I can reliably generate a IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL by quitting a game that used IPX. It's quite annoying, really, because if I ever want to play StarCraft multiplayer, I know I'm in for a reboot. For added fun, playing Diablo II over Battle.net also means random IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL popping up.
It seems to be a bug with something that Blizzard is doing because I am yet to BSOD my system on anything but Blizzard games. When StarCraft caused the system to BSOD, I figured it was a problem with the IPX drivers, but since Diablo II can do it on Battle.net, I'm beginning to doubt that. (I've also seen Java manage to reboot my machine randomly - hasn't happened recently, but some how Cocoon managed to reboot my Windows machine with the 1.3 JDK. Don't ask how, it just did...)
I'd guess I have network card issues, something's probably wrong with my LinkSys card drivers ("Works with Linux! Download drivers from our website! Uh, you aren't planning on using the Ethernet for Internet access, right?" - later versions of their driver disk come with Linux drivers, and Linux kernel 2.4.x have the appropriate drivers, but Linux 2.2.x at the time I got the card didn't - meaning a quick boot to Windows before I could get Linux up and running...)
Other than randomly rebooting with JDK 1.3 and the occasional multiplayer Blizzard game BSODing me, Win2k's been rock solid. Although I use Mozilla as my browser, solving the "Explorer bringing the system down" liability that Win2k has. (Mostly when some page causes IE to start chewing threw resources, or when some app manages to crash the Explorer desktop instance and it gets screwed up when it's autorestarted.)
My only beef is that I rarely get "unkillable" processes - processes that Windows claims are being debugged. Ah well - I can deal with it.
It's better than my current Linux Gnome 2 install, which steadfastly refuses to use any window manager except twm... I'll get around to fixing it eventually, but since I mostly use my desktop for games and Java development, I really don't find myself wanting to go back to Linux. Sorry guys...
Like the other posters said, I signed up so that I could see where the event was being held on the offchance I could make it there. Since I didn't know if I could make it, I didn't click the "RSVP" button. It turns out that I couldn't have made it, so I didn't come.
But I've got to post a slight rant on the "RSVP" feature - RSVP actually means "respond, please" (respondez, s'il vous plait - I think?) - meaning that they should have options for "I will be attending", "I will not be attending", or "I might be attending." Since I could only say that I might be attending I would have loved to have given that option. That way, you could have seen that there were 7 people planning on coming, 3 people who might come, 5 who couldn't, and 65 people who were to lazy to respond. (As an example, obviously...)
If there is another Slashdot meetup, I'll try and come. But I couldn't promise to come to this one. If it were on a weekend, then there would be a higher chance I could manage to come to it. Maybe next time, maybe...
It is possible to let an Exception cause a Java application to "crash", although it usually exits fairly cleanly, or, if the exception occured as the result of an event in a GUI, just continue on it's merry way, with the given function having been aborted.
The Java compiler forces people to catch any Throwable that does not extend either Error or RuntimeException - assuming that the given exception is noted in the throws clause of the method it's looking at. However, as far as the Java runtime is concerned, any exception can be ignored. (So if you managed to compile against classes that claimed not to throw a given exception and link at runtime against code that does, an uncaught exception can wind up "crashing" the program.) An ignored excpetion just propagates up the stack (well, the stack of called methods), until eventually it gets caught by the root exception handler in java.lang.Thread.run(), which simply dumps the stack trace and then destroys the current thread - in essence, causing the application to "crash", although it's really just an uncaught exception.
To prevent that, just
try { // your code } catch (Exception e) { // Either fix it, or restart, or something }
Generally speaking, Errors should not be caught because they're basically signs of the underlying system getting ready to go out the window. (Except for StackOverflowException which is usually a sign of unchecked recurrsion...)
Oh, and you should add something to your list of problems - the completely inconsistant and confusing versioning numbers that Sun uses.
Since as you do complain about the fact that Sun uses Java to mean both the language, virtual machine, and class library, the Java version number is just plain confusing since it applies to all three.
As an example, when Java went from version 1.0 to 1.1, there were several changes to the language (the addition of inner classes), several changes to the API (a new AWT event model), and changes to the JIT technology backing the virtual machine. This pales in comparison to the absolutely stunning Java 2 release.
See, when Java 1.2 was released, half the documentation called it "Java 2" - which is understandable, since there were many additions to the default class library (Graphics2D, Collections, Arrays (which adds the qsort that was missing, BTW - it's java.util.Arrays.sort(java.lang.Object[]) - oh, and because Object[] isn't the same as int[] etc, they have special copies of the method for byte[], char[], double[], float[], int[], long[], short[], and of course, Object[].)
Java 2 - or Java 1.2 - also saw the default JIT be changed to the HotSpot JIT. I think Java 1.3 changed the compiler, as well as adding new classes, and 1.4 changed the language to add an assert feature - involving another change to the compiler...
Anyway, I still do write Java as my day job, and it's nice to get that off my chest... ahhhhh...
The $6 price also helps defray the losses (yes losses) from people who sneak their own food and beverages into the theatre. If everyone would buy one bucket of popcorn and one soda, theatres wouldn't have to charge $6 for popcorn.
Man, you really must hate people like me who... gasp... don't like eating or drinking stuff while watching a movie. Which means that when I come to a theater, I don't "sneak" in any food or drink, and I don't purchase any food or drink. I must be costing you a fortune - you must be glad I rarely go to see movies, then.
(Plus I don't see what the purpose is of chugging 32 oz of soda just so you can skip out during the climax to make use of the rest facilities. Seems like it would disrupt the flow of the movie.)
I just can't imagine detecting if there's a car in your way in Boston.
Whenever I'm about to change lanes in Boston, the car three blocks behind me in the lane I want to move into makes sure he's in the way...
Or when I have to do the grand "merge into the other car" move where you just sort of make a space so that you can get in the appropriate "x-Turn Only" lane for your destination. (Or to get out of the "we're UPS and therefore can park in the right lane" idiots. It seems to be just UPS - I've never found myself cursing out the postal service or FedEx. What does Brown do for me? Causes a mile-long backup.)
I'd imagine that in Boston, you'd just have to detect the car turning and sound the alarm... because if there isn't somebody in your way yet, someone will ensure that they get in your way.
Then there's the "dodge-the-pedestrian" game - seeing as people in Boston never seem to either try and cross at a crosswalk or, if they do, wait for the walk light. Not that it stops them from pushing the walk light button, crossing anyway, and then laughing at all the cars stopped in all directions when the light turns red to activate the walk light. (There's nothing like being stopped because some idiot reading a book while slowly meandering across Mass Ave without actually paying attention to the road...)
Of course, it's not so much that I hate driving in Boston, it's that I hate parking in Boston...
Most people have been flaming you for various things regarding Walmart being cheap bastards, so I'll go off on a completely different tangent.
They are diverse enough that loosing wouldn't kill them.
"Loosing"?! "LOOSING"?!
Loosing
means the act of letting fly, the act of letting loose, or the act of relaxing. I'm not sure what they're loosing in your sentence, but it doesn't make sense.
Unless you meant "losing" as in L-O-S-I-N-G, which means "the act of failure, or being brought to destruction" - which would make sense in that sentence.
Now I'm sorry if English isn't your native language or anything like that (although with a ".us" domain name, it probably is) but there are so many people here - and on the Internet in general - who spell "LOSING" with a second "O" that it does not have!
Oh, and apparently you're an idiot for thinking that Walmart has a vested interest in improving Linux.
However, I think that you do have a point - if Walmart thinks it'd be cheaper to improve the Linux product to increase their sales, they well might decide to roll their own or make deals with Linux vendors to improve the existing Linux distros. To people who say that Walmart is "just trying to cut costs," remember that bringing costs in-house - growing "horizontally" - has been used in the past by big buisnesses (Rockerfeller, Carnegie...) to help increase profits by removing a middle-man from the process.
Since I don't have a clear financial view of how much it would cost Wal-Mart to help with Linux as opposed to leave well enough alone, I can't say whether or not they will - at this time, I expect that they will not and simply pump cash into the Linux distros they sell through licensing expenses, and maybe request improvements.
Of course, the flip side to the coin is that they may be simply using this as a barganing tactic to get Microsoft to lower costs. In which case it still may be in their best interests to improve Linux, or at least threaten to do so. It's hard to say without knowing the exact costs as well as having market data to help predict the costs and benifits to trying to improve Linux compared to letting the distros evolve naturally. Time will tell...
Why did Square request to be left out?
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Why'd Square request not to be mentioned? I literally bought a PlayStation and PlayStation 2 to play Final Fantasy. I'm sure you would have been able to do a nice section on them - but according to the afterword or something (it's my younger brother's book, I haven't had a chance to read through it yet) they requested not to be mentioned - which is too bad, since they've done some pretty amazing games. Final Fantasies I, VI, VII, and X all strike me as some of the greatest games I've played. (VIII can rot, IV was OK but I didn't find it to be quite as good as the others, II, III, and V were never released in the US (well, V has been rereleased, but I haven't played through it yet).) I have a sneaking suspicion that with XI we are seeing the last of the Final Fantasy series of games - which is too bad.
I'd understand if they also requested you not to explain why, but I'm curious, so if you can tell, please do!
Other than that, the most of the games I remember playing as a kid seemed to be in there, although you missed Scram and Ladder! (Really early DOS games - I wanna see if anyone else out there recoginizes them.) But Zork was in there, so that's good. I think Planetfall was too, but I'm not sure - I only got to glance through the book over my brother's shoulder and again on the way up to a store to get him Jak and Daxter for his birthday.
(And trust me, driving while having your little brother try and show you pretty pictures gets annoying very fast - although your book did shut him up:P (I'm kidding - he's usually a good passenger, except when it comes to trying to point to pictures while I'm changing lanes...) However, I'm pretty sure that he really likes your book - even if he doesn't recognize half the old games.)
Well, that's a bit of a troll statement if I don't then try and explain what I mean. This is subjective, of course, but I still think it should be heard... this is more "devil' advocate" then what I really believe, and may be overly-pessimistic.
I dunno how well thought out she wrote the piece. I dunno anything about her, if her music is any good, or anything. But the fact that she wasn't recording and releasing mainstream, popular stuff during the time of massive filesharing means that if your average Joe or Jane hears this used as an argument he's going to come up with one of two things: "Who?" or "So?"
"Who?" is bad because some unknown person who at one time had popular songs is meaningless in an argument about file sharing and being able to make mix CDs - she isn't currently producing any music and having her livelyhood ruined by the record companies. Or, it can be argued that the reason I never heard about her is because all that file sharing and evil fair use stuff made her too obscure for me to ever have heard of before.
"So?" is just as bad, and is the main argument against Courtney Love's tirade against the recoring industry. (In Courtney Love's case, just about everyone who hasn't read the article dismisses her as some drugged-up bitch who has no real clue about the real world. Which makes saying "well, Courtney Love says..." turn against you really, really quickly.)
In Janis's case, her problems happened a long time ago, and so can be seen as being a moot point - after all, she wrote her music 30-40 years ago, which is far enough back for many people to consider practices may have changed, even if they haven't. It's too far back for people to accept her views as being relevant to today's culture or practices.
What we really need is someone who is currently in the limelight to come out against the record companies - not someone who was already fallen. This is a catch-22 though - if they are currently riding their way to fame, they probably see nothing wrong with the recording industry that is still their friend. After a fall from popularity and fame, they're opinions became only the complaints of someone who has fallen off and wants to complain about being popular, and are easy to write off.
I really don't see any way to make this a winnable argument with most people - the recording artists that come out against the recording industry are usually seen as being "too old" or "too out of the current industry" to be taken seriously by most people. Which leaves us right were we started... the recording companies telling people what to believe about becoming a rock star.
Does anyone out there do any real work? I'm really, really pissed off at the way Mozilla and Adobe are handling 133567, because when the project started and it was decided to do some critical things in SVG, it worked in both Mozilla and IE. Which was nice.
Time passes, Mozilla reaches 1.0 - and breaks the SVG plugin. Well, yeah, it may be Adobe's fault, but guess what this does to our already-in-progress site? Forces us to drop Mozilla support since the bug crashes Mozilla on our site. Really damned annoying, especially because the site used to work with Mozilla.
Anyway, a feature request gets added that means a floating panel that follows the scrolled viewport - something easily achevable with the onscroll event. Except guess what? Bug 35011 pops up - the code doesn't work in Mozilla. After spending an hour or so trying to figure out why I pop over to Mozilla and find Bug 35011.
And it may be marked FIXED, but check the "target milestone" listed - it's 1.0.1. Decidedly not 1.0 - I can guarentee you it does not work in Mozilla 1.0 - try the test case given for the bug. It will not work in Mozilla 1.0.
Since there is no way I can convince anyone that telling the users to use browsers marked as a "bleeding edge alpha release" - straight quote from mozilla.org, no trolling - I'm left with not bothering to test the site in Mozilla.
Were those two bugs fixed, I could get around to ensuring all the Javascript (which is required by the end-users) works in both browsers - until those bugs are fixed, I just kinda have to wait around and continue developing for IE and hope that when Mozilla 1.1-stable is released, the code won't be too IE-specific.
Until either Adobe or Mozilla addresses the SVG plugin, vast portions of the site will cause the browser to crash - or be unusable. We didn't want to use Flash and so went with the "open standard" and it turns out that by doing that we're locking people in with IE - now do you understand?
No trolling - just the simple facts. Due to those two bugs, the site is unusable with Mozilla - literally - because the only page that doesn't use SVG requires the onscroll event to work correctly, or things get... weird. (It's dynamic in other ways, which means that the bar that should float on the top will occasionally get moved in Mozilla when certain events occur - meaning that Mozilla users wind up with a bar stuck in the middle of the data they wanted to read.)
So I would say that both those bugs are showstoppers for the project I'm working on. Yeah, the first bug might be "fixed" - but it isn't fixed in the stable release. The second bug might "not have anything to do with Mozilla" but it is something that used to work with Mozilla and now doesn't work with Mozilla. Meaning that Mozilla gets the blame, and the site is unusable with it. Until they get around to releasing the next "stable" version.
(And anyone who wants to argue that this is a troll might want to instead expend that energy doing something useful like bugging Adobe to release an SVG plugin that works with Mozilla, so that half the site works again.)
I recall in the author's notes to one of his books Piers Anthony remarked something along the lines of using a Microsoft Natural Keyboard using a Dvorak keyboard mode. This was around the time of the introduction of the evil Com-Pewter, as I recall. I might be able to find the book somewhere at home, although it may have been in one of the books that we got through the library.
So yeah, he probably switched to a computer when they got to the point where it was fairly easy to switch keyboard layouts, or when someone pointed out to him how to switch keyboard layouts. So it probably isn't as dramatic a switch as you might think...
Of course, I've since gotten - well, bored, really - with Xanth and am now chewing through the Discworld series - kinda too bad, since a few years earlier, I might have some real questions to ask with this interview...
Have you seen Mozilla boot on even an 800Mhz P3? It takes forever. And on older P2 and celery based systems (or Cyrix-based for those bargin-basement shoppers) the page rendering is even slow.
Get more memory. Seriously. I'm using Mozilla on a P2 at work right now, and it's running just fine. Page rendering is fine, I can load multiple tabs, everything seems to be working acceptably. It uses 30MB of memory, with around 20MB required just to load up and display nothing, but it runs fine once loaded.
Yeah, it takes a while to boot (around 5-10 seconds depending on system load), but once loaded, it works just fine on this P2 of unknown MHz. So I'd find out what you did to your 800MHz P3 - Mozilla ran perfectly on my 800MHz Athlon (with 256MB RAM, even better when I upgraded to 640MB and stopped swapping). Your problems are almost guarenteed to be memory based or otherwise system based - Mozilla can run fine on a P2, although it takes a while to initially load. Once up and running, it works well enough I use it for my daily browsing, except when I need to hit MSDN for web-dev stuff.
Ah, the irony - look at my posting history, you'll find I'm working on an IE-only webpage, but use Mozilla for my day-to-day web-browsing. I live a weird life. *Sigh*.
Actually, I can design a webpage that looks lovely in IE and Mozilla, as well as looking fine in Lynx - but that completely craps out Netscape due to its complete and total flakeyness when it comes to CSS. My homepage (offline now) was designed to take full advantage of CSS's ability to layout text and created a page where the menubar by the side would appear properly in Lynx as a list of links at the top. (Although in the future I might wanna move it to the bottom - I dunno.) I would therefore assume that a blind person could have managed to use my webpage without much difficulty.
However, in Netscape 4, things just kinda all came together on top of each other. The menubar and the content kinda just appeared all on top of each other with nearly-random black boxes around the text. For added fun, the links didn't always become links due to some weird Netscape 4 CSS+hyperlink reaction.
End result: Fuck NS4 users - there aren't any anyway, so what do I care? My page works fine in Lynx, Mozilla, and IE (and Opera as well, I think, although I never really tested it) - any NS4 users can damn well use NS4 to download a real browser that properly supports or properly ignores CSS. So, yeah, fuck the NS4 users - I wanna use real web standards, and not have to bastardize a page to work in NS4 so that it'd be completely unusable to a speach reader but at least place the text properly on the page in the proper size with the proper border. It may not validate as valid HTML or valid CSS, but I can force Netscape 4 to do what it's supposed to do!
Or I can just allow the NS4 users to go somewhere else and allow everyone else to view the page in a useable fashion.
Heh, I work at a company that also sets NS4 as the "standard" browser.
The project I'm working on has created a webpage that only works with IE - it doesn't work with Mozilla not because of anything nasty, but because various bugs (namely, 35011 and 133567) prevent features that are supposed to work with Mozilla from actually working with Mozilla. When 1.1 or 1.0.1 gets released, I might get around to seeing if I can make the site work with the newer versions of Mozilla, but really, it isn't worth it.
Besides, the end users all use IE, and for those that use Netscape 4, they can go fuck themselves or pray to five dieties and sacrifice three goats and a sheep that it gracefully degrades properly. Which it usually doesn't due to a half-assed CSS implementation. Trust me, I have a Sourceforge project where I have to use server-side includes to make the page render useably in Netscape 4 due to the fact that NS4's CSS implementation removes my links from the menubar!
So, yeah, NS4 users can go fuck themselves - if Netscape 4 is your only choice, then shut off Javascript immediately because this also shuts off their crappy CSS implementation and might allow things to degrade in a proper way. Of course, with the site I'm working on, Javascript is required to make some of the more interactive elements work. (I hate requirements generated by people who want a webpage to work exactly like Excel does...)
They still have to download the crap before they can filter it, right? How do you know that they aren't filtering it all out and aren't looking at a report that says "Filtered e-mail: 90% Klez, 9% Spam, 0.45% Troll, 0.45% Flamebait, 0.05% Stupid, 0.04% Real, 0.02% Complaints About Slashdot Math"?
Maybe Hemos came up with the figure by checking his e-mail and watching as 90% of it was filtered into the bitbucket. Maybe he still filters it by hand - regardless, when a massive collection of your inbox is junk, you still have to watch it go through the filter. (Well, OK, not always - there are filter setups where you don't see it, but let's not get too technical, alright?)
The bottom line is this: they may filter it, but they still have to deal with the incoming bytes in some way. The "90%" figure probably comes from either a filter report, or from watching the data be filtered if they're using client-based filtering. Just because they know that 90% of their incoming e-mail is crap doesn't mean they manually sort it.
I can't see the thing (stupid Slashdot effect) but I'll comment one aspect I've been trying to figure out. You said:
The only advantage with the two-head design is that you can flip around one of the two screens to give a presentation...
Based on what I've read, that "presentation screen" is a 13.3" screen with an even smaller visible area. That sounds like a pretty small presentation surface. It doesn't sound like it would really be all that useful.
So I have to ask anyone out there who can actually see the thing: what makes this "flip around" screen more useful for a presentation than hooking up a $2500 laptop to a $1500 LCD projector and doing the presentation that way, at a $1000 savings?
It can't be to prevent needing to lug the projector around, can it? From what I've read, it's probably about as heavy as a projector + laptop combo (although I'm not sure - recent LCD projectors are fairly small, but older ones can be heavy). Then again, you can't lose the weight of the projector if you want to use just the laptop to work on while traveling.
This sounds like it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, based on the comments I've read. If anyone has any pictures of the thing, I'd love to see them - I can't access the main site due to the Slashdot effect.
More than four? Well, sure, but I won't bother listing them and will only say that I think WLVI might be a little pissed if they had to change their channel number from 56.
(Think Roman numerals if you don't get it. Oh, and it's the WB station in the Boston area.)
I can't believe that there was anyone out there stupid enough to somehow connect this with Linux. I saw the "all the good Linux software is illegal post" and then had to back up to find out what on earth the parent was smoking to try and decide this could some how be good for Linux.
Either they're joking (in which case they're still smoking some good stuff, since it isn't funny) or their really, really stupid.
In either case, please do what you can about ramming your boot up their ass as soon as their head vacates the general area. I wholeheartedly support you.
But we don't cry about it [copyprotected movies] - we just accept it.
Huh? Excuse me? What Slashdot have you been reading? People bitch all the time about CSS and Macrovision. Or did you miss all the fun stuff happening about DeCSS?
Or maybe the story about how the Harry Potter DVD won't be Macrovision protected? The resulting discussion talked about loads of ways to get around Macrovision, as well as many people complaining about how Macrovision lowers the quality of the video.
I'll complain about video games using copy protection too - I could barely play my copy of Black and White since for whatever reason the copy protection would take a full five minutes to finally get around to deciding my legally purchased CD-ROM was valid. And then, since this is in the pre-patched days, it would start up, and then crash as soon as I tried to actually play the game.
I'd really much prefer video game manufactorer's don't use CD-based copy protection schemes. I'd like to be able to make backup copies of their CDs without shelling out money for CloneCD. I don't mind registration keys; they work fairly well and they allow people to just play the game without worrying about their hardware being unable to play the game due to some bogus copy protection.
I hate having to root around for the CD to a game that allows all the data to be stored on the harddrive just so it verifies I'm not using a stolen copy. It's a waste of my time and it suggests that they expect me to be a thief - not good customer relations, really.
Being a mostly-Windows 2000 user (although I do run Linux on my server and have my desktop set up to dual boot into Debian Linux), I really don't mind CSS since it doesn't effect my ability to watch movies on my computer. Since I'm an American and region encoding usually works out so that people in Region 1 get the DVD first and imported DVDs are usually more exprensive, I don't really care personally about the region issue - but I can understand why others might hate region encoding with a passion.
In other words, yes, people bitch about movies and computer games being copy protected.
There's a huge difference between there being a single Nimba infected file that is never used anywhere in the entire product, and the headline "Visual Studio.Net: Now with more Viruses". Not to mention that the hole the Nimba virus would be attacking becomes patched during the installation of Visual Studio.Net by the installation of Internet Explorer 6.
Is it a problem? Yes. Is Microsoft doing something about it? Yes. In fact, Microsoft seems to be going out of their way to ensure that no one is harmed by it - giving clean copies to all the customers they are aware of.
Michael is trying to make the situation seem much more dire than it really is. Yes, Microsoft managed to let a file infected with a virus into a version of one of their most important products. However, that product makes the system it installs on immune to the specific vector of infection that the infected file accidently included with the product.
Just like Michael went after McAfee for claiming that the JPEG virus is a huge concern, he's claiming that the virus Microsoft included is a huge concern. It isn't.
An appropriate headline might be "Korean Visual Studio.Net Ships With Nimba" and then mentioning in the story body that the infected file is not actually used by the system and should theoretically never be run, and even if it is run, can't infect the system with Visual Studio.Net installed anyway. The story body should most likely also mention that the virus was added by a third party contracter.
The headline and story blurb seem to suggest that installing the Korean version of Visual Studio.Net will infect your computer with a virus, and that simply isn't the case. Yes, it still shows sloppy QA, but it can't really cause any actual damage, and that should be mentioned in the story.
They (being Microsoft) found it when uploading the help files to MSDN. Since the help files need to be converted individually to the online format, the Microsoft employee uploading the files noticed an extra file at that point.
In other words, it was practically impossible to find, until someone at Microsoft had to go individually through all the files to get them ready to be read through MSDN.
This is according to the linked article -- please, read the articles, they're usually very informative:)
Actually, according to the article at least, Microsoft did scan the files for viruses prior to shipping. However, they apparently have it set up to only scan files that they expect to be there, and therefore missed the added Nimba file. The way I read it, the Nimba file is not really part of the package and can never be accessed in normal usage of the product, and can only be accessed if the user goes looking through the actual help files that come with the system.
Assuming that by "help files" they mean "VS.Net Documentation" then there are quite a few help files covering everything from JScript, VB, C#, C++, to the Windows Platform API, the C# class library, and more - which means it'd be practically impossible to manage to find the one Nimba file amoungst the croud. However, if they just mean tool help, then that content is a lot more limited, but I somehow doubt that is the case.
I have to wonder how much about that "scan only files that should be there" is really spin doctoring, and if they didn't really scan the disk and are instead coming up with an excuse for having missed the presence of the file.
Anyway, the Slashdot writeup is, as usual, way overblown in its anti-Microsoft slant. If they're going to write tirades about McAfee scaremongering, then they probably shouldn't do it themselves.
(And, by the way, Michael is the author of both articles...)
It sounds like you think that AV companies should be implementing heuristics and capabilities.
Most AV software already has a scan optional called a "heuristic scan" - a scan that checks executable code on your computer for programs that look like they might be viruses, since virii usually do well defined actions related to infecting and causing damage. I know Norton Anti-Virus does, they call it "Bloodhound". I'd be very surprised if McAfee doesn't since Dr. Soloman's did, and they own that now.
As for running programs in a "safe area," that sounds like something that the operating system should be doing, not some anti-virus pack. A capabilities system in essence does that - it sets what actions a user/program can take. So that a user can be created with very basic permissions such as "access the screen" (ie, connect to the X server/call API functions in the GDI), but not more complicated things like "access the file system."
Of course, as far as I know, capabilities are not wide spread yet although I believe there is work to try and implement them in the upcoming Linux 2.6/3.0 using the new plugable security model.
So basically, the features you ask for either already exist and are turned on by default, or aren't part of what an AV program should be doing and are part of the operating system's tasks.
And I haven't liked an RTS since Total Annihilation, mostly because it's the only one which got the interface right and had units which are reasonably intelligent in responding to the enemy without user intervention.
Too bad it's slow as anything and even worse when played multiplayer. I used to try and play it with my younger brother, but since my computer is faster, I would win by producing more units than his system could handle, and then moving them in while his computer struggled at 1FPS.
As for the units acting intelligently, what game were you playing? They only act fairly intelligently if you set them to patrol an area - otherwise, they're dumb as bricks. Which is kinda strange, actually...
And for those people who think that units acting intelligently is "playing the game for you", acting intelligently in this case means:
Construction units will repair damaged buildings/units.
Damaged units will return to auto-repair bays to "heal".
Most units will break off a fight when they start getting badly damaged when on patrol, when told to specifically attack, they attack until all enemies in the area are gone or until they're dead.
All of the above behaviors are only when a unit is set to patrol an area; otherwise they sit around and will only return fire but not follow enemies away. (By default - you can tell your units to hold fire, return fire, or attack all, and tell them to hold their position, move to intercept, or follow enemies.)
Although I am still pretty sure that in Total Anihilation, the units still wouldn't help each other, one of my main pet peeves in these games.
I really hate it when you have to explicitly tell your troops to attack the guys using ranged attacks on them. They should either go after the guy themself, or move out of the danger area.
I especially hate it when a random unit decides to follow an enemy unit around the map. Nothing like finding out that a single enemy resource gatherer has pulled your main troops way away from your base while you were busy telling your resource gathers to actually gather resources instead of stand around the newly build resource mine. (Although the stupid "I just build a lumber mill, now I'm gonna sit around." bug is fixed in most recent games. The "I'm going to follow this unit until I die." bug still exists - so many games either allow you to say "don't attack enemies" or "attack enemies" but not "don't follow enemies way away from your where you're stationed" - TA does, and AOE2 does, but A) it's a MS product, so I can't praise it here, and B) it's an "advanced" option and is not shown by default.)
My main beef with TA though is the fact it has a really crappy map editor. Map editting is what made Warcraft and Starcraft fun, it's what makes AOE2 fun and it's what makes me excited about Warcraft III - creating your own scenarios is a lot of fun. TA did have a map editor, but it crashed frequently and has a strange tile-based interface that made it rather difficult to do anything except on a well defined grid. (Don't think tiles as in AOE2 and Warcraft tiles, think tiles as in 5x5 collections of 32x32 pixel tiles that can be placed on a grid, where figuring out ways so that features do not look like they were placed in... well, 5x5 tiles of 32x32 pixel tiles...)
Uh, I'll stop this now - I've kinda just rambled on. Anyway, TA was fun, but it isn't without some flaws, and I personally found its UI to be rather cluncky.
I hope this doesn't compete with my badly designed, rigid and difficult to use 3D engine I have been working on.
Don't reinvent the wheel - we've got plenty of those already. Don't forget to strive for "poorly documented" as well, and try and make sure it only runs on development Linux kernels - or go for broke, and make it only work on some strange NetBSD port. For added fun, require Mozilla while you're at it.
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It seems to be a bug with something that Blizzard is doing because I am yet to BSOD my system on anything but Blizzard games. When StarCraft caused the system to BSOD, I figured it was a problem with the IPX drivers, but since Diablo II can do it on Battle.net, I'm beginning to doubt that. (I've also seen Java manage to reboot my machine randomly - hasn't happened recently, but some how Cocoon managed to reboot my Windows machine with the 1.3 JDK. Don't ask how, it just did...)
I'd guess I have network card issues, something's probably wrong with my LinkSys card drivers ("Works with Linux! Download drivers from our website! Uh, you aren't planning on using the Ethernet for Internet access, right?" - later versions of their driver disk come with Linux drivers, and Linux kernel 2.4.x have the appropriate drivers, but Linux 2.2.x at the time I got the card didn't - meaning a quick boot to Windows before I could get Linux up and running...)
Other than randomly rebooting with JDK 1.3 and the occasional multiplayer Blizzard game BSODing me, Win2k's been rock solid. Although I use Mozilla as my browser, solving the "Explorer bringing the system down" liability that Win2k has. (Mostly when some page causes IE to start chewing threw resources, or when some app manages to crash the Explorer desktop instance and it gets screwed up when it's autorestarted.)
My only beef is that I rarely get "unkillable" processes - processes that Windows claims are being debugged. Ah well - I can deal with it.
It's better than my current Linux Gnome 2 install, which steadfastly refuses to use any window manager except twm... I'll get around to fixing it eventually, but since I mostly use my desktop for games and Java development, I really don't find myself wanting to go back to Linux. Sorry guys...
But I've got to post a slight rant on the "RSVP" feature - RSVP actually means "respond, please" (respondez, s'il vous plait - I think?) - meaning that they should have options for "I will be attending", "I will not be attending", or "I might be attending." Since I could only say that I might be attending I would have loved to have given that option. That way, you could have seen that there were 7 people planning on coming, 3 people who might come, 5 who couldn't, and 65 people who were to lazy to respond. (As an example, obviously...)
If there is another Slashdot meetup, I'll try and come. But I couldn't promise to come to this one. If it were on a weekend, then there would be a higher chance I could manage to come to it. Maybe next time, maybe...
The Java compiler forces people to catch any Throwable that does not extend either Error or RuntimeException - assuming that the given exception is noted in the throws clause of the method it's looking at. However, as far as the Java runtime is concerned, any exception can be ignored. (So if you managed to compile against classes that claimed not to throw a given exception and link at runtime against code that does, an uncaught exception can wind up "crashing" the program.) An ignored excpetion just propagates up the stack (well, the stack of called methods), until eventually it gets caught by the root exception handler in java.lang.Thread.run(), which simply dumps the stack trace and then destroys the current thread - in essence, causing the application to "crash", although it's really just an uncaught exception.
To prevent that, just
Generally speaking, Errors should not be caught because they're basically signs of the underlying system getting ready to go out the window. (Except for StackOverflowException which is usually a sign of unchecked recurrsion...)Oh, and you should add something to your list of problems - the completely inconsistant and confusing versioning numbers that Sun uses.
Since as you do complain about the fact that Sun uses Java to mean both the language, virtual machine, and class library, the Java version number is just plain confusing since it applies to all three.
As an example, when Java went from version 1.0 to 1.1, there were several changes to the language (the addition of inner classes), several changes to the API (a new AWT event model), and changes to the JIT technology backing the virtual machine. This pales in comparison to the absolutely stunning Java 2 release.
See, when Java 1.2 was released, half the documentation called it "Java 2" - which is understandable, since there were many additions to the default class library (Graphics2D, Collections, Arrays (which adds the qsort that was missing, BTW - it's java.util.Arrays.sort(java.lang.Object[]) - oh, and because Object[] isn't the same as int[] etc, they have special copies of the method for byte[], char[], double[], float[], int[], long[], short[], and of course, Object[].)
Java 2 - or Java 1.2 - also saw the default JIT be changed to the HotSpot JIT. I think Java 1.3 changed the compiler, as well as adding new classes, and 1.4 changed the language to add an assert feature - involving another change to the compiler...
Anyway, I still do write Java as my day job, and it's nice to get that off my chest... ahhhhh...
Man, you really must hate people like me who ... gasp ... don't like eating or drinking stuff while watching a movie. Which means that when I come to a theater, I don't "sneak" in any food or drink, and I don't purchase any food or drink. I must be costing you a fortune - you must be glad I rarely go to see movies, then.
(Plus I don't see what the purpose is of chugging 32 oz of soda just so you can skip out during the climax to make use of the rest facilities. Seems like it would disrupt the flow of the movie.)
Whenever I'm about to change lanes in Boston, the car three blocks behind me in the lane I want to move into makes sure he's in the way...
Or when I have to do the grand "merge into the other car" move where you just sort of make a space so that you can get in the appropriate "x-Turn Only" lane for your destination. (Or to get out of the "we're UPS and therefore can park in the right lane" idiots. It seems to be just UPS - I've never found myself cursing out the postal service or FedEx. What does Brown do for me? Causes a mile-long backup.)
I'd imagine that in Boston, you'd just have to detect the car turning and sound the alarm... because if there isn't somebody in your way yet, someone will ensure that they get in your way.
Then there's the "dodge-the-pedestrian" game - seeing as people in Boston never seem to either try and cross at a crosswalk or, if they do, wait for the walk light. Not that it stops them from pushing the walk light button, crossing anyway, and then laughing at all the cars stopped in all directions when the light turns red to activate the walk light. (There's nothing like being stopped because some idiot reading a book while slowly meandering across Mass Ave without actually paying attention to the road...)
Of course, it's not so much that I hate driving in Boston, it's that I hate parking in Boston...
They are diverse enough that loosing wouldn't kill them.
"Loosing"?! "LOOSING"?!
Loosing means the act of letting fly, the act of letting loose, or the act of relaxing. I'm not sure what they're loosing in your sentence, but it doesn't make sense.
Unless you meant "losing" as in L-O-S-I-N-G, which means "the act of failure, or being brought to destruction" - which would make sense in that sentence.
Now I'm sorry if English isn't your native language or anything like that (although with a ".us" domain name, it probably is) but there are so many people here - and on the Internet in general - who spell "LOSING" with a second "O" that it does not have!
Oh, and apparently you're an idiot for thinking that Walmart has a vested interest in improving Linux.
However, I think that you do have a point - if Walmart thinks it'd be cheaper to improve the Linux product to increase their sales, they well might decide to roll their own or make deals with Linux vendors to improve the existing Linux distros. To people who say that Walmart is "just trying to cut costs," remember that bringing costs in-house - growing "horizontally" - has been used in the past by big buisnesses (Rockerfeller, Carnegie...) to help increase profits by removing a middle-man from the process.
Since I don't have a clear financial view of how much it would cost Wal-Mart to help with Linux as opposed to leave well enough alone, I can't say whether or not they will - at this time, I expect that they will not and simply pump cash into the Linux distros they sell through licensing expenses, and maybe request improvements.
Of course, the flip side to the coin is that they may be simply using this as a barganing tactic to get Microsoft to lower costs. In which case it still may be in their best interests to improve Linux, or at least threaten to do so. It's hard to say without knowing the exact costs as well as having market data to help predict the costs and benifits to trying to improve Linux compared to letting the distros evolve naturally. Time will tell...
I'd understand if they also requested you not to explain why, but I'm curious, so if you can tell, please do!
Other than that, the most of the games I remember playing as a kid seemed to be in there, although you missed Scram and Ladder! (Really early DOS games - I wanna see if anyone else out there recoginizes them.) But Zork was in there, so that's good. I think Planetfall was too, but I'm not sure - I only got to glance through the book over my brother's shoulder and again on the way up to a store to get him Jak and Daxter for his birthday.
(And trust me, driving while having your little brother try and show you pretty pictures gets annoying very fast - although your book did shut him up :P (I'm kidding - he's usually a good passenger, except when it comes to trying to point to pictures while I'm changing lanes...) However, I'm pretty sure that he really likes your book - even if he doesn't recognize half the old games.)
Well, that's a bit of a troll statement if I don't then try and explain what I mean. This is subjective, of course, but I still think it should be heard... this is more "devil' advocate" then what I really believe, and may be overly-pessimistic.
I dunno how well thought out she wrote the piece. I dunno anything about her, if her music is any good, or anything. But the fact that she wasn't recording and releasing mainstream, popular stuff during the time of massive filesharing means that if your average Joe or Jane hears this used as an argument he's going to come up with one of two things: "Who?" or "So?"
"Who?" is bad because some unknown person who at one time had popular songs is meaningless in an argument about file sharing and being able to make mix CDs - she isn't currently producing any music and having her livelyhood ruined by the record companies. Or, it can be argued that the reason I never heard about her is because all that file sharing and evil fair use stuff made her too obscure for me to ever have heard of before.
"So?" is just as bad, and is the main argument against Courtney Love's tirade against the recoring industry. (In Courtney Love's case, just about everyone who hasn't read the article dismisses her as some drugged-up bitch who has no real clue about the real world. Which makes saying "well, Courtney Love says..." turn against you really, really quickly.)
In Janis's case, her problems happened a long time ago, and so can be seen as being a moot point - after all, she wrote her music 30-40 years ago, which is far enough back for many people to consider practices may have changed, even if they haven't. It's too far back for people to accept her views as being relevant to today's culture or practices.
What we really need is someone who is currently in the limelight to come out against the record companies - not someone who was already fallen. This is a catch-22 though - if they are currently riding their way to fame, they probably see nothing wrong with the recording industry that is still their friend. After a fall from popularity and fame, they're opinions became only the complaints of someone who has fallen off and wants to complain about being popular, and are easy to write off.
I really don't see any way to make this a winnable argument with most people - the recording artists that come out against the recording industry are usually seen as being "too old" or "too out of the current industry" to be taken seriously by most people. Which leaves us right were we started... the recording companies telling people what to believe about becoming a rock star.
Time passes, Mozilla reaches 1.0 - and breaks the SVG plugin. Well, yeah, it may be Adobe's fault, but guess what this does to our already-in-progress site? Forces us to drop Mozilla support since the bug crashes Mozilla on our site. Really damned annoying, especially because the site used to work with Mozilla.
Anyway, a feature request gets added that means a floating panel that follows the scrolled viewport - something easily achevable with the onscroll event. Except guess what? Bug 35011 pops up - the code doesn't work in Mozilla. After spending an hour or so trying to figure out why I pop over to Mozilla and find Bug 35011.
And it may be marked FIXED, but check the "target milestone" listed - it's 1.0.1. Decidedly not 1.0 - I can guarentee you it does not work in Mozilla 1.0 - try the test case given for the bug. It will not work in Mozilla 1.0.
Since there is no way I can convince anyone that telling the users to use browsers marked as a "bleeding edge alpha release" - straight quote from mozilla.org, no trolling - I'm left with not bothering to test the site in Mozilla.
Were those two bugs fixed, I could get around to ensuring all the Javascript (which is required by the end-users) works in both browsers - until those bugs are fixed, I just kinda have to wait around and continue developing for IE and hope that when Mozilla 1.1-stable is released, the code won't be too IE-specific.
Until either Adobe or Mozilla addresses the SVG plugin, vast portions of the site will cause the browser to crash - or be unusable. We didn't want to use Flash and so went with the "open standard" and it turns out that by doing that we're locking people in with IE - now do you understand?
No trolling - just the simple facts. Due to those two bugs, the site is unusable with Mozilla - literally - because the only page that doesn't use SVG requires the onscroll event to work correctly, or things get ... weird. (It's dynamic in other ways, which means that the bar that should float on the top will occasionally get moved in Mozilla when certain events occur - meaning that Mozilla users wind up with a bar stuck in the middle of the data they wanted to read.)
So I would say that both those bugs are showstoppers for the project I'm working on. Yeah, the first bug might be "fixed" - but it isn't fixed in the stable release. The second bug might "not have anything to do with Mozilla" but it is something that used to work with Mozilla and now doesn't work with Mozilla. Meaning that Mozilla gets the blame, and the site is unusable with it. Until they get around to releasing the next "stable" version.
(And anyone who wants to argue that this is a troll might want to instead expend that energy doing something useful like bugging Adobe to release an SVG plugin that works with Mozilla, so that half the site works again.)
So yeah, he probably switched to a computer when they got to the point where it was fairly easy to switch keyboard layouts, or when someone pointed out to him how to switch keyboard layouts. So it probably isn't as dramatic a switch as you might think...
Of course, I've since gotten - well, bored, really - with Xanth and am now chewing through the Discworld series - kinda too bad, since a few years earlier, I might have some real questions to ask with this interview...
(Yes, it's a joke - as is this. Although this one isn't quite as subtle.)
Get more memory. Seriously. I'm using Mozilla on a P2 at work right now, and it's running just fine. Page rendering is fine, I can load multiple tabs, everything seems to be working acceptably. It uses 30MB of memory, with around 20MB required just to load up and display nothing, but it runs fine once loaded.
Yeah, it takes a while to boot (around 5-10 seconds depending on system load), but once loaded, it works just fine on this P2 of unknown MHz. So I'd find out what you did to your 800MHz P3 - Mozilla ran perfectly on my 800MHz Athlon (with 256MB RAM, even better when I upgraded to 640MB and stopped swapping). Your problems are almost guarenteed to be memory based or otherwise system based - Mozilla can run fine on a P2, although it takes a while to initially load. Once up and running, it works well enough I use it for my daily browsing, except when I need to hit MSDN for web-dev stuff.
Ah, the irony - look at my posting history, you'll find I'm working on an IE-only webpage, but use Mozilla for my day-to-day web-browsing. I live a weird life. *Sigh*.
However, in Netscape 4, things just kinda all came together on top of each other. The menubar and the content kinda just appeared all on top of each other with nearly-random black boxes around the text. For added fun, the links didn't always become links due to some weird Netscape 4 CSS+hyperlink reaction.
End result: Fuck NS4 users - there aren't any anyway, so what do I care? My page works fine in Lynx, Mozilla, and IE (and Opera as well, I think, although I never really tested it) - any NS4 users can damn well use NS4 to download a real browser that properly supports or properly ignores CSS. So, yeah, fuck the NS4 users - I wanna use real web standards, and not have to bastardize a page to work in NS4 so that it'd be completely unusable to a speach reader but at least place the text properly on the page in the proper size with the proper border. It may not validate as valid HTML or valid CSS, but I can force Netscape 4 to do what it's supposed to do!
Or I can just allow the NS4 users to go somewhere else and allow everyone else to view the page in a useable fashion.
The project I'm working on has created a webpage that only works with IE - it doesn't work with Mozilla not because of anything nasty, but because various bugs (namely, 35011 and 133567) prevent features that are supposed to work with Mozilla from actually working with Mozilla. When 1.1 or 1.0.1 gets released, I might get around to seeing if I can make the site work with the newer versions of Mozilla, but really, it isn't worth it.
Besides, the end users all use IE, and for those that use Netscape 4, they can go fuck themselves or pray to five dieties and sacrifice three goats and a sheep that it gracefully degrades properly. Which it usually doesn't due to a half-assed CSS implementation. Trust me, I have a Sourceforge project where I have to use server-side includes to make the page render useably in Netscape 4 due to the fact that NS4's CSS implementation removes my links from the menubar!
So, yeah, NS4 users can go fuck themselves - if Netscape 4 is your only choice, then shut off Javascript immediately because this also shuts off their crappy CSS implementation and might allow things to degrade in a proper way. Of course, with the site I'm working on, Javascript is required to make some of the more interactive elements work. (I hate requirements generated by people who want a webpage to work exactly like Excel does...)
Maybe Hemos came up with the figure by checking his e-mail and watching as 90% of it was filtered into the bitbucket. Maybe he still filters it by hand - regardless, when a massive collection of your inbox is junk, you still have to watch it go through the filter. (Well, OK, not always - there are filter setups where you don't see it, but let's not get too technical, alright?)
The bottom line is this: they may filter it, but they still have to deal with the incoming bytes in some way. The "90%" figure probably comes from either a filter report, or from watching the data be filtered if they're using client-based filtering. Just because they know that 90% of their incoming e-mail is crap doesn't mean they manually sort it.
The only advantage with the two-head design is that you can flip around one of the two screens to give a presentation...
Based on what I've read, that "presentation screen" is a 13.3" screen with an even smaller visible area. That sounds like a pretty small presentation surface. It doesn't sound like it would really be all that useful.
So I have to ask anyone out there who can actually see the thing: what makes this "flip around" screen more useful for a presentation than hooking up a $2500 laptop to a $1500 LCD projector and doing the presentation that way, at a $1000 savings?
It can't be to prevent needing to lug the projector around, can it? From what I've read, it's probably about as heavy as a projector + laptop combo (although I'm not sure - recent LCD projectors are fairly small, but older ones can be heavy). Then again, you can't lose the weight of the projector if you want to use just the laptop to work on while traveling.
This sounds like it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, based on the comments I've read. If anyone has any pictures of the thing, I'd love to see them - I can't access the main site due to the Slashdot effect.
(Think Roman numerals if you don't get it. Oh, and it's the WB station in the Boston area.)
Either they're joking (in which case they're still smoking some good stuff, since it isn't funny) or their really, really stupid.
In either case, please do what you can about ramming your boot up their ass as soon as their head vacates the general area. I wholeheartedly support you.
Huh? Excuse me? What Slashdot have you been reading? People bitch all the time about CSS and Macrovision. Or did you miss all the fun stuff happening about DeCSS? Or maybe the story about how the Harry Potter DVD won't be Macrovision protected? The resulting discussion talked about loads of ways to get around Macrovision, as well as many people complaining about how Macrovision lowers the quality of the video.
I'll complain about video games using copy protection too - I could barely play my copy of Black and White since for whatever reason the copy protection would take a full five minutes to finally get around to deciding my legally purchased CD-ROM was valid. And then, since this is in the pre-patched days, it would start up, and then crash as soon as I tried to actually play the game.
I'd really much prefer video game manufactorer's don't use CD-based copy protection schemes. I'd like to be able to make backup copies of their CDs without shelling out money for CloneCD. I don't mind registration keys; they work fairly well and they allow people to just play the game without worrying about their hardware being unable to play the game due to some bogus copy protection.
I hate having to root around for the CD to a game that allows all the data to be stored on the harddrive just so it verifies I'm not using a stolen copy. It's a waste of my time and it suggests that they expect me to be a thief - not good customer relations, really.
Being a mostly-Windows 2000 user (although I do run Linux on my server and have my desktop set up to dual boot into Debian Linux), I really don't mind CSS since it doesn't effect my ability to watch movies on my computer. Since I'm an American and region encoding usually works out so that people in Region 1 get the DVD first and imported DVDs are usually more exprensive, I don't really care personally about the region issue - but I can understand why others might hate region encoding with a passion.
In other words, yes, people bitch about movies and computer games being copy protected.
Is it a problem? Yes. Is Microsoft doing something about it? Yes. In fact, Microsoft seems to be going out of their way to ensure that no one is harmed by it - giving clean copies to all the customers they are aware of.
Michael is trying to make the situation seem much more dire than it really is. Yes, Microsoft managed to let a file infected with a virus into a version of one of their most important products. However, that product makes the system it installs on immune to the specific vector of infection that the infected file accidently included with the product.
Just like Michael went after McAfee for claiming that the JPEG virus is a huge concern, he's claiming that the virus Microsoft included is a huge concern. It isn't.
An appropriate headline might be "Korean Visual Studio .Net Ships With Nimba" and then mentioning in the story body that the infected file is not actually used by the system and should theoretically never be run, and even if it is run, can't infect the system with Visual Studio .Net installed anyway. The story body should most likely also mention that the virus was added by a third party contracter.
The headline and story blurb seem to suggest that installing the Korean version of Visual Studio .Net will infect your computer with a virus, and that simply isn't the case. Yes, it still shows sloppy QA, but it can't really cause any actual damage, and that should be mentioned in the story.
In other words, it was practically impossible to find, until someone at Microsoft had to go individually through all the files to get them ready to be read through MSDN.
This is according to the linked article -- please, read the articles, they're usually very informative :)
Assuming that by "help files" they mean "VS.Net Documentation" then there are quite a few help files covering everything from JScript, VB, C#, C++, to the Windows Platform API, the C# class library, and more - which means it'd be practically impossible to manage to find the one Nimba file amoungst the croud. However, if they just mean tool help, then that content is a lot more limited, but I somehow doubt that is the case.
I have to wonder how much about that "scan only files that should be there" is really spin doctoring, and if they didn't really scan the disk and are instead coming up with an excuse for having missed the presence of the file.
Anyway, the Slashdot writeup is, as usual, way overblown in its anti-Microsoft slant. If they're going to write tirades about McAfee scaremongering, then they probably shouldn't do it themselves.
(And, by the way, Michael is the author of both articles...)
Most AV software already has a scan optional called a "heuristic scan" - a scan that checks executable code on your computer for programs that look like they might be viruses, since virii usually do well defined actions related to infecting and causing damage. I know Norton Anti-Virus does, they call it "Bloodhound". I'd be very surprised if McAfee doesn't since Dr. Soloman's did, and they own that now.
As for running programs in a "safe area," that sounds like something that the operating system should be doing, not some anti-virus pack. A capabilities system in essence does that - it sets what actions a user/program can take. So that a user can be created with very basic permissions such as "access the screen" (ie, connect to the X server/call API functions in the GDI), but not more complicated things like "access the file system."
Of course, as far as I know, capabilities are not wide spread yet although I believe there is work to try and implement them in the upcoming Linux 2.6/3.0 using the new plugable security model.
So basically, the features you ask for either already exist and are turned on by default, or aren't part of what an AV program should be doing and are part of the operating system's tasks.
Too bad it's slow as anything and even worse when played multiplayer. I used to try and play it with my younger brother, but since my computer is faster, I would win by producing more units than his system could handle, and then moving them in while his computer struggled at 1FPS.
As for the units acting intelligently, what game were you playing? They only act fairly intelligently if you set them to patrol an area - otherwise, they're dumb as bricks. Which is kinda strange, actually...
And for those people who think that units acting intelligently is "playing the game for you", acting intelligently in this case means:
- Construction units will repair damaged buildings/units.
- Damaged units will return to auto-repair bays to "heal".
- Most units will break off a fight when they start getting badly damaged when on patrol, when told to specifically attack, they attack until all enemies in the area are gone or until they're dead.
All of the above behaviors are only when a unit is set to patrol an area; otherwise they sit around and will only return fire but not follow enemies away. (By default - you can tell your units to hold fire, return fire, or attack all, and tell them to hold their position, move to intercept, or follow enemies.)Although I am still pretty sure that in Total Anihilation, the units still wouldn't help each other, one of my main pet peeves in these games. I really hate it when you have to explicitly tell your troops to attack the guys using ranged attacks on them. They should either go after the guy themself, or move out of the danger area.
I especially hate it when a random unit decides to follow an enemy unit around the map. Nothing like finding out that a single enemy resource gatherer has pulled your main troops way away from your base while you were busy telling your resource gathers to actually gather resources instead of stand around the newly build resource mine. (Although the stupid "I just build a lumber mill, now I'm gonna sit around." bug is fixed in most recent games. The "I'm going to follow this unit until I die." bug still exists - so many games either allow you to say "don't attack enemies" or "attack enemies" but not "don't follow enemies way away from your where you're stationed" - TA does, and AOE2 does, but A) it's a MS product, so I can't praise it here, and B) it's an "advanced" option and is not shown by default.)
My main beef with TA though is the fact it has a really crappy map editor. Map editting is what made Warcraft and Starcraft fun, it's what makes AOE2 fun and it's what makes me excited about Warcraft III - creating your own scenarios is a lot of fun. TA did have a map editor, but it crashed frequently and has a strange tile-based interface that made it rather difficult to do anything except on a well defined grid. (Don't think tiles as in AOE2 and Warcraft tiles, think tiles as in 5x5 collections of 32x32 pixel tiles that can be placed on a grid, where figuring out ways so that features do not look like they were placed in ... well, 5x5 tiles of 32x32 pixel tiles...)
Uh, I'll stop this now - I've kinda just rambled on. Anyway, TA was fun, but it isn't without some flaws, and I personally found its UI to be rather cluncky.
I hope this doesn't compete with my badly designed, rigid and difficult to use 3D engine I have been working on.
Don't reinvent the wheel - we've got plenty of those already. Don't forget to strive for "poorly documented" as well, and try and make sure it only runs on development Linux kernels - or go for broke, and make it only work on some strange NetBSD port. For added fun, require Mozilla while you're at it.