Believe it or not, I use Microsoft's notation to make pointers to strings. While they use stuff like LPSTR (ugly - long pointer [32-bit] to a string), I do a
typedef char* pstr;
and
typedef const char* pcstr;
That solves the problem of your multiple-declarations. I suppose a lot of that is left over from C, where you had to declare all your data at the top of the block, but code like this is relatively clear (assuming you know what pstr is):
pstr begin, end, other;
and avoids the * notation, especially in a dynamic array of strings:
pstr* some2darray = new pstr[12]; some2darray[0] = new char[100];
The rules changed once Microsoft was declared as a monopoly. We now have reason to believe that any buyout of Nintendo is simply a tactic for Microsoft to gain control of the gaming industry--not an attempt to improve this industry.
Many of the buyouts in the past have been for failing companies. When a company as large as Microsoft throws $25 billion onto the table, we have reason to question their motives.
Nintendo has been a leading provider with their flagship N64, ever since the Nintendo, Game Boy, Super Nintendo and now the Game Cube. While the market share has shrunk considerably with the choice provided by Sony's Playstation, you cannot discredit the meaning of the Nintendo brand.
The fact that Microsoft can, financially, simply scoop up these companies--albeit in unexplored markets (before the X-Box came about) really scares me. To think that the home entertainment world would be exposed to BSODs in their very own living room sickens me to death. Next thing you know, Microsoft demands 2/3 rack space on gaming shelves and a 60%+ size increase of the advertised X-Box logo over competitors (Canadians will recognize this inadvertant reference to Quebec's language advertisement policies).
So, while major distributors of games still make a great deal of their income from non-Microsoft games and sales of products from other giants such as Sony, Microsoft is relatively powerless to dictate what gets sold and where (see: Microsoft's power over OEMs, links too numerous to mention).
So...
Linux and UNIX groupies like you give the community a bad name.
This has nothing to do with Linux or UNIX. This is the gaming entertainment industry and an oversized, broken oil tanker leaking its decrepid monopoly resources upon a growing industry. Stick your unrelated platform opinions elsewhere.
And what was wrong with trying to buy Nintedo?
As I said, this is no ordinary company trying to buy Nintendo. While Microsoft has produced numerous PC games, the console industry, prior to the X-Box, is uncharted by Microsoft. Their purchase of one of the leading brand figures, based upon their monopoly, is theoretically disastrous.
so the product will be even better?
Even the most innate of/.'ers is familiar with Microsoft definition of "better". "What's good for us is good for the industry."
Do you accuse Saturn to rip off Ford because they're making cars.
Pick your fight with someone else. Until you've actually been to the dealer and have been showered by the unexpected attention they pay to their customers, keep your keys out of the ignition and your trunk shut.
Because otherwise, the decision Joe User has to make is, do I want to keep using StarOffice that came or free on my PC, or do I want to pay $500 to get Microsoft office?
As sorry as I am, I'm afraid that might not be entirely true. Users want what they're used to, and that mostly includes the software that they use at work. More companies use Microsoft Office than Sun StarOffice.
You might argue and say, "but StarOffice is better, more companies should use it!" It might be better, or it might not be. I certainly have an easier time using it than MS Office, personally. But then, what if your office software screws up, as happens often enough. Who are you going to blame? Sun? They don't claim liability on their software. Neither does Microsoft, nor does any smart company. But the difference is, it's easy enough for a company to claim "our Microsoft software screwed up so we couldn't deliver on time." Who's going to argue with that? Everyone's had it happen to them. Sun, of course, doesn't have as established a reputation (in end-user computing anyways) as Microsoft (good or bad).
The same goes for free software. Why should a company use free software when they have no one to blame? They could blame it on Linus (god forbid), they could even blame it on Red Hat (a relatively viable solution, as they do back their products). While open source companies like Red Hat have worked to establish a reputation, there's no replacement for Microsoft as head scapegoat.
I suspect things may change eventually, when corporations are able to respond to these scapegoat claims with, "why use a monopolist's software? You know there are better solutions."
They say they're "managing" the use of P2P apps, and that's all they say. Nothing about blocking. And you may still use these file sharing services, only you are subject to a restricted download. What did the writer say, sub-kb speeds? That's about what I get from most users on Kazaa.
On a lucky streak, I can get several kb. A little more now that my winbox is masqed behind my linux box (and I'm not subject to windows crappy IP stack as the bottleneck). Xtra must really be doing some heavy filtering on their server side to discriminate against P2P apps, if that is the case. Consequently, my connection is DSL, I'm in Canada, and I usually get around 150kb on a good day.
The reference to vampires and blood-sucking indivuduals gets tiresome. Talk about editorializing.
It's nice to see Microsoft acknowledging that we can, per se, use the GPL as a weapon against dominating corporations. The GPL allows us to defend ourselves against such tactics as closed implementations. We're all familiar with the prediction that, if Microsoft had their way, no software other than that released by Microsoft would be able (read: permitted) to interact with Microsoft's own software.
I respect the right of a company to protect their intellectual property. If you put a countless number of man hours into developing a product, you want to protect theft. I encourage Microsoft to develop their own software. I encourage them to restrict the way their software is released to the public.
Despite this, I scoff at the yet-another-underhanded-tactic of limiting software produced by other organizations. Not only are they limiting competition, they're actually saying that without Microsoft's permission, you can't develop software.
You might argue and say, "yes, but the licensing agreement only limits GPL-like licenses, and doesn't prevent a company from developing their own in-house, non-GPL implementation of this CIFS protocol". But then we're all familiar with the strength with which Microsoft withholds information. Consequently, those choosing not to release their CIFS implementation under GPL must still request information from Microsoft regarding this standard. So, if Microsoft doesn't want you to write it, you don't write it.
Like I said, protect your software, but don't inhibit other companies or organizations for writing their own. It's clearly "if we can't write good software, no one will."
I know they were running Apache/BSD... A quick check of Netcraft would show they switched to IIS5/Win2k, or at least changed the headers; additionally they changed the IP address and redirected the DNS entry to the new server. I'm not saying they didn't run FreeBSD, I'm saying that they either switched to IIS5/Win2k and did a recursive copy of the web root (hence the leftover FreeBSD binary), or they forged the headers.
They really did a number on this one. For a few days, while the site was down, they were running the default anonymous FTP server. It's still up, but they removed all traces of FreeBSD.
You can still log in as anonymous, but there's just a dummy html file there. Before, you could find/bin/ls. Doing a 'file' on it revealed it was a FreeBSD binary. Hmm.. hanging around on an IIS server? Wow, imagine that.
The PR people know their stuff. I would imagine they took plenty of courses during those several days of downtime to learn how 'cp -R *' actually works.
This has been around for quite some time. I remember being 14 (7 years ago) and seeing a documentary on TV about cars in England with this technology. There was a microphone in the cab of the car, as well as numerous speakers. The microphone would pick up the noise from the engine and the wind rushing past the car, the computer chip would invert it and play it back; the result? A perfectly quiet ride. Additionally, it featured a control panel that simulated noises of different cars. You could make it sound like an F1 racer, or a Nascar engine, etc. The car wasn't terribly attractive though (but the female showcasing it was:).
It doesn't matter whether or not it's random (it actually repeats the randomization algorithm every 12 hours, so to get an accurate response for your position you would have to wait 12 hours, after which you would get a totally different error pattern). As long as you take two samples at the same time - one at the base station and the other at the roaming device. They're both off by the same amount; it has nothing to do with randomness.
It was around 100 meters in any direction from your current location. And yes, it was by the U.S. government to prevent people from bombing the White House. As if a bomb big enough, off by 100 meters, would actually miss the white house.
They removed it sometime last year, I believe. With 9-11, there are rumors they may impose the restriction again, but that's assuming any primary threats have missiles capable of using GPS.
This restriction would pose little or no problem to people using it for the purposes this article describes. GPS correction is available through a "post-processing" method. You position a GPS base station at a known location. If you take samples at exactly the same time from different locations, those locations are off by exactly the same error vector. So, you simply compare the base station samples to the base station position to get the error vector, and apply this error vector to the roaming samples to get your almost-exact position.
I say almost exact because signals are disrupted by various things. Light and sound are waves; they move at a constant speed as long as the travel medium doesn't change. As a consequence, like sound, light is affected by the doppler effect. It usually isn't significant, but can throw your results off nonetheless.
Clouds, rain, snow, buildings, etc. can also affect the results, as well as the SNR (signal to noise ratio -- measures the amount of readable data to background noise). If the SNR is high, it's unlikely the results will be thrown off significantly. All these problems are virtually unavoidable unless the weather is clear, you have a high channel capacity on your GPS device (8 is usually good, I think available satellites above the horizon range from about 8-11, high on elevated terrain), and there are few if any buildings around.
You need at least n+1 satellites in reach to get nth-dimensional results. So, for planar (2d) positions (latitude/longitude, or azimuth or whatever) you need 3 satellites, and 4 for spatial (3d, 2d + a z-position, your elevation).
The more satellites, the more precise your results are. If the base station is within 500 metres away, and you have real-time correction (which would still help with climate problems), you can get sub-centimetre accuracy.
Does anybody have any idea what port this embedded service uses, or any way of finding it out? I think in four weeks (or more) I may run a simple scanner, like ethereal, on my Linux box. I have about 6 Windoze machines masqued off it to my ADSL provider, so I may just block the port through my firewall, so anyone using Kazaa can still use it, EULA be damned.
I anticipated an overly unbalanced article, being that
(MSNBC is a Microsoft - NBC joint venture.)
and held my breath while I read the article. Fortunately, it does do a good job of picking on all the top players in the industry, though the article truly has no point.
I found myself hunting around for a "Next>" link at the bottom of the article, confused at the abrupt end. None. Then I re-read the "conclusion":
Playing a fighting game without good controls is like going to a Milli Vanilli concert in which the dubbed music does not work. I mean, what's the point?
That doesn't explain this article at all. It explains partially what to look for in a fighting game.
What is the point of this article? It's clearly not an extensive review of the worst games. I consider myself an adequate judge of a good game, after purchasing (interpret how you may) over 100 games for the original Playstation, and another 20 for the PS2. I've seen far worse games than what they have here, many not worth the price of rental. Granted, there's nothing worse than a fractional frame-rate or the controller-breaking frustration of a ridiculously difficult game, but why warn consumers about the pothole in front of them, only to have them fall into the next?
I counted about 8 games to avoid. I'd be willing to bet there are more than just a few games that serve no other purpose on the shelves than to be load-bearing devices. Few are even worth the price of a blank CD (but you didn't hear that from me).
IMHO, if you want to write an article like this, give the do's and don'ts to selecting a game. Give suggestions on how to weed out the worst from the best. Don't just list a bunch of bad games, say why they're bad, plug a few consoles (any publicity is good publicity) and leave it at that.
(conclusion reduced to prevent conflict of interest)
Nice idea, but it won't work. People want variety. I've spent months on multiple-mountain slopes. Unless you're there during peak times, most of the runs are empty. Why do they keep the maintenance costs? People want something new. You want to fill that need, you landscape a new mountain. You can spend an entire day on a single mountain, then ski the next one over the following day. Or you could spend you're entire day going from one mountain to the next, only touching a chairlift a few times during the day.
Forget the breakdown of these chairlifts. If something mechanical goes wrong, the entire facility is down for however long it takes to repair. I can't see the advantage of the business model in this idea. It appears the farthest it will go from a consumer's perspective is atop someone's desk, plugged into a power outlet with little lego men falling over themselves and getting churned up in the mechanics.
I do, however, see the advantage for trainers. Less time on the lift means more time on the slopes; if you have the stamina, you could get much more training benefit out of an hour on this contraption than you would at a typical ski resort.
Although it looks like a snow-covered tilt-a-whirl, but I think I'll save my money and spend time at a real ski resort.
Read the story/.ers... it's $1.6 million, not $6 million. Still a significant increase over $16,000.
Re:"Netscape-style plug-in modules" - HUH?
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SuSE 7.3 vs XP
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· Score: 1
I don't quite understand this, it seems poorly researched. I have NEVER had a problem with viewing PDFs under IE; in fact, I can either right-click and "Save Link As..." or click on the PDF and hit the save button in the title bar, as you mentioned.
I can't remember a time when the save button wasn't there. I haven't used Netscape for a very long time, and I find it hard to believe they would stick with strictly Netscape plugins (I've never heard of a PDF Netscape plugin, but I'm probably uninformed), when the Acrobat Reader has such nice integration with Internet Explorer -- even the Netscape-plugin-less one that comes with XP and is touted on Microsoft's download sites.
Microsoft addressed that in Windows 2000 - the dialog must have popped up as a child of the active window. In 2000 and (I believe) ME and anything later, the window will appear in the background, while its title bar and taskbar will flash indicating that there's a new window that needs addressing.
You'll get the same problem in X apps under Linux - provided the dialogs popup from the active application; other than that you can always adjust your window manager preferences so new popups don't get the keyboard focus.
I had an identical problem back with Windows NT4; I was typing in ICQ and two dialogs, entirely separate from ICQ, popped up. I incidentally hit the spacebar in the midst of typing and dismissed both of them without reading what they were.
Essentially, if dialogs are popping up while you're typing, it's probably an interface issue with the application, not with Windows XP. I'm not a GUI wizard or anything, but I prefer text entry fields to validate when you click "OK" as opposed to while you're typing.
I dislike Windows as much as the next person, but I need it for development. If it wasn't for my job, I'd eliminate it entirely. But putting up with Windows is less grief than going without a job, especially with the current economy.
Other than that, complaining about intermittent dialogs is just nitpicking, and shouldn't decide your final decision on any OS.
Re:The PS2 is very interesting
on
LinuxWorld Summary
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The graphics engine itself is 128-bit. Anything that needs to be optimized is built right into the proprietary libraries (graphics synthesizers, etc). I saw a screen grab from the bootup of the Japanese kit awhile ago. The kernel had build-in support for the graphics synthesizing chip. So you can forget them shipping GIF and support for other graphics formats in the form of a library - they're built right into the chip. This is a major speed increase.
I see many people falling prey to the MHz game. The PS2 has a 300MHz processor, which is nowhere near that of the latest Pentium 4's (or the X-Box, for that matter). They're neglecting to mention that the PS2 has a RISC chip; its goal being to provide a small, but fast, instruction set. If you reduce the complexity of the chip, you increase the speed of the chip, regardless of the clock speed (to a certain extent). What the PS2's chip can run in two clock cycles might take a Pentium 4 five clock cycles.
Just remember the days of DEC (now Compaq) Alpha. A 300MHz Alpha could beat the heck out of any 600-800MHZ Pentium (AFAIK).
I just detest seeing Microsoft's comparison and their usual marketing techniques: PS2 - 300MHz, X-Box - 900MHz. They're taking advantage of the fact that a lot of gamers (not all) don't know the difference between the two architectures.
Very cool. I think the importance of an online survey is overstated, however, as many people can hide behind their computers and feel less obligated to give truthful--and important--responses.
I personally ranked indirect improvements to earth the most important: Studying other planets to learn more about earth, and accumulating resources from other planets. I'm not an astronomer (I'm a software developer), but feel the space race reflected a slight childish nature towards building bigger, better toys that will simply be jettisoned into outer space. I would also like to see less missions fail due to the risk of metric to imperial conversions.
The poll is closed, and there is a full disclaimer above the results:
On 21 December, ZDNet posted a story reporting the preliminary results of this poll, which showed a large majority of respondents who said they planned to deliver applications via Web services by the end of 2002 favoured Java for the job. At the time, Java outranked.Net by a factor of three in this poll. By early January, the position had reversed; the results are shown here. An investigation indicated that Microsoft employees used vote-rigging to distort the results. The full story can be found here.
The initial sale warranty lasts 90 days. If you plan on adding to the PS2 numbers by buying one, spend the extra $70USD (I think; it's $100CDN) to get the extended warranty (2 years after the 90-day initial warranty). My PS2 chickened out on me the other day, but thankfully, I bought the warranty, and it's at Sony getting fixed (no more Metal Gear Solid 2 for me for awhile; I also can't watch DVDs). Without the extended warranty, repairs will cost you almost $120USD ($175 CDN).
In other news, the original PlayStation crept up on gamers. Most people played the classic "Nintendo", others were experimenting with Sega, and a few took a dip into the TG-16. I think part of the reason the PS2 is so popular is from the attention the PS got during its several years in the limelight. I still remember sitting outside the doors of Toys 'R Us at 6:00am waiting to get in and pick up a PS2 (this was last October 26th).
I cringed at the sight of the X-Box; and at various screencaps of its infamous "green screens of death". I'm afraid the GameCube lost my vote. The N64 went out the door once they released Doom for $170CDN a few years ago.
IMHO it definitely leaves things to be desired. It's designed for the computer illiterate, evident in its improved (though not spectacular) user interface. I use it primary on my laptop, and run Linux on my PC as a networking gateway (and to watch TV).
I see plenty of features with which Microsoft has gone overkill. For example, they store a backup of all your system DLLs in \windows\system32\dllcache (assuming you have the default installation path set). This includes files for Internet Explorer, Movie Maker and Messenger. It also installs MSN Explorer by default, and you must manually remove it from your system through the control panel.
One of the biggest difficulties with migrating down to Windows XP is using old applications. Most work, though I do a lot of Windows CE development, and their development tools don't work. ActiveSync seems to go crazy, and won't establish a connection with the eMbedded Tools IDE. So much for backwards compatibility. Device connectability has always been a problem (with ActiveSync and the embedded development tools) but it's even worse on XP.
The memory footprint is huge - don't bother running it on any less than 128MB of RAM.
The Remote Assistance tool is reminiscent of *nix X Server/Client interface. I also find XP more stable than Windows 2000. You shouldn't be misled by the migration from Windows ME to Windows XP. They're designed under entirely different code bases. I think that may be the reason why Microsoft chose to rename NT5 to Windows 2000, to eliminate the first-glance impression that 9x and NT are two entirely different operating systems - which they are, but not for the benefit of marketing.
So much for open competition. If you have MSN Messenger on your system (ie: you haven't found a way to delete it), Outlook and Internet Explorer will launch it automatically. You must exit these two apps before you can close MSN Messenger. Alternatively, you can read-protect the file through the NTFS security features to prevent even the system from accessing it.
Microsoft also wants to dictate where you should store your files. If you save a web picture to a directory outside of your "My Documents\My Pictures" folder, this will be the default path until you re-open Internet Explorer. Then you have to navigate out of "My Documents\My Pictures" yet again. So much for the intelligent operating system.
I think the keenest feature is the font smoothing - You can enable ClearType font smoothing from the desktop settings panel, and fonts will look oh-so-crisp on laptop displays - even regular CRTs.
And.NET Passport? Yeah, it's integrated into Windows XP. Some of my friends are on MSN Messenger, so to chat with them, I have to integrate Passport into my Windows XP "experience". Of course, I already had one when Microsoft "upgraded" my Hotmail account to a Passport account.
SO... if you've been stuck with Windows ME, it's time for an upgrade. For all intents and purposes, XP still seems like the next step forward in the NT-branch of Windows OS's. If you're happy with Windows 2000, stick with that. Don't give up your limited freedom of choice by installing XP and having it force Internet Explorer, Messenger and Movie Maker on you. If you're thinking of going to Windows XP for its user interface configurability, don't bother. It comes with only the new "XP" theme, and the old Windows 2000 theme. You have to buy Plus! to get any more, and even then, there are only 4 cheesy themes that come with it.
If somebody found a solution to an NP complete problem, it would open the doors to a whole new world of algorithm efficiency. That's a small statement compared to how much easier it would make you computer science degree program.
Slashdot Mirror
or a 69-year-old asylum escapee
The rules changed once Microsoft was declared as a monopoly. We now have reason to believe that any buyout of Nintendo is simply a tactic for Microsoft to gain control of the gaming industry--not an attempt to improve this industry.
/.'ers is familiar with Microsoft definition of "better". "What's good for us is good for the industry."
Many of the buyouts in the past have been for failing companies. When a company as large as Microsoft throws $25 billion onto the table, we have reason to question their motives.
Nintendo has been a leading provider with their flagship N64, ever since the Nintendo, Game Boy, Super Nintendo and now the Game Cube. While the market share has shrunk considerably with the choice provided by Sony's Playstation, you cannot discredit the meaning of the Nintendo brand.
The fact that Microsoft can, financially, simply scoop up these companies--albeit in unexplored markets (before the X-Box came about) really scares me. To think that the home entertainment world would be exposed to BSODs in their very own living room sickens me to death. Next thing you know, Microsoft demands 2/3 rack space on gaming shelves and a 60%+ size increase of the advertised X-Box logo over competitors (Canadians will recognize this inadvertant reference to Quebec's language advertisement policies).
So, while major distributors of games still make a great deal of their income from non-Microsoft games and sales of products from other giants such as Sony, Microsoft is relatively powerless to dictate what gets sold and where (see: Microsoft's power over OEMs, links too numerous to mention).
So...
Linux and UNIX groupies like you give the community a bad name.
This has nothing to do with Linux or UNIX. This is the gaming entertainment industry and an oversized, broken oil tanker leaking its decrepid monopoly resources upon a growing industry. Stick your unrelated platform opinions elsewhere.
And what was wrong with trying to buy Nintedo?
As I said, this is no ordinary company trying to buy Nintendo. While Microsoft has produced numerous PC games, the console industry, prior to the X-Box, is uncharted by Microsoft. Their purchase of one of the leading brand figures, based upon their monopoly, is theoretically disastrous.
so the product will be even better?
Even the most innate of
Do you accuse Saturn to rip off Ford because they're making cars.
Pick your fight with someone else. Until you've actually been to the dealer and have been showered by the unexpected attention they pay to their customers, keep your keys out of the ignition and your trunk shut.
Because otherwise, the decision Joe User has to make is, do I want to keep using StarOffice that came or free on my PC, or do I want to pay $500 to get Microsoft office?
As sorry as I am, I'm afraid that might not be entirely true. Users want what they're used to, and that mostly includes the software that they use at work. More companies use Microsoft Office than Sun StarOffice.
You might argue and say, "but StarOffice is better, more companies should use it!" It might be better, or it might not be. I certainly have an easier time using it than MS Office, personally. But then, what if your office software screws up, as happens often enough. Who are you going to blame? Sun? They don't claim liability on their software. Neither does Microsoft, nor does any smart company. But the difference is, it's easy enough for a company to claim "our Microsoft software screwed up so we couldn't deliver on time." Who's going to argue with that? Everyone's had it happen to them. Sun, of course, doesn't have as established a reputation (in end-user computing anyways) as Microsoft (good or bad).
The same goes for free software. Why should a company use free software when they have no one to blame? They could blame it on Linus (god forbid), they could even blame it on Red Hat (a relatively viable solution, as they do back their products). While open source companies like Red Hat have worked to establish a reputation, there's no replacement for Microsoft as head scapegoat.
I suspect things may change eventually, when corporations are able to respond to these scapegoat claims with, "why use a monopolist's software? You know there are better solutions."
They say they're "managing" the use of P2P apps, and that's all they say. Nothing about blocking. And you may still use these file sharing services, only you are subject to a restricted download. What did the writer say, sub-kb speeds? That's about what I get from most users on Kazaa.
On a lucky streak, I can get several kb. A little more now that my winbox is masqed behind my linux box (and I'm not subject to windows crappy IP stack as the bottleneck). Xtra must really be doing some heavy filtering on their server side to discriminate against P2P apps, if that is the case. Consequently, my connection is DSL, I'm in Canada, and I usually get around 150kb on a good day.
The reference to vampires and blood-sucking indivuduals gets tiresome. Talk about editorializing.
Hahaha, I'm seeing about 10 people/sec rating the page. If only they had a better rating scheme (-1, Troll).
It's nice to see Microsoft acknowledging that we can, per se, use the GPL as a weapon against dominating corporations. The GPL allows us to defend ourselves against such tactics as closed implementations. We're all familiar with the prediction that, if Microsoft had their way, no software other than that released by Microsoft would be able (read: permitted) to interact with Microsoft's own software.
I respect the right of a company to protect their intellectual property. If you put a countless number of man hours into developing a product, you want to protect theft. I encourage Microsoft to develop their own software. I encourage them to restrict the way their software is released to the public.
Despite this, I scoff at the yet-another-underhanded-tactic of limiting software produced by other organizations. Not only are they limiting competition, they're actually saying that without Microsoft's permission, you can't develop software.
You might argue and say, "yes, but the licensing agreement only limits GPL-like licenses, and doesn't prevent a company from developing their own in-house, non-GPL implementation of this CIFS protocol". But then we're all familiar with the strength with which Microsoft withholds information. Consequently, those choosing not to release their CIFS implementation under GPL must still request information from Microsoft regarding this standard. So, if Microsoft doesn't want you to write it, you don't write it.
Like I said, protect your software, but don't inhibit other companies or organizations for writing their own. It's clearly "if we can't write good software, no one will."
I know they were running Apache/BSD... A quick check of Netcraft would show they switched to IIS5/Win2k, or at least changed the headers; additionally they changed the IP address and redirected the DNS entry to the new server. I'm not saying they didn't run FreeBSD, I'm saying that they either switched to IIS5/Win2k and did a recursive copy of the web root (hence the leftover FreeBSD binary), or they forged the headers.
They really did a number on this one. For a few days, while the site was down, they were running the default anonymous FTP server. It's still up, but they removed all traces of FreeBSD.
/bin/ls. Doing a 'file' on it revealed it was a FreeBSD binary. Hmm.. hanging around on an IIS server? Wow, imagine that.
You can still log in as anonymous, but there's just a dummy html file there. Before, you could find
The PR people know their stuff. I would imagine they took plenty of courses during those several days of downtime to learn how 'cp -R *' actually works.
This has been around for quite some time. I remember being 14 (7 years ago) and seeing a documentary on TV about cars in England with this technology. There was a microphone in the cab of the car, as well as numerous speakers. The microphone would pick up the noise from the engine and the wind rushing past the car, the computer chip would invert it and play it back; the result? A perfectly quiet ride. Additionally, it featured a control panel that simulated noises of different cars. You could make it sound like an F1 racer, or a Nascar engine, etc. The car wasn't terribly attractive though (but the female showcasing it was :).
It doesn't matter whether or not it's random (it actually repeats the randomization algorithm every 12 hours, so to get an accurate response for your position you would have to wait 12 hours, after which you would get a totally different error pattern). As long as you take two samples at the same time - one at the base station and the other at the roaming device. They're both off by the same amount; it has nothing to do with randomness.
It was around 100 meters in any direction from your current location. And yes, it was by the U.S. government to prevent people from bombing the White House. As if a bomb big enough, off by 100 meters, would actually miss the white house.
They removed it sometime last year, I believe. With 9-11, there are rumors they may impose the restriction again, but that's assuming any primary threats have missiles capable of using GPS.
This restriction would pose little or no problem to people using it for the purposes this article describes. GPS correction is available through a "post-processing" method. You position a GPS base station at a known location. If you take samples at exactly the same time from different locations, those locations are off by exactly the same error vector. So, you simply compare the base station samples to the base station position to get the error vector, and apply this error vector to the roaming samples to get your almost-exact position.
I say almost exact because signals are disrupted by various things. Light and sound are waves; they move at a constant speed as long as the travel medium doesn't change. As a consequence, like sound, light is affected by the doppler effect. It usually isn't significant, but can throw your results off nonetheless.
Clouds, rain, snow, buildings, etc. can also affect the results, as well as the SNR (signal to noise ratio -- measures the amount of readable data to background noise). If the SNR is high, it's unlikely the results will be thrown off significantly. All these problems are virtually unavoidable unless the weather is clear, you have a high channel capacity on your GPS device (8 is usually good, I think available satellites above the horizon range from about 8-11, high on elevated terrain), and there are few if any buildings around.
You need at least n+1 satellites in reach to get nth-dimensional results. So, for planar (2d) positions (latitude/longitude, or azimuth or whatever) you need 3 satellites, and 4 for spatial (3d, 2d + a z-position, your elevation).
The more satellites, the more precise your results are. If the base station is within 500 metres away, and you have real-time correction (which would still help with climate problems), you can get sub-centimetre accuracy.
Does anybody have any idea what port this embedded service uses, or any way of finding it out? I think in four weeks (or more) I may run a simple scanner, like ethereal, on my Linux box. I have about 6 Windoze machines masqued off it to my ADSL provider, so I may just block the port through my firewall, so anyone using Kazaa can still use it, EULA be damned.
I anticipated an overly unbalanced article, being that
(MSNBC is a Microsoft - NBC joint venture.)
and held my breath while I read the article. Fortunately, it does do a good job of picking on all the top players in the industry, though the article truly has no point.
I found myself hunting around for a "Next>" link at the bottom of the article, confused at the abrupt end. None. Then I re-read the "conclusion":
Playing a fighting game without good controls is like going to a Milli Vanilli concert in which the dubbed music does not work. I mean, what's the point?
That doesn't explain this article at all. It explains partially what to look for in a fighting game.
What is the point of this article? It's clearly not an extensive review of the worst games. I consider myself an adequate judge of a good game, after purchasing (interpret how you may) over 100 games for the original Playstation, and another 20 for the PS2. I've seen far worse games than what they have here, many not worth the price of rental. Granted, there's nothing worse than a fractional frame-rate or the controller-breaking frustration of a ridiculously difficult game, but why warn consumers about the pothole in front of them, only to have them fall into the next?
I counted about 8 games to avoid. I'd be willing to bet there are more than just a few games that serve no other purpose on the shelves than to be load-bearing devices. Few are even worth the price of a blank CD (but you didn't hear that from me).
IMHO, if you want to write an article like this, give the do's and don'ts to selecting a game. Give suggestions on how to weed out the worst from the best. Don't just list a bunch of bad games, say why they're bad, plug a few consoles (any publicity is good publicity) and leave it at that.
(conclusion reduced to prevent conflict of interest)
Nice idea, but it won't work. People want variety. I've spent months on multiple-mountain slopes. Unless you're there during peak times, most of the runs are empty. Why do they keep the maintenance costs? People want something new. You want to fill that need, you landscape a new mountain. You can spend an entire day on a single mountain, then ski the next one over the following day. Or you could spend you're entire day going from one mountain to the next, only touching a chairlift a few times during the day.
Forget the breakdown of these chairlifts. If something mechanical goes wrong, the entire facility is down for however long it takes to repair. I can't see the advantage of the business model in this idea. It appears the farthest it will go from a consumer's perspective is atop someone's desk, plugged into a power outlet with little lego men falling over themselves and getting churned up in the mechanics.
I do, however, see the advantage for trainers. Less time on the lift means more time on the slopes; if you have the stamina, you could get much more training benefit out of an hour on this contraption than you would at a typical ski resort.
Although it looks like a snow-covered tilt-a-whirl, but I think I'll save my money and spend time at a real ski resort.
Read the story /.ers... it's $1.6 million, not $6 million. Still a significant increase over $16,000.
I don't quite understand this, it seems poorly researched. I have NEVER had a problem with viewing PDFs under IE; in fact, I can either right-click and "Save Link As..." or click on the PDF and hit the save button in the title bar, as you mentioned.
I can't remember a time when the save button wasn't there. I haven't used Netscape for a very long time, and I find it hard to believe they would stick with strictly Netscape plugins (I've never heard of a PDF Netscape plugin, but I'm probably uninformed), when the Acrobat Reader has such nice integration with Internet Explorer -- even the Netscape-plugin-less one that comes with XP and is touted on Microsoft's download sites.
Microsoft addressed that in Windows 2000 - the dialog must have popped up as a child of the active window. In 2000 and (I believe) ME and anything later, the window will appear in the background, while its title bar and taskbar will flash indicating that there's a new window that needs addressing.
You'll get the same problem in X apps under Linux - provided the dialogs popup from the active application; other than that you can always adjust your window manager preferences so new popups don't get the keyboard focus.
I had an identical problem back with Windows NT4; I was typing in ICQ and two dialogs, entirely separate from ICQ, popped up. I incidentally hit the spacebar in the midst of typing and dismissed both of them without reading what they were.
Essentially, if dialogs are popping up while you're typing, it's probably an interface issue with the application, not with Windows XP. I'm not a GUI wizard or anything, but I prefer text entry fields to validate when you click "OK" as opposed to while you're typing.
I dislike Windows as much as the next person, but I need it for development. If it wasn't for my job, I'd eliminate it entirely. But putting up with Windows is less grief than going without a job, especially with the current economy.
Other than that, complaining about intermittent dialogs is just nitpicking, and shouldn't decide your final decision on any OS.
The graphics engine itself is 128-bit. Anything that needs to be optimized is built right into the proprietary libraries (graphics synthesizers, etc). I saw a screen grab from the bootup of the Japanese kit awhile ago. The kernel had build-in support for the graphics synthesizing chip. So you can forget them shipping GIF and support for other graphics formats in the form of a library - they're built right into the chip. This is a major speed increase.
I see many people falling prey to the MHz game. The PS2 has a 300MHz processor, which is nowhere near that of the latest Pentium 4's (or the X-Box, for that matter). They're neglecting to mention that the PS2 has a RISC chip; its goal being to provide a small, but fast, instruction set. If you reduce the complexity of the chip, you increase the speed of the chip, regardless of the clock speed (to a certain extent). What the PS2's chip can run in two clock cycles might take a Pentium 4 five clock cycles.
Just remember the days of DEC (now Compaq) Alpha. A 300MHz Alpha could beat the heck out of any 600-800MHZ Pentium (AFAIK).
I just detest seeing Microsoft's comparison and their usual marketing techniques: PS2 - 300MHz, X-Box - 900MHz. They're taking advantage of the fact that a lot of gamers (not all) don't know the difference between the two architectures.
Very cool. I think the importance of an online survey is overstated, however, as many people can hide behind their computers and feel less obligated to give truthful--and important--responses.
I personally ranked indirect improvements to earth the most important: Studying other planets to learn more about earth, and accumulating resources from other planets. I'm not an astronomer (I'm a software developer), but feel the space race reflected a slight childish nature towards building bigger, better toys that will simply be jettisoned into outer space. I would also like to see less missions fail due to the risk of metric to imperial conversions.
The poll is closed, and there is a full disclaimer above the results:
.Net by a factor of three in this poll. By early January, the position had reversed; the results are shown here. An investigation indicated that Microsoft employees used vote-rigging to distort the results. The full story can be found here.
On 21 December, ZDNet posted a story reporting the preliminary results of this poll, which showed a large majority of respondents who said they planned to deliver applications via Web services by the end of 2002 favoured Java for the job. At the time, Java outranked
Baywatch is all day on TNN January 1st.
The initial sale warranty lasts 90 days. If you plan on adding to the PS2 numbers by buying one, spend the extra $70USD (I think; it's $100CDN) to get the extended warranty (2 years after the 90-day initial warranty). My PS2 chickened out on me the other day, but thankfully, I bought the warranty, and it's at Sony getting fixed (no more Metal Gear Solid 2 for me for awhile; I also can't watch DVDs). Without the extended warranty, repairs will cost you almost $120USD ($175 CDN).
In other news, the original PlayStation crept up on gamers. Most people played the classic "Nintendo", others were experimenting with Sega, and a few took a dip into the TG-16. I think part of the reason the PS2 is so popular is from the attention the PS got during its several years in the limelight. I still remember sitting outside the doors of Toys 'R Us at 6:00am waiting to get in and pick up a PS2 (this was last October 26th).
I cringed at the sight of the X-Box; and at various screencaps of its infamous "green screens of death". I'm afraid the GameCube lost my vote. The N64 went out the door once they released Doom for $170CDN a few years ago.
IMHO it definitely leaves things to be desired. It's designed for the computer illiterate, evident in its improved (though not spectacular) user interface. I use it primary on my laptop, and run Linux on my PC as a networking gateway (and to watch TV).
.NET Passport? Yeah, it's integrated into Windows XP. Some of my friends are on MSN Messenger, so to chat with them, I have to integrate Passport into my Windows XP "experience". Of course, I already had one when Microsoft "upgraded" my Hotmail account to a Passport account.
I see plenty of features with which Microsoft has gone overkill. For example, they store a backup of all your system DLLs in \windows\system32\dllcache (assuming you have the default installation path set). This includes files for Internet Explorer, Movie Maker and Messenger. It also installs MSN Explorer by default, and you must manually remove it from your system through the control panel.
One of the biggest difficulties with migrating down to Windows XP is using old applications. Most work, though I do a lot of Windows CE development, and their development tools don't work. ActiveSync seems to go crazy, and won't establish a connection with the eMbedded Tools IDE. So much for backwards compatibility. Device connectability has always been a problem (with ActiveSync and the embedded development tools) but it's even worse on XP.
The memory footprint is huge - don't bother running it on any less than 128MB of RAM.
The Remote Assistance tool is reminiscent of *nix X Server/Client interface. I also find XP more stable than Windows 2000. You shouldn't be misled by the migration from Windows ME to Windows XP. They're designed under entirely different code bases. I think that may be the reason why Microsoft chose to rename NT5 to Windows 2000, to eliminate the first-glance impression that 9x and NT are two entirely different operating systems - which they are, but not for the benefit of marketing.
So much for open competition. If you have MSN Messenger on your system (ie: you haven't found a way to delete it), Outlook and Internet Explorer will launch it automatically. You must exit these two apps before you can close MSN Messenger. Alternatively, you can read-protect the file through the NTFS security features to prevent even the system from accessing it.
Microsoft also wants to dictate where you should store your files. If you save a web picture to a directory outside of your "My Documents\My Pictures" folder, this will be the default path until you re-open Internet Explorer. Then you have to navigate out of "My Documents\My Pictures" yet again. So much for the intelligent operating system.
I think the keenest feature is the font smoothing - You can enable ClearType font smoothing from the desktop settings panel, and fonts will look oh-so-crisp on laptop displays - even regular CRTs.
And
SO... if you've been stuck with Windows ME, it's time for an upgrade. For all intents and purposes, XP still seems like the next step forward in the NT-branch of Windows OS's. If you're happy with Windows 2000, stick with that. Don't give up your limited freedom of choice by installing XP and having it force Internet Explorer, Messenger and Movie Maker on you. If you're thinking of going to Windows XP for its user interface configurability, don't bother. It comes with only the new "XP" theme, and the old Windows 2000 theme. You have to buy Plus! to get any more, and even then, there are only 4 cheesy themes that come with it.
Bottom line - if it works, don't fix it.
Don't by an X-Box either [/me runs for cover].
If somebody found a solution to an NP complete problem, it would open the doors to a whole new world of algorithm efficiency. That's a small statement compared to how much easier it would make you computer science degree program.