2y=US&2ffi=&2l=&2g=&2pl=&2v=&2n=&2pn=")
sb.append("&panelbtn=2")
sb.appendformat("&1a={0}&1c={1}&1s={2}&1z={3}", sAddress, sCity, sState, sZip)
sb.appendformat("&2a={0}&2c={1}&2s={2}&2z={3}", eAddress, eCity, eState, eZip)
dim url = new system.uri(sb.tostring)
StringBuilders and String.Format() are your friends
When I switched from 33k6 dialup to 64k ISDN, I was frustrated with how slow browsing the net was. Sure, loading images was much faster, but loading HTML was dog-slow. One particularly frustrating thing was USENET. Downloading messages was easily three times slower than on dialup.
Well, "futureproofing" in this context means replacing your E4400 @ 200 MHz FSB with a new quad-core Penryn that has an FSB of 333 MHz. It would be a noticeable upgrade for gaming, development, video encoding, etc. I agree with you that trying to buy the latest and greatest is a bad idea; my old PC lasted since 2000, and it was only replaced this year with medium-range components.
:)
Anyway, the point is that if you buy that Penryn, your "good enough" DDR2-533 (266 MHz FSB) you bought with the E4400 isn't guaranteed to work as DDR2-667 needed for the new CPU. If you have an "overkill" DDR2-667, it'll feel right at home with the Penryn... Except that you might even be able to get higher performance with a 4:5 ratio and a "totally unneeded overkill for the E4400" DDR2-800 working at 416 MHz FSB (doable for most memories).
I've just checked DDR2 memory prices where I live. Believe it or not, DDR2-800 is *cheaper* than DDR2-667, and I can only find one vendor with DDR2-533. So, if you are buying a DDR2-based system these days, the choice is clear. Actually, there's no choice.
P.S. We need more "Trolls" here
Intel's C2Ds love their memory bandwidth. Even the extreme low end, such as the E4xxx, can profit from something like DDR2-800 and an asynchronous 1:2 FSB:RAM. The E6xxx with their 266 MHz FSB can run at 2:3 with DDR2-800 and perform better than with 1:1 and slightly lower latencies.
Besides, the price difference between DDR2-533 and DDR2-800 is really small. You might as well go for it, if only for futureproofing your system.
For example, yesterday I read a blog post from one of Opera's employees, outlining a debug session with Yahoo! Mail, which stopped working in Opera 9.5 alpha. Yes, there's a bug in Opera which makes Y!Mail broken. However, there is also this:
This breaks Y!Mail because they take a string of perfectly fine XML, wrap it in HTML comment tags, put it inside an <XML> tag, add it inside the BODY tag with that horrendous IE thingy called insertAdjacentHTML, serialize the DOM of said tags by reading
That's how most "brokenness" happens... As you can see here, they have used a proprietary IE method, and they have used a proprietary Gecko object, the DOMParser, which is buggy by itself. So, if Opera or KHTML-based browsers want to make Y!Mail work, they have to emulate both IE and Gecko - and their emulation of what Gecko does must adhere to DOMParser being broken (the bug is present since 2000, Bugzilla entry linked to in the blog post in this paragraph).
Don't be so quick to blame KHTML - there's plenty of "Yahoo Mails" out there, and web coders who aren't doing things in the standard way.
"." should be inline find and "," an inline find links on a default install, IIRC.
One other thing I absolutely adore about Opera is spatial navigation. It doesn't get much praise anywhere, but it's really great.
http://nontroppo.org/timer/kestrel_tests/
And remember, this is an *alpha* release.
My block list in Opera is a many years old - most of the stuff was done when Firefox wasn't even on the horizon. I maybe see one ad per month. Why are auto-updating block lists so important? It looks just like paranoia to me - "zomgz, I *need* to update, or there will be ads!". No, there won't really be.
There is a UserJS somewhere (userjs.org?) to introduce Flashblock-like functionality.
Opera 9.x natively supports per-site JS and plugins blocking, and CSS as well. But OK, there is no status bar icon.
You don't need the "Down Them All" plugin. Press Ctrl+Alt+L and you have a new tab with links on the current page. You can even filter them. Then just select whatever you want and download.
Same here.
I've tried just about every available mail client - Calypso, PocoMail, The Bat, Thunderbird, Outlook, you name it... And I still come back to Eudora.
It totally sucks with anything that isn't us-ascii, it's ugly as hell, but it works. I have hundreds of filters set up, but it's Eudora's simplicity and the MDI that are the killer features as far as I'm concerned. MDI is especially important. I like having multiple mailboxes open. While I have something close to a hundred of them and half have "unread" mail, there is about a dozen mailboxes that I keep open at all times because they either contain useful information, or are my own "priority system", in the sense of "you have to reply to those ASAP".
If Penelope gives Thunderbird the totally awesome Eudora filters (and yes, I do need filtering of sent items, damn it!) and the MDI (okay, and the excellent search as well), they have me as a new user. Unfortunately, in its current state, Penelope is really nothing like Eudora, not in appearance, not in functionality. I hope that will change one day.
For desktop CPUs, yes. Mobile ones, I don't know exactly, but they can also have their FSB lowered for even smaller idle operating frequencies.
CPU FSB and RAM speeds have been confusingly "marketingized". RAM is presented as double actual speed, while CPU FSB is quadrupled.
:)
The E6600 therefore has an actual FSB of 266 MHz, and people are going even up to 500 ("2000") MHz on quality i965 motherboards. Nothing is locked, except for increasing the CPU multiplier (you can only decrease it). There are some confusing issues with FSB straps and what is known as "FSB holes" - basically, the area between 350 and 400 MHz FSB is often unstable because the NB is heavily overclocked in that FSB strap, so it makes a strange situation in which boards become more stable with higher overclocks due to a higher strap chosen and relaxed NB speeds and timings... I don't know the exact details, you will have to ask a hardcore overclocker
DDR2-800 runs at a real 400 MHz, so it actually needs to be downclocked to 266 (DDR2-533) if you want it to run in sync with the E6600 FSB, but it usually gives worse results than asynchronous FSB:RAM, as C2Ds like memory bandwidth more than tighter latencies.
If you want to push your E6600 from 9*266=2.4 GHz to 3.2 GHz, you can run at 8*400 with 1:1 FSB:RAM. It is even possible that it will work on that frequency with close to stock voltage (usually around 1.3V). I personally have my E4300 overclocked to 2.4 GHz and undervolted to 1.1V from the stock 1.25V (IIRC). It's a nice compromise between power consumption and speed, especially since EIST can only drop the CPU multiplier to 6, which means that my CPU runs at 1.6 GHz in idle. Higher FSBs obviously increase the idle speeds. In the 8*400 scenario, the CPU would idle at 6*400=2.4 GHz. AMD's Cool'n'Quiet is still better regarding idle power consumption, though.
That said, yes, AMD provides very cheap CPUs, fast enough for anyone apart the most hardcore gamer, who is always on the lookout for that virtual orgasm caused by 10 3DMarks more.
I did buy a C2D (E4300, the cheapest) and a P5B Deluxe, however, for two reasons:
1) I needed RAID-1, which was provided through Intel's ICH8R. For some reason, I don't trust Nvidia to be up to the task.
2) Future compatibility. I started "hating" AMD when they dumped S754 for S939 and S940 in a very short timeframe. Then they dumped those for AM2, and they are already talking about AM3 and AM4! I can put a 1333 MHz FSB CPU on my motherboard, and I'm quite sure that I'll be able to use the Penryns one day as well. I personally consider the motherboard to be the second most important thing in the computer; which is the first? The power supply.
Opera Mini already has 0.24% of the entire browser "market share", according to some statistics. Now, that's impressive, especially when you convert that percentage to something more absolute. For example, there is one Opera Mini user for every 19 Safari users, or one for every 60 Firefox users.
But is it surprising? No. Opera Mini has become the mobile browser of choice for a lot of people. It was the first browser to make a real push on the mobile market and truly bring the web to mobile phones. And it shows - not only does Opera Mini often come preinstalled on a lot of phones (as does its more capable older sister, Opera Mobile), but you have people wanting to install it before anything else.
It's a work of wonder. I love it.
Microsoft has sunk a great deal of work into HD Photo/JPEG XR and is aiming it specifically towards digital photography and other image capturing devices.
I'm not an expert when it comes to cameras, but the way I understand it, any camera can store JPEG files on its memory cards, and some offer a way to store device-specific RAW. Some even allow you to store the same picture in both formats at the same time, in case you aren't satisfied with the JPEG version and want to process the RAW data.
Now, the problem with RAW - again, I stress that I'm far from being an expert - seems to be that each manufacturer has their own format, which also changes in different camera models. There are many different RAW-editing programs, which feature support for a subset of different cameras. It's common to have, say, five programs that support your particular camera, and each of them will load and display the picture *differently* for some reason - either because of incomplete support, or because of bad (reverse-engineered?) specs, or the phase of the moon.
What HD Photo seems to be aiming at is unification of digital camera storage formats, not to be a generic JPEG replacement - it's silly to even think about that. The HD Photo taken on your Canon should thus be compatible with Fuji's own "RAW" image editing program, for example, and there would be no need to have a trillion camera drivers/plugins/whatever just to support the trillion cameras' native storage format.
There are also some other things that I think HD Photo does. For example, some cameras allow you to take the same picture with different exposure settings (usually three), so you could do some HDR stuff with that. Instead of getting three files, you could have it all in just one. Also, when zooming in a section of a photo on your camera, you wouldn't need to decode the entire (JPEG) file into the camera's internal memory, because HD Photo seems to allow fast decoding of a particular area instead of the whole thing.
That's at least how I understood it. I definitely like the idea, but they need to open it up and get rid of the patents.