Yes, but once you've installed it for testing purposes, you've accepted the license agreement and can't take it back anymore. The only time you can honestly return software under this policy is if you pop in the CD, see the license, don't like it, click "No", take out the CD, and go back to the store. I'm sure that in Microsoft's view, clicking "Yes" is like signing the contract, and then the contract will hold. You can't unsign the contract and take the software back to the store.
I know, it sucks...
Re:Just for the sake of asking...
on
Review: SliMP3
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· Score: 1
The 20 minute buffer is probably not "skip protection" in the same sense as your Discman has skip protection... the iPod will spin the drive,read 20 minutes of data into memory, then stop the drive and play from memory in order to save power.
If the 20 minute buffer really was just "skip protection", it would be quite useless since hard drives don't skip unless they crash - in which case, that would be the last 20 minutes of music your iPod ever played.
Can't help thinking about Transmeta
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 3, Funny
When I look at the hype surrounding this thing, it reminds me of Transmeta. Transmeta had some of the world's brightest computer geeks working on a s3kr1t pr0j3k+ that would change the world, and it turned out to be yet another x86 clone (whoo hoo.) Now there is another company with bright scientists working on a s3kr1t pr0j3k+ that would change the world, and it turns out to be a motorscooter. (whoo hoo.)
None of the laws have been tested in courts, and some of them will most likely be interperted different once they get tested in real practice. None of the laws have been tested in courts, and some of them will most likely be interperted different once they get tested in real practice.
Don't count on it... remember, the Supreme Court upheld the detention of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps after Pearl Harbor. Courts tend to defer to the administration during times of war.
I'd like to know the structural weaknesses of that dam so I can decide whether or not to live downstream of it.
I'd like to know about the design, security, and operating safety record of that nuclear plant so I can decide if I want to buy that nice vacation home across the lake from it.
As you can see, information that is useful to terrorists can also be quite useful to the average Joe as well. Locking it up in the name of Homeland Security will eventually lead to us being told "It's safe, trust us, we're the Government/Big Power Company/whatever". Judging from the past, such interests have not been exactly forthcoming about threats to public safety resulting from their activities. I'd like to be able to check on things for myself, thank you very much. Or at least have the confidence of knowing that the media has access to the information so they can (in theory) check on these things for me.
The only times I can remember Nintendo NES's crashing was when they fell on the floor after people tripped over your controller cord or after you got excited and yanked on the controller, pulling the NES off it's shelf. This was quite annoying because it usually happened when you were very far along in the game, but all you had to do was to reset the system, possibly eject and reinsert the cartridge, and start over. An Xbox, with it's DVD/whatever drive and internal hard drive, would probably be much worse off after an encounter with the floor... But from what I've heard it's so heavy that your controller would probably get unplugged before the system took a dive.
The settlement seems to only apply to server protocols necessary to interoperate with Windows. Since Microsoft Exchange works with Outlook - an application that runs on Windows, not Windows itself - they probably won't have to open the protocol under this settlement. Now if they were to bundle Outlook with Windows and make the same claim as they did with Internet Explorer ("We just added new features to the operating system. It's not illegal product tying.") THEN they might have to open the Exchange protocol... but I'm sure their lawyers have forseen this and will come up with some way around it.
You are ignoring the fact that SmartMedia and CompactFlash cards are popular today -- despite their dimunitive size.
I bet that 95% of the people using SmartMedia and CompactFlash cards only have one, or at most two, of them (due to their relatively high cost) and either never take them out of the device or take them out only to transfer data off them using a CF card reader or similar device. Therefore, they aren't very likely to get lost and the small size goes unnoticed for the most part (except when you pull the CF card out of your MP3 player and say "I can fit 1.5 cd's worth of music on this tiny thing!")
PS/2 to serial mouse adapters don't work most of the time, because there is a difference in the protocols used for a serial mouse and a PS/2 mouse. The adapter doesn't convert between the serial and PS/2 protocol - it just connects the pins. The mouse has to support both the serial and PS/2 protocols in order for the adapter to work. (Notice that they never tell you this on the package for the adapter...) Although you mention your mouse works with both PS/2 and serial ports, most likely the KVM switch isn't passing the serial signal. This isn't a problem with the keyboard, because the only difference between AT and PS/2 keyboards is the pinout - the protocol and electrical setup remain the same. Mueller or another decent PC hardware book will have a comprehensive explanation of this.
I have a Linksys SVIEW04 that I bought a couple years ago. For each port, it has a set of PS/2 connectors and a set of AT/serial connectors and it handles the translation of the mouse protocol. I don't know if Linksys still makes this model. You might be stuck with having to use 2 mice...
Windows Media Player 7 or above will rip files off a CD while you're listening to it (granted, it's MS Windows Media Audio, not MP3.) Last I checked, it doesn't burn CD's... but I think the Windows XP version will. However, it uses a rights management system, which is why I will not use it.
Actually, it doesn't... Windows 98 ends up as a choice in the Windows 2000 multi-boot menu.
Re:You twisted the question though.
on
ORBS Forks
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· Score: 1
And, what about when that accidentally deleted message was a new client trying to get in contact with you about hiring you for a job. And, what about when that client goes to someone else because they never heard back from you.
That job offer could have just as easily been blocked because the person sending it happened to use a mail server that was on ORBS. Now, you say, they could fix their open relay... but what if it's a small company using their incompetent ISP's smtp servers (switch ISP's? yes, but then you'd have to deal with Internic losing your domain...) or a big company where the person in Human Resources sending you the message wouldn't have control over the mail server and probably doesn't even know what SMTP is. Should they suffer?
Attempting to block spam is a noble cause, but ORBS and the other lists like it just cause too much collateral damage.
Historically, Nintendo has always maintained tight control over who could produce games for their systems. In fact, this was one of the main reasons for Nintendo's success with the NES in the mid-80s.
One of the reasons that Atari failed was because anybody could make games for it - the cartridges were just standard ROM chips of about 4K or so stuck on a card and encased in plastic. Lots of companies made lots of crappy games for the system. When these companies went out of business, their inventory was dumped on the market at liquidation prices, which depressed prices for other games and the cycle continued. Atari also had PR problems because some companies made porn games for the 2600. (If you ask me, though, anyone who found stick-figure porn at about a 100x100 resolution with 16 colors arousing had issues...)
By implementing a patented lockout device in the NES cartridges, Nintendo could regulate the number of cartridges on the market to prevent oversupply and prevent really crappy games from reaching the market. They could also collect royalties on each game sold for the system, regardless of the developer. Since this strategy worked so well for Nintendo 15 years ago, it's no wonder they continue it today.
Why do I know this? I wrote a 50-page report on the video game industry up to the time of the NES for a high school senior project. Read it at my webpage, but ignore the first 5 pages - it's methodology and crap that's really not that interesting.
On PunkBuster's website, it said that they eventually hoped that all game servers would be using PunkBuster. Then they go and make their software so that it won't let anybody using Asus graphics drivers on their server. Their suggestion is to download the latest version of Nvidia's reference drivers. However, this disables some of the utilities Asus gives you to monitor the card fan speed, temperature, set the clock rate without having to hack your registry, etc. Sounds to me like Asus could get a good lawyer to spin this as illegal restraint of trade or something.
I don't cheat. I haven't even played a game of Quake in months. However, this sort of holier than thou attitude among people (in this case, the PunkBuster developers) really pisses me off.
Actually, I'm pretty sure the person you're thinking of is
John Harris Hall, who mass-produced rifles at the U.S. Armory in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, around the time you mentioned.
It seems silly to throw away perfectly-good P133 boxes, but you certainly can't sell them or give them away anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
Lots of people in the Western Hemisphere are perfectly happy to take these computers. A P133, when loaded with Windows 95, Netscape 4.0, Juno/NetZero/whatever, and StarOffice 5 runs very nicely. My old high school gets these from the government, fixes them up, equips them with $20 modems, and gives them to students who don't have and can't afford computers. We actually used to run this same software image on 486's and the performance was acceptable. If you have P133s (or P-anythings, for that matter!) that you can't seem to get rid of, talk to schools in low-income areas near you. Just don't try to unload crap on these people. Nothing makes us more angry than when somebody donates us a Pentium with no CPU & RAM or a Mac with the ROM simm removed (the ROM simm is specific to one model of Mac and pretty useless apart from the computer, and the Mac is inoperable without the ROM SIMM.)
And if you have 486's or something that you can't get rid of locally, there are ways to donate them to Third World nations. We've sent Macintosh IIci's to Africa through a friend of a teacher, and donated 486s to the Seventh-Day Adventists. Look around.
Remember: A 486 is still infinitely faster than no computer at all.
Be sure you haven't turned off your browser's reporting of the referer header. MS wants to track you, so they try to do it with cookies. If you don't take cookies, they do it by redirecting you to msid.msn.com, which gives you an id in the URL and then sends you to the original page. If you turn off referers, then msnbc.com doesn't get it's referer tag, assumes you followed a link, and sends you back to msid ad infinitum.
The Linux OS has just as many features as Windows, if not more. The problem with Linux is that the applications people need don't really exist. Blaming the operating system for feature deficiencies when it's really lacking applications is a very Microsoft thing to do.
MCI used to own 1-800-ATT-CALL also. If you called it, you'd get a recording saying something like "This number is not in service. To make a collect call, please dial 1-800-COLLECT." 1-800-COLLECT is owned by... MCI!
Hmm... Here in Maryland, Bell Atlantic let our family have AT&T on the main line and MCI on the modem line for a very long time. Eventually, MCI dropped service on the modem line. I guess this was because we never made any long distance calls. When I try to make a long distance call on the modem line, I always get "Your call cannot be completed" messages. Oh well. MCI was charging a $5/month minimum anyway.
I don't think this is a very powerful statement at all. While some people may not vote in protest, they are drowned out by the majority of nonvoters who aren't voting because they just don't care.
Heck, this isn't even websafe. If somebody turns up their Brightness control too much, black becomes grey. If it's down too far, white becomes grey. White isn't even consistent from the left side of my (brand new Trinitron) monitor to the right! (It's slightly more red on the right.) Unless everybody has exactly the same monitor set to exactly the same settings, there is no such thing as a 100% websafe pallette.
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Yes, but once you've installed it for testing purposes, you've accepted the license agreement and can't take it back anymore. The only time you can honestly return software under this policy is if you pop in the CD, see the license, don't like it, click "No", take out the CD, and go back to the store. I'm sure that in Microsoft's view, clicking "Yes" is like signing the contract, and then the contract will hold. You can't unsign the contract and take the software back to the store.
I know, it sucks...
The 20 minute buffer is probably not "skip protection" in the same sense as your Discman has skip protection... the iPod will spin the drive,read 20 minutes of data into memory, then stop the drive and play from memory in order to save power.
If the 20 minute buffer really was just "skip protection", it would be quite useless since hard drives don't skip unless they crash - in which case, that would be the last 20 minutes of music your iPod ever played.
When I look at the hype surrounding this thing, it reminds me of Transmeta. Transmeta had some of the world's brightest computer geeks working on a s3kr1t pr0j3k+ that would change the world, and it turned out to be yet another x86 clone (whoo hoo.) Now there is another company with bright scientists working on a s3kr1t pr0j3k+ that would change the world, and it turns out to be a motorscooter. (whoo hoo.)
Moral of the story: Don't believe the hype.
None of the laws have been tested in courts, and some of them will most likely be interperted different once they get tested in real practice. None of the laws have been tested in courts, and some of them will most likely be interperted different once they get tested in real practice.
Don't count on it... remember, the Supreme Court upheld the detention of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps after Pearl Harbor. Courts tend to defer to the administration during times of war.
I'd like to know the structural weaknesses of that dam so I can decide whether or not to live downstream of it.
I'd like to know about the design, security, and operating safety record of that nuclear plant so I can decide if I want to buy that nice vacation home across the lake from it.
As you can see, information that is useful to terrorists can also be quite useful to the average Joe as well. Locking it up in the name of Homeland Security will eventually lead to us being told "It's safe, trust us, we're the Government/Big Power Company/whatever". Judging from the past, such interests have not been exactly forthcoming about threats to public safety resulting from their activities. I'd like to be able to check on things for myself, thank you very much. Or at least have the confidence of knowing that the media has access to the information so they can (in theory) check on these things for me.
The only times I can remember Nintendo NES's crashing was when they fell on the floor after people tripped over your controller cord or after you got excited and yanked on the controller, pulling the NES off it's shelf. This was quite annoying because it usually happened when you were very far along in the game, but all you had to do was to reset the system, possibly eject and reinsert the cartridge, and start over. An Xbox, with it's DVD/whatever drive and internal hard drive, would probably be much worse off after an encounter with the floor... But from what I've heard it's so heavy that your controller would probably get unplugged before the system took a dive.
it seems like it would have to include exchange.
The settlement seems to only apply to server protocols necessary to interoperate with Windows. Since Microsoft Exchange works with Outlook - an application that runs on Windows, not Windows itself - they probably won't have to open the protocol under this settlement. Now if they were to bundle Outlook with Windows and make the same claim as they did with Internet Explorer ("We just added new features to the operating system. It's not illegal product tying.") THEN they might have to open the Exchange protocol... but I'm sure their lawyers have forseen this and will come up with some way around it.
You are ignoring the fact that SmartMedia and CompactFlash cards are popular today -- despite their dimunitive size.
I bet that 95% of the people using SmartMedia and CompactFlash cards only have one, or at most two, of them (due to their relatively high cost) and either never take them out of the device or take them out only to transfer data off them using a CF card reader or similar device. Therefore, they aren't very likely to get lost and the small size goes unnoticed for the most part (except when you pull the CF card out of your MP3 player and say "I can fit 1.5 cd's worth of music on this tiny thing!")
PS/2 to serial mouse adapters don't work most of the time, because there is a difference in the protocols used for a serial mouse and a PS/2 mouse. The adapter doesn't convert between the serial and PS/2 protocol - it just connects the pins. The mouse has to support both the serial and PS/2 protocols in order for the adapter to work. (Notice that they never tell you this on the package for the adapter...) Although you mention your mouse works with both PS/2 and serial ports, most likely the KVM switch isn't passing the serial signal. This isn't a problem with the keyboard, because the only difference between AT and PS/2 keyboards is the pinout - the protocol and electrical setup remain the same. Mueller or another decent PC hardware book will have a comprehensive explanation of this.
I have a Linksys SVIEW04 that I bought a couple years ago. For each port, it has a set of PS/2 connectors and a set of AT/serial connectors and it handles the translation of the mouse protocol. I don't know if Linksys still makes this model. You might be stuck with having to use 2 mice...
Windows Media Player 7 or above will rip files off a CD while you're listening to it (granted, it's MS Windows Media Audio, not MP3.) Last I checked, it doesn't burn CD's... but I think the Windows XP version will. However, it uses a rights management system, which is why I will not use it.
The best way to accelerate your Mac is at 9.8 m/s^2.
Actually, it doesn't... Windows 98 ends up as a choice in the Windows 2000 multi-boot menu.
That job offer could have just as easily been blocked because the person sending it happened to use a mail server that was on ORBS. Now, you say, they could fix their open relay... but what if it's a small company using their incompetent ISP's smtp servers (switch ISP's? yes, but then you'd have to deal with Internic losing your domain...) or a big company where the person in Human Resources sending you the message wouldn't have control over the mail server and probably doesn't even know what SMTP is. Should they suffer?
Attempting to block spam is a noble cause, but ORBS and the other lists like it just cause too much collateral damage.
One of the reasons that Atari failed was because anybody could make games for it - the cartridges were just standard ROM chips of about 4K or so stuck on a card and encased in plastic. Lots of companies made lots of crappy games for the system. When these companies went out of business, their inventory was dumped on the market at liquidation prices, which depressed prices for other games and the cycle continued. Atari also had PR problems because some companies made porn games for the 2600. (If you ask me, though, anyone who found stick-figure porn at about a 100x100 resolution with 16 colors arousing had issues...)
By implementing a patented lockout device in the NES cartridges, Nintendo could regulate the number of cartridges on the market to prevent oversupply and prevent really crappy games from reaching the market. They could also collect royalties on each game sold for the system, regardless of the developer. Since this strategy worked so well for Nintendo 15 years ago, it's no wonder they continue it today.
Why do I know this? I wrote a 50-page report on the video game industry up to the time of the NES for a high school senior project. Read it at my webpage, but ignore the first 5 pages - it's methodology and crap that's really not that interesting.
I don't cheat. I haven't even played a game of Quake in months. However, this sort of holier than thou attitude among people (in this case, the PunkBuster developers) really pisses me off.
Lots of people in the Western Hemisphere are perfectly happy to take these computers. A P133, when loaded with Windows 95, Netscape 4.0, Juno/NetZero/whatever, and StarOffice 5 runs very nicely. My old high school gets these from the government, fixes them up, equips them with $20 modems, and gives them to students who don't have and can't afford computers. We actually used to run this same software image on 486's and the performance was acceptable. If you have P133s (or P-anythings, for that matter!) that you can't seem to get rid of, talk to schools in low-income areas near you. Just don't try to unload crap on these people. Nothing makes us more angry than when somebody donates us a Pentium with no CPU & RAM or a Mac with the ROM simm removed (the ROM simm is specific to one model of Mac and pretty useless apart from the computer, and the Mac is inoperable without the ROM SIMM.)
And if you have 486's or something that you can't get rid of locally, there are ways to donate them to Third World nations. We've sent Macintosh IIci's to Africa through a friend of a teacher, and donated 486s to the Seventh-Day Adventists. Look around.
Remember: A 486 is still infinitely faster than no computer at all.
Be sure you haven't turned off your browser's reporting of the referer header. MS wants to track you, so they try to do it with cookies. If you don't take cookies, they do it by redirecting you to msid.msn.com, which gives you an id in the URL and then sends you to the original page. If you turn off referers, then msnbc.com doesn't get it's referer tag, assumes you followed a link, and sends you back to msid ad infinitum.
The Linux OS has just as many features as Windows, if not more. The problem with Linux is that the applications people need don't really exist. Blaming the operating system for feature deficiencies when it's really lacking applications is a very Microsoft thing to do.
Actually, The Thinkpads on ISS run Solaris, not Linux.
MCI used to own 1-800-ATT-CALL also. If you called it, you'd get a recording saying something like "This number is not in service. To make a collect call, please dial 1-800-COLLECT." 1-800-COLLECT is owned by... MCI!
Hmm... Here in Maryland, Bell Atlantic let our family have AT&T on the main line and MCI on the modem line for a very long time. Eventually, MCI dropped service on the modem line. I guess this was because we never made any long distance calls. When I try to make a long distance call on the modem line, I always get "Your call cannot be completed" messages. Oh well. MCI was charging a $5/month minimum anyway.
You actually found coverage of the Olympics? You must not live in the USA, because all I've seen on NBC is a documentary on the Olympic athletes.
I don't think this is a very powerful statement at all. While some people may not vote in protest, they are drowned out by the majority of nonvoters who aren't voting because they just don't care.
Heck, this isn't even websafe. If somebody turns up their Brightness control too much, black becomes grey. If it's down too far, white becomes grey. White isn't even consistent from the left side of my (brand new Trinitron) monitor to the right! (It's slightly more red on the right.) Unless everybody has exactly the same monitor set to exactly the same settings, there is no such thing as a 100% websafe pallette.