I was researching the NES Zapper (working on an emulator) and came across Wikipedia's page on it.
It mentioned that the zapper wouldn't work on projection or plasma screen TV's, and actually said "the reasons why are unknown"
Are you kidding me? Yeah, it's a magic wand imbued with the powers of the ancient elders to kill ducks, and is beyond the capacity for mortal science to understand. OR, it's just a light sensor with a 15khz low pass filter.
Just one of a million examples of Wikipedia's complete inadequacy for any kind of actual research.
I imgagine if I was researching non-canonical Mario erotic fan fiction, Wikipedia would be a treasure trove of information.
Err, you never said if it worked or not. Also, if it does work, correct it! That's what Wikipedia's for, right?
Much of the material on pop-culture subjects has been either cut down or deleted outright. This has pushed many editors to other smaller wikis where they can have the level of detail they want.
Exactly. If I want lots of detail on a particular Haruhi book/episode I'd go to the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Wiki. Same for Pokemon or lyrics or homebrew DS software or anything. Wikipedia isn't supposed to have everything in one place; it's supposed to be a general source of information. Make it anything more than that and fanboys/fangirls insert a lot of unneeded information that might not even be necessary to people looking it up.
Touhou runs almost perfectly in Linux with Wine the last time I checked, which is almost every single day that I play Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (with the english patch, but japanese works too).
TIP: Run the game on a virtual Wine desktop! Switching windows causes this weird and annoying glitch where it seems like a button is stuck, and if it's on a virtual desktop the window won't technically lose focus.
Dropbox isn't open and it stores the files online. I would suggest it as well, but he can't control the encryption. Not sure about "Jungle Disk", whatever that is.
It's just a pity when religions get in the way of our society (abortion, contraceptives and gay rights are good things) and when people take them too far (terrorism).
1) There are lots of non-religious people that are pro-life because they see it as murder. You're killing a human child, breathing or not, when you have an abortion, a very selfish act without thinking about your potential child (unless, of course, the mother would die from having childbirth; that's reasonable).
2) Contraceptives, from what I hear, are terrible to use. A lot of people I know won't even consider them because of the risks involved.
3) I'm fine with gay partnerships, but is gay marriage really needed? Marriage has always been a religious thing even since ancient times. What could possibly come from gay marriage that a gay partnership won't bring?
4) Hitler/communism/etc. did more damage than religious terrorism ever did. All of them were non-religious.
"And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter." (Revelation 8:10, 11 - KJB).
Does it say exactly when it'll happen? Nope. The Bible, in many different places within itself says that nobody on Earth will be sure when the end will come. Why so many people that call themselves Christians believe otherwise, I have no idea...
Making it open source allows you to use it, distribute it, and modify it.
Wrong. Open Source and Free software are totally different things. Yes, Free software is Open Source, but being Open Source does not mean that it is Free. Just because someone allows you to use the source of a program doesn't mean you can legally do anything you want with it. However, I just looked up the Apache License and it seems very similar to licenses like the LGPL, so in this case, you're free to do as you please.
Just want you all to know the difference so you're not confused in the future.
Boring cheap wireless card in my new PC "just works" with vista but I've spent more hours than I really should trying to get it to work in unbuntu to no avail so I have to string a cable across the house when I want to use the net with linux.
1) Did you try ndiswrapper?
2) You can't blame Ubuntu or Linux in general for something like that. Whenever you install an operating system you are never guaranteed (except maybe by the hardware's manufacturer) if it will or won't work out of the box. Linux is way more out-of-the-box compatible with devices such as printers, webcams, and (IIRC) tablets than windows ever was. Sorry about your wireless card, but nobody ever said it would work right away.
3) Did you try Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10)?
Now the bright side of linux is that it tells you when something is wrong, it tells you even when nothing is wrong, it gives you all the details you need to figure out how to fix it, so many details that if you aren't equipped to understand them it worries you.
...
but for most users they don't know how to fix a computer, they really don't want to know, they don't even want to know the full details of what's gone wrong because they dobn't read error messages anyway, they're not going to spend an hour reading documentation to get their sound to work again. And they shouldn't have to.
Oh gosh... This isn't a problem at all. You're making a mountain out of a shoebox; creating a problem where there isn't one, if that makes sense to you. Linux error messages are much more human-readable (at least on Ubuntu with it's Apport system). Not only this, but it (Apport) gives you the ability to report the problem, tells you what will be in the report (optional) and since the code of whatever crashed is most likely Free, a fix is MUCH more likely than otherwise. Nobody ever said reading documentation was a "problem"; it should be obvious for some programs, right? Why aren't you mentioning this as a Windows or Mac problem as well?
Some of the biggest questions around services shch as bit.ly, TinyURL, and is.gd is what happens when they go out of business (as tr.im did [CC] last August).
Yeah, it's out of business, but now it's open-source and not-for-profit (IIRC). I use tr.im a lot and it works just as good, if not better, than any other URL shortener I've used even.
There are - let us say - 200 or so Linux distributions.
Yes, but they're all unlimited. Well, at least the majority of them. If I install Ubuntu Server edition, there's nothing stopping me from converting to Ubuntu Desktop (just install ubuntu-desktop). Each edition of Window$ is Defective By Design and limits your ability to do anything they don't feel you have the right to do. Every Linux distribution is just the Linux kernel with some GNU programs and maybe a few themes/extras. On Window$, if I buy Home, I cannot, repeat cannot use features in Business/Ultimate/Enterprise edition. This is why I use Linux, because I'm free to do as I please with no restrictions.
You know, I think it's technically possible to switch an Ubuntu desktop over to OpenSUSE somehow without re-installing... Can't do that on Windows, can you?
Yeah, and most likely we'll see these solar elevators in the next, I dunno, 300 years? And then there will be all of this conflict in the middle east over the fact that we wouldn't need their resources anymore, and I have a hunch that people in giant flying robots will rise up against all of the war going on. Oh, and there's a small chance of a group working over the world's government to form and start attacking the terrorists. Lets hope none of that happens, right?;)
About the first hypothesis: What's making these accidents? It can't all be coincidence, could it? There's no other explanation than a non-secular one in this case; am I correct?
Am I the only one that thinks Google's going a little too fast with its version numbering scheme? It isn't based on months or years but it keeps going up at a fast pace. Of course, this does make some non-educated folks want to use the software for stupid reasons.
"You use Firefox? Eww, Chrome's already on version 4 and Firefox is stuck on 3.5.whatever. Noob." or "Chrome has a higher version number than Firefox, so it must be more secure/mature; I'll start using it!"
I have a friend that won't use anything, I repeat/anything/ that doesn't have a version number over 1.0 (even if it's something like FFMPEG). Why are so many people trained to love high version numbers, when in reality they can mean anything?
...clonezilla can do all of that too. did you even check the site? and might I mention that clonezilla's free as in speech, and not super-expensive like Acronis.
Oh, might I mention that CloneZilla is an/imaging/ program similar to Norton Ghost. It won't back up individual files, but it can back up individual partitions and drives. It only backs up the parts you need though and it can optionally split it into multiple files if you'd like. It only backs up the parts of the partition/drive that have data on it as well, so the file can only be as large as your partition is full. As I said, compression helps here and while it takes a little bit more time for it to finish (not much though) it saves a bit of space.
CloneZilla? It's linux-based, but it'll run as a LiveCD (aka, put the CD in and reboot). It comes in Live and Server editions for different needs. The backups are fast and you can choose how much compression you want as well. It can connect to remote drives and physical drives and I've just tried running the server edition at my old school (I volunteer there) and it works great! We got a whole lab of computers-around 20 of them-in only 3-4 hours! They were all running Windows XP.
Windows its the rusty tool box it has everything you want to do the job but you may need to do some digging to find the right tool and sometimes finding the right tool takes forever but it does do the job and its useful for almost all jobs.
Don't forget how the tools keep breaking and since nobody knows how the tools are made, the only viable solution sometimes is to buy a new one;)
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I was researching the NES Zapper (working on an emulator) and came across Wikipedia's page on it.
It mentioned that the zapper wouldn't work on projection or plasma screen TV's, and actually said "the reasons why are unknown"
Are you kidding me? Yeah, it's a magic wand imbued with the powers of the ancient elders to kill ducks, and is beyond the capacity for mortal science to understand. OR, it's just a light sensor with a 15khz low pass filter.
Just one of a million examples of Wikipedia's complete inadequacy for any kind of actual research.
I imgagine if I was researching non-canonical Mario erotic fan fiction, Wikipedia would be a treasure trove of information.
Err, you never said if it worked or not. Also, if it does work, correct it! That's what Wikipedia's for, right?
Much of the material on pop-culture subjects has been either cut down or deleted outright. This has pushed many editors to other smaller wikis where they can have the level of detail they want.
Exactly. If I want lots of detail on a particular Haruhi book/episode I'd go to the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya Wiki. Same for Pokemon or lyrics or homebrew DS software or anything. Wikipedia isn't supposed to have everything in one place; it's supposed to be a general source of information. Make it anything more than that and fanboys/fangirls insert a lot of unneeded information that might not even be necessary to people looking it up.
Touhou runs almost perfectly in Linux with Wine the last time I checked, which is almost every single day that I play Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (with the english patch, but japanese works too).
TIP: Run the game on a virtual Wine desktop! Switching windows causes this weird and annoying glitch where it seems like a button is stuck, and if it's on a virtual desktop the window won't technically lose focus.
Obama is a member of the One World Order muslim kenyan atheist conspiracy
I can't tell whether or not this is meant to be a joke or to be serious. By the way, You can't be muslim and atheist at the same time.
They said that it affects old versions of internet explorer.
Dropbox isn't open and it stores the files online. I would suggest it as well, but he can't control the encryption. Not sure about "Jungle Disk", whatever that is.
It's just a pity when religions get in the way of our society (abortion, contraceptives and gay rights are good things) and when people take them too far (terrorism).
1) There are lots of non-religious people that are pro-life because they see it as murder. You're killing a human child, breathing or not, when you have an abortion, a very selfish act without thinking about your potential child (unless, of course, the mother would die from having childbirth; that's reasonable).
2) Contraceptives, from what I hear, are terrible to use. A lot of people I know won't even consider them because of the risks involved.
3) I'm fine with gay partnerships, but is gay marriage really needed? Marriage has always been a religious thing even since ancient times. What could possibly come from gay marriage that a gay partnership won't bring?
4) Hitler/communism/etc. did more damage than religious terrorism ever did. All of them were non-religious.
Is this close enough?
"And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter." (Revelation 8:10, 11 - KJB).
Does it say exactly when it'll happen? Nope. The Bible, in many different places within itself says that nobody on Earth will be sure when the end will come. Why so many people that call themselves Christians believe otherwise, I have no idea...
Making it open source allows you to use it, distribute it, and modify it.
Wrong. Open Source and Free software are totally different things. Yes, Free software is Open Source, but being Open Source does not mean that it is Free. Just because someone allows you to use the source of a program doesn't mean you can legally do anything you want with it. However, I just looked up the Apache License and it seems very similar to licenses like the LGPL, so in this case, you're free to do as you please.
Just want you all to know the difference so you're not confused in the future.
Forgot to apply quotes the second time... my bad. If you read the parent before this one it should be obvious where the quotes should be.
Boring cheap wireless card in my new PC "just works" with vista but I've spent more hours than I really should trying to get it to work in unbuntu to no avail so I have to string a cable across the house when I want to use the net with linux.
1) Did you try ndiswrapper?
2) You can't blame Ubuntu or Linux in general for something like that. Whenever you install an operating system you are never guaranteed (except maybe by the hardware's manufacturer) if it will or won't work out of the box. Linux is way more out-of-the-box compatible with devices such as printers, webcams, and (IIRC) tablets than windows ever was. Sorry about your wireless card, but nobody ever said it would work right away.
3) Did you try Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10)?
Now the bright side of linux is that it tells you when something is wrong, it tells you even when nothing is wrong, it gives you all the details you need to figure out how to fix it, so many details that if you aren't equipped to understand them it worries you.
...
but for most users they don't know how to fix a computer, they really don't want to know, they don't even want to know the full details of what's gone wrong because they dobn't read error messages anyway, they're not going to spend an hour reading documentation to get their sound to work again. And they shouldn't have to.
Oh gosh... This isn't a problem at all. You're making a mountain out of a shoebox; creating a problem where there isn't one, if that makes sense to you. Linux error messages are much more human-readable (at least on Ubuntu with it's Apport system). Not only this, but it (Apport) gives you the ability to report the problem, tells you what will be in the report (optional) and since the code of whatever crashed is most likely Free, a fix is MUCH more likely than otherwise. Nobody ever said reading documentation was a "problem"; it should be obvious for some programs, right? Why aren't you mentioning this as a Windows or Mac problem as well?
Some of the biggest questions around services shch as bit.ly, TinyURL, and is.gd is what happens when they go out of business (as tr.im did [CC] last August).
Yeah, it's out of business, but now it's open-source and not-for-profit (IIRC). I use tr.im a lot and it works just as good, if not better, than any other URL shortener I've used even.
>
There are - let us say - 200 or so Linux distributions.
Yes, but they're all unlimited. Well, at least the majority of them. If I install Ubuntu Server edition, there's nothing stopping me from converting to Ubuntu Desktop (just install ubuntu-desktop). Each edition of Window$ is Defective By Design and limits your ability to do anything they don't feel you have the right to do. Every Linux distribution is just the Linux kernel with some GNU programs and maybe a few themes/extras. On Window$, if I buy Home, I cannot, repeat cannot use features in Business/Ultimate/Enterprise edition. This is why I use Linux, because I'm free to do as I please with no restrictions.
You know, I think it's technically possible to switch an Ubuntu desktop over to OpenSUSE somehow without re-installing... Can't do that on Windows, can you?
I think this pretty much sums up our future if this is allowed to happen: http://xkcd.com/129/
Scary thought...
Mod parent up. Keepassx, as another comment suggested, is great as well.
Yeah, and most likely we'll see these solar elevators in the next, I dunno, 300 years? And then there will be all of this conflict in the middle east over the fact that we wouldn't need their resources anymore, and I have a hunch that people in giant flying robots will rise up against all of the war going on. Oh, and there's a small chance of a group working over the world's government to form and start attacking the terrorists. Lets hope none of that happens, right? ;)
Don't forget Spaceman Spiff, you insensitive clod! ;)
About the first hypothesis: What's making these accidents? It can't all be coincidence, could it? There's no other explanation than a non-secular one in this case; am I correct?
Google Gnash and Swfdec; they're coming along nicely, but aren't 100% replacements as of yet.
Am I the only one that thinks Google's going a little too fast with its version numbering scheme? It isn't based on months or years but it keeps going up at a fast pace. Of course, this does make some non-educated folks want to use the software for stupid reasons.
"You use Firefox? Eww, Chrome's already on version 4 and Firefox is stuck on 3.5.whatever. Noob."
or
"Chrome has a higher version number than Firefox, so it must be more secure/mature; I'll start using it!"
I have a friend that won't use anything, I repeat /anything/ that doesn't have a version number over 1.0 (even if it's something like FFMPEG). Why are so many people trained to love high version numbers, when in reality they can mean anything?
And God forbid that I continue the joke and say, "Why is /THIS/ modded funny!?"
...clonezilla can do all of that too. did you even check the site? and might I mention that clonezilla's free as in speech, and not super-expensive like Acronis.
Oh, might I mention that CloneZilla is an /imaging/ program similar to Norton Ghost. It won't back up individual files, but it can back up individual partitions and drives. It only backs up the parts you need though and it can optionally split it into multiple files if you'd like. It only backs up the parts of the partition/drive that have data on it as well, so the file can only be as large as your partition is full. As I said, compression helps here and while it takes a little bit more time for it to finish (not much though) it saves a bit of space.
CloneZilla? It's linux-based, but it'll run as a LiveCD (aka, put the CD in and reboot). It comes in Live and Server editions for different needs. The backups are fast and you can choose how much compression you want as well. It can connect to remote drives and physical drives and I've just tried running the server edition at my old school (I volunteer there) and it works great! We got a whole lab of computers-around 20 of them-in only 3-4 hours! They were all running Windows XP.
And IIRC, it supports FTP and Samba/NFS. http://clonezilla.org/ for the regular LiveCD or http://drbl.sourceforge.net/ if you want a live server edition.
Windows its the rusty tool box it has everything you want to do the job but you may need to do some digging to find the right tool and sometimes finding the right tool takes forever but it does do the job and its useful for almost all jobs.
Don't forget how the tools keep breaking and since nobody knows how the tools are made, the only viable solution sometimes is to buy a new one ;)