Physical real world examples tend to help in teaching theory in a lot of different fields.
Lord Knows there have been tons of things from a large variety of different areas of mathmatics that I didn't understand until it was related to me in terms of 2x4s.:)
Reboots are not really needed most of the time. You can kill DirectX update the D3D driver and restart an DirectX app that'll use the new driver without even rebooting the machine (actually you only need to do this if you're writing the driver). And it's pretty funny that DHCP can change your IP address on the fly, but if you want to change a static IP address you have to reboot. I think they are just being extra cautious because if they can save one support call from some terrible thing that happened once it's worth it the way they view it. A lot of people require reboot at the end of their installshield scripts for NO reason.
I hate it when the installer AUTOMATICALY reboots.
I once lost some work (not much, I do save.:) ) that way, pissed me off.
Hint to developers / programmers: Closing down other programs on a machine WITHOUT asking for permission is a DAMN good way to get your program removed from my computer the second my computer gets done rebooting. . . .
Pacemakers, defibrilators, hearing aids, etc, are all inspected and classified for use on airplanes. I'd be willing to bet that Dr. Mann's gear hasn't undergone half the scrutiny.
Oh yes, why, that LCD screen he has and the little antenna are just SO dangerous. . .. (don't forget the video camera!) -_-
Honestly now, what the hell do you think his electronics are going to do? Take over the steering wheel via remote and crash the airplane? Hardly.
And the fact that he HAD CLEARANCE FROM THE AIRLINE TO BOARD should also tell you something.
It was the AIRPORT that was being a bitch about things, he had already flown INTO the airport without turning the plane into a UFO or any other such weirdity, and being a professor I am quite a bit more likely to trust HIS judgement then the judgement of whatever GED committee decides on what is or is not safe for use on airplanes.
Hell Microsoft hasn't INVENTED anything, no one is going to argue THAT point with you.
Quite frankly I have almost NO problem with their software now.
Now I had SERIOUS problems with their software even 4-5 years ago, and MAJOR problems with it 6 or 7 years ago, but now days, hell, it works, its stable. Yes it is huge as fuck, but that is partialy the fault of marketing who demands that features go over function (lets add frilly blue curvy window boarders and who cares if it takes up an extra 500Megabytes compared to our last release!).
My main complaints with Microsoft at this point in time revolve around their business policies. Namely how much they seek to steamroll the consumer into buying MS products by using FUD and steamroll the competition by yelling out FUD about the competitions products.
If they just stopped bullshitting around all the time I think that MS would find that they ended up with A LOT less enemies.
Somebody should tell them that monopolies are LEGAL if gained through LEGAL means. . . . .
How to install drivers on windows (the more or less insecure way, but hell, executables by their very nature. . ..)
goto manufacturers web site
goto driver page
click driver
select 'run from'
wait
wait
wait
wish you had broadband (hahah, I do. Yah!)
Click yes
Click next
Click next
Click "I agree that j00 0wn my s0ul"
Click done
enjoy.
Ok so A LOT of clicking is involved, but it is MUCH more intuitive them guessing at WTF you need.:) It is just downloading an EXE and running it from your browsers cache, then letting clicking through the standard boring 'yada yada yada' screens that almost any driver have.
Windows also has the advantage that the WORST that can possibly go wrong is that you have to hit a key at startup and select use last best config. Handy that.:)
Umm, what exactly IS the worst that installing an improper driver under Linux can do to ya anyways? I know that under the MS system that it USED to be able to cause hardware damage, but that is pretty much none existent now (as windows is far more likely to shit out then go on running hardware with the wrong driver, or it will shitout when some serious incompatability is found, take your pick.:) ) Windows actualy typicaly tends to just disable that singular device now days more often then it refuses to boot.
"This isn't final fantasy with 3000 healing potions. "
States EXACTLY what my problem with current RPGs is.
I remember in the older RPGs HAVING to Hoard my healing potions.
Ability to raise from dead? LOL!!! Yah right! If you were LUCKY it was included in the game SOMEPLACE. I remember in DragonWars (Interplay RPG, most none linear RPG that I have ever played, man I love that game!) there was this ONE healing well down a gazzilion levels underground that more often then not you ended up losing two or three more guys just escaping from it after reaching it to raise one party member from the dead.
Not an easy experance.
Now days RPGs have healing spells and raise dead items and such around every corner. Hell they HEAL you before the boss fight! Isn't the TRUE beauty of fighting that Red Dragon (not like any games actualy use Dragons as bosses anymore, they are typicaly commons now. . . . and that is just plain wrong) that you finaly limp through level 10 of the dungion (anybody else remember Ultima4's dungion system? Oh man those were EVIL) on your last few HPs with all of your healing potions expended and your magic spells all but gone, only to find this HUGE ass dragon ready to kick your ass halfway to hell.
Now THAT was an epic fight. You felt damn PROUD when your sorry ass CRAWLED out of that brawl alive. It wasn't a matter of equiping your 4x spell ring and casting meteo for 4000000 gazzilion damage. Hell no. It was spending four or five minutes MINIMUM thinking over EVERY last damn little move that you made. You EARNED your victory, you literaly had sweat pouring from your veins.
RPGs were HARD damnit. If a character died he was DEAD. Or at least a LOOOONG ways off from revival. Yah it SUCKED when a character died, but hey, guess what, death sucks, deal.
And above all else, it felt damn good to have your white mage crawl up from out of a dungion with everybody else in the party dead. Wooden Hammer to the rescue!
Last year there were MORE april fools jokes on the/. frontpage as I recall. . ..
bah. Just more whiners this year.:P
The net was actualy pretty slow for april fools stuff, and A LOT of it has come down early (excuse me folks, uh, 4 hours to go. . . . at least here on the west coast). Last year was better. ^_^
A BUNCH OF ASSHOLES HADN'T GONE AND STARTED STEALING EVERY DAMN LAST FILE IN EXISTENCE OFF OF NAPSTER
Yes napster had fair use potential, but the MAJORITY OF TRAFFIC OVER IT was ILLEGAL. School childern sold f*cking pirated CDRs for crying out loud! Of COURSE there was/is a problem, and the ONLY way to get around it is to MAKE PEACE with the RIAA.
Suggestion #1;
stop f*cking stealing files! Do NOT brag about your MP3 collection, do NOT say that you just download files to test out a CD (uh people, helllooo, various online sites, hell, TONS of online sites allow for you to sample entire tracks from CDs, LEGALY. The RIAA and members tried to do its best to accomidate people in that area, what response did they get? NOTHING) and STOP downloading every damn file in existence just because you want to have the largest MP3 collection/penis size!
(apologies to those few who actualy DO use P2P file sharing programs for SOLELY legal purposes. All, uh, 3 or 4 of you.)
Next, if you REALLY want to shove it to the RIAA, then for crying out loud do not listen to their music AT ALL.
When artists can start getting MORE money and MORE listeners from signing up with alternative lables then they can from signing up with one of the 'big boys' THEN and ONLY THEN will we have 'won' this 'war' against the RIAA.
Yes the DMCA sucks, horribly. Some type of law needed to exist to address that illegal sector, and we all KNEW that some type of law was going to be passed sooner or later.
Now what did you HONESTLY expect to happen? The big companies to draft a WELL REASONED and LIGHT handed law that allowed for maximum consumer protection?
HEheheheheheehohohohohLOL!! Seriously now.
THINK your actions through before you take them. THINK of the long term CONSEQUENCES of your actions before you take them.
(of course getting napster featured on the f*cking 6'oclock news didn't help much either. . ..)
My point was that it is something that should be INCLUDED with the OS. It can be construed as being a mite bit of an embaressment to Windows users that they cannot even auto-shutdown a network without installing some extra application.
(there are of course ways to do this, but as I said, by DEFAULT it cannot be done on Windows, where as on *nix and a host of other Network Based OSs it is a very simple procedure)
Or have HTML rendered in the same way that a lot of other files are handled, though an xLIB type of a system. "x" being whatever your file format is.
Most of those interactive help files use a very minimal subset of HTML but manage to take for-friggin-ever to load themselves. Likely because they are using a highly bloated HTML rendering engine, oh joy. By using a nice efficent HTML rendering engine not only could the user experance be improved, but you the developer would no longer be stuck using a product that Microsoft could change at any moment. With the xLIB system, you choose the library version that gets included with your program.
I can nuke everything but the main kernal and the shnit loaded by the registery and have everything still work A-OK.
All that is really needed is the already modular DirectX and the support for various other APIs (and few products use them all and it would be easy enough to use other ones such as SDL when need be) and everything would work just fine. Of course some of those APIs DO present a problem, but no one in this right mind still uses the older then heck ones and a lot of the new ways of doing things suck so much (such as the HTML help files, bleh. Those suck horribly) that well, heck;
I have been saying for quite some time now that Microsoft needs to strip out some of the older shnitz from their OS, such as the program to detect for the Pentium Bug (bleh).
One thing that is REALLY missing from Windows is a NICE auto-shutdown utility. Sure third party utilities exist to do that, and Windows has the proper APIs to handle all of that, but no truly GOOD free program has come out to accomplish that task yet. A lot of programs have it tacked on as an extra and some programs exist to do timed shutdowns (though they tend to not be all that good, such as shutting down right away as the default action when invoked with no command line parameters) but having one that can say;
"Shutdown the computer after there has been no traffic on port XXX for the last TTT minutes"
My grandmother (who has Cataracts amongst other eye problems) is able to view things on her 21" monitor just fine.
So go for a 21 incher, pretty much any one will do as long as it has a good.pitch and the focus is good. Go Trinitron for that matter.
Baring that, I am sure that these people may be able to help you.:)
A good on screen text dictator is a plus, I have known of people who were almost compleatly blind and managed to use a computer just fine with a good text dictator. I find the damn things highly annoying myself (being a speed reader I would keel over if I lost my ability to read efficently.:(:(:( ) but many people swear by them.
*COUGH* *COUGH* Windows (any version) tends to have excellent text dictation support, as it does other features for the visualy impaired. (built in magnifing utility and such).
Also, learn how to type with your eyes clsoed, it can save a lot of wear and tear on them.:) (useful advice in general.:) )
Use a good video card, I recommend a Matrrox card of any sort. They Rock. Period.:)
I'd bitch like hell if I was only getting 300kilobytes per second.
Fuck.
200KiloBYTES per second is killing me as it is.:( I was spoiled by @Home (heh, uncapped downloads ruled. I once got 2.2MegaBytes per second down!) I want my uncapped line at $40 a month back.:(
Though in all honesty, it is such that put @Home out of business in the first place.:) (well that and running that inane web portal of theirs, bleh!)
I remember how my first modem came with a somewhat short (only 3 or 4 pages) history of the internet in the begining of the manual.
It also came with software for every major ISP out there at the time, a copy of Mosaic and some other nifty stuff. (mostly complete AT command chart and such).
Man I miss how stuff used to come prepackaged.
Heya, anybody else remember how you had to PAY to join an ISP? You'd fork over cash to GET that AOL disk! LOL! (called a starter kit then, heh.)
Not having that kind of money at the time (err, or now. I still could not afford to pay $200 or so for just entry rights to an online medium, not to mention per minute charges!) I have no idea what was in those packages, but the level of support and services offered in them might be good to look at for starters. (with things updated of course)
Re:This is what'll screw us all in the end
on
The Root of All E-Mail
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
"(any network engineer with a sense of adventure and a flashlight can prowl the sewers tracing data lines, anyway.)."
This being the true threat anyways.
....
That and whitetrash with backhoes. They ALWAYS manage to take out some part of the internet on at least a somewhat annual basis. . ..
Seriously though, 8 dudes in scuba gear and / or who don't mind getting stinky, could take out the required 8 root servers needed to slow things down. Bit whoop. So I would be stuck using a cached copy from someplace::yawns:: no more NEW.coms or dynamic IP linked to a Domain warez sites. Oh no the horror!
I found RE scary because it HAD NO background scary music. Most movies you can tell exactly when something is going to jump out at you because there is this huge obvious buildup in the music. RE just had water dripping or other such ambience at times in its scary places.
I am the wacko who dreamed at age 12 or so of going around with Freddy Kruger and chopping people up with him, trust me, it is VERY RARE that I find a movie scary at all.
(and WTF is up with Steven King? NOTHING he writes / directs is scary. Funny at times, but not scary.)
BladeII takes that entire bullet ducking scene to a new level though.:) I mean at first it LOOKS LIKE a direct rip off of The Matrix but then they go compleatly original with it.:)
Yah, that Swordfish scene was, besides being about the only good reason to see the movie, a darn good example of senseless violence in slow motion.:)
I have seen super fast movements being represented by blurs before, and I must say, that stretching the living shnitz out of a characters body does NOT count as bluring, nor does f'ing up the colors on the character.
At times the characters were perfectly focused but they still looked like crud.:(
Having taken some (not to mention failed. ^_^ ) base low level video production courses I was marginaly trained to spot even the slighest bit of CG in video, and that scene stuck out like a sore thumb. I think I could have spotted it if I was blind in one eye.
Oh wait a minute, I AM blind in one eye!
:D
Annnyways. A few other times in the movie a simular effect happened, but not ever NEARLY so much.
My guess is that some dip-stick used direct mesh deformation and forgot to include a friggin skeleton framework on the characters. . . . That is about the ONLY explanation that I can think of for the entire clay look.
Though if they could get that down pat it could make for an interesting new field of CG.:) I mean it DID look awfuly darn close to Claymation!;D
Slashdot Mirror
wow, you linked to a none working domain name, don't you feel proud?
:( :( :(
Yeesh.
The trolls are getting worse and worse around here.
Physical real world examples tend to help in teaching theory in a lot of different fields.
:)
Lord Knows there have been tons of things from a large variety of different areas of mathmatics that I didn't understand until it was related to me in terms of 2x4s.
Reboots are not really needed most of the time. You can kill DirectX update the D3D driver and restart an DirectX app that'll use the new driver without even rebooting the machine (actually you only need to do this if you're writing the driver). And it's pretty funny that DHCP can change your IP address on the fly, but if you want to change a static IP address you have to reboot. I think they are just being extra cautious because if they can save one support call from some terrible thing that happened once it's worth it the way they view it. A lot of people require reboot at the end of their installshield scripts for NO reason.
:) ) that way, pissed me off.
I hate it when the installer AUTOMATICALY reboots.
I once lost some work (not much, I do save.
Hint to developers / programmers: Closing down other programs on a machine WITHOUT asking for permission is a DAMN good way to get your program removed from my computer the second my computer gets done rebooting. . . .
Thankfuly (sadly?) formatting and reinstalling on either Linux OR Windows is a lot easier then fixing most major screwups. :)
Of course when the data is important. . . . bleh. I typicaly tend to be the poor SOB stuck fixing things, LOL!
Pacemakers, defibrilators, hearing aids, etc, are all inspected and classified for use on airplanes. I'd be willing to bet that Dr. Mann's gear hasn't undergone half the scrutiny.
.
Oh yes, why, that LCD screen he has and the little antenna are just SO dangerous. . .
(don't forget the video camera!)
-_-
Honestly now, what the hell do you think his electronics are going to do? Take over the steering wheel via remote and crash the airplane? Hardly.
And the fact that he HAD CLEARANCE FROM THE AIRLINE TO BOARD should also tell you something.
It was the AIRPORT that was being a bitch about things, he had already flown INTO the airport without turning the plane into a UFO or any other such weirdity, and being a professor I am quite a bit more likely to trust HIS judgement then the judgement of whatever GED committee decides on what is or is not safe for use on airplanes.
"Quiz: name one innovative Microsoft technology."
:)
Does their massive FUD machine count?
Hell Microsoft hasn't INVENTED anything, no one is going to argue THAT point with you.
Quite frankly I have almost NO problem with their software now.
Now I had SERIOUS problems with their software even 4-5 years ago, and MAJOR problems with it 6 or 7 years ago, but now days, hell, it works, its stable. Yes it is huge as fuck, but that is partialy the fault of marketing who demands that features go over function (lets add frilly blue curvy window boarders and who cares if it takes up an extra 500Megabytes compared to our last release!).
My main complaints with Microsoft at this point in time revolve around their business policies. Namely how much they seek to steamroll the consumer into buying MS products by using FUD and steamroll the competition by yelling out FUD about the competitions products.
If they just stopped bullshitting around all the time I think that MS would find that they ended up with A LOT less enemies.
Somebody should tell them that monopolies are LEGAL if gained through LEGAL means. . . . .
"I'm missing something here..... (apt-get install xserver)"
.)
:) It is just downloading an EXE and running it from your browsers cache, then letting clicking through the standard boring 'yada yada yada' screens that almost any driver have.
:)
:) ) Windows actualy typicaly tends to just disable that singular device now days more often then it refuses to boot.
How to install drivers on windows (the more or less insecure way, but hell, executables by their very nature. . .
goto manufacturers web site
goto driver page
click driver
select 'run from'
wait
wait
wait
wish you had broadband (hahah, I do. Yah!)
Click yes
Click next
Click next
Click "I agree that j00 0wn my s0ul"
Click done
enjoy.
Ok so A LOT of clicking is involved, but it is MUCH more intuitive them guessing at WTF you need.
Windows also has the advantage that the WORST that can possibly go wrong is that you have to hit a key at startup and select use last best config. Handy that.
Umm, what exactly IS the worst that installing an improper driver under Linux can do to ya anyways? I know that under the MS system that it USED to be able to cause hardware damage, but that is pretty much none existent now (as windows is far more likely to shit out then go on running hardware with the wrong driver, or it will shitout when some serious incompatability is found, take your pick.
I have it. :)
:)
Falcons Eye is my perfered port, w00t. 3d isometric view point! Yaah!
The line;
"This isn't final fantasy with 3000 healing potions. "
States EXACTLY what my problem with current RPGs is.
I remember in the older RPGs HAVING to Hoard my healing potions.
Ability to raise from dead? LOL!!! Yah right! If you were LUCKY it was included in the game SOMEPLACE. I remember in DragonWars (Interplay RPG, most none linear RPG that I have ever played, man I love that game!) there was this ONE healing well down a gazzilion levels underground that more often then not you ended up losing two or three more guys just escaping from it after reaching it to raise one party member from the dead.
Not an easy experance.
Now days RPGs have healing spells and raise dead items and such around every corner. Hell they HEAL you before the boss fight! Isn't the TRUE beauty of fighting that Red Dragon (not like any games actualy use Dragons as bosses anymore, they are typicaly commons now. . . . and that is just plain wrong) that you finaly limp through level 10 of the dungion (anybody else remember Ultima4's dungion system? Oh man those were EVIL) on your last few HPs with all of your healing potions expended and your magic spells all but gone, only to find this HUGE ass dragon ready to kick your ass halfway to hell.
Now THAT was an epic fight. You felt damn PROUD when your sorry ass CRAWLED out of that brawl alive. It wasn't a matter of equiping your 4x spell ring and casting meteo for 4000000 gazzilion damage. Hell no. It was spending four or five minutes MINIMUM thinking over EVERY last damn little move that you made. You EARNED your victory, you literaly had sweat pouring from your veins.
RPGs were HARD damnit. If a character died he was DEAD. Or at least a LOOOONG ways off from revival. Yah it SUCKED when a character died, but hey, guess what, death sucks, deal.
And above all else, it felt damn good to have your white mage crawl up from out of a dungion with everybody else in the party dead. Wooden Hammer to the rescue!
Last year there were MORE april fools jokes on the /. frontpage as I recall. . . .
:P
bah. Just more whiners this year.
The net was actualy pretty slow for april fools stuff, and A LOT of it has come down early (excuse me folks, uh, 4 hours to go. . . . at least here on the west coast). Last year was better. ^_^
For those of us on the west coast it is still another 54 minutes to go. . . .
:)
Time to start checking the east coast sites though.
*COUGH* OT *COUGH*
I liked the old man better. . . .
This would all be a moot point if
.
.)
A BUNCH OF ASSHOLES HADN'T GONE AND STARTED STEALING EVERY DAMN LAST FILE IN EXISTENCE OFF OF NAPSTER
Yes napster had fair use potential, but the MAJORITY OF TRAFFIC OVER IT was ILLEGAL. School childern sold f*cking pirated CDRs for crying out loud! Of COURSE there was/is a problem, and the ONLY way to get around it is to MAKE PEACE with the RIAA.
Suggestion #1;
stop f*cking stealing files! Do NOT brag about your MP3 collection, do NOT say that you just download files to test out a CD (uh people, helllooo, various online sites, hell, TONS of online sites allow for you to sample entire tracks from CDs, LEGALY. The RIAA and members tried to do its best to accomidate people in that area, what response did they get? NOTHING) and STOP downloading every damn file in existence just because you want to have the largest MP3 collection/penis size!
(apologies to those few who actualy DO use P2P file sharing programs for SOLELY legal purposes. All, uh, 3 or 4 of you.)
Next, if you REALLY want to shove it to the RIAA, then for crying out loud do not listen to their music AT ALL
When artists can start getting MORE money and MORE listeners from signing up with alternative lables then they can from signing up with one of the 'big boys' THEN and ONLY THEN will we have 'won' this 'war' against the RIAA.
Yes the DMCA sucks, horribly. Some type of law needed to exist to address that illegal sector, and we all KNEW that some type of law was going to be passed sooner or later.
Now what did you HONESTLY expect to happen? The big companies to draft a WELL REASONED and LIGHT handed law that allowed for maximum consumer protection?
HEheheheheheehohohohohLOL!! Seriously now.
THINK your actions through before you take them. THINK of the long term CONSEQUENCES of your actions before you take them.
(of course getting napster featured on the f*cking 6'oclock news didn't help much either. . .
My point was that it is something that should be INCLUDED with the OS. It can be construed as being a mite bit of an embaressment to Windows users that they cannot even auto-shutdown a network without installing some extra application.
(there are of course ways to do this, but as I said, by DEFAULT it cannot be done on Windows, where as on *nix and a host of other Network Based OSs it is a very simple procedure)
Or have HTML rendered in the same way that a lot of other files are handled, though an xLIB type of a system. "x" being whatever your file format is.
Most of those interactive help files use a very minimal subset of HTML but manage to take for-friggin-ever to load themselves. Likely because they are using a highly bloated HTML rendering engine, oh joy. By using a nice efficent HTML rendering engine not only could the user experance be improved, but you the developer would no longer be stuck using a product that Microsoft could change at any moment. With the xLIB system, you choose the library version that gets included with your program.
I can nuke everything but the main kernal and the shnit loaded by the registery and have everything still work A-OK.
:)
All that is really needed is the already modular DirectX and the support for various other APIs (and few products use them all and it would be easy enough to use other ones such as SDL when need be) and everything would work just fine. Of course some of those APIs DO present a problem, but no one in this right mind still uses the older then heck ones and a lot of the new ways of doing things suck so much (such as the HTML help files, bleh. Those suck horribly) that well, heck;
I have been saying for quite some time now that Microsoft needs to strip out some of the older shnitz from their OS, such as the program to detect for the Pentium Bug (bleh).
One thing that is REALLY missing from Windows is a NICE auto-shutdown utility. Sure third party utilities exist to do that, and Windows has the proper APIs to handle all of that, but no truly GOOD free program has come out to accomplish that task yet. A lot of programs have it tacked on as an extra and some programs exist to do timed shutdowns (though they tend to not be all that good, such as shutting down right away as the default action when invoked with no command line parameters) but having one that can say;
"Shutdown the computer after there has been no traffic on port XXX for the last TTT minutes"
would be rather nice.
My grandmother (who has Cataracts amongst other eye problems) is able to view things on her 21" monitor just fine.
.pitch and the focus is good. Go Trinitron for that matter.
:)
:( :( :( ) but many people swear by them.
:) (useful advice in general. :) )
:)
So go for a 21 incher, pretty much any one will do as long as it has a good
Baring that, I am sure that these people may be able to help you.
A good on screen text dictator is a plus, I have known of people who were almost compleatly blind and managed to use a computer just fine with a good text dictator. I find the damn things highly annoying myself (being a speed reader I would keel over if I lost my ability to read efficently.
*COUGH* *COUGH* Windows (any version) tends to have excellent text dictation support, as it does other features for the visualy impaired. (built in magnifing utility and such).
Also, learn how to type with your eyes clsoed, it can save a lot of wear and tear on them.
Use a good video card, I recommend a Matrrox card of any sort. They Rock. Period.
Bah. Meant I would bitch if I was getting 300kiloBITS and that 200kiloBYTES is still evil.
Bleh bleh BLEH
I'd bitch like hell if I was only getting 300kilobytes per second.
:( I was spoiled by @Home (heh, uncapped downloads ruled. I once got 2.2MegaBytes per second down!) I want my uncapped line at $40 a month back. :(
:) (well that and running that inane web portal of theirs, bleh!)
Fuck.
200KiloBYTES per second is killing me as it is.
Though in all honesty, it is such that put @Home out of business in the first place.
I remember how my first modem came with a somewhat short (only 3 or 4 pages) history of the internet in the begining of the manual.
It also came with software for every major ISP out there at the time, a copy of Mosaic and some other nifty stuff. (mostly complete AT command chart and such).
Man I miss how stuff used to come prepackaged.
Heya, anybody else remember how you had to PAY to join an ISP? You'd fork over cash to GET that AOL disk! LOL! (called a starter kit then, heh.)
Not having that kind of money at the time (err, or now. I still could not afford to pay $200 or so for just entry rights to an online medium, not to mention per minute charges!) I have no idea what was in those packages, but the level of support and services offered in them might be good to look at for starters. (with things updated of course)
"(any network engineer with a sense of adventure and a flashlight can prowl the sewers tracing data lines, anyway.)."
.
::yawns:: no more NEW .coms or dynamic IP linked to a Domain warez sites. Oh no the horror!
This being the true threat anyways.
....
That and whitetrash with backhoes. They ALWAYS manage to take out some part of the internet on at least a somewhat annual basis. . .
Seriously though, 8 dudes in scuba gear and / or who don't mind getting stinky, could take out the required 8 root servers needed to slow things down. Bit whoop. So I would be stuck using a cached copy from someplace
I found RE scary because it HAD NO background scary music. Most movies you can tell exactly when something is going to jump out at you because there is this huge obvious buildup in the music. RE just had water dripping or other such ambience at times in its scary places.
I am the wacko who dreamed at age 12 or so of going around with Freddy Kruger and chopping people up with him, trust me, it is VERY RARE that I find a movie scary at all.
(and WTF is up with Steven King? NOTHING he writes / directs is scary. Funny at times, but not scary.)
Doh, darnit, sorry. Forgot about sword fish. :)
:) I mean at first it LOOKS LIKE a direct rip off of The Matrix but then they go compleatly original with it. :)
:)
BladeII takes that entire bullet ducking scene to a new level though.
Yah, that Swordfish scene was, besides being about the only good reason to see the movie, a darn good example of senseless violence in slow motion.
I have seen super fast movements being represented by blurs before, and I must say, that stretching the living shnitz out of a characters body does NOT count as bluring, nor does f'ing up the colors on the character.
:(
At times the characters were perfectly focused but they still looked like crud.
Ahh, amen. I am not alone! :)
:) I mean it DID look awfuly darn close to Claymation! ;D
Having taken some (not to mention failed. ^_^ ) base low level video production courses I was marginaly trained to spot even the slighest bit of CG in video, and that scene stuck out like a sore thumb. I think I could have spotted it if I was blind in one eye.
Oh wait a minute, I AM blind in one eye!
:D
Annnyways. A few other times in the movie a simular effect happened, but not ever NEARLY so much.
My guess is that some dip-stick used direct mesh deformation and forgot to include a friggin skeleton framework on the characters. . . . That is about the ONLY explanation that I can think of for the entire clay look.
Though if they could get that down pat it could make for an interesting new field of CG.