What makes our city much better than all the rest in North America is that our computer hardware prices are considerably lower than elsewhere due to us being a major shipping port in Canada and North America as a whole.
Hell, a year and a half ago I bought a Celeron 600 and a MSI 6309 Motherboard together for only $130 CDN.
Considering I don't use Windows...
on
iPod on Windows
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Is there a Linux program that can do the same as this Windows application?
My friend Brian develops SCI Studio which is a Win32 application that allows you to develop games similar to those mentioned in the story above.
In fact, you can also edit those existing games and make them run in Windows. You may also want to take a look at his other site as he is a big AGI/SCI fantatic.
I am an avid UNIX user who has experience in FreeBSD, Solaris, and Linux; as well as experience in Windows, BeOS, and good ol' fashioned DOS. I am, also, a Macintosh user, but still stuck in the Motorola 680x0 world.
I currently own a Macintosh LC II which is currently running Debian GNU/Linux (along-side with Macintosh System 7.5.5) and acts as a remote access point for my home network when I am away from the house. I have had this Macintosh since I was eleven years-old and have not had a single problem with it. I did also own a Macintosh Portable until a year ago when it finally gave up entirely and died on me.
Beyond the LC II and the Portable, I haven't had a whole lot of Apple experience. It is probably because of how your company prices your hardware or how I cannot really customize and build a Macintosh myself (like the PC world). If you guys made the hardware a bit more open, I'd consider dipping my toes into the Apple Computer market, again.
I do intend to get an Apple Macintosh in the next year or so seeing that you guys have adopted a variant BSD as your primary OS. If prices do drop a little, I will consider buying it sooner rather than later. If I do not buy a Macintosh at all, I may be using one anyways at a local technical university when I attend my first year there this Fall.
I also am considering getting an old Apple Quadra and getting ahold of a copy of A/UX. One question, though, can I still buy a copy of that particular Operating System as seeing it isn't availble off your FTP server?
While mentioning that FTP server, why is it not that Macintosh System 7.6 and Mac OS 8.1 not availble on it? I can understand maybe 8.5 and 9.0 not being on the server, but seeing that those Operating Systems are six years old and five years old, should they not be availble for free so that people who buy older Macintoshes that do not support the newer versions can at least run an almost up-to-date version?
I might as well throw this question in, will Mac OS X ever be ported to the x86? I am aware that Darwin is currently availble for both the PC and the Macintosh under the GPL, but I'd love to see you guys market the entire OS to the PC. Are you holding back due to your support from Microsoft? As well, if I am not mistaken, did you not also plan to port the Mac OS entirely to the PC architecture?
I am aware that in the United States that some states like California are experiencing an energy crunch that is making them buy energy from us in Canada.
Canada does not face the same energy problems as you guys because of how they're managed. All of the provinces in Canada have crown-owned energy corporations (such as Quebec Hydro, B.C. Hydro, Ontario Power, etc...), though some provinces as mine (British Columbia) are considering to privatize some parts of the business.
In the United States, though, some states such as California have deregulated their energy corporatations and have lost most of their power over them.
And yes, the west coast of Vancouver Island is fun to surf and is a very nice place to visit (I live in Vancouver if you're curious).
We could sue the companies that press the CDs, or make the CD-ROM drives that read (or rip in their mind) the compact audio, or Sony for their VHS tape players, or Maxtor for making the hard drives that store the "pirated" material.
It is fairly easy to determine how much they have made from sales of CDs, DVDs, Software, etc. All they have to do is determine how much was spent on the production of the item, how much of them were sold, and then maybe compare to how much they made last year.
Yet with determining how much they lose to pirates is very very difficult and you have to beleive that the numbers they throw are just complete bullshit.
The MPAA, RIAA, BSA... can't really do that because do they check how many people have gotten a copy of Microsoft Windows XP, the new Matthew Good Band CD, the Harry Potter movie, or the Clerks DVD from IRC, P2P, friends, stores, etc? No, because they can't.
I'll admit I have a fair number of MP3s on hand and that do over-use my Windows 98 license (only on two machines which belong to my parents, I am a Linux user), yet can these companies and organisations, in reality, determine the losses they suffer? No.
I can say for a fact I know bnetd was being used to play pirated copies of Warcraft III.
Yet, Blizard was dumb enough not to put any protections in their software to make it harder to pirate. If they were smart, they would have done something similar to Windows' WPA crap (I hate it, but it does a good job) and catalogued all of the user's hardware as soon as they install the software.
Is Microsoft going to include WPA in this software? If so, what happens if I switch my battery or plug it into my car lighter and it requires me to call Microsoft? How would I call them if the phone is not usable?
You see here, folks; this is why you shouldn't do this modification because as you can see, he didn't get to finish his message due to a hard drive failure.
Just be glad that the CRTC made it possible for Cable and DSL (and broadband in general) not to be fucked over like what happened in the United States.
Considering there is a hard disk and a operation system that is developed by "hackers," what is stopping someone from creating a bootloader for Linux to boot PS2/PSX burns (let it be a DVD-R/CDR).
I don't see why it would not be possible to do so unless they have really done a good job putting protections into place.
Umm... where the heck did you get the idea Compact Disc audio is analog? It is digital, silly.
Anyways, VQF has sadly gone the route of the dinosaur.
I am a little off-topic here...
on
NY Times on Anime
·
· Score: 2, Informative
...but there is an anime showing today here in Vancouver BC, Canada at the main Douglas College campus (a block away from New Westminster Skytrain) at 2:00 pm. Admission is $3 and the following are playing:
1. Neia Under 7 #1, 2
2. Inu-yasha #1,2
3. Big-O #1,2
4. Hand Maid May #1,2,3
break (30 min)
5. Initial D #1,2,3
6. G-Savior
/end of off-topic.
A while back Roger Ebert did an article on various anime and it seems that he actually likes it after all (considering he seems a bit hard to please from my view-point). As well, an article in my local paper depicted that "Astro-boy," our atomic little friend from the 60s, is returning to DVD.
Re:Mirror of wonderful post
on
Debian NetBSD
·
· Score: 1
Buddy, the MySQL settings are probably set to a low queue limit and since the queue limit is full it is rejecting all incoming connections until a spot is availble.
I know this from experience. They probably have set it down to a lower level because the system can't handle a higher queue level.
The promotions committee is strangely quiet today. Normally they're far more boisterous and sure of themselves. This has to be good news.
"Now Simon, as you know there's a vacancy for a Senior Operator in the Computer Centre following the tragic accident in the staff showers."
"Yes" I utter, "tragic"
"How the hell a toaster got in there in the first place is beyond the scope of this committee, as our main interest is to find a replacement as soon as possible. Ordinarily, we would appoint such a senior position externally, but following that awful business with the lift controller failure and the shortlisted candidates.."
"Awful" I sigh, my heart pity at the tragedy of three Senior Operator applicants plunging down a lift shaft to their deaths... Completely accidental you understand...
"..It still seems very strange; apparently the accident inspector stated that the lift appeared to be accelerating *faster* than the speed of gravity when it fell. But I guess we'll never know now that the lift control room had that big electrical fire..."
I could be oversensitive on this issue, but I'm feeling a little bit of dissent in the room around me. Some members of the promotions committee appear to be having problems making the decision of whether they should support the University's interests by appointing me senior operator or becoming involved in the next fatal campus accident. I decide to cut through the red tape and get to the point.
"So essentially, all supposition aside, you wish me to take over the role of Senior Operator.."
"Ah..." the chairman utters, looking around the room for backup, "..Yes"
"Ok, fine. I'll need a couple of K extra for the increased responsibility, say another K for relocation.."
"BUT YOU'RE ONLY TWO OFFICES AWAY!!"
"Good point - another *TWO* K for relocation, and new office furniture. Leather Armchairs would be good. Oh, and an expresso machine."
I get up.
"Well, that should be all I think, so I'll just get off back to work"
While they mutter amongst themselves, I make my exit back to the control room. As it's getting towards the end of my working day (3pm) I write protect the userdisk and start a shutdown for 1 minute. The phone rings.
"I can't save my work" a voice sobs from the phone
"You really should try.."
"But the system won't let me" he wimpers, "can you halt the shutdown?"
"Well, I'd like to, but it's irrevocably committed to shutdown - there's no telling what might happen - we could lose all your work, there's no telling...."
"Um..." - You can almost hear the wheels turning - "...Uh.."
I hang up - they're obviously not committed.
The shutdown completes and I reboot, then decide to introduce a little fun to the network by pulling out random staff terminal lines and repatching them to the student areas and vice versa. Just like the big breakin of '91.
Next I choose a letter at random from the complaints box to use as this week's "External Penetration" victim, then delete all their files.
I decide to get into something new. I break out the telephone serviceman's handset and wander into the comms room and start eavesdropping on people's conversations.
Most of it is crap, but it gives me an idea. Pipe it all through voice recognition and look for words including my name (for security purposes), a sexual encounter, or live chickens. Definite possibilities...
A user rings.
"Oh, Hi - can you tell me what my password is please?" they ask
"I'm sorry" I say for the 1 billionth time "passwords are encrypted on the system, and it's far easier for me to change your password than to find out what it is." (Which is crap; I know what it is, the password changing routine does have a slight in-house modification which the implementers probably weren't counting on.)
"Oh, ok - could you change it to 'desert' please - that was my old password"
"I'm sorry, but we can't change user's passwords to ones that they supply - that would compromise site security"
"Oh, then could you just give me a new password?"
"Sure. What about desert?"
"Huh?.... Oh, Ok, that would be fine"
I hang up, they hang up. 10 minutes later they call back.
"Have you changed that password yet?" they ask
"CHANGED the password?" I say "You just asked me to give you a new password, you said nothing about changing it"
"But... Oh. Well, could you change it to desert for me please?"
"I'm sorry, but I can't do that, because of the security compromise, as I told you before. If I knew your password, I could possibly log into your account without you knowing, couldn't I?"
"Well yes..."
"And if that happened, your data would be compromised, wouldn't it?"
"Uhh, yes, I suppose it would"
"So in other words, if two people have the password to an account, the security of it is at least halved, isn't it?"
"Yes, I suppose you're right"
"Of course I am, I'm the *OPERATOR*. I'm not only right, I'm wrong if I want to be as well.."
"Uh.."
He doesn't know whether to agree or not. Wimp.
"Now," I say, breaking the tension "I'll change your password for you"
"Ok, thanks"
"No worries. Bye now"
"B. >click"
They ring back
"You didn't tell me my password!"
"Of course I didn't. We already agreed that two people knowing the password is less secure than one, didn't we?"
"Well, yes, but..."
"No buts, security is security, off you go..."
That's the problem with this job, it doesn't come naturally - you have to *WORK* on it.
Think about it, do you actually think any emulator would want to run such games in a window?
Also, under requirements it says you need a ATI Radeon or Geforce3. Umm, doesn't the X Box work on a GF3 and not an ATI chipset? If so, then wouldn't games fail to work or display properly on the ATI card since they're programmed for the GF3? It also states it uses OpenGL, why not DirectX, Microsoft's brain-child?
As well, why would it need that much ram? The X Box has only 64 MB of RAM, therefore the games should function fine under a system with 128 MB of RAM.
And to add to that, you need a P3/P4/Athlon? Hell, the X Box uses a Celeron 733! I doubt you would even need a processor faster than 733 MHz as a 500 MHz processor would probably do the job.
Well, the next threat is not fire or explosions but actually spinning objects spinning at speeds up to 10,000 RPM.
Hard Drives could become a dangerous issue if we find out they can actually go off their motor and fly out of their casing towards unsuspecting objects, creatures, or people.
You know, with more and more pocket PCs out there, airplanes are at risk.
Two pen taps and the plane would go boom.
I think the government should regulate everything from Cell phones to Computers. Make it so everytime you go buy electronics, you must show your ID in order to purchase it; then interrogate the person if they don't have their card on them.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Here here, fellow Vancouverite.
What makes our city much better than all the rest in North America is that our computer hardware prices are considerably lower than elsewhere due to us being a major shipping port in Canada and North America as a whole.
Hell, a year and a half ago I bought a Celeron 600 and a MSI 6309 Motherboard together for only $130 CDN.
Is there a Linux program that can do the same as this Windows application?
Does it work under Wine if not?
My friend Brian develops SCI Studio which is a Win32 application that allows you to develop games similar to those mentioned in the story above.
In fact, you can also edit those existing games and make them run in Windows. You may also want to take a look at his other site as he is a big AGI/SCI fantatic.
Whee.
What Canadian energy crisis?
I am aware that in the United States that some states like California are experiencing an energy crunch that is making them buy energy from us in Canada.
Canada does not face the same energy problems as you guys because of how they're managed. All of the provinces in Canada have crown-owned energy corporations (such as Quebec Hydro, B.C. Hydro, Ontario Power, etc...), though some provinces as mine (British Columbia) are considering to privatize some parts of the business.
In the United States, though, some states such as California have deregulated their energy corporatations and have lost most of their power over them.
And yes, the west coast of Vancouver Island is fun to surf and is a very nice place to visit (I live in Vancouver if you're curious).
We could sue the companies that press the CDs, or make the CD-ROM drives that read (or rip in their mind) the compact audio, or Sony for their VHS tape players, or Maxtor for making the hard drives that store the "pirated" material.
Give me a break.
It is fairly easy to determine how much they have made from sales of CDs, DVDs, Software, etc. All they have to do is determine how much was spent on the production of the item, how much of them were sold, and then maybe compare to how much they made last year.
Yet with determining how much they lose to pirates is very very difficult and you have to beleive that the numbers they throw are just complete bullshit.
The MPAA, RIAA, BSA... can't really do that because do they check how many people have gotten a copy of Microsoft Windows XP, the new Matthew Good Band CD, the Harry Potter movie, or the Clerks DVD from IRC, P2P, friends, stores, etc? No, because they can't.
I'll admit I have a fair number of MP3s on hand and that do over-use my Windows 98 license (only on two machines which belong to my parents, I am a Linux user), yet can these companies and organisations, in reality, determine the losses they suffer? No.
I can say for a fact I know bnetd was being used to play pirated copies of Warcraft III.
Yet, Blizard was dumb enough not to put any protections in their software to make it harder to pirate. If they were smart, they would have done something similar to Windows' WPA crap (I hate it, but it does a good job) and catalogued all of the user's hardware as soon as they install the software.
Is Microsoft going to include WPA in this software? If so, what happens if I switch my battery or plug it into my car lighter and it requires me to call Microsoft? How would I call them if the phone is not usable?
You guys just slashdotted my friend's website. Amazingly, it is still up.
You see here, folks; this is why you shouldn't do this modification because as you can see, he didn't get to finish his message due to a hard drive failure.
Just be glad that the CRTC made it possible for Cable and DSL (and broadband in general) not to be fucked over like what happened in the United States.
I am talking CD-Rs here.
If I am not incorrect, the hacked-up version of Debian has newer versions of the above software.
If you really want to, you could just go the NetBSD route.
Considering there is a hard disk and a operation system that is developed by "hackers," what is stopping someone from creating a bootloader for Linux to boot PS2/PSX burns (let it be a DVD-R/CDR).
I don't see why it would not be possible to do so unless they have really done a good job putting protections into place.
Umm... where the heck did you get the idea Compact Disc audio is analog? It is digital, silly.
Anyways, VQF has sadly gone the route of the dinosaur.
...but there is an anime showing today here in Vancouver BC, Canada at the main Douglas College campus (a block away from New Westminster Skytrain) at 2:00 pm. Admission is $3 and the following are playing:
1. Neia Under 7 #1, 2
2. Inu-yasha #1,2
3. Big-O #1,2
4. Hand Maid May #1,2,3
break (30 min)
5. Initial D #1,2,3
6. G-Savior
/end of off-topic.
A while back Roger Ebert did an article on various anime and it seems that he actually likes it after all (considering he seems a bit hard to please from my view-point). As well, an article in my local paper depicted that "Astro-boy," our atomic little friend from the 60s, is returning to DVD.
Buddy, the MySQL settings are probably set to a low queue limit and since the queue limit is full it is rejecting all incoming connections until a spot is availble.
I know this from experience. They probably have set it down to a lower level because the system can't handle a higher queue level.
"Ah Simon, thank you for coming, please sit down"
.. .. Oh, Ok, that would be fine"
The promotions committee is strangely quiet today. Normally they're far more boisterous and sure of themselves. This has to be good news.
"Now Simon, as you know there's a vacancy for a Senior Operator in the Computer Centre following the tragic accident in the staff showers."
"Yes" I utter, "tragic"
"How the hell a toaster got in there in the first place is beyond the scope of this committee, as our main interest is to find a replacement as soon as possible. Ordinarily, we would appoint such a senior position externally, but following that awful business with the lift controller failure and the shortlisted candidates.."
"Awful" I sigh, my heart pity at the tragedy of three Senior Operator applicants plunging down a lift shaft to their deaths... Completely accidental you understand...
"..It still seems very strange; apparently the accident inspector stated that the lift appeared to be accelerating *faster* than the speed of gravity when it fell. But I guess we'll never know now that the lift control room had that big electrical fire..."
I could be oversensitive on this issue, but I'm feeling a little bit of dissent in the room around me. Some members of the promotions committee appear to be having problems making the decision of whether they should support the University's interests by appointing me senior operator or becoming involved in the next fatal campus accident. I decide to cut through the red tape and get to the point.
"So essentially, all supposition aside, you wish me to take over the role of Senior Operator.."
"Ah..." the chairman utters, looking around the room for backup, "..Yes"
"Ok, fine. I'll need a couple of K extra for the increased responsibility, say another K for relocation.."
"BUT YOU'RE ONLY TWO OFFICES AWAY!!"
"Good point - another *TWO* K for relocation, and new office furniture. Leather Armchairs would be good. Oh, and an expresso machine."
I get up.
"Well, that should be all I think, so I'll just get off back to work"
While they mutter amongst themselves, I make my exit back to the control room. As it's getting towards the end of my working day (3pm) I write protect the userdisk and start a shutdown for 1 minute. The phone rings.
"I can't save my work" a voice sobs from the phone
"You really should try.."
"But the system won't let me" he wimpers, "can you halt the shutdown?"
"Well, I'd like to, but it's irrevocably committed to shutdown - there's no telling what might happen - we could lose all your work, there's no telling...."
"Um..." - You can almost hear the wheels turning - "...Uh.."
I hang up - they're obviously not committed.
The shutdown completes and I reboot, then decide to introduce a little fun to the network by pulling out random staff terminal lines and repatching them to the student areas and vice versa. Just like the big breakin of '91.
Next I choose a letter at random from the complaints box to use as this week's "External Penetration" victim, then delete all their files.
I decide to get into something new. I break out the telephone serviceman's handset and wander into the comms room and start eavesdropping on people's conversations.
Most of it is crap, but it gives me an idea. Pipe it all through voice recognition and look for words including my name (for security purposes), a sexual encounter, or live chickens. Definite possibilities...
A user rings.
"Oh, Hi - can you tell me what my password is please?" they ask
"I'm sorry" I say for the 1 billionth time "passwords are encrypted on the system, and it's far easier for me to change your password than to find out what it is." (Which is crap; I know what it is, the password changing routine does have a slight in-house modification which the implementers probably weren't counting on.)
"Oh, ok - could you change it to 'desert' please - that was my old password"
"I'm sorry, but we can't change user's passwords to ones that they supply - that would compromise site security"
"Oh, then could you just give me a new password?"
"Sure. What about desert?"
"Huh?
I hang up, they hang up. 10 minutes later they call back.
"Have you changed that password yet?" they ask
"CHANGED the password?" I say "You just asked me to give you a new password, you said nothing about changing it"
"But... Oh. Well, could you change it to desert for me please?"
"I'm sorry, but I can't do that, because of the security compromise, as I told you before. If I knew your password, I could possibly log into your account without you knowing, couldn't I?"
"Well yes..."
"And if that happened, your data would be compromised, wouldn't it?"
"Uhh, yes, I suppose it would"
"So in other words, if two people have the password to an account, the security of it is at least halved, isn't it?"
"Yes, I suppose you're right"
"Of course I am, I'm the *OPERATOR*. I'm not only right, I'm wrong if I want to be as well.."
"Uh.."
He doesn't know whether to agree or not. Wimp.
"Now," I say, breaking the tension "I'll change your password for you"
"Ok, thanks"
"No worries. Bye now"
"B. >click"
They ring back
"You didn't tell me my password!"
"Of course I didn't. We already agreed that two people knowing the password is less secure than one, didn't we?"
"Well, yes, but..."
"No buts, security is security, off you go..."
That's the problem with this job, it doesn't come naturally - you have to *WORK* on it.
Preformance, basically.
A PIII 1000 on a laptop differs from a PIII 1000 on a PC. You get more bang out of a normal PC motherboard than the one used in laptops.
...make a great addon to a home entertainment system. Pop a 80 GB hard disk in it and you can view movies, listen to MP3s, or browse the web.
All you need to add is a wireless keyboard and mouse and you're set.
Sadly, the page turns a 404 and it hasn't been updated since July 2000.
TA is a great game (I have it along with the two expansion packs Core and Battle Tactics) and I'd love to see what people could do with the source.
Why?
Think about it, do you actually think any emulator would want to run such games in a window?
Also, under requirements it says you need a ATI Radeon or Geforce3. Umm, doesn't the X Box work on a GF3 and not an ATI chipset? If so, then wouldn't games fail to work or display properly on the ATI card since they're programmed for the GF3? It also states it uses OpenGL, why not DirectX, Microsoft's brain-child?
As well, why would it need that much ram? The X Box has only 64 MB of RAM, therefore the games should function fine under a system with 128 MB of RAM.
And to add to that, you need a P3/P4/Athlon? Hell, the X Box uses a Celeron 733! I doubt you would even need a processor faster than 733 MHz as a 500 MHz processor would probably do the job.
As stated by a lot of other people, it is a fake.
Well, the next threat is not fire or explosions but actually spinning objects spinning at speeds up to 10,000 RPM.
Hard Drives could become a dangerous issue if we find out they can actually go off their motor and fly out of their casing towards unsuspecting objects, creatures, or people.
You know, with more and more pocket PCs out there, airplanes are at risk.
:)
Two pen taps and the plane would go boom.
I think the government should regulate everything from Cell phones to Computers. Make it so everytime you go buy electronics, you must show your ID in order to purchase it; then interrogate the person if they don't have their card on them.