I stand corrected. Personally I've just grouped COM and COM+ together under the category of "APIs that need to be taken out back and shot". (I'm sure COM has its uses, but IMHO DirectX ain't it.)
However, your comment makes no sense. All games written for one version of DirectX should work in the later versions. Otherwise you'd have games failing left right and centre and people on here bitching about how they can't update DirectX without killing their favourite game.
(Disclaimer: I have written code for DirectX, but not since DirectX 7.)
Actually, you do get problems like this to a degree. When you want to get a DirectX interface, you have to go through COM+. COM+ requires that library developers (read: the DirectX dev team) tag each version of their interfaces with a unique ID, and each time a new version of their library changes an interface, it's required to return the older interface if a program asks for it. The upshot of this is, if a game asks for a DirectX n object, then DirectX n+1 has to be able to accomodate it.
So, in theory, DirectX is backwards-compatible. In practice, DirectX versions sometimes maintain the same interface but make slight changes to functionality that break older games (especially ones that have code to work around DirectX bugs that Microsoft later fixes). I know there have been a good number of games that crash or otherwise act weird when you upgrade DirectX past a certain version, but the only one I can think of off the top of my head is WarBirds (which they later fixed through a patch).
Admittedly, this doesn't happen much anymore (WarBirds was a few years ago), but it does happen.
Actually, it is accessible from the GUI: hit Edit/Preferences, go to Privacy & Security/Images, and check "Do not load remote images...".
That said, one of my (few) complaints with the monolithic Mozilla suite is that the Preferences dialog buries useful stuff like that where you might not expect it. Thankfully, that's one of the things that's been revamped in Firebird/Thunderbird.
Doom9's "New A/V Formats" forum is a good place to ask; besides the FAQs, there's a ton of technical expertise there (the programmers of OGM and Matroska filters and muxers sometimes hang about to answer technical questions).
The quick-'n'-dirty answer is that, as long as you've got muxers and demuxers for the formats you're working with, converting from one container format to another is generally lossless, so you don't really need to worry about losing data to an obsolete format. In this layman's opinion (I'm not an A/V software programmer, but I play one on Slashdot), Matroska looks like a good choice here, since you can mux practically everything under the sun into a Matroska file. But be warned that practically-speaking not all of the existing Matroska filters recognize data like chapters; in contrast, formats like OGM may not support as much metadata, but the existing filters generally recognize all of it.
What? It's not meant for music you say? Well let me be the judge of that;)
Actually, the only physical difference between music CDs and data CDs is that music CDs have a flag set. CD recorders in stereo equipment won't burn on CDs without the flag set. Computer CD-R(W) drives ignore the flag and accept either type of disc. The flag just means that higher royalites were paid to the recording industry (or that any royalties were paid at all, in the U.S.) and doesn't affect performance at all.
Sometimes stores advertise music CDs as being "optimized" for audio, but that's just a case of ignorant ad-writers. Unless you've got a standalone CD recorder, there's zero reason to buy music CDs.
Still, that makes it two remote root holes in the default install now I believe...
The Internet Storm Center says it "may not be exploitable on . . . OpenBSD". ('course, you should probably patch anyway.)
Re:Lies, statistics, and analysts
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Java vs .NET
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· Score: 1
Oh, and the JDK comes with the source to all of Java's classes
Not completely true. The undocumented classes under the sun.* hierarchy are not included, and AFAIK they don't include the native parts of AWT either. Granted, 95% of the classes are there, but if you want to see the inner workings of, say, the networking libraries, you're stuck.
That said, Java is an absolute joy to work with compared to many other languages (especially when paired with an IDE like Eclipse), but Sun's implementation isn't as open as some people make it out to be.
Self-mutating viruses have been around for over a decade. They're called polymorphic viruses, and they usually work by reordering instructions, randomly inserting useless instructions (like NOP or OR AX, AX), or encrypting the virus against a varying table of keys and then decrypting the virus at runtime.
You may want to contact the Crystal Space folks about seeking sponsorship -- their front page shows they got sponsorship from ATI. It wouldn't surprise me if at least one sound card manufacturer is willing to sponsor Audacity, since new chipsets like the Envy24HT are being pushed for recording on a budget, and a good free (as in beer) mid-end audio program would make a great bundled app.
But if we could only combine current media (an 8/16 MB compactflash card could hold every version of every game ever written for this machine) you'd have something.
Experienced movie viewers will only insist on a VHS tape because it provides that three dimensional quality to the sound AND the video, and the digital copy just looks cold to human perception.
Nonsense. Every real videophile knows that the image clarity of DVDs is superior, especially when you coat the bottom of your DVDs with a green marker to reduce reflectivity.
Go to the Styles\user directory inside of your Opera directory. Find nostalgia.css and delete it. Congrats, you successfully battled 4K of creeping featurism.
That's right, you can accomplish a C64 look in 4K of CSS code. Pretty nice proof-of-concept, if you ask me.
Mozilla/Netscape 7 has form management features built-in, but most people don't know about it because it's stupidly buried under the Tools menu.
If the prospect of using a program called Mozilla terrifies her and you don't want all the extra crap that comes standard with Netscape, use SillyDog's steamlined Netscape. Then add the mother-friendly pop-up blocking feature back and she should be good to go.
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon is a terrific read. It will definitely last you more than 26 hours (it's over 700 pages long and incredibly dense -- it's been aptly referred to as the postmodern Ulysses) and (without giving too much of the plot away) deals with some "geek" stuff like rockets and calculus.
It's also an excellent book in its own right -- it won the National Book Award in 1974, and it would have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize had the board not considered it obscene and overriden the judges' decision.
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Intel's problem is that they use too few buzzwords. Now if they'd just called it "FreeOpenML XP Extreme Edition", they'd be fine.
I stand corrected. Personally I've just grouped COM and COM+ together under the category of "APIs that need to be taken out back and shot". (I'm sure COM has its uses, but IMHO DirectX ain't it.)
Actually, you do get problems like this to a degree. When you want to get a DirectX interface, you have to go through COM+. COM+ requires that library developers (read: the DirectX dev team) tag each version of their interfaces with a unique ID, and each time a new version of their library changes an interface, it's required to return the older interface if a program asks for it. The upshot of this is, if a game asks for a DirectX n object, then DirectX n+1 has to be able to accomodate it.
So, in theory, DirectX is backwards-compatible. In practice, DirectX versions sometimes maintain the same interface but make slight changes to functionality that break older games (especially ones that have code to work around DirectX bugs that Microsoft later fixes). I know there have been a good number of games that crash or otherwise act weird when you upgrade DirectX past a certain version, but the only one I can think of off the top of my head is WarBirds (which they later fixed through a patch).
Admittedly, this doesn't happen much anymore (WarBirds was a few years ago), but it does happen.
That said, one of my (few) complaints with the monolithic Mozilla suite is that the Preferences dialog buries useful stuff like that where you might not expect it. Thankfully, that's one of the things that's been revamped in Firebird/Thunderbird.
How about "esto"? It's gender-neutral. Besides, if any city deserves to be called "this thing", it's Los Angeles.
It's recommended as Pricelessware by alt.comp.freeware, which means no nasty spyware or adware.
The quick-'n'-dirty answer is that, as long as you've got muxers and demuxers for the formats you're working with, converting from one container format to another is generally lossless, so you don't really need to worry about losing data to an obsolete format. In this layman's opinion (I'm not an A/V software programmer, but I play one on Slashdot), Matroska looks like a good choice here, since you can mux practically everything under the sun into a Matroska file. But be warned that practically-speaking not all of the existing Matroska filters recognize data like chapters; in contrast, formats like OGM may not support as much metadata, but the existing filters generally recognize all of it.
Sometimes stores advertise music CDs as being "optimized" for audio, but that's just a case of ignorant ad-writers. Unless you've got a standalone CD recorder, there's zero reason to buy music CDs.
That said, Java is an absolute joy to work with compared to many other languages (especially when paired with an IDE like Eclipse), but Sun's implementation isn't as open as some people make it out to be.
Self-mutating viruses have been around for over a decade. They're called polymorphic viruses, and they usually work by reordering instructions, randomly inserting useless instructions (like NOP or OR AX, AX), or encrypting the virus against a varying table of keys and then decrypting the virus at runtime.
You may want to contact the Crystal Space folks about seeking sponsorship -- their front page shows they got sponsorship from ATI. It wouldn't surprise me if at least one sound card manufacturer is willing to sponsor Audacity, since new chipsets like the Envy24HT are being pushed for recording on a budget, and a good free (as in beer) mid-end audio program would make a great bundled app.
Unfortunately, it's not cheap, and it requires a much-harder-to-find Atari 7800, but it's a big step in the right direction.
That's right, you can accomplish a C64 look in 4K of CSS code. Pretty nice proof-of-concept, if you ask me.
If the prospect of using a program called Mozilla terrifies her and you don't want all the extra crap that comes standard with Netscape, use SillyDog's steamlined Netscape. Then add the mother-friendly pop-up blocking feature back and she should be good to go.
Have you tried WeirdX? Free, GPLed, and only 210K in size. It even runs on the crippled Java VM that ships with Windows.
Some user configuration is required, of course.
The caption reads "George Boole Ordering Lunch."
It's also an excellent book in its own right -- it won the National Book Award in 1974, and it would have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize had the board not considered it obscene and overriden the judges' decision.