The real question is if there is anything interesting left in Vista to make it worth upgrading... Other than the fact that older products will be end-of-lifed tech support wise, it's looking like a hard sell that people should upgrade to this from Windows 2000, much less from XP.
It's a good thing the use of radio is regulated by the FCC and not by Massport then, huh? Seems like a safe bet that if Massport can't prove interference with a licensed usage of spectrum (I.E. something outside the 2.4Ghz range) and there's nothing in Continental's lease prohibiting it, Massport is going to have to suck it up and live without the ability to rape travelers in exchange for internet access.
An existing library of Xbox titles might help convince some of those people to buy an Xbox 360. After all, Microsoft does want to increase their market share with the next generation, don't they?
Gameplay doesn't have to be realistic or original to be fun. There is nothing wrong with reusing game mechanics over and over again until the end of time as long as the content is updated.
Articles like this fuel the tinkering that wrecks good games in future iterations. "Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within" is a perfect example of that. Saying you shouldn't make another game with 'cliche' mechanics and a new plot is like saying they shouldn't come out with any new books unless they have an updated page turning mechanic.
reduce the harm that some of this stuff causes when it inevitably gets into their hands.
Exposure doesn't cause harm. Exposure without understanding causes harm.
Since it's near impossible to shield children from all exposure from things their parents find objectionable, you could say that the lack of exposure causes harm, since without exposure there is no understanding.
Hiding things you disapprove of is bad. When they see something you don't like, don't cover their eyes, explain why it's bad. That way you have control over what they think about that thing. Otherwise they will be exposed to it when you're not around and forming their own opinions; opinions you may not approve of. Children don't learn your values if you hide them. This isn't limited to children either. Censorship in almost all forms is bad for this reason.
Have you ever seen a group of kids catch a glimpse of nudity in an 'R' rated film? You can tell the difference between the kids with parents who hide such things from their children and the kids with parents who teach them about those things. The kids who's parents have explained what was happening tend to cover their eyes when the nudity comes on. The kids who have never been exposed to it get really wide-eyed.
That's when parents will tell you that you (and everyone else) have no right to tell them how to raise their children.
And that's when you tell them that they should look in the fucking mirror because advocating for regulation of this stuff is telling people how to raise their children. Telling parent's that it's their responsiblilty to keep this stuff out of their kids hands if they don't want the kids to have it is the exact opposite of telling parents how to raise their kids; it's telling them that the way they raise their kids is up to them and not up to the government.
The difference between heavily restricted wintel boxes and non DRM Apples will be apparent even down to the level of J6P. Would this leave Apple as the only "General computer" left?
Nope. Computers with a trusted computing module can still be used for general purpose computing, but also have the ability to interoperate with media that is DRM protected for use on "trusted computers". The content is restricted, not the computer. If things are as you say, everybody will be making PCs that can run whatever you like, but Apple machines won't be able to play 'trusted computing' protected content.
As these anti-American and bizarre rules become increasingly accepted
What evidence is there that these rules will become widespread? For starters they would have to be effective to be widely adopted. Plus your assertion implies that you assume you can only get a job working for "the man" and you can't go into (ethical) business for yourself.
you take any job you can get. That's reality, dude!
Funny, I just heard on NPR today that hiring of new college grads is up 20% this year, and the job market is the best it's been since 1999.
The company I work for just laid off 13 people, and I quit. Everybody that looked had a job within two weeks including myself.
Reality is that even in a downturn we have low (by global standards) unemployment. Not only that, but with such easily available credit, and bankruptcy laws that are (still) fairly generous, it's pretty easy to start a business of your own.
Reality is that even in a downturn, organized labor continues to abuse their position of power. The leadership of the unions (at least those that remain in the AFL-CIO) maintain that big companies can take union demands in stride and that they're just holding back. Why do you think rules like this are even considered.
Seriously, nobody is forcing you, or anybody to work for a place with a policy like this. When you accept a job you enter into a contract with the employer. If you don't like the terms you don't have to sign up, or you can try to negotiate or you can start your own competing company with better polices and hire away all the company's employees, or whatever...
This ruling pisses me off more because all these people got paid to sit around and make this dumb-ass ruling instead of doing some real work.
The Lotus Notes client never ran on Solaris, AIX or even LINUX.
Just because they never supported it doesn't mean it didn't work. The clients for the newer OSs were scrapped when the "If it's not windows they can use a web browser" mentality came around.
The client was some impressive code. I recall the thing that struck me the most about it was the shear size of the document rendering code. It was thirteen million lines (yes, million). It supported every format I could think of that was in common use at the time.
Iris (the subsidiary of Lotus that writes Notes/Domino) had the best bug tracking and customer support tracking utility of any company I've ever worked for *by far*, and it was entirely Notes database based. Perhaps you have to be one of the guys who wrote it to make it work well, but they definatly had it doing some neat tricks.
The guy saying it was better than exchange until about 1990 left off a decade. For starters I don't even think there was a Microsoft Exchange in 1990.
I can't speak about what it could "do", but it is the worst, bar none, UI of any application I've ever used or seen.
What it could do was everything Access, Exchange, Outlook, Acrobat, Front Page, and Project could do before any of those programs got popular. Until 2002 or so it was better than Exchange in every way except for, as you point out, user interface. When an Exchange server crashed (back then), you were looking at 10 minutes per user to rebuild the database. In the 30+ thousand user environments that were the target of Notes, that was unacceptable.
I worked on Notes code base as an intern at Iris for a a few years back when I was in college, and the interface was a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' kind of thing. Multi-million dollar customers cried bloody murder if the UI changed at all, and new customers complained if you didn't. Notes 5 had at least 3 user selectable interfaces, one of which wasn't a half bad knockoff of Outlook 97. The other thing you have to remember about the interface is that it ran on Windows, MacOS, Solaris, s/390, AIX, Linux, and HP/UX, and looked the same on all of them. That's a feat most people don't even attempt these days. (It made for some fun debugging environments too. Unfortunatly they only support Windows for the UI now, but they brought all the cruft along for the ride.
I mean sure there's CPU's which are 50% faster again - but are they worth 350$ US ?
Processors are fast enough now that it's easy to wait for a 2x performance boost over a period of 4 or so years before upgrading.
Plus you've got to remember, this thing is two CPUs. I've been running my Dual MP 1800+ for almost 4 years now (Actually XPs with some conductive paint). A dual core 3800+ for $300 seems like a bargain to me. More than twice the performance for less money than I paid for what I've got. Near top-of-the-line SMP has never been cheaper.
I had to switch from DSL to cable when I moved, and i wish I could go back.
Comcast's IP blocks are in every RBL known to man, and the upstream speed sucks. With DSL you can pick an ISP that has non-blocked addresses and business grade SLAs. With cable I have to colocate a box to run my e-mail servers.
Easy, reload the Dell site every day until you hit a day with a sale and a coupon. I just bought a 21" monitor there and the total after shipping came to $529, but it was $489 before shipping.
They've got a 20.1" one there right now for $561.75, and two minutes on google will net you a $75 off coupon. They had a 19" version for $287 the other day... It's hard to find a good 19" CRT for much less that isn't a refurb.
BTW, that 20.1" monitor has a biger viewable size than your 21" CRT. Even the 19" version is bigger than the viewable on many 21" CRTs.
The Frugal Gamer website does a decent job of keeping tabs on the Dell sales and coupon codes.
not to mention a high end lcd costs over twice as much as a high end crt.
They did in 2003...
Now you can get a moderately high end (DVI, multi-inputs, 12ms response) 21" LCD for $500 or less while the equivalent 22" CRT costs considerably more. As of early 2005, quality LCDs are cheaper than quality CRTs. Of course this is mostly because there aren't many quality CRTs being made anymore, but that doesn't lessen the point.
I can't measure that my display is really 12ms, but I can tell it ghosts way less than displays I've seen advertised as 25ms. I'd like to know how you prove that it's 'bullshit'.
Try Walmart or Best Buy instead of EB Games.... There are TONS of childrens titles out there. There are lots of flash games for kids too. Somebody should take the keyboard away from some people.
I don't understand how what character is in the game has anything to do with how innovative or different the game play is. Are you trying to say that Mario Golf, Mario Cart, Mario Tennis, Super Mario Sunshine, Paper Mario, and Mario Party are all the same games beacuse they all feature Mario?
Leveraging an existing, well liked character is a great way to market innovative games, because people like to buy something that has a little bit of familarity. A lot of innovative games fail because they are too new for casual gamers to take a chance on. Take an innovative game and make Mario the main character though, and it'll sell. The best part is that everybody benefits... The people who like the tried and true, and all of us who wish games were more innovative.
This is why it's, to continue with your example, DeWalt's responsibility to defend their trademark. Since in the case of your example they didn't, you should have every reason to expect that they make it right if they hope for you to ever purchase a product that says "DeWalt" on it. It's their job to go after the guy that sold it to you, not yours. It's enough that we grant corporations intellectual property rights. We shouldn't, as individuals, have to police them as well.
Littleton actually. If you want you can come get one... I've had this pile of machines for two years and I still haven't managed to get rid of them all.. They're 1U and 2U rack-mount. No AGP...
Same deal here. A judges order can take the form of a warrant. Where do you think warrants come from, and what do you think happens to you if you don't comply?
The hardest part won't be giving it away. [...] This is probably the best way to ensure that your gift ends up in the right hands.
This guy is more noble than me... I just want the shit I've got out of my house. If you want a dual P3 700 or a 400mhz Sparc64 or some cat5 patch cables, please, dear god, come and get them out of my basement. They're not of sufficient value for the troubles of eBay, and I'm far to lazy to drive or ship them anywhere... If you're going to use them to develop free software, or use them for teaching, all the better.
The thing is... It's harder than you think to find somebody who wants an old machine enough to actually come get it.
How about A-12 #06925 on the deck(!) of the USS Intrepid?
What are the (!) and ? for? It's not like anything there is secret, or even a potential military target. The Intrepid (which is exactly what's in that picture) has been docked there on the west side of Manhattan for decades... If the resolution were higher you could see the tourists.
Slashdot Mirror
The real question is if there is anything interesting left in Vista to make it worth upgrading... Other than the fact that older products will be end-of-lifed tech support wise, it's looking like a hard sell that people should upgrade to this from Windows 2000, much less from XP.
It's a good thing the use of radio is regulated by the FCC and not by Massport then, huh? Seems like a safe bet that if Massport can't prove interference with a licensed usage of spectrum (I.E. something outside the 2.4Ghz range) and there's nothing in Continental's lease prohibiting it, Massport is going to have to suck it up and live without the ability to rape travelers in exchange for internet access.
Most people don't own an Xbox.
An existing library of Xbox titles might help convince some of those people to buy an Xbox 360. After all, Microsoft does want to increase their market share with the next generation, don't they?
Gameplay doesn't have to be realistic or original to be fun. There is nothing wrong with reusing game mechanics over and over again until the end of time as long as the content is updated.
Articles like this fuel the tinkering that wrecks good games in future iterations. "Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within" is a perfect example of that. Saying you shouldn't make another game with 'cliche' mechanics and a new plot is like saying they shouldn't come out with any new books unless they have an updated page turning mechanic.
reduce the harm that some of this stuff causes when it inevitably gets into their hands.
Exposure doesn't cause harm. Exposure without understanding causes harm.
Since it's near impossible to shield children from all exposure from things their parents find objectionable, you could say that the lack of exposure causes harm, since without exposure there is no understanding.
Hiding things you disapprove of is bad. When they see something you don't like, don't cover their eyes, explain why it's bad. That way you have control over what they think about that thing. Otherwise they will be exposed to it when you're not around and forming their own opinions; opinions you may not approve of. Children don't learn your values if you hide them. This isn't limited to children either. Censorship in almost all forms is bad for this reason.
Have you ever seen a group of kids catch a glimpse of nudity in an 'R' rated film? You can tell the difference between the kids with parents who hide such things from their children and the kids with parents who teach them about those things. The kids who's parents have explained what was happening tend to cover their eyes when the nudity comes on. The kids who have never been exposed to it get really wide-eyed.
That's when parents will tell you that you (and everyone else) have no right to tell them how to raise their children.
And that's when you tell them that they should look in the fucking mirror because advocating for regulation of this stuff is telling people how to raise their children. Telling parent's that it's their responsiblilty to keep this stuff out of their kids hands if they don't want the kids to have it is the exact opposite of telling parents how to raise their kids; it's telling them that the way they raise their kids is up to them and not up to the government.
The difference between heavily restricted wintel boxes and non DRM Apples will be apparent even down to the level of J6P. Would this leave Apple as the only "General computer" left?
Nope. Computers with a trusted computing module can still be used for general purpose computing, but also have the ability to interoperate with media that is DRM protected for use on "trusted computers". The content is restricted, not the computer. If things are as you say, everybody will be making PCs that can run whatever you like, but Apple machines won't be able to play 'trusted computing' protected content.
As these anti-American and bizarre rules become increasingly accepted
What evidence is there that these rules will become widespread? For starters they would have to be effective to be widely adopted. Plus your assertion implies that you assume you can only get a job working for "the man" and you can't go into (ethical) business for yourself.
you take any job you can get. That's reality, dude!
Funny, I just heard on NPR today that hiring of new college grads is up 20% this year, and the job market is the best it's been since 1999.
The company I work for just laid off 13 people, and I quit. Everybody that looked had a job within two weeks including myself.
Reality is that even in a downturn we have low (by global standards) unemployment. Not only that, but with such easily available credit, and bankruptcy laws that are (still) fairly generous, it's pretty easy to start a business of your own.
Reality is that even in a downturn, organized labor continues to abuse their position of power. The leadership of the unions (at least those that remain in the AFL-CIO) maintain that big companies can take union demands in stride and that they're just holding back. Why do you think rules like this are even considered.
Now how do you feel about the ruling?
Apathetic?
Seriously, nobody is forcing you, or anybody to work for a place with a policy like this. When you accept a job you enter into a contract with the employer. If you don't like the terms you don't have to sign up, or you can try to negotiate or you can start your own competing company with better polices and hire away all the company's employees, or whatever...
This ruling pisses me off more because all these people got paid to sit around and make this dumb-ass ruling instead of doing some real work.
What I'm saying is that they never released it, but it worked in house. In other words, the code supported it, but the binaries never shipped.
The Lotus Notes client never ran on Solaris, AIX or even LINUX.
Just because they never supported it doesn't mean it didn't work. The clients for the newer OSs were scrapped when the "If it's not windows they can use a web browser" mentality came around.
The client was some impressive code. I recall the thing that struck me the most about it was the shear size of the document rendering code. It was thirteen million lines (yes, million). It supported every format I could think of that was in common use at the time.
Iris (the subsidiary of Lotus that writes Notes/Domino) had the best bug tracking and customer support tracking utility of any company I've ever worked for *by far*, and it was entirely Notes database based. Perhaps you have to be one of the guys who wrote it to make it work well, but they definatly had it doing some neat tricks.
The guy saying it was better than exchange until about 1990 left off a decade. For starters I don't even think there was a Microsoft Exchange in 1990.
I can't speak about what it could "do", but it is the worst, bar none, UI of any application I've ever used or seen.
What it could do was everything Access, Exchange, Outlook, Acrobat, Front Page, and Project could do before any of those programs got popular. Until 2002 or so it was better than Exchange in every way except for, as you point out, user interface. When an Exchange server crashed (back then), you were looking at 10 minutes per user to rebuild the database. In the 30+ thousand user environments that were the target of Notes, that was unacceptable.
I worked on Notes code base as an intern at Iris for a a few years back when I was in college, and the interface was a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' kind of thing. Multi-million dollar customers cried bloody murder if the UI changed at all, and new customers complained if you didn't. Notes 5 had at least 3 user selectable interfaces, one of which wasn't a half bad knockoff of Outlook 97. The other thing you have to remember about the interface is that it ran on Windows, MacOS, Solaris, s/390, AIX, Linux, and HP/UX, and looked the same on all of them. That's a feat most people don't even attempt these days. (It made for some fun debugging environments too. Unfortunatly they only support Windows for the UI now, but they brought all the cruft along for the ride.
I mean sure there's CPU's which are 50% faster again - but are they worth 350$ US ?
Processors are fast enough now that it's easy to wait for a 2x performance boost over a period of 4 or so years before upgrading.
Plus you've got to remember, this thing is two CPUs. I've been running my Dual MP 1800+ for almost 4 years now (Actually XPs with some conductive paint). A dual core 3800+ for $300 seems like a bargain to me. More than twice the performance for less money than I paid for what I've got. Near top-of-the-line SMP has never been cheaper.
I had to switch from DSL to cable when I moved, and i wish I could go back.
Comcast's IP blocks are in every RBL known to man, and the upstream speed sucks. With DSL you can pick an ISP that has non-blocked addresses and business grade SLAs. With cable I have to colocate a box to run my e-mail servers.
Easy, reload the Dell site every day until you hit a day with a sale and a coupon. I just bought a 21" monitor there and the total after shipping came to $529, but it was $489 before shipping.
They've got a 20.1" one there right now for $561.75, and two minutes on google will net you a $75 off coupon. They had a 19" version for $287 the other day... It's hard to find a good 19" CRT for much less that isn't a refurb.
BTW, that 20.1" monitor has a biger viewable size than your 21" CRT. Even the 19" version is bigger than the viewable on many 21" CRTs.
The Frugal Gamer website does a decent job of keeping tabs on the Dell sales and coupon codes.
not to mention a high end lcd costs over twice as much as a high end crt.
They did in 2003...
Now you can get a moderately high end (DVI, multi-inputs, 12ms response) 21" LCD for $500 or less while the equivalent 22" CRT costs considerably more. As of early 2005, quality LCDs are cheaper than quality CRTs. Of course this is mostly because there aren't many quality CRTs being made anymore, but that doesn't lessen the point.
I can't measure that my display is really 12ms, but I can tell it ghosts way less than displays I've seen advertised as 25ms. I'd like to know how you prove that it's 'bullshit'.
Good job for highlighting more cookie cutter Top 40's crap, MTV. Way to go.
It's not about whether you like the music or hate it, or if it's popular or original or whatever... They get paid to advertise this music.
Methinks Sony's production woes are going to be their achillies heel this time...
I want to know, because I don't want to run into this guy in an online game on the off chance he'll say "Methinks" again.
It hurts my brain.
Try Walmart or Best Buy instead of EB Games.... There are TONS of childrens titles out there. There are lots of flash games for kids too. Somebody should take the keyboard away from some people.
I don't understand how what character is in the game has anything to do with how innovative or different the game play is. Are you trying to say that Mario Golf, Mario Cart, Mario Tennis, Super Mario Sunshine, Paper Mario, and Mario Party are all the same games beacuse they all feature Mario?
Leveraging an existing, well liked character is a great way to market innovative games, because people like to buy something that has a little bit of familarity. A lot of innovative games fail because they are too new for casual gamers to take a chance on. Take an innovative game and make Mario the main character though, and it'll sell. The best part is that everybody benefits... The people who like the tried and true, and all of us who wish games were more innovative.
This is why it's, to continue with your example, DeWalt's responsibility to defend their trademark. Since in the case of your example they didn't, you should have every reason to expect that they make it right if they hope for you to ever purchase a product that says "DeWalt" on it. It's their job to go after the guy that sold it to you, not yours. It's enough that we grant corporations intellectual property rights. We shouldn't, as individuals, have to police them as well.
Littleton actually. If you want you can come get one... I've had this pile of machines for two years and I still haven't managed to get rid of them all.. They're 1U and 2U rack-mount. No AGP...
Send me an e-mail.
Same deal here. A judges order can take the form of a warrant. Where do you think warrants come from, and what do you think happens to you if you don't comply?
The hardest part won't be giving it away. [...] This is probably the best way to ensure that your gift ends up in the right hands.
This guy is more noble than me... I just want the shit I've got out of my house. If you want a dual P3 700 or a 400mhz Sparc64 or some cat5 patch cables, please, dear god, come and get them out of my basement. They're not of sufficient value for the troubles of eBay, and I'm far to lazy to drive or ship them anywhere... If you're going to use them to develop free software, or use them for teaching, all the better.
The thing is... It's harder than you think to find somebody who wants an old machine enough to actually come get it.
How about A-12 #06925 on the deck(!) of the USS Intrepid?
What are the (!) and ? for? It's not like anything there is secret, or even a potential military target. The Intrepid (which is exactly what's in that picture) has been docked there on the west side of Manhattan for decades... If the resolution were higher you could see the tourists.