IE is basically a standard Windows control, just like a button or a checkbox.
Well, not really, but like a whole bunch of the more complicated Windows "controls" it can be embedded in a similar fashion. It works similar to the way Gecko works in Mozilla. The browser embeds a browser "control" into the window that contains the back buttons and the like.
You can verify that the IE "control" is separate by openning the Help option in the Start menu in any version since Windows NT 4 or Windows 95. It will open up a window that contains an index on the left and a document on the right. Right click on the right pane and the popup menu should look surprisingly similar to IE displaying a webpage. (In XP, you'll need to choose an option, let's say "What's new in Windows XP" before a "standard" browser control appears.) This is an embedded IE control.
Hopefully this answers your question: IE will remain just like it currently really is, a control that can be embedded in any program. It's already a "standard" control since Windows 98/2000. It will just now be - er, even more standard, or something. I really don't know what the "change" means, from a developer point of view. (I think it means "IE 7 will not be backported to older Windows versions.")
Mozilla does something similar. If you have the DOM Inspector installed on Mozilla, then you can "inspect" a browser window and look for the "tabbrowser" element in the tree. (Look for the "hbox" above the "statusbar" on the bottom, and then open the last element until you see "tabbrowser" - openning this up (last element always) eventually brings up a "browser" element. This is the XUL element that contains the HTML page you view.)
For instance, I boycott McDonald's and the Olive Garden. As to why, I won't get into that.
I boycott McDonalds too - because their food sucks. Unfortunately, I still like going to Boston Market (they still exist, at least out here in the Boston area). Boston Market has some of the highest-quality fast food you can get. But it turns out they're owned by McDonalds. D'oh!
I also "boycott" the RIAA by not liking any of the current crap out there. I've bought something like five CDs in the past couple of years (RIAA CDs, that is - I also got some CDs from non-RIAA sources). I can't really boycott them any further - I haven't bought a CD at all this year, and have no plans to in the future. I also don't "share" music online, so they haven't "lost sales" that way, only by producing crap. It's a pity they'll never know and even if they did they'd blame the Internet.
I also wonder how much boycotting really effects these companies, especially with something like the Boston Market/McDonalds thing up above. When Boston Market was owned by a local company (and was Boston Chicken), I could support them guilt-free. Now that they aren't, their mashed potatos suck. Er, I'm supporting another business I don't like. ("Oh, BTW, the vegetarian French fries kinda-sorta had beef fat in them.")
Similar things happen with Sony. I don't buy any Sony music (not buying music at all helps with that), but I own a PS2 and purchase games for it, helping Sony anyway.
I guess I wonder how much "voting with your dollar" really matters - it seems to be next to impossible to get boycotts up to critical mass where they'll actually have an effect. I suppose what I'm saying is that boycotting doesn't really have that much of an effect unless we can get a large number of friends to actually care enough to join in. Otherwise, I think boycotting what you actually like is rather pointless.
Actually, the whole point is that various client-side technologies are designed to mesh with the server-side technologies. There are ActiveX controls which are designed to be "controlled" on the server-side and various scripting technologies designed to make it so that server-side VB script can "interact" with client-side VB script and vice-versa (without using a query string or the like).
Also, there is such a thing as a server-side ActiveX control. It effects the HTTP transaction instead of the HTML page. They're some controls designed to allow "interaction" between the server control and the client control. A simple example is a progress bar control on the client that is updated using server-side scripting. (Apache can't do that.)
So - why build a client that everyone uses? To try and force everyone to use your server, by making your client work best with your server.
[W]hat's the answer (the answer to a shareholder's question, perhaps) for pumping money into browser development?
The server.
Not, like the AC suggested, access to servers (other than defaulting searches to their own site, and controlling the default bookmarks), but server software.
While most IE versions will still support other server software, they intend to "embrace and extend" to make the browser work better with their servers than with other servers. IE is designed to work in harmony with IIS. IIS offers several technologies designed to make IE work better with it than any other server. (Mostly having to do with ActiveX controls and other scripting technologies to make ASP applications work "better" with IE than any other browser.)
Apple and Mozilla are playing catchup now. Netscape originally made Netscape Navigator to sell Netscape server software. This is no longer the case. Mozilla is now a bargining chip for AOL.
Apple is creating Safari to ensure that they will always have a browser for their platform. Surfing the web is now an important feature for an OS, and not having a current browser for the Apple platform would probably kill it.
I've run into stuff like this before. I blame Sun for making it next to impossible to locate the JRE on a given system without resorting to hacks like the JAVA_HOME environment, or querying the runtime environment of whatever answers to "java".
What's really annoying is that Sun doesn't set the JAVA_HOME environment variable when you install J2SE. However, their J2EE SDK requires JAVA_HOME to be set. Various other Java utilities use the JAVA_HOME hack to make things work. You'd think Sun would - eventually - understand this and create some standard way of specifying where Java is on a given platform.
The reason I call the JAVA_HOME variable a hack is because it negates the "platform independent" nature that Java is supposed to have. If I have to write a shell script for Windows and Unix to make things work, what's the point?
What I really want is for Sun to create software that allows deploying Java apps in a truly platform-independant manor. JAR files are an improvement, in that they can be made "executable," but what I really want is a way of creating an application file that can bind itself as the editor for various file types, add itself to program menus, and do other various "GUI-ish" things, without relying on writing native code for every platform you deploy on. Likewise, for console/server code, I want to be able to create a program descriptor that has a native program automatically create the appropriate native stubs to run the Java program.
I think Java Web Start was supposed to solve the GUI application deployment, but it isn't really a complete solution in that it requires using the Java Web Start application to run any program deployed that way. It also doesn't allow a program to specify itself as the default application for loading given file types.
The fact is, the United States had moral, legal, and political justification for removing Saddam Hussein.
Yeah. Wouldn't it have been so cool if the administration had actually - oh, I don't know - used them to justify going to war? But no. We didn't go in because Iraq had violated the UN resolution. We didn't go in to "liberate" the Iraqi people. We went in because Saddam had a dangerous stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and had recently purchased nuclear material to build a nuclear capability.
Whoops. No weapons of mass destruction. Oh, and it turns out he didn't purchase nuclear material. Our bad.
But, you claim, we helped the Iraqi people! Yeah, but when are we going to help people in Cuba, North Korea, China, Africa, Palistine...
There's plenty of evil in this world, and we can't be the policemen to the world. Did we help improve the situation in Iraq? Probably. (There's still plenty of time for us to mess things up. I hope we've learned past lessons and will remain there long enough to allow Iraq to become a stable representative government.)
Unfortunately, in reality, the ends do not justify the means. Likewise, a poor means does not injustify a good outcome. It is possible to believe that Iraq is better off without Saddam while also believing that the actions taken to remove him were poorly chosen. One does not contradict the other.
I like the "computer as car" analogy, because they are both relatively new technologies and both required a lot of changes to society to fully integrate them. They both have similar requirements...
I want to drive my car to work, you're right. I shouldn't need to know every single component and how it works. I don't need to know the tire pressure. I don't need to understand what the gas guage is for or what the speedometer indicates. I ignore the little blinking red lights, too.
Oh - wait - no, I don't. A car requires a lot of upkeep if you want it to work properly, just like a computer does. I have to change my oil every three months (patch the OS), fill up my car with gas every week or so (update AV software), and need to get it inspected every year (reinstall Windows:)). I also need to watch for any error lights lighting up on my dash and need to take action based on them. (Answering AV software alerts?) If it breaks down, I take the car into the mechanic. He knows far more about cars than I do and can fix it properly and safely.
Why should a computer be treated any differently from a car? Because people have been told that computers are "smart" and are only slowly beginning to learn the horrible truth - they aren't. Computers are dumb. They do what they're told, even if it's harmful, even if it wasn't what was meant (Do What I Mean!). They require constant checkups to ensure that "what they are told" is as close to "what they are supposed to do" as possible.
Computers require upkeep, just like cars. Just like cars, doing the upkeep prevents your doing what you actually want to do - and just like cars, regularly maintaining your computer helps to ensure smooth operation.
Technically, it was "pounds of food" - after you "hunted" various game, you'd be awarded with some number of "pounds of food" and buffalo would give you somewhere in the 300-400 (or even higher?) range. Which was pointless, because the game would only allow you to carry 200 pounds of food. (Apparently you prepared the food for travel at the hunting site or something.)
Oh, so you're one of those types who hunts out all the buffalo (Can't carry more than 200 pounds of food at one time? What's the point of 300-400 pound buffalo!?) and watches as the family dies from starvation and various injuries as the mules die on the trip over the mountains.
I never did that. My families all died after I cheaped out on the river crossing and tried to swim across. (John should have learned to swim.)
Ah, memories of high school "computer" class. Rest of the class should have typed faster:)
Actually, Aquafina comes from the nearest PepsiCo bottler. For example, in the New England area, Aquafina comes from scenic Ayer, Massachusetts. (But no mountains. And it's only scenic in the fall. And not really, at that.)
This makes a lot of sense, really: the big bottlers all take the municipal water source, purify it, and then carbonate and add syrup to it. Bottled water is simply soda with no carbonation and no syrup.
I'd really like to post a link listing all the sources, but I can't find one, so I'll make do with this Michigan Daily article about a controversy over the source of bottled water. Which is six years old, but I don't think things have changed.
The mean is the average. The median is the number where half are less than and half are greater than. Therefore, by definition, half the people are stupider than the median stupidity level.
The other half know the difference between the mean, median, and mode, and post with a username.
How exactly does the road system not discriminate against blind people (or those who have lost their glasses)?
Seeing as I live in Massachusetts, and was stuck behind a four car pileup this evening, all the while watching motorcycles pass in the breakdown lane and the occasion car missing the ambulance/police car bearing down on them, I fail to see your point...
USA TODAY: Is there a scenario by which you would at some point consider porting Microsoft applications into Linux?
BG: There's no consideration of that at this point.
"At this point"? Very interesting that he seems to admit they might consider it at all. Or maybe I'm reading too much into a figure of speech.
You're reading too much into the speech. He's giving himself an out if Linux should somehow manage to triumph and win over Windows. (I seriously doubt that'll ever happen, but who knows? Those desktop projects might surprise me yet.) He's trying to avoid something like the misattributed "640K should be enough for anyone" quote. Basically, if Linux becomes important enough to be a serious threat to the Windows operating system, he'd be a fool not to consider porting Microsoft applications to it. Just like there are Mac versions of Office, if Linux managed to become important enough to have a sizable software market, then it might become incredibly foolish not to do a port.
However, I see no reason to consider such a thing at this point in time. Linux isn't a desktop system and there are so few people who use it that writing commerical software for a Linux desktop is a losing proposition. (Besides, which do you use, KDE or GNOME?)
Who knows what the future will hold? Bill Gates doesn't have a 100% record on predicting the future - and he's not foolish enough to burn bridges that he might later find himself needing to cross.
The Windows save dialog is a mini-Explorer. It has the Windows Explorer embedded right in it. It supports everything Explorer does, which can be annoying at times. (For example, you can move and copy files from within the save/open dialog. You can also rename existing files and create new directories. Renaming and new directories is useful. Accidently moving something in the dialog is annoying because it doesn't get added to the Explorer "Undo" list. Of course, I hate Explorer's Undo anyway, because they don't have a corresponding "Redo" and it doesn't always Undo what you expect it to, sometimes instead Undoing something you did hours before because the operation you accidently did isn't undoable. Enough of this rant.)
The Windows dialog does keep you to two view options, though - you're only allowed "List" and "Detailed" views. So it's not quite what you want, but it's hardly new. Windows has done this since Windows 95.
I want to know how they managed to get that giant, heavy crate with the Ark in it into the U-Boat.
I think we can forgive that by assuming the boat was custom-made for the purpose of smuggling the Ark out. Since it was supposed to be such an important weapon in the Nazi armory, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume they did some custom work to safely ferry the Ark to whereever they took it. (I forget where the submarine base was supposed to be. No VHS player, let alone the movie itself.)
Besides, if we allow the Ark to be hidden in an Egyptian tomb and assume that the little light puzzle would still work even after three thousand or so years (guess Indy hit on the right day for that one), I think we can forgive a minor thing like a door being too small:)
Hey, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance got "Partial Nudity," and there is one section of the game where the main character (Raiden, not Snake) is running around naked. In Substance, they added a VR mode calling "Streaking Mode" where you run around naked and try to sneak past the guards.
And he's nude - no clothing, not much other way to describe it. I'd think the cutscene and the gameplay section would count as "prolonged" - it's not like he's naked off-camera while changing or something. I suppose they figure that the way he attempts to hide his important parts counts as "mild" - although you can get in-game characters to comment on him. (Apparently the Russian guards think he's a little on the small side.)
The game designers did go out of their way to ensure that a certain region in the front was never viewable by the camera, but his butt is hanging out there is plain view as you try and sneak past the guards. I still think playing a guy running around naked counts as prolonged nudity.
But apparently "nudity" only applies to females, when you can see to much of their brests. A guy running around butt-naked is "partial nudity," because watching a guy run around naked must be a "mild depection of nudity," whatever that means.
(I can't be the only one who thinks nudity = completely nude; partial nudity = strategic covering of important areas, can I?)
Actually, HKEY_CURRENT_USERshould only contain information about user settings. (Things like your desktop wallpaper, mail settings, anything that is unique per user.) These are frequently stored in random "dot files" in your home directory under Unix. As of Windows 2000, "Documents and Settings\Application Data" or "Documents and Settings\Local Settings" are valid places to store data that used to get stored in HKEY_CURRENT_USER. (In other words, "dot files" should go in either "Application Data" or "Local Settings".) Specific installation data belongs in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE which is more like the equivilent of/etc. Things like a list of hardware installed and the mount table are in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Unfortunately, many applications created in the Win95 era almost randomly store data in any of the various hives. So you might lose some user-specific data, or have some data specific to an installation copied if using old software.
Don't forget the #&(%ing HKEY_CURRENT_USER hive...
Otherwise, I just recently restored my user settings by simply copying the old "Documents and Settings\_xeno_" to the new. (Well, except my WinXP username isn't "_xeno_"...) Fairly easy, if you know to do it.
Unfortunately, you lose the registry... (The restore came about due to the registry becoming corrupted and Windows deciding it was pirated. Hense, no "export->import".)
Oh, and most of the distros I used where fairly consistant about having/etc/profile containing the system environment variables, so you usually could just up and copy the/home/user directory. The disclaimer is that they were RedHat, Mandrake, Debian and finally Gentoo. So YMMV.
This is almost the same thing as taking a book, translating it into a different language, and posting it online. I highly doubt that even though every single word is different a court would buy that such a work did not infringe on the original copyright. This is basically the same thing - taking a game, and "translating" it by producing new code and new graphics that are supposed to mimic the original.
There are thousands of Tetris clones out there - if they infringed on the Tetris copyright then it stands to reason that this infringes too, as it makes no effort to make a new game just copy an old one.
Besides, we can also go to the "trademark" angle where FreeCraft is attempting to create a game similar to WarCraft. I think a reasonable person might confuse the two based on the names and on some of the screenshots that exist.
Basically: I think there are plenty of legal reasons why FreeCraft will lose if they decide to fight this one. They should just cease and desist and go start a new and original RTS with new features that no one has seen before instead of rehashing WarCraft II.
OK, I'll assume that FreeCraft does not and has never distributed Blizzard graphics. (Even though I'm positive I downloaded a copy that did. I'll have to go through my backups at some time to see if I still have it, since I deleted the game some time ago.)
You state that it can only use WarCraft II graphics if available. This basically means that FreeCraft is, as far as I can tell, a direct ripoff of WarCraft II. It has the same units. It has the same buildings. It has the same tilesets. It has the same gameplay. (Apparently, some versions also add new resources?)
It still is a fairly blatant rip-off of WarCraft II. (Along with the afore-mentioned "StarCraft" style health bars.) This sounds like Blizzard has a very good reason to send a Cease and Desist. I never was very impressed with FreeCraft or FreeCiv since both of them seem to basically be rehashing what's already been done before. I'd be far more interested in seeing an open source game push new ground. Rehashing Blizzard games isn't new ground.
You're right. It was a WarCraft clone. When I looked at it originally, there were map graphics stolen directly from StarCraft. It would appear this has changed. (They are now stolen from WarCraft.)
Anyway, check out this screenshot. Compare with this one. First shot is FreeCraft. (Dead giveaways are the red blobby thing from the catapult and StarCraft style health bars.) Second shot is of WarCraft II. Look slightly similar? (Especially the building in the lower left corner?)
So, yeah, I got the details wrong (I still think the copy I downloaded was early enough to be using a Marine artwork in place of a Footsoldier artwork). But they do indeed steal - directly - the graphics set from WarCraft II and are basically trying to "recreate" that game. They should have expected what they got.
(I'm guessing there's things like similar artwork here, since gameplay mechanics cannot be copyrighted).
Last time I checked out FreeCraft, not only was there "similar" graphics, there were icons and images ripped straight out of StarCraft. Like various tiles from the grassland StarCraft mapset, likewise with tree "doo-dads" from StarCraft. I think they also flat-out stole a Terran Marine as a unit.
Creating your own free RTS game is a worthy goal. FreeCraft is attempting to recreate StarCraft or something. FreeCraft was asking for this to happen. My first thought was "it's about time" - I would have expected this to happen a long time ago.
Maybe some of the FreeCraft code can be resurrected into a truly new game, but not only was the current game not that interesting, it was also a fairly blatant ripoff of StarCraft.
BTW, am I the only person who laughs every time some talks about have a frame rate greater than their refresh rate? It doesn't mean anything!:)
Sure it does: massive tearing:) If you're running at 100FPS on a 75Hz display, that means that each frame you actually see contains 1.333 frames. So about a third of the way down the screen, you'll see the spot where frame 1 was overwritten by frame 2. On the next pass, you'll get the bottom 1/3 of frame 2 and then the top 2/3 of frame 3...
May not sound like that big a deal, but on any decent motion where the ratio is consistant enough, there will be a spot on the screen where elements don't line up because the top half is one frame and the bottom is the next frame. Even at 75Hz, you can still see it, because it remains in every frame. It's kinda disconcerting, especially if you're turning or there is a lot of motion on screen, as things will be cut in half with the line moving around as the actual frame rate fluctuates.
So, no, you're not the only one who laughs at people who have framerates higher than their refreshes:)
Hmm... it would appear that Orrin Hatch got bit by not regularly checking links. Sounds like some porn company snapped up a defunct domain name after the original company, hopefully a search engine, died.
I know the same thing happened to the Linux User Group I (used to) belong to. Er, that link isn't work safe either - but it is lesbian porn, if that helps.
Kinda a shock the first time I tried to find out when the new meeting times were...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, not really, but like a whole bunch of the more complicated Windows "controls" it can be embedded in a similar fashion. It works similar to the way Gecko works in Mozilla. The browser embeds a browser "control" into the window that contains the back buttons and the like.
You can verify that the IE "control" is separate by openning the Help option in the Start menu in any version since Windows NT 4 or Windows 95. It will open up a window that contains an index on the left and a document on the right. Right click on the right pane and the popup menu should look surprisingly similar to IE displaying a webpage. (In XP, you'll need to choose an option, let's say "What's new in Windows XP" before a "standard" browser control appears.) This is an embedded IE control.
Hopefully this answers your question: IE will remain just like it currently really is, a control that can be embedded in any program. It's already a "standard" control since Windows 98/2000. It will just now be - er, even more standard, or something. I really don't know what the "change" means, from a developer point of view. (I think it means "IE 7 will not be backported to older Windows versions.")
Mozilla does something similar. If you have the DOM Inspector installed on Mozilla, then you can "inspect" a browser window and look for the "tabbrowser" element in the tree. (Look for the "hbox" above the "statusbar" on the bottom, and then open the last element until you see "tabbrowser" - openning this up (last element always) eventually brings up a "browser" element. This is the XUL element that contains the HTML page you view.)
I boycott McDonalds too - because their food sucks. Unfortunately, I still like going to Boston Market (they still exist, at least out here in the Boston area). Boston Market has some of the highest-quality fast food you can get. But it turns out they're owned by McDonalds. D'oh!
I also "boycott" the RIAA by not liking any of the current crap out there. I've bought something like five CDs in the past couple of years (RIAA CDs, that is - I also got some CDs from non-RIAA sources). I can't really boycott them any further - I haven't bought a CD at all this year, and have no plans to in the future. I also don't "share" music online, so they haven't "lost sales" that way, only by producing crap. It's a pity they'll never know and even if they did they'd blame the Internet.
I also wonder how much boycotting really effects these companies, especially with something like the Boston Market/McDonalds thing up above. When Boston Market was owned by a local company (and was Boston Chicken), I could support them guilt-free. Now that they aren't, their mashed potatos suck. Er, I'm supporting another business I don't like. ("Oh, BTW, the vegetarian French fries kinda-sorta had beef fat in them.")
Similar things happen with Sony. I don't buy any Sony music (not buying music at all helps with that), but I own a PS2 and purchase games for it, helping Sony anyway.
I guess I wonder how much "voting with your dollar" really matters - it seems to be next to impossible to get boycotts up to critical mass where they'll actually have an effect. I suppose what I'm saying is that boycotting doesn't really have that much of an effect unless we can get a large number of friends to actually care enough to join in. Otherwise, I think boycotting what you actually like is rather pointless.
Also, there is such a thing as a server-side ActiveX control. It effects the HTTP transaction instead of the HTML page. They're some controls designed to allow "interaction" between the server control and the client control. A simple example is a progress bar control on the client that is updated using server-side scripting. (Apache can't do that.)
So - why build a client that everyone uses? To try and force everyone to use your server, by making your client work best with your server.
The server.
Not, like the AC suggested, access to servers (other than defaulting searches to their own site, and controlling the default bookmarks), but server software.
While most IE versions will still support other server software, they intend to "embrace and extend" to make the browser work better with their servers than with other servers. IE is designed to work in harmony with IIS. IIS offers several technologies designed to make IE work better with it than any other server. (Mostly having to do with ActiveX controls and other scripting technologies to make ASP applications work "better" with IE than any other browser.)
Apple and Mozilla are playing catchup now. Netscape originally made Netscape Navigator to sell Netscape server software. This is no longer the case. Mozilla is now a bargining chip for AOL.
Apple is creating Safari to ensure that they will always have a browser for their platform. Surfing the web is now an important feature for an OS, and not having a current browser for the Apple platform would probably kill it.
What's really annoying is that Sun doesn't set the JAVA_HOME environment variable when you install J2SE. However, their J2EE SDK requires JAVA_HOME to be set. Various other Java utilities use the JAVA_HOME hack to make things work. You'd think Sun would - eventually - understand this and create some standard way of specifying where Java is on a given platform.
The reason I call the JAVA_HOME variable a hack is because it negates the "platform independent" nature that Java is supposed to have. If I have to write a shell script for Windows and Unix to make things work, what's the point?
What I really want is for Sun to create software that allows deploying Java apps in a truly platform-independant manor. JAR files are an improvement, in that they can be made "executable," but what I really want is a way of creating an application file that can bind itself as the editor for various file types, add itself to program menus, and do other various "GUI-ish" things, without relying on writing native code for every platform you deploy on. Likewise, for console/server code, I want to be able to create a program descriptor that has a native program automatically create the appropriate native stubs to run the Java program.
I think Java Web Start was supposed to solve the GUI application deployment, but it isn't really a complete solution in that it requires using the Java Web Start application to run any program deployed that way. It also doesn't allow a program to specify itself as the default application for loading given file types.
Yeah. Wouldn't it have been so cool if the administration had actually - oh, I don't know - used them to justify going to war? But no. We didn't go in because Iraq had violated the UN resolution. We didn't go in to "liberate" the Iraqi people. We went in because Saddam had a dangerous stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and had recently purchased nuclear material to build a nuclear capability.
Whoops. No weapons of mass destruction. Oh, and it turns out he didn't purchase nuclear material. Our bad.
But, you claim, we helped the Iraqi people! Yeah, but when are we going to help people in Cuba, North Korea, China, Africa, Palistine...
There's plenty of evil in this world, and we can't be the policemen to the world. Did we help improve the situation in Iraq? Probably. (There's still plenty of time for us to mess things up. I hope we've learned past lessons and will remain there long enough to allow Iraq to become a stable representative government.)
Unfortunately, in reality, the ends do not justify the means. Likewise, a poor means does not injustify a good outcome. It is possible to believe that Iraq is better off without Saddam while also believing that the actions taken to remove him were poorly chosen. One does not contradict the other.
I want to drive my car to work, you're right. I shouldn't need to know every single component and how it works. I don't need to know the tire pressure. I don't need to understand what the gas guage is for or what the speedometer indicates. I ignore the little blinking red lights, too.
Oh - wait - no, I don't. A car requires a lot of upkeep if you want it to work properly, just like a computer does. I have to change my oil every three months (patch the OS), fill up my car with gas every week or so (update AV software), and need to get it inspected every year (reinstall Windows :)). I also need to watch for any error lights lighting up on my dash and need to take action based on them. (Answering AV software alerts?) If it breaks down, I take the car into the mechanic. He knows far more about cars than I do and can fix it properly and safely.
Why should a computer be treated any differently from a car? Because people have been told that computers are "smart" and are only slowly beginning to learn the horrible truth - they aren't. Computers are dumb. They do what they're told, even if it's harmful, even if it wasn't what was meant (Do What I Mean!). They require constant checkups to ensure that "what they are told" is as close to "what they are supposed to do" as possible.
Computers require upkeep, just like cars. Just like cars, doing the upkeep prevents your doing what you actually want to do - and just like cars, regularly maintaining your computer helps to ensure smooth operation.
Technically, it was "pounds of food" - after you "hunted" various game, you'd be awarded with some number of "pounds of food" and buffalo would give you somewhere in the 300-400 (or even higher?) range. Which was pointless, because the game would only allow you to carry 200 pounds of food. (Apparently you prepared the food for travel at the hunting site or something.)
I never did that. My families all died after I cheaped out on the river crossing and tried to swim across. (John should have learned to swim.)
Ah, memories of high school "computer" class. Rest of the class should have typed faster :)
This makes a lot of sense, really: the big bottlers all take the municipal water source, purify it, and then carbonate and add syrup to it. Bottled water is simply soda with no carbonation and no syrup.
I'd really like to post a link listing all the sources, but I can't find one, so I'll make do with this Michigan Daily article about a controversy over the source of bottled water. Which is six years old, but I don't think things have changed.
The other half know the difference between the mean, median, and mode, and post with a username.
Seeing as I live in Massachusetts, and was stuck behind a four car pileup this evening, all the while watching motorcycles pass in the breakdown lane and the occasion car missing the ambulance/police car bearing down on them, I fail to see your point...
You're reading too much into the speech. He's giving himself an out if Linux should somehow manage to triumph and win over Windows. (I seriously doubt that'll ever happen, but who knows? Those desktop projects might surprise me yet.) He's trying to avoid something like the misattributed "640K should be enough for anyone" quote. Basically, if Linux becomes important enough to be a serious threat to the Windows operating system, he'd be a fool not to consider porting Microsoft applications to it. Just like there are Mac versions of Office, if Linux managed to become important enough to have a sizable software market, then it might become incredibly foolish not to do a port.
However, I see no reason to consider such a thing at this point in time. Linux isn't a desktop system and there are so few people who use it that writing commerical software for a Linux desktop is a losing proposition. (Besides, which do you use, KDE or GNOME?)
Who knows what the future will hold? Bill Gates doesn't have a 100% record on predicting the future - and he's not foolish enough to burn bridges that he might later find himself needing to cross.
The Windows dialog does keep you to two view options, though - you're only allowed "List" and "Detailed" views. So it's not quite what you want, but it's hardly new. Windows has done this since Windows 95.
I think we can forgive that by assuming the boat was custom-made for the purpose of smuggling the Ark out. Since it was supposed to be such an important weapon in the Nazi armory, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to assume they did some custom work to safely ferry the Ark to whereever they took it. (I forget where the submarine base was supposed to be. No VHS player, let alone the movie itself.)
Besides, if we allow the Ark to be hidden in an Egyptian tomb and assume that the little light puzzle would still work even after three thousand or so years (guess Indy hit on the right day for that one), I think we can forgive a minor thing like a door being too small :)
And he's nude - no clothing, not much other way to describe it. I'd think the cutscene and the gameplay section would count as "prolonged" - it's not like he's naked off-camera while changing or something. I suppose they figure that the way he attempts to hide his important parts counts as "mild" - although you can get in-game characters to comment on him. (Apparently the Russian guards think he's a little on the small side.)
The game designers did go out of their way to ensure that a certain region in the front was never viewable by the camera, but his butt is hanging out there is plain view as you try and sneak past the guards. I still think playing a guy running around naked counts as prolonged nudity.
But apparently "nudity" only applies to females, when you can see to much of their brests. A guy running around butt-naked is "partial nudity," because watching a guy run around naked must be a "mild depection of nudity," whatever that means.
(I can't be the only one who thinks nudity = completely nude; partial nudity = strategic covering of important areas, can I?)
Unfortunately, many applications created in the Win95 era almost randomly store data in any of the various hives. So you might lose some user-specific data, or have some data specific to an installation copied if using old software.
Otherwise, I just recently restored my user settings by simply copying the old "Documents and Settings\_xeno_" to the new. (Well, except my WinXP username isn't "_xeno_"...) Fairly easy, if you know to do it.
Unfortunately, you lose the registry... (The restore came about due to the registry becoming corrupted and Windows deciding it was pirated. Hense, no "export->import".)
Oh, and most of the distros I used where fairly consistant about having /etc/profile containing the system environment variables, so you usually could just up and copy the /home/user directory. The disclaimer is that they were RedHat, Mandrake, Debian and finally Gentoo. So YMMV.
This is almost the same thing as taking a book, translating it into a different language, and posting it online. I highly doubt that even though every single word is different a court would buy that such a work did not infringe on the original copyright. This is basically the same thing - taking a game, and "translating" it by producing new code and new graphics that are supposed to mimic the original.
There are thousands of Tetris clones out there - if they infringed on the Tetris copyright then it stands to reason that this infringes too, as it makes no effort to make a new game just copy an old one.
Besides, we can also go to the "trademark" angle where FreeCraft is attempting to create a game similar to WarCraft. I think a reasonable person might confuse the two based on the names and on some of the screenshots that exist.
Basically: I think there are plenty of legal reasons why FreeCraft will lose if they decide to fight this one. They should just cease and desist and go start a new and original RTS with new features that no one has seen before instead of rehashing WarCraft II.
You state that it can only use WarCraft II graphics if available. This basically means that FreeCraft is, as far as I can tell, a direct ripoff of WarCraft II. It has the same units. It has the same buildings. It has the same tilesets. It has the same gameplay. (Apparently, some versions also add new resources?)
It still is a fairly blatant rip-off of WarCraft II. (Along with the afore-mentioned "StarCraft" style health bars.) This sounds like Blizzard has a very good reason to send a Cease and Desist. I never was very impressed with FreeCraft or FreeCiv since both of them seem to basically be rehashing what's already been done before. I'd be far more interested in seeing an open source game push new ground. Rehashing Blizzard games isn't new ground.
Anyway, check out this screenshot. Compare with this one. First shot is FreeCraft. (Dead giveaways are the red blobby thing from the catapult and StarCraft style health bars.) Second shot is of WarCraft II. Look slightly similar? (Especially the building in the lower left corner?)
So, yeah, I got the details wrong (I still think the copy I downloaded was early enough to be using a Marine artwork in place of a Footsoldier artwork). But they do indeed steal - directly - the graphics set from WarCraft II and are basically trying to "recreate" that game. They should have expected what they got.
Last time I checked out FreeCraft, not only was there "similar" graphics, there were icons and images ripped straight out of StarCraft. Like various tiles from the grassland StarCraft mapset, likewise with tree "doo-dads" from StarCraft. I think they also flat-out stole a Terran Marine as a unit.
Creating your own free RTS game is a worthy goal. FreeCraft is attempting to recreate StarCraft or something. FreeCraft was asking for this to happen. My first thought was "it's about time" - I would have expected this to happen a long time ago.
Maybe some of the FreeCraft code can be resurrected into a truly new game, but not only was the current game not that interesting, it was also a fairly blatant ripoff of StarCraft.
Sure it does: massive tearing :) If you're running at 100FPS on a 75Hz display, that means that each frame you actually see contains 1.333 frames. So about a third of the way down the screen, you'll see the spot where frame 1 was overwritten by frame 2. On the next pass, you'll get the bottom 1/3 of frame 2 and then the top 2/3 of frame 3...
May not sound like that big a deal, but on any decent motion where the ratio is consistant enough, there will be a spot on the screen where elements don't line up because the top half is one frame and the bottom is the next frame. Even at 75Hz, you can still see it, because it remains in every frame. It's kinda disconcerting, especially if you're turning or there is a lot of motion on screen, as things will be cut in half with the line moving around as the actual frame rate fluctuates.
So, no, you're not the only one who laughs at people who have framerates higher than their refreshes :)
I know the same thing happened to the Linux User Group I (used to) belong to. Er, that link isn't work safe either - but it is lesbian porn, if that helps.
Kinda a shock the first time I tried to find out when the new meeting times were...
Fortunately, I've switched to Mozilla since then :)
(And yes, that's a direct screenshot. No editting - just trying to read at threshhold -1, nested, on a 400+ comment story.)