Saying ignorant shit like that doesn't really inspire confidence in your other assertions. The oil reserves in Russia are enormous. Conversely, the oil reserves in Afghanistan are nil. That's right, dumbass, not every place between Turkey and India is a desert full of camel-riding Bedouins sitting on massive oil reserves.
Two words- Null Modem and Hyperterminal will transfer all the files stored on 5.25" floppies for that Commodore 64 (or even stored on cassette tape) to their Windows machines just fine. It's just ASCII after all, no big problem.
Hah. It's amazing how modern computers have made us forget how little we used to have, and how much of it was proprietary as well. First, it's not ASCII, but PETSCII. Granted, the only serious difference is that lower and uppercase are swapped, but it's still worth noting. Second, The C64 User Port is capable of serial communications, but it isn't RS-232. It requires a level converter to bring it up from the simple TTL signals it puts out. Third, the C64 has essentially no significant operating system functionality upon powerup. It's not a simple matter of typing "cat PERVFILES >/dev/UserPort" or some such. You have to either find someone who knows how to write a disk-to-serial dumper, or maybe find a terminal program you can do a text send with. Do you know how to access a file on a C64 disk?
The back of the Commodore 64 has an RS-232 interface. Any schmuck with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering can hook the Commodore 64's serial interface into the serial interface of any modern desktop.
No, actually it doesn't have an RS-232 interface. It has something called a User Port, using a male card-edge connector, which can transmit and receive serial data, but it only does so at TTL levels. But yeah, any schmuck with a soldering iron and a breadboard can slap together a true RS-232 interface using a 25 cent MAX232 chip and a few caps.
I believe the concept of zero originated on the Indian sub-continent not with the arabs
The concept of our modern base-10 notation originated in india, but the symbolic representation of a stand-alone null value goes back to the babylonians and the bizarre mixed-base sexagesimal system. At any rate, none of this is particularly relevant. The point still stands: zero existed as a mathematical concept even before the invention of any one of its various incarnations (mayan, babylonian, indian, arabic).
If you are a free market capitalist then you probably regard government as just another product that you should be able to purchase.
But that's not just some rabid free market capitalist view, that's actually the case with all government, and always has been. The means of purchasing government favor are generally disguised in various ways to give the appearance of propriety, but it's there just the same. The only way of mitigating this unavoidable condition is to ensure government remains as small and powerless as possible.
I would love to hear what your definition of "Socialist" is, because it's obviously not the same as the rest of the planet's.
I would love to hear what the "rest of the world's" definition of socialism is, as the textbook definition leans heavily on the notion of state control of the means of production. Most of the world's "socialist" countries fail that definition. Nowadays it seems to be used to describe varying degrees of state involvement in various parts of the economy (e.g. medicine), paid for by moderately high tax rates. By that measure, either of you could be correct. Basically it devolves into a pissing match over which country is throwing more money at which segment of society.
If you had succeeded in the "look alike, work alike" departments, he wouldn't have to know you changed it.
Heh. Yeah, I did make the mistake of not making it look like a DOS text-mode app. I figured (incorrectly) that he'd appreciate not having to cursor around a non-intuitive text-based interface and use the space bar to fill in "check boxes", but instead be able to use the mouse on REAL check boxes. Eh, no great loss. He's an idiot. I did it for the fun of programming it, mostly.
If your talking about windows you can use the net use lpt1://computername/printer name to make a network or USB printer print just like it was LPT1, I have to do it all the time for crappy military dos applications. (btw you do need to share the printer out if its a USB printer)
Yeah, that was the guy's "fix" also. Unfortunately, it requires several network services to be loaded, some of which conflict with the function of my Idiot Employer's dialup networking configuration.
hmmm...got sidetracked by the idiocy of my employer and I never made the point I was aiming for.
I emailed the guy who wrote (and still sells) the software that he ought to be distributing it with VirtualPC combined with DOS, if he's not going to re-write it in a non-toy language.
You'd be surprised (or perhaps dismayed) to know how many old crawling horror DOS applications there are out there in use. My boss uses this abomination of a program for creating master key systems that was written in Turbo Pascal back in the 80's. He recently paid $60 for the newest "upgrade" (last year!), but the thing is still written in TP, and still cannot be made to print to anything other than LPT1. I wrote a look-alike, work-alike windows app in two weeks (using Borland C++ Builder) that worked with his USB printer and could even import the data files from the old shitty program-- but he "couldn't figure out how to work it" so he continues to use that DOS-based crap. There are lots of people like that, some stuck with legacy software that can't realistically be brought into the 21st century, some just dumbfucks like my boss.
HOWEVER, these items in online games have MASSIVE intrinisic value based on labor.
Marxist claptrap. The labor theory of value is a load of horseshit concocted by political philosophers with no appreciation for the reality of economics. A thing has no value beyond what someone is willing to pay for it. You could spend 400 hours making carefully formed and wrapped sewage popsicles, but they aren't worth $5000. Besides, the labor theory of value requires an outside authority to set the value of your labor, and in this case, CCP has already declared (via TOS) that your work is not exchangeable for money and therefore is worth nothing.
Don't forget the 9th Amendment, which reinforces the point nicely from the other direction:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Basically, "just because we didn't put it on our Top Ten list, doesn't mean it isn't a right". This is the amendment that makes me want to choke the living shit out of dumbfuck self-proclaimed Strict Constructionists when they say "the constitution says nothing about [insert rights issue here]" (cough)Limbaugh(/cough). So to the GP poster who said of wiretapping "I nonetheless cannot find any constitutional article or ammendment prohibiting it", you need to actually read and understand the damn constitution before you can comment on it intelligently.
And that's what the fear in this network neutrality argument is about. Forget about slowing down my google searches, what is going to happen when google, amazon, apple, akamai, and others start pushing the big red button on connections to them?
With any luck, the large content providers will have a "big red button" page that comes up instead of their content (or maybe just a huge banner above the content explaining why the connection is slow). This page/banner will explain why the user's ISP is to blame, and incidentally, here's a list of phone number you can call to complain. How long do you think their scheme will last with their phones (and more impotantly, their congressman's phones) ringing off the hook with irate sunbscribers' calls? They own the pipes, but their victims have access to our eyeballs...
Forget about buying a media system, just dig out some old computer you have, make sure it has a video card with TV-out. Doesn't matter if it has a hard drive or not, as long as it has a CD or DVD player. Download Linux Geexbox boot CD. Hook up your system to your TV and stereo system. Download some movies from the bittorrents. Burn to CD/DVD. Watch movies. Who cares if the system is noise, you won't hear it when you have a movie playing loud.
Yeah...because HTPC boxes are just used to play DVDs.
Seriously, you did notice where they mentioned features other than DVD playback, right?
Why must PC makers keep putting those massive, useless plugs on computers?
Because there's a space reserved for it in the ATX rear panel spec. Seriously, when the difference between including a parallel port and leaving it out is a fraction of a cent on the price of the connector because the chipset contains the interface by default, why not? In this case, they're probably just using a commodity mobo chosen for it's complete smorgasbord of ports. Stands to reason the parallel port would show up too.
Let's try an experiment in letting market forces rule. I set up a PBX and connect up the 6 houses in my neighborhood. I get a bill from the phone company and apportion it based on fixed cost + per minute to the folks using the phone. I will also provide backup VOIP for when the phone goes out or all lines are busy, and a UPS for power outages. My guess is that I have just cut our phone bills in half.
The experiment is to see how many days it takes for the government and phone company to come out and cut the wires and arrest me.
Don't be daft, you won't be arrested. Large office parks and multi-story buildings do exactly that all the time. The only reason you can't build your own competing phone system is that the first time you need to string a wire across or under a street, you're fucked.
Home Depot seems to be pretty good about choosing quality suppliers
I can't specifically speak for their CF bulbs as I've never bought one from HD, but I can assure you that the above statement is pretty much exactly incorrect. The only quality you might find a HD is where it inadvertently intersects with "cheap" and/or "only".
You've put your finger on exactly why I loathe "adventure games". It's not about puzzles or problem solving, it's about guessing what the writer thinks would be fun to have you do right now.
There's a quote from a review of a typical bad adventure game that I think sums up the problem with adventure games. The game required you to impersonate some guy, so you steal his ID card. Then, you had to find and attach a piece of tape across a hole at the back of a tool shed. Then you had to chase a cat into the tool shed and out the hole in the back. Then you had to take the tape, which was now covered with cat hair, and use the hair plus spirit gum to make a fake mustache for yourself. Then, take the man's ID card and draw a mustache on his picture on the card with a pen. Now you look like the man's ID card with the mustache drawn on it. Puzzle solved. As the article writer said, the problem with this "puzzle" was that it had no logic to it whatsoever. After all:
The first step in impersonating a man who doesn't have a mustache, is not to make a fake mustache.
I think that pretty well sums up the major shortcoming of most adventure type games.
Students don't live in absurd poverty. Their meals and lodging are typically guaranteed to them as part of the meal and housing plans that they have taken loans to pre-pay for.
Yes, that's clearly how all students live, be they freshmen, or working on their phd thesis. None of them ever end up living six to a 2 bedroom apartment because campus housing is full and/or they are ineligible for it. And there's certainly no limit whatsoever on the amount of money you can get in federal student loans-- why, you can live like a king on the free money they heap upon students! That's why they're all dressed in Armani suits and driving Ferraris.
Have you even known anyone in college? It's like you only read about dorm life once in a magazine and think "yup, that's higher education".
You could just use the scarecrow technique. Just put the brownies -- no exlax, no poison, just plain brownies -- in there and attach a sticker to them: "WARNING: one of this brownies contains cianide." I guess nobody would have the guts to try and guess if the warning was true.
Nah, nobody would believe anyone would be stupid enough to keep poison food next to their non poisoned food. Better would be "WARNING: one of these brownies is mad with ex-lax instead of chocolate. I know which one. Do you?"
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hmmm...got sidetracked by the idiocy of my employer and I never made the point I was aiming for.
I emailed the guy who wrote (and still sells) the software that he ought to be distributing it with VirtualPC combined with DOS, if he's not going to re-write it in a non-toy language.
Don't forget the 9th Amendment, which reinforces the point nicely from the other direction:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Basically, "just because we didn't put it on our Top Ten list, doesn't mean it isn't a right". This is the amendment that makes me want to choke the living shit out of dumbfuck self-proclaimed Strict Constructionists when they say "the constitution says nothing about [insert rights issue here]" (cough)Limbaugh(/cough). So to the GP poster who said of wiretapping "I nonetheless cannot find any constitutional article or ammendment prohibiting it", you need to actually read and understand the damn constitution before you can comment on it intelligently.
Seriously, you did notice where they mentioned features other than DVD playback, right?
"You've got questions, we've got cellphones."
Master of Magic, Master of Orion II, and X-Com: UFO
The first step in impersonating a man who doesn't have a mustache, is not to make a fake mustache.
I think that pretty well sums up the major shortcoming of most adventure type games.
Have you even known anyone in college? It's like you only read about dorm life once in a magazine and think "yup, that's higher education".