True, sometimes you need incandescents, but in domestic households they are exception, not the rule. I'm sure any legislation will make the distinction clear between a commercial photographic lighting and the lightbulbs you run in your house.
Sadly the app I'm talking about only runs on Windows and Windows is the only place it will ever work. While PostgreSQL works fine on Linux I'd love to use a Windows database which is not some cut down / crippled commercial DB but is still moderately scalable. Sadly the app is far too complicated to port (and the current trend is to dump the DB altogether for web services), but if I were writing from scratch I'd definitely be trying to use a free SQL server. It's just too much bother supporting MSDE & SQL Server and explaining to tight fisted customers why MSDE is not always suitable.
My point about the database engine is not that I personally couldn't produce one but that PostgreSQL should do it themselves. Microsoft is eating their lunch here. MSDE & SQL Server Express 2005 might be bloaty installs and have a raft of issues down the road, but they do more or less what they claim on the side of the box - namely you install them and you have a nice fully featured relational DB on your desktop for free. Then of course MS mops up on deployments which grow too big for the desktop DB and need to upgrade to SQL Server which is virtually a drop-in replacement. If PostgreSQL shipped in an 8Mb redistributable package and offered hassle free installation, I can see it having a lot of appeal to companies using MSDE but also providing the scalability (and shoe in for Linux) down the line.
SQLite is okay for standalone apps. I'm talking about an app which has multiple clients per database. And the database needs to support views, triggers, stored procs locking etc. We use MSDE for small deployments and SQL Server for larger ones.
PostgreSQL is easy peasy to install on Windows, so I don't see why anyone would even think of leaving Windows just to use it. It has a nice installer which includes pgAdmin, compiled help manual and drivers for Java, ODBC and.NET. I've even hooked it up to Open Office Base before now.
My only wish is that they'd produce a PostgreSQL Engine version - basically PostgreSQL without the help or extraneous fluff which automatically installs without icons or anything. The DB is far, far smaller that MSDE (cut down MS SQL Server 2000) or MS SQL Server Express 2005, has most of the same features and no restrictions on use or database capacity. I work on a project that uses MSDE and the thing is a bitch to configure and make work. If I didn't have 1000+ SQL statements and 1 million lines of C++ to port, I would switch to PostgreSQL in an instant.
Still doesn't make much sense that MS should promote it though.
Someone needs to find the key for the PlayStation 3. That will really twist Sony's panties in a knot. Must protect BluRay... Must protect PlayStation 3...
Chances are they'd just shove out a new firmware update and that would be that. No doubt there would be a running battle to reissue keys but they'd do if it they had to, and would jiggle the hardware too if necessary to prevent any cracks from working on all machines.
I don't quite understand why they are even comparing sound or video output from a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD disc. The physical medium that the H264 or VC-1 file got read for is totally irrelevant if movies are using the same encoding formats. Features may be somewhat different (though usually analogous), but comparing the codecs seems to be a bit stupid.
Any differences that actually do exist are more likely attributable to the player or the mastering software than the disc it came from.
Microsoft sent me a free Vista Business (for completing some online training vids) and I have installed it. My opinions are mixed at this point.
The upgrade went mostly okay, but it had an extremely aggravating feature - it didn't preserve my existing users or their settings. So after installing I literally had to go through hundreds of thousands of files changing their file ownership to the new user. I can semi-understand that it didn't upgrade my user's AppData and so forth, but couldn't it at least asked if I wanted to preserve user Foo & Bar (and their GUID) so that I don't fuckup all my carefully applied file ownerships and permissions?
Once installed, everything appeared to work fine. I had to grab a driver for a sound card and for a TV capture device. The UI is much, much, much cleaner and more consistent than XP and mostly intuitive. Aero is pretty too, nicer and more compact than Aqua IMO. Other features of Vista such as the live preview window on the taskbar is very cool.
UAC is as annoying as hell. I disabled it, and I really don't see it stopping any kind of virii or spyware since users will soon be trained to click through anything it says. The gadget sidebar went too. I really don't know why Apple and Microsoft stole this feature since it's a waste of space and memory for a minmal benefit.
I mostly like the UI. The new start menu is easier if what you want is visible on it, but the new pane to access the Programs menu is painfully slow and annoying to navigate.
I also hate that DevStudio 2003 is tagged unsupported though it mostly works. Also my builds take longer than by before by a wide margin. Even cygwin builds take longer. I don't know what to attribute this to, but I suspect shadow copy or just less memory. Speaking of shadow copy, I am totally confused as to whether I can disable it without disabling system restore points. The UI for shadow copy is botched and confusing, and I wish that I could disable the feature for certain folders where I don't need versioning. I also see shadow copy as a security disaster in the making - what if I don't actually want to have previous versions of certain files?
So it's a mixed bag. I think if you use Windows you should resign yourself to the upgrade sooner or later. Overall I think it is "better", but I don't see any reason to rush out and install it right away.
Your "I don't want to, therefore no-one else will ever want to either" mentality is precisely the problem. Whatever happened to "easy things should be easy, difficult things possible"?
Erk, I thought I just suggested GNOME could benefit from power tools or an advanced mode. So what exactly is your point?
That's easy if you have 1 computer. I work for a financial institution that has literally ten thousand servers with hundreds of different deployments. One subsystem might pass a timestamp to another to another so you can imagine the havoc if one of them screws this up. Even worse we have client software running on financial advisor's desktops that hasn't been touched in years. Basically the fix has been in planning for 12 months and all other server work was put on hold for 4 months so the maintainance people can fix the mess.
I'm a power user and I really don't have a problem with GNOME. It's simple, straightforward, minimalist and stays the hell out of the way while I do stuff. After all, it is "stuff" that I use the computer for, not to fuck around configuring the desktop.
The thing is (as Linus has demonstrated), is that if you know what you're doing you can add this stuff, or at least drop to the command line or install Konq or Midnight Commander. Virtually every Linux dist has a vast library of tools to use. I do think that GNOME would benefit from some kind of power tools (think TweakUI on windows) or even an advanced mode which exposes more, but making the desktop simple, consistent and easy to use for mere mortals by default is the only way to go.
Anyway GNOME isn't as simple as OS X (for example), yet dare criticize OS X on slashdot and you invoke the wrath of Apple zealots everywhere.
I think y2k was a let down because it was fairly straightforward to fix software and tell if it was going to get bitten or not. Basically anything that stored dates as two digits had to be fixed. The bigger problem will come in 2037 when lots of clunking software with no source code wraps around.
The DST thing is pretty evil too because it's usually up to runtime stacks like Java and CRT to decide on the timezone and time. If they give you the wrong time you're screwed. For the most part you might be okay if everything resolves down to some registry entries or timezone data files but that isn't always the case. There are functions such as Microsoft's _tzset() which are HARDCODED to a particular behaviour and apps that link to the CRT or have their own DLLs will be broken unless you recompile them.
I don't understand why such a large portion of the Church is opposed to science and evolution.
Because put simply, the Bible says or implies one thing and then science promptly demonstrates it to be utterly false or baseless. Think floods, stars, geological time, orbits, fossils, evolution etc.
Some people can't cope with that. When it comes down to it they'd rather believe the literal word of a book cobbled together from thousands of years of superstition than what facts or reality might otherwise say.
You have to understand why Nintendo needs a profit. Nintendo's ONLY products are a few games consoles. They have to make a profit because they have no other businesses to drive. Games help for sure, but I suspect the R&D for a new console is so vast that games don't cut it by themselves.
The same is not true of Microsoft or Sony. Microsoft is using the 360 to push IPTV, Video on Demand, Vista, Zune. Sony is using the PS3 to push LCD TV, Blu-Ray, IPTV, Video on Demand & Walkman. Consoles are part of an overall strategy for these companies to get themselves into your home (before Apple, Tivo + rest of world). That's in addition to whatever they make off games. So both can afford to take a bigger hit up front because the console is a loss leader.
In Sony's case the strategy mightn't look like it is working, but it is - Blu-Ray is the defacto winner (barring some monstrous screwup) of the HD format war and they've just become the biggest producer of LCD TVs. Now the PS3 isn't completely responsible for both bits of news but it gives a hefty shove to both. And they haven't even started with their download services yet.
Furries and other assorted weirdos. Seriously what the hell is the point of Second Life? The client is so atrocious and the world so painfully slow to load that I don't quite follow the point of it at all. It reminds me of TinyMud 15 years ago - you think it's going to be an MMPORG but its just a horribly inconsistent world with a bunch of people standing around asking passers by to play with the objects they created.
Porn really is a sideshow and mostly irrelevant. Porn purveyors sell content and they really do not care how you get that content, just that you do. In fact, the most important thing for porn studios is discrete and convenient distribution of their product. Therefore I suspect that most producers are 10x more interested in delivering downloadable porn.
It's simply not like the days of Betamax vs VHS any more. Remember that mainstream movie studios were highly reluctant to support either format and about the only thing you could buy was porn and video nasties.
I think most of the early Blu-Ray discs were using MPEG-2. But the more recent ones are gravitating to AVC/H-264 which suggests it will become the defacto format in future. I don't know if anyone at all is interested in VC-1 which is Microsoft's format.
HDMI isn't "just a gimic" unless you think DVI-D is also "just a gimic". Perhaps you can't tell the difference between VGA and DVI-D outputs in which case I recommend you stick with component / composite cables. For everybody else, HDMI offers a clear advantage in picture quality.
As for the "content" on the discs, unless Universal & Warner Bros (who support both formats) offer consistently better movies than the other studios combined I fail to see what your point is. Universal is the odd man out here. Everybody else is behind Blu-Ray. Sooner or later Universal will be too.
Of course perhaps some miracle will occur, but at this point HD-DVD is looking doomed.
Exactly. Simple common sense and pragmatism shows Blu-Ray is winning. It's selling more, it has more titles, it has widespread industry support. HD-DVD would have to do something pretty amazing or Sony (+ rest of industry) something really dumb to lose at this point. I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone but HD-DVD player owners who thinks Toshiba's format stands a chance.
And that's just in the US. Japan has already decided on Blu-Ray and Europe will default to Blu-Ray as soon as the PS3 launches.
I have a Mac, I have a PC. The Mac has less games and less apps than the PC. What games and apps there are usually cost more and / or arrive later than the PC versions. And the hardware is more expensive too. And while the Mac's UI is attractive, I get annoyed by amount of bloat in the UI, the single menu bar and the dock. I don't see why I would want to swap from a PC to a Mac until that situation changed.
In its favour OS X is a nice operating system, far more spartan and usable (at least to novies), and anything running over Unix can't be bad. But use it day to day? No way. I think I'd prefer Ubuntu over OS X if Windows disappeared tomorrow.
If it wasn't pulled by Atari the morning it appeared on store shelves, it probably would have been blocked by local or state action. And might have stopped sales of the game console itself. Things are a little bit looser now, but still there is the opportunity for an independent developer to release something so utterly vile as to enrage people.
Surely the same could be said for DVD players though?
Seriously though, copy protection is there to stop piracy. Mod chips are there to aide piracy. All this bullshit about "backups" or imports etc., is simply that - bullshit. While there may be people who actually do play backups, it's pretty clear what the vast, vast majority are sold for.
I wonder if Nintendo and MS wouldn't be better off doing what Sony did and dropping regional controls altogether. It's one less excuse for modchip makers to hide behind. That's probably one good reason Sony did it in fact.
I think it's wishful thinking if you ever believe that Epic would port a cutting edge game engine to a platform which is literally 5 years behind the curve, if not more. The Wii simply doesn't have the graphics, memory or processing power for the sort of games that would want to use it.
With the Wii you get to produce an Unreal 2 Engine game with some graphical enhancements over a Gamecube game but costs don't explode; in contrast to make a PS3/XBox 360 game your budget will probably explode to being 3-4 times what a PS2/XBox game cost. Now, what I hope happens is that the Wii demonstrates that pushing graphical limits is not necessary so that in the next generation developers produce games which focus on gameplay and have graphics on the level the developer can afford.
Which might be viable if there is a PS2 and Xbox around to shoulder some of the costs, but what happens when those consoles are gone? Sites like 1up.com have already been bandying around terms such as "sloppy seconds" to describe the number of Wii titles which are simply PS2 or GC ports. Why is it getting ports? Because it is cheap. Why bother writing Splinter Cell : Double Agent from scratch when you can port the PS2 one, slap on some Wiimote gestures and send it out the door? Once PS2 titles begin to dry up, Wii titles are faced with shouldering the ENTIRE cost of development from conception, implementation, artwork, QA and marketing by themselves.
By contrast, perhaps PS3 & 360 development is more expensive. But if you're developing for PS3 and 360 and PC (and possibly Mac) then much of the expense is common to all platforms - graphics, artwork, models, engines (Unreal, Havok, PhysX etc.) a large percentage of the code, QA, marketing etc.
The last version I ran was probally V6.xx, which was AIM infected.
At the time of Netscape 6.x, the browser was basically a stable branch of Mozilla which went through a shit tonne of extra QA testing and had a few extras like AIM and spellchecker. It wasn't very intrusive and the extra QA was really noticeable back at that time when the Mozilla browser would crash quite frequently.
These days Firefox is pretty stable, so if AOL / Netscape are going to rebrand it, they should perhaps be more subtle and lowkey about it than they were with 8.0.
Is that it's not THE Netscape browser. These days Netscape is just a brand and the browser is the Mozilla browser after a bunch AOL marketroids have slapped tonnes of performance / screen sapping buttons, effects and other shit all over it rendering it completely useless.
At one stage the Netscape browser was actually worth using because it was Mozilla + extra QA + some minor and useful extras like IM panel and spellchecker. These days I simply don't see the point.
If AOL really want to revamp it, I suggest they consider throwing a million at Mozilla.org to produce a version of Firefox with different bookmarks & search set to AOL links and maybe some cool Time Warner themes that people might actually want (e.g. Superman Returns, Lord of the Rings, 300, Harry Potter, Sopranos etc. etc.)
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True, sometimes you need incandescents, but in domestic households they are exception, not the rule. I'm sure any legislation will make the distinction clear between a commercial photographic lighting and the lightbulbs you run in your house.
My point about the database engine is not that I personally couldn't produce one but that PostgreSQL should do it themselves. Microsoft is eating their lunch here. MSDE & SQL Server Express 2005 might be bloaty installs and have a raft of issues down the road, but they do more or less what they claim on the side of the box - namely you install them and you have a nice fully featured relational DB on your desktop for free. Then of course MS mops up on deployments which grow too big for the desktop DB and need to upgrade to SQL Server which is virtually a drop-in replacement. If PostgreSQL shipped in an 8Mb redistributable package and offered hassle free installation, I can see it having a lot of appeal to companies using MSDE but also providing the scalability (and shoe in for Linux) down the line.
SQLite is okay for standalone apps. I'm talking about an app which has multiple clients per database. And the database needs to support views, triggers, stored procs locking etc. We use MSDE for small deployments and SQL Server for larger ones.
My only wish is that they'd produce a PostgreSQL Engine version - basically PostgreSQL without the help or extraneous fluff which automatically installs without icons or anything. The DB is far, far smaller that MSDE (cut down MS SQL Server 2000) or MS SQL Server Express 2005, has most of the same features and no restrictions on use or database capacity. I work on a project that uses MSDE and the thing is a bitch to configure and make work. If I didn't have 1000+ SQL statements and 1 million lines of C++ to port, I would switch to PostgreSQL in an instant.
Still doesn't make much sense that MS should promote it though.
Chances are they'd just shove out a new firmware update and that would be that. No doubt there would be a running battle to reissue keys but they'd do if it they had to, and would jiggle the hardware too if necessary to prevent any cracks from working on all machines.
Any differences that actually do exist are more likely attributable to the player or the mastering software than the disc it came from.
The upgrade went mostly okay, but it had an extremely aggravating feature - it didn't preserve my existing users or their settings. So after installing I literally had to go through hundreds of thousands of files changing their file ownership to the new user. I can semi-understand that it didn't upgrade my user's AppData and so forth, but couldn't it at least asked if I wanted to preserve user Foo & Bar (and their GUID) so that I don't fuckup all my carefully applied file ownerships and permissions?
Once installed, everything appeared to work fine. I had to grab a driver for a sound card and for a TV capture device. The UI is much, much, much cleaner and more consistent than XP and mostly intuitive. Aero is pretty too, nicer and more compact than Aqua IMO. Other features of Vista such as the live preview window on the taskbar is very cool.
UAC is as annoying as hell. I disabled it, and I really don't see it stopping any kind of virii or spyware since users will soon be trained to click through anything it says. The gadget sidebar went too. I really don't know why Apple and Microsoft stole this feature since it's a waste of space and memory for a minmal benefit.
I mostly like the UI. The new start menu is easier if what you want is visible on it, but the new pane to access the Programs menu is painfully slow and annoying to navigate.
I also hate that DevStudio 2003 is tagged unsupported though it mostly works. Also my builds take longer than by before by a wide margin. Even cygwin builds take longer. I don't know what to attribute this to, but I suspect shadow copy or just less memory. Speaking of shadow copy, I am totally confused as to whether I can disable it without disabling system restore points. The UI for shadow copy is botched and confusing, and I wish that I could disable the feature for certain folders where I don't need versioning. I also see shadow copy as a security disaster in the making - what if I don't actually want to have previous versions of certain files?
So it's a mixed bag. I think if you use Windows you should resign yourself to the upgrade sooner or later. Overall I think it is "better", but I don't see any reason to rush out and install it right away.
Erk, I thought I just suggested GNOME could benefit from power tools or an advanced mode. So what exactly is your point?
That's easy if you have 1 computer. I work for a financial institution that has literally ten thousand servers with hundreds of different deployments. One subsystem might pass a timestamp to another to another so you can imagine the havoc if one of them screws this up. Even worse we have client software running on financial advisor's desktops that hasn't been touched in years. Basically the fix has been in planning for 12 months and all other server work was put on hold for 4 months so the maintainance people can fix the mess.
The thing is (as Linus has demonstrated), is that if you know what you're doing you can add this stuff, or at least drop to the command line or install Konq or Midnight Commander. Virtually every Linux dist has a vast library of tools to use. I do think that GNOME would benefit from some kind of power tools (think TweakUI on windows) or even an advanced mode which exposes more, but making the desktop simple, consistent and easy to use for mere mortals by default is the only way to go.
Anyway GNOME isn't as simple as OS X (for example), yet dare criticize OS X on slashdot and you invoke the wrath of Apple zealots everywhere.
The DST thing is pretty evil too because it's usually up to runtime stacks like Java and CRT to decide on the timezone and time. If they give you the wrong time you're screwed. For the most part you might be okay if everything resolves down to some registry entries or timezone data files but that isn't always the case. There are functions such as Microsoft's _tzset() which are HARDCODED to a particular behaviour and apps that link to the CRT or have their own DLLs will be broken unless you recompile them.
Because put simply, the Bible says or implies one thing and then science promptly demonstrates it to be utterly false or baseless. Think floods, stars, geological time, orbits, fossils, evolution etc.
Some people can't cope with that. When it comes down to it they'd rather believe the literal word of a book cobbled together from thousands of years of superstition than what facts or reality might otherwise say.
The same is not true of Microsoft or Sony. Microsoft is using the 360 to push IPTV, Video on Demand, Vista, Zune. Sony is using the PS3 to push LCD TV, Blu-Ray, IPTV, Video on Demand & Walkman. Consoles are part of an overall strategy for these companies to get themselves into your home (before Apple, Tivo + rest of world). That's in addition to whatever they make off games. So both can afford to take a bigger hit up front because the console is a loss leader.
In Sony's case the strategy mightn't look like it is working, but it is - Blu-Ray is the defacto winner (barring some monstrous screwup) of the HD format war and they've just become the biggest producer of LCD TVs. Now the PS3 isn't completely responsible for both bits of news but it gives a hefty shove to both. And they haven't even started with their download services yet.
It does until you observe it. Then it runs Windows instead.
Furries and other assorted weirdos. Seriously what the hell is the point of Second Life? The client is so atrocious and the world so painfully slow to load that I don't quite follow the point of it at all. It reminds me of TinyMud 15 years ago - you think it's going to be an MMPORG but its just a horribly inconsistent world with a bunch of people standing around asking passers by to play with the objects they created.
It's simply not like the days of Betamax vs VHS any more. Remember that mainstream movie studios were highly reluctant to support either format and about the only thing you could buy was porn and video nasties.
I think most of the early Blu-Ray discs were using MPEG-2. But the more recent ones are gravitating to AVC/H-264 which suggests it will become the defacto format in future. I don't know if anyone at all is interested in VC-1 which is Microsoft's format.
As for the "content" on the discs, unless Universal & Warner Bros (who support both formats) offer consistently better movies than the other studios combined I fail to see what your point is. Universal is the odd man out here. Everybody else is behind Blu-Ray. Sooner or later Universal will be too.
Of course perhaps some miracle will occur, but at this point HD-DVD is looking doomed.
And that's just in the US. Japan has already decided on Blu-Ray and Europe will default to Blu-Ray as soon as the PS3 launches.
In its favour OS X is a nice operating system, far more spartan and usable (at least to novies), and anything running over Unix can't be bad. But use it day to day? No way. I think I'd prefer Ubuntu over OS X if Windows disappeared tomorrow.
Surely the same could be said for DVD players though?
Seriously though, copy protection is there to stop piracy. Mod chips are there to aide piracy. All this bullshit about "backups" or imports etc., is simply that - bullshit. While there may be people who actually do play backups, it's pretty clear what the vast, vast majority are sold for.
I wonder if Nintendo and MS wouldn't be better off doing what Sony did and dropping regional controls altogether. It's one less excuse for modchip makers to hide behind. That's probably one good reason Sony did it in fact.
I think it's wishful thinking if you ever believe that Epic would port a cutting edge game engine to a platform which is literally 5 years behind the curve, if not more. The Wii simply doesn't have the graphics, memory or processing power for the sort of games that would want to use it.
Which might be viable if there is a PS2 and Xbox around to shoulder some of the costs, but what happens when those consoles are gone? Sites like 1up.com have already been bandying around terms such as "sloppy seconds" to describe the number of Wii titles which are simply PS2 or GC ports. Why is it getting ports? Because it is cheap. Why bother writing Splinter Cell : Double Agent from scratch when you can port the PS2 one, slap on some Wiimote gestures and send it out the door? Once PS2 titles begin to dry up, Wii titles are faced with shouldering the ENTIRE cost of development from conception, implementation, artwork, QA and marketing by themselves.
By contrast, perhaps PS3 & 360 development is more expensive. But if you're developing for PS3 and 360 and PC (and possibly Mac) then much of the expense is common to all platforms - graphics, artwork, models, engines (Unreal, Havok, PhysX etc.) a large percentage of the code, QA, marketing etc.
The Wii is going to be the odd man out here.
At the time of Netscape 6.x, the browser was basically a stable branch of Mozilla which went through a shit tonne of extra QA testing and had a few extras like AIM and spellchecker. It wasn't very intrusive and the extra QA was really noticeable back at that time when the Mozilla browser would crash quite frequently.
These days Firefox is pretty stable, so if AOL / Netscape are going to rebrand it, they should perhaps be more subtle and lowkey about it than they were with 8.0.
At one stage the Netscape browser was actually worth using because it was Mozilla + extra QA + some minor and useful extras like IM panel and spellchecker. These days I simply don't see the point.
If AOL really want to revamp it, I suggest they consider throwing a million at Mozilla.org to produce a version of Firefox with different bookmarks & search set to AOL links and maybe some cool Time Warner themes that people might actually want (e.g. Superman Returns, Lord of the Rings, 300, Harry Potter, Sopranos etc. etc.)