they're attacking one of the oldest technologies out there. I remember having a VCR back in the early '80s.
Wow! That is super old! Ancient even! I mean, up until now, they've only been attacking newer technologies, like paper copies of DeCSS, t-shirts and such, which are obviously a much more recent development than this VCR you speak of.
Did technology even exist before 1980? I guess not, because VCRs are amoung the oldest there is. I think the wheel was invented in 1977, shortly after the development of language.
Like that ancient PIII-933 I got a month ago? Yes, those were the days. I remember when I was the first person on my block to get a near-gHz PC... I was the envy of everyone in my country. For a mere $4000, I was on the cusp of gigahertz processing... opening up 87 instances of Microsoft Word was never easier.
Ah, but those simple days of pre-gHz processing are all but gone out here in the real world. Being the leading edge guy I am and obviously needing to keep up with the times and after hours of putting it off, I finally made the upgrade to the 1133 mHz P3.
Oh, sweet nostalgia! The 1133 performs as well as my pre-pre-gHz 850! Why, it seems like only months ago when the most I could get out of my desktop was a paltry 180 fps in Q3A. Happy days are here again!
How did our ancient pre-gHz brethren survive with such quaint technology?!
MacOS: Everyone at the airline looks the same. When you ask the stewardess how much longer it will take to get there, she tells you, "You don't need to know, we don't want you to know, so shut up." All planes at MacAir are translucent cubes, come in multiple colors and only have one wing.
Unix: Everyone taking the flight brings one piece of the plane and begins construction, constantly bickering about what kind of plane they're going to build. After it's built, everyone boards the plane heading to Washington, DC. After entering "grep washington" and travelling 2,000 mph en route, you arrive at Calgary.
Windows 95: There are no security checks at the airline. Instead, everyone can enter and leave the plane at a whim, including during flight. There are no landing strips for Win95 Airlines, as all planes simply crash at their location.
Windows 98: Similar to Win95 Airlines, AirWin98 crashes less often, but mid air collisions are more frequent.
Windows NT: After boarding the plane, everyone on board says the password in unison. A single passenger then exits the plane with a hammer and a piece of paper, writes down the destination and nails it to the fuselage, whereupon the flight takes off and crashes into open sea.
OS/2: Although it claims to have over 9 million regular passangers, you never actually see anybody flying on AirOS/2. Occaisonally, when too many people board OS/2 jets, they explode for seemingly no reason.
*BSD: All of Air*BSD's planes are B-2 bombers, fly all day long and are rarely noticed by the average passanger. When a jet breaks down, it's helpful to have a pilot who has flown BSD's jets for at least 10 years.
linux: All passangers sit on the tarmac in the outline of a jet and make whooshing noises religiously, pretending they're actually going somewhere.
Q. How many Microsoft support personel does it take to replace a lightbulb? A. We have issue this problem Support Number 31415567 and are currently assigning a technician to help you solve your lightbulb problem. We will contact you when a technician becomes available.
Q. How many Windows programmers does it take to create a lightbulb? A. 472 -- one to write WinGetLightBulbBox(), one to write WinRemoveLightFromBox(), one to write WinCheckLightSwitch()....
Q. How many Microsoft support tech's does it take to fix a lighbulb? A. Well, actually you must be the problem, because we have a copy of the lightbulb here in our office and it's working fine...
Q. How many Microsoft debuggers does it take to replace a lightbulb? A. None, they just notice it's burnt out.
Q. How many Microsoft programmers does it take to fix a lightbulb? A. None, they just write darkness up as a new and useful feature.
Q. How many Microsoft developers does it take to replace a lightbulb? A. Three -- two to hold the ladder steady and one to screw the lightbulb into a sink faucet.
Q. How many Microsoft employees does it take to replace a lightbulb? A. None. They live in eternal darkness.
... unintelligible blue screens of death that tell us lots of useless numbers and memory addresses but nothing of any use, and midi that plays randomly.
How difficult is it to bring up a window that says, "Excel crashed, your work is gone, loser."
Instead I get a midi of 'Start Me Up' and some memory addresses. Killer!
For your pleasure and off-topic fun, a handy lexicon of Microsoft PR translations:
Microsoft is getting free advertisements from electronic billboard operators!
No wonder there's so many Windows bugs! Bill Gates, in all of his genius and luminating brilliance, told his Windows devs to include a sneaky billboard function into the win32 api (WinCreateBillboardError()) that's called on all billboards to secretly promote Windows!
Or some pro-linux billboard operator has been playing tricks on poor Bill
Q: How many Bill Gates' does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Just one. He just holds the lightbulb still and lets the world revolve around him.
I've been playing Bubble Bobble and Super Bubble Bobble (which is identical to Bubble Bobble except it has Super on the title screen) for the past two weeks now. I was into it big time back in da day (circa 1989 when it was released) and just this week bet my high score of 1,869,840 on a single life.
The NES version was good, but it doesn't beat the arcade by any stretch... and Bubble Bobble 2 (NES) and Rainbow Islands (The Story of Bubble Bobble 2) sucked...
It might not come with a native boot-to-DOS mode, but here's what I usually do on my NT installs:
Partition the disk so that you have a small FAT partition to hold DOS and a larger partition for NT. I usually use ~100 MB for the FAT partition.
Install DOS (or hell, linux, DR-DOS, PC-DOS, whatever -- I usually use MS-DOS 6.2 myself) onto the 100 MB partition.
Install WinNT on the larger partition. The NT Boot Loader should include three options now -- the regular boot, the VGA boot and MS-DOS.
This DOS partition comes in handy if you're using NTFS because any important files that you want to get back after a complete NT meltdown can be placed on the DOS partition, which you can boot to even if NT goes beserk. You can also read that partition if you use a DOS boot disk (or Win9x, linux or what have you). Of course, that DOS partition doesn't afford you any NT security, so keep that in mind.
A SuperDisk is similar to a Zip disk. It has a capacity of 120 MB and looks very similar to a standard 3.5" floppy disk. (Actually, it's dimensions are identical, and the only real difference in appearance is the shutter.)
SuperDisk is an Imation technology. It's closed, which really sucks, because one of the reasons the 3.5" floppy because such a hit was because anyone could make them. Not so with the SuperDisk.
SuperDisks only work with SuperDisk drives, like the LS-120, although they will fit in a regular floppy drive. SuperDisk drives are also backwardly compatible with regular floppies. USB, parallel, serial and internal models are available.
I have one, but only because it was free. I find it useful for taking home big files from work, since I have a T1 connection at work and a 33.6 connection at home. I'm not a fan of the closed nature of Imation and their SuperDisks, but it comes in handy when I'm taking home 10 mp3s or some mpegs.
Remember ZipSlack? It was quite similar, but used a 100 MB Zip disk. It also usd the UMSDOS filesystem, and thus could simply be placed into a Windows/DOS directory and used from there.
This is still cool, though, because I have an LS-120 and not a Zip drive.
It makes me yearn for the days when you bought an album for the album, not for the one hit wonder. You heard the single, the single was good, then you bought the album and the whole frickin' thing was good.
Albums like Pet Sounds or Sgt. Pepper, Led Zep IV or Who's Next.
The idea of an album as a solid 50 minutes of music has been lost in the quagmire of Britney Spears, 'NSync and the dozens (nay, hundreds) of bands who
Produce entire albums consisting of one song changed ever so slightly (Changing lyrics like "I want you back baby" to "Baby, I want you back" doesn't make two different songs, Boy Bands); or
Produce a one-hit wonder that urges people to buy their worthless album that contains said one-hit wonder and 50 minutes of garbage. The music is totally disposable. If it was never released, it wouldn't have mattered because it influences no one and doesn't add anything to our culture, whereas the real albums (Are You Experienced?, Highway 61 Revisited, etc.) affect people, change music and add something. Those were real albums, not 50 minutes of fluff, and they weren't propelled by a one-hit wonder.
These days, the album isn't worth the $17 the record companies say it is. Why pay for the entire album when there's just one good song on it? Why release albums these days at all? Why not just release the single and forget about the rest of the tracks?
Or at least let us pick and choose our tracks so we can weed out the fluff and just concentrate on those one-hit wonders. Let me download a song for $1 or whatever so I don't have to shell out $17 for the entire useless album.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean RMS and his cronies?
J
Wow! That is super old! Ancient even! I mean, up until now, they've only been attacking newer technologies, like paper copies of DeCSS, t-shirts and such, which are obviously a much more recent development than this VCR you speak of.
Did technology even exist before 1980? I guess not, because VCRs are amoung the oldest there is. I think the wheel was invented in 1977, shortly after the development of language.
J
Freecell granny probably just needs a deck of cards, not a frickin' solitaire server.
J
Like that ancient PIII-933 I got a month ago? Yes, those were the days. I remember when I was the first person on my block to get a near-gHz PC... I was the envy of everyone in my country. For a mere $4000, I was on the cusp of gigahertz processing... opening up 87 instances of Microsoft Word was never easier.
Ah, but those simple days of pre-gHz processing are all but gone out here in the real world. Being the leading edge guy I am and obviously needing to keep up with the times and after hours of putting it off, I finally made the upgrade to the 1133 mHz P3.
Oh, sweet nostalgia! The 1133 performs as well as my pre-pre-gHz 850! Why, it seems like only months ago when the most I could get out of my desktop was a paltry 180 fps in Q3A. Happy days are here again!
How did our ancient pre-gHz brethren survive with such quaint technology?!
J
Because they're is there around here.
J
Unless you've overloaded the operator >>, which you haven't.
J
crap, preview, preview.
fdiv bug.
J
Did you hear Intel found the cause of the fdiv big?
Apparently it was classified as a preying mantissa.
J
This case has all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster!
Or at the very least, an after school movie of the week...
J
Windows ME -- kept being promised, "Any day now."
Windows ME -- took a lot longer to actually arrive
Windows ME -- crawls on a P100
Windows ME -- will be used to judge Bill Gates
Windows ME -- turns perfectly good computers into furniture
Windows ME -- remembered for weak memory protection
Windows ME -- was created from Windows 95
Windows ME -- has no shame
Coincidence?
J
Haven't you been watching TV? There's almost 20 DeVry campuses all across the US! They're serious about America's success!
J
If operating systems were airlines:
MacOS: Everyone at the airline looks the same. When you ask the stewardess how much longer it will take to get there, she tells you, "You don't need to know, we don't want you to know, so shut up." All planes at MacAir are translucent cubes, come in multiple colors and only have one wing.
Unix: Everyone taking the flight brings one piece of the plane and begins construction, constantly bickering about what kind of plane they're going to build. After it's built, everyone boards the plane heading to Washington, DC. After entering "grep washington" and travelling 2,000 mph en route, you arrive at Calgary.
Windows 95: There are no security checks at the airline. Instead, everyone can enter and leave the plane at a whim, including during flight. There are no landing strips for Win95 Airlines, as all planes simply crash at their location.
Windows 98: Similar to Win95 Airlines, AirWin98 crashes less often, but mid air collisions are more frequent.
Windows NT: After boarding the plane, everyone on board says the password in unison. A single passenger then exits the plane with a hammer and a piece of paper, writes down the destination and nails it to the fuselage, whereupon the flight takes off and crashes into open sea.
OS/2: Although it claims to have over 9 million regular passangers, you never actually see anybody flying on AirOS/2. Occaisonally, when too many people board OS/2 jets, they explode for seemingly no reason.
*BSD: All of Air*BSD's planes are B-2 bombers, fly all day long and are rarely noticed by the average passanger. When a jet breaks down, it's helpful to have a pilot who has flown BSD's jets for at least 10 years.
linux: All passangers sit on the tarmac in the outline of a jet and make whooshing noises religiously, pretending they're actually going somewhere.
J
... not without precedent, as I believe you will find that Superman once did it to save Lois Lane's life in Superman.
Besides, I'm sure that Bill Gates wants to think that if there's one man who can stop the world from spinning, it's him.
J
Q. How many Microsoft support personel does it take to replace a lightbulb?
A. We have issue this problem Support Number 31415567 and are currently assigning a technician to help you solve your lightbulb problem. We will contact you when a technician becomes available.
Q. How many Windows programmers does it take to create a lightbulb?
A. 472 -- one to write WinGetLightBulbBox(), one to write WinRemoveLightFromBox(), one to write WinCheckLightSwitch()....
Q. How many Microsoft support tech's does it take to fix a lighbulb?
A. Well, actually you must be the problem, because we have a copy of the lightbulb here in our office and it's working fine...
Q. How many Microsoft debuggers does it take to replace a lightbulb?
A. None, they just notice it's burnt out.
Q. How many Microsoft programmers does it take to fix a lightbulb?
A. None, they just write darkness up as a new and useful feature.
Q. How many Microsoft developers does it take to replace a lightbulb?
A. Three -- two to hold the ladder steady and one to screw the lightbulb into a sink faucet.
Q. How many Microsoft employees does it take to replace a lightbulb?
A. None. They live in eternal darkness.
I've got a million of them.
J
How difficult is it to bring up a window that says, "Excel crashed, your work is gone, loser."
Instead I get a midi of 'Start Me Up' and some memory addresses. Killer!
For your pleasure and off-topic fun, a handy lexicon of Microsoft PR translations:
- Loads applications 50% faster! -- experience crashes 50% faster
- Multitasking! -- crashes multiple programs at once
- Backwardly compatible! -- will also crash your existing software
- Network ready! -- crashes multiple systems at once
- Multimedia ready! -- experience the astonishing sights and sounds of crashing in vivid VGA color
- Free MSN subscription! -- go online and talk to other Windows users about their crashing experiences
- Mac-like interface! -- 11 years of development and it's not even original
- User friendly! -- pictures of clouds
JMicrosoft is getting free advertisements from electronic billboard operators!
No wonder there's so many Windows bugs! Bill Gates, in all of his genius and luminating brilliance, told his Windows devs to include a sneaky billboard function into the win32 api (WinCreateBillboardError()) that's called on all billboards to secretly promote Windows!
Or some pro-linux billboard operator has been playing tricks on poor Bill
Q: How many Bill Gates' does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Just one. He just holds the lightbulb still and lets the world revolve around him.
J
Amen to that brutha!
I've been playing Bubble Bobble and Super Bubble Bobble (which is identical to Bubble Bobble except it has Super on the title screen) for the past two weeks now. I was into it big time back in da day (circa 1989 when it was released) and just this week bet my high score of 1,869,840 on a single life.
The NES version was good, but it doesn't beat the arcade by any stretch... and Bubble Bobble 2 (NES) and Rainbow Islands (The Story of Bubble Bobble 2) sucked...
J
With decent comp, a joy stick and a 21" monitor, it can be just as good. And with better resolution, too.
And where else am I going to play Custer's Revenge?!
J
Microsoft is opening its software GPLing everything it owns! Windows 2001 code comes first, on September 1!
Now we just sit back and wait for the C|NET exclusive expose on Microsoft's new open source strategy...
J
According to that 'Behind the Laughter' episode this past season, they're in Kentucky.
J
- Partition the disk so that you have a small FAT partition to hold DOS and a larger partition for NT. I usually use ~100 MB for the FAT partition.
- Install DOS (or hell, linux, DR-DOS, PC-DOS, whatever -- I usually use MS-DOS 6.2 myself) onto the 100 MB partition.
- Install WinNT on the larger partition. The NT Boot Loader should include three options now -- the regular boot, the VGA boot and MS-DOS.
This DOS partition comes in handy if you're using NTFS because any important files that you want to get back after a complete NT meltdown can be placed on the DOS partition, which you can boot to even if NT goes beserk. You can also read that partition if you use a DOS boot disk (or Win9x, linux or what have you). Of course, that DOS partition doesn't afford you any NT security, so keep that in mind.J
A SuperDisk is similar to a Zip disk. It has a capacity of 120 MB and looks very similar to a standard 3.5" floppy disk. (Actually, it's dimensions are identical, and the only real difference in appearance is the shutter.)
SuperDisk is an Imation technology. It's closed, which really sucks, because one of the reasons the 3.5" floppy because such a hit was because anyone could make them. Not so with the SuperDisk.
SuperDisks only work with SuperDisk drives, like the LS-120, although they will fit in a regular floppy drive. SuperDisk drives are also backwardly compatible with regular floppies. USB, parallel, serial and internal models are available.
I have one, but only because it was free. I find it useful for taking home big files from work, since I have a T1 connection at work and a 33.6 connection at home. I'm not a fan of the closed nature of Imation and their SuperDisks, but it comes in handy when I'm taking home 10 mp3s or some mpegs.
J
Remember ZipSlack? It was quite similar, but used a 100 MB Zip disk. It also usd the UMSDOS filesystem, and thus could simply be placed into a Windows/DOS directory and used from there.
This is still cool, though, because I have an LS-120 and not a Zip drive.
J
Albums like Pet Sounds or Sgt. Pepper, Led Zep IV or Who's Next.
The idea of an album as a solid 50 minutes of music has been lost in the quagmire of Britney Spears, 'NSync and the dozens (nay, hundreds) of bands who
Produce entire albums consisting of one song changed ever so slightly (Changing lyrics like "I want you back baby" to "Baby, I want you back" doesn't make two different songs, Boy Bands); or
Produce a one-hit wonder that urges people to buy their worthless album that contains said one-hit wonder and 50 minutes of garbage. The music is totally disposable. If it was never released, it wouldn't have mattered because it influences no one and doesn't add anything to our culture, whereas the real albums (Are You Experienced?, Highway 61 Revisited, etc.) affect people, change music and add something. Those were real albums, not 50 minutes of fluff, and they weren't propelled by a one-hit wonder.
These days, the album isn't worth the $17 the record companies say it is. Why pay for the entire album when there's just one good song on it? Why release albums these days at all? Why not just release the single and forget about the rest of the tracks?
Or at least let us pick and choose our tracks so we can weed out the fluff and just concentrate on those one-hit wonders. Let me download a song for $1 or whatever so I don't have to shell out $17 for the entire useless album.
Perhaps slightly off-topic, but I needed to vent.
J
Isn't Windows ME a game?
;)
It's a joke at the very least.
J