I don't pretend to have my finger on the pulse of the arcade industry, but it seemed like an obvious development. There isn't much need to create custom arcade hardware when you've got something like the X-Box that you can develop arcade games on and later port to the home PC (and X-Box game console).
Quite a good strategy, for Microsoft and Sega.
But everywhere else, isn't Microsoft trying to move away from "pay-once" to "pay-per-use?" Here, they seem to be doing the opposite. Arcade games are pay-per-use. If a kid pays once for the home version of the arcade game, Microsoft ceases making money from that kid on that title. In the old days, where the home version of the game was only okay, kids would continue to play the superior arcade versions, so the game company could have its cake and eat it, too. But does that still hold true if the difference between the arcade and home versions of a game has been whittled down to only the environment in which it is played? I mean, I'd pick a sitting in a comfy chair with a clean bathroom and full fridge a few steps away, over an arcade full of punk-ass, trash-talking wiggers any day. I didn't have that choice growing up with Atari 2600- and ColecoVision-caliber systems, but considering how many arcades have vanished in the last couple of years, it seems like most people nowadays are choosing the comfy chair and all the trimmings.
It just seems like a waste to me to develop special arcade hardware that's only going to be a 'commercial' for a game, when the ordinary in-store demo units do the same thing for less cost, and the game is right there for purchase on impulse after a short tryout.
Oh, if you think Apple isn't the victim of the Kiss of Death, just look who is their biggest stock-owner.
Uh, that was $150M worth of non-voting stock, so if you were trying to imply that Microsoft has surreptitiously taken control of Apple as a result of that investment, think again, genius.
And I do believe Microsoft has since sold off that stock and made a very significant profit from the sale, but whether they have or not, Apple is not Vichy France to Microsoft's Nazis.
Exclusivity deals like this are not a problem, because Joe Consumer still has a choice-- if you don't want to drink Pepsi products with the food you get from those places, you can always take the food home and drink whatever you want with it there, or you can eat someplace that offers Coca Cola products instead.
~Philly
EULA acceptance = no Microsoft liability
on
EU May Fine Microsoft
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Anyone running Microsoft software has accepted the EULA for that software. No matter what Microsoft claims in their marketing materials about how robust, secure, etc. their products are, the EULA usually quite specifically absolves Microsoft of any liability at all, should their products not perform as advertised and instead cause damage to or destruction of the hardware on which it is used, monetary loss, injury or loss of life, or anything else that most people would term "bad" and start looking for someone to sue over.
This is patently ridiculous, IMHO. Imagine if GM bragged in their commercials about how safe their cars are because they have airbags, and then printed a EULA on their airbags that absolved them of any liability if the user died from using the airbag. Would people still buy GM cars? Probably not. Until software companies can be held totally accountable for the claims they make about the robustness and security of their products, the users of those products will always get the shaft, and have little recourse when they do.
I amazingly never had an Erector set when I was a kid, but I still have all of my Lego stuff. Also had a ton of Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, Bristle Blocks, and Ringamajigs, which looked a lot like the thing they stick into the middle of your pizza so the box doesn't get crushed down into the cheese, except the circular part was (obviously) a ring instead of a solid circle. There were 4 nubs on top of the ring, 90 degrees apart from each other, and the rings sat on legs about an inch or so high that had hollows in the bottom that the nubs snapped into. They were kind of limited, but made for some pretty colorful structures. A quick Google search uncovered the rather impressive resume of their inventor.
Tactical nukes are definitely not ruled out at this point, especially if this anthrax thing in Florida is linked to the terrorists.
The United States lumps together nuclear, chemical and biological agents as "weapons of mass destruction." Technically, the U.S. would be in accordance with its policy on 'first use,' if it used nukes now. If the anthrax incident can be traced to terrorists, then it becomes even more likely that the dust will be blown off our stockpile of battlefield nukes.
Here are the differences between then and now (read carefully, for they are subtle ones):
1991: Iraq invades Kuwait, on the other side of the globe, killing zero Americans in the process, depriving rich Kuwaitis of their gold and Rolls Royces, and making Americans pay a couple cents more per gallon while gassing up their SUVs and filling their heating oil tanks for a few months.
2001: Terrorist fucknuts slam planes into buildings on American soil, killing thousands of ordinary Americans in the process, wounding thousands more ordinary Americans, depriving still thousands more ordinary Americans of their parents, children, spouses, or livelihoods, and (probably) sending the U.S. economy, if not the global economy, down the crapper for a while.
In 1991, the American populace's support of our forces in the Gulf War began to waver, once the missions became more dangerous than dropping bombs from the security of planes aloft in coalition-controlled skies. Bush the First chose poorly in not having the coalition ground forces press on, take Baghad, and kick the balls off of Saddam Hussein in the town square. He went on to become a one-term president in part because of that choice, ironically the result he was fearing if he had instructed our forces to take Baghdad.
In 2001, the American populace will support significantly more dangerous missions, because we'll have a hard time feeling safe in our own cities until Osama bin Laden and as many of his ilk as possible are dead-- and if the military has to seal off the borders of Afghanistan and sweep through the whole country a square mile at a time until they find and kill as many of the terrorists as possible, the American people will likely be fine with that, for at least a while longer than they would have been with it happening in Iraq 10 years ago.
Back in 1995, Claris introduced Emailer, a Mac e-mail client application that could retrieve AOL mail, along with many other kinds of mail accounts. Development was continued on it for about 3 years or so, but it became an orphan when Claris became Filemaker, Inc and divested itself of non-database products. It was neglected and finally end-of-lifed by Apple in November 1998 at version 2.0v3. Most of the team that created it went on to develop Outlook Express for the Mac, which does not do AOL mail because AOL decided to stop licensing out the protocol. I can only assume that AOL realized they could make more money by forcing everyone to use their shitty built-in mail client and bombarding them with paid advertisements the entire time, than by licensing out the protocol to other software companies creating clean, elegantly-designed mail clients.
Six years later, Emailer still works great on Mac OS 9.x, and the original developers do not believe it should break under OS X. I still use it (as do a lot of people) and I still think it's the best mail client I've ever used, because it doesn't do HTML mail. Nothing but pure, speedy text.
What happens if I don't have the application that created the file?
It depends.
If you have MacLinkPlus installed, double-clicking on a document whose creator app you don't have, will bring up a dialog listing the other apps you do have that can open it.
Otherwise, the Mac will probably just give you a dialog telling you "The file cannot be opened because its creator app can't be found."
If you have a general idea of what kind of file you're dealing with, try dragging it onto the icon of an application... if the application's icon turns dark, that usually means that it can read that type of file. Dropping the file icon onto the application icon will cause that application to launch, and then try to open that file. You could then do a Save As... and save the file in the format of your chosen app.
Lastly, you can do batch conversions of filetypes and creator codes with a utility called FileTyper. For on-the-fly editing of type and creator codes from the file's Get Info window, you can use Snitch.
Yeah, sure seems that way when you consider that true Islam eschews murder, suicide, etc, and yet OBL and his minions have no trouble with doing any of those things.
Oh, and let's not forget having respect for women, which I'm sure is why some of the hijackers were reported to have been getting lap dances at some titty bar in Florida a day or two before heading off to meet Allah.
Bin Laden and his ilk just seem to pick and choose which tenets of Islam they want to follow, so wondering whether or not he'd chow down on some scrapple if he was offered nothing else to eat is hardly ignorant. Might be kind of nice for all the other Muslims who worship this guy to see what a charlatan he is, just conveniently chucking aspects of his alleged faith when they become inconvenient to him.
Osama's prison menu should be all-you-can-eat ham, bacon, pork chops... you get the idea. I'm interested to see just how devout a Muslim that fucker is-- would he starve to death, or eat the flesh of an unclean animal?
Also, what's a terrible way for a Muslim to die? I know Osama thinks he'll become a martyr and go off to paradise with his friggin' virgins or whatever-- what could be done to him so he'll believe he'll be damned, and not greet the Reaper with open arms? Someone on here wrote a while back that a dishonorable death would be if he were killed and/or buried while wrapped in the skin of a pig. Any truth to that?
Don't forget that the SR-71 was developed from a lot of work that went into designing a hydrogen fueled aircraft.
Yes, one of the more entertaining parts of Skunk Works, IMHO, is the section where Ben Rich talks about his research and experimentation with liquid hydrogen.
No?! Dammit, that was one of the funniest Simpsons episodes ever! They can't pull it!!
From what I've heard, FOX took it out of syndication immediately after the 11th.
The only remaining question is, will it be missing from the eventually-forthcoming "The Complete nth Season" DVD that will cover the season in which it premiered? If so, I suggest the buyers of that DVD initiate a class-action lawsuit for false advertising-- because without "The City of New York versus Homer Simpson," it's not the complete season.
Oh, and I saw Zoolander last night. It was incredibly stupid, but I thought it was quite funny. And I was howling at the '2001' reference.
I went there from '91 to '93, and hated it. The curriculum was SHIT. I was a Comp Sci major, forced to take more physics and chemistry than MacGyver did. I dropped out-- walked out of a class one afternoon in July of 1993 (For those who didn't know, Drexel is a co-op school, so you get to sit in a hot-ass lecture hall in the summer while your friends are down the shore) and never went back-- and got a job in the real world. Ten years later, none of the shit they said I had to learn to get a degree in CompSci has EVER come up. Imagine that.
To keep this post somewhat on topic-- I think it's a real dick move on Drexel's part trying to sit on all those domains just so nobody else can use them for anything.
AT&T WorldNet was the dialup ISP I left when I got my Comcast@Home service. Cable or not, I was about to leave them anyway.
AT&T WorldNet, who offered me "unlimited" internet access for ~ $20 per month, and then complained that their network was overtaxed when I used it as per our agreement. A couple months before I finally went to cable, they switched from ~$20/month for unlimited, to ~$20/month for x hours, and then ridiculous additional charges for going over x. Fuck AT&T.
They ought to change their advertisting slogan to "AT&T. We have altered the deal. Pray we do not alter if further."
NET SEND [idiot's IP address] Hey idiot, your friggin' computer is infected with [IIS virus of the week], why don't you get a clue and fix it?
My Mac server's firewall software has been logging these attempts forever. I'm currently looking for an AppleScriptable Mac program that can send out these NET SEND messages to the idiots automatically. For now, I have to print the firewall log from my Mac and send the messages manually from my PC.
Still closer...
You could just pick up this month's Maxim (at least the U.S. edition), which features Jolene Blaylock and will probably be a little easier to conceal from your wife.:-)
Perhaps Intel made Gateway an offer they, in their increasingly-desperate financial straits, could not refuse. An offer like, "If you exclusively sell machines based on Intel processors, we'll give you a significant discount over what you'd pay if you offered your customers a choice."
This is a Microsoft tactic from way back, used with great effect to obtain their OS monopoly. The Microsoft File gives a detailed account of them using this tactic to stop Vobis, a German PC maker from offering DR-DOS. Microsoft gave Vobis a huge discount on the then-new Windows 3.x if they would exclusively sell MS-DOS and stop distributing DR-DOS.
The janitor at the place had just bought a brand-new car, but was complaining that the dealership almost wouldn't sell it to him. Why not? Because he had paid in CASH. $26,000 in cash.
This happened to me back in '94, when I bought a new car with some money I inherited. Only I wrote out a personal check for the full amount, just under $18,000.
I anticipated hesitation on the dealer's part, so I made sure to bring a copy of my last bank statement, and an interim statement from an ATM that was produced that day. Took them a while to verify the funds, but they sold me the car. The look on the salesman's face when he asked me, "How would you like to finance this?" and I whipped out my checkbook and replied, "How about 100% down, and 0% interest?" was definitely worth the wait while they verified me.
I remember seeing a Compaq DeskPro with USB on the logic board in early or mid 1997.
Who had the hardware first is irrelevant. Until Windows 98 added functional USB support (Win95 OSR2 does not count because its USB support was half-assed crap), those USB ports were little more than extra holes in the backplate. And aren't DeskPros aimed at the corporate market anyway, where (since NT is the "recommended" OS) USB was unusable until Windows 2000 was released in 1999?
Even with the USB support that came with Windows 98, Wintel users still hung on to those serial and parallel port devices for their dear little lives. Apple was the first company to fully support USB, which it did by producing a product that exclusively used USB to connect peripherals-- and that is what created the market for USB.
You can argue that forcing people to replace their legacy devices or buy adapters so they can continue to use them kind of sucks, but it is a tactic that is sometimes necessary. For example, to make sure people used the mouse on the first Macintosh, its keyboard had no cursor keys, so they couldn't stick with the 'old' ways. Once the mouse became accepted and it was shown that cursor keys still had a useful place on the keyboard, they were reinstated on the keyboards of subsequent Mac models.
Why not just build on top of that rubble with a new structure?
Ask the guys who didn't worry about the stability of the ground under the Tower of Pisa.
If there's one thing you need when you're building a structure tens of stories high and weighing hundreds of thousands of tons, it's a damned rock-stable piece of ground for the structure to sit on. According to reports, the owner of the site wants to put up four 50 story buildings in place of the twin towers, so they will need to clear everything out and reestablish a good foundation.
Another reason they can't just plow it under is the infrastructure buried beneath. They're not going to just write off the train tunnel to NJ, presumably thousands of commuters relied on it every day. Rebuilt offices will need close-by transit to bring the workers in. And they definitely have to shore up that 'bathtub' that holds back the waters of the Hudson. If that is breached, it could negatively affect the foundation stability of the buildings that survived in the area.
Actually, I think you're right. Most companies that could afford to keep their offices in the WTC, could also afford a decent off-site backup strategy. It would seem that many invested in one. Judging by a report I read recently but can't find now, one of the larger off-site backup companies (Iron Mountain, maybe?) said their affected customers started calling a few minutes after the first plane hit.
One company that landed on its feet with a great deal of luck got a writeup on CNN. Seems the CEO's fiancee, who also worked at the company, had the presence of mind to grab their backup tapes on her way out the door.
Most people are more worried about the largely-irreplaceable paper-based records that either burned up, were buried under rubble, or spread from hell to breakfast over lower Manhattan when the towers came down. I believe NYC, or maybe even NY state has suspended or outright eliminated statues of limitations on many kinds of proceedings, in anticipation of the resulting bureaucratic mess the missing records will eventually create.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't pretend to have my finger on the pulse of the arcade industry, but it seemed like an obvious development. There isn't much need to create custom arcade hardware when you've got something like the X-Box that you can develop arcade games on and later port to the home PC (and X-Box game console).
Quite a good strategy, for Microsoft and Sega.
But everywhere else, isn't Microsoft trying to move away from "pay-once" to "pay-per-use?" Here, they seem to be doing the opposite. Arcade games are pay-per-use. If a kid pays once for the home version of the arcade game, Microsoft ceases making money from that kid on that title. In the old days, where the home version of the game was only okay, kids would continue to play the superior arcade versions, so the game company could have its cake and eat it, too. But does that still hold true if the difference between the arcade and home versions of a game has been whittled down to only the environment in which it is played? I mean, I'd pick a sitting in a comfy chair with a clean bathroom and full fridge a few steps away, over an arcade full of punk-ass, trash-talking wiggers any day. I didn't have that choice growing up with Atari 2600- and ColecoVision-caliber systems, but considering how many arcades have vanished in the last couple of years, it seems like most people nowadays are choosing the comfy chair and all the trimmings.
It just seems like a waste to me to develop special arcade hardware that's only going to be a 'commercial' for a game, when the ordinary in-store demo units do the same thing for less cost, and the game is right there for purchase on impulse after a short tryout.
~Philly
Oh, if you think Apple isn't the victim of the Kiss of Death, just look who is their biggest stock-owner.
Uh, that was $150M worth of non-voting stock, so if you were trying to imply that Microsoft has surreptitiously taken control of Apple as a result of that investment, think again, genius.
And I do believe Microsoft has since sold off that stock and made a very significant profit from the sale, but whether they have or not, Apple is not Vichy France to Microsoft's Nazis.
~Philly
I like RC myself, but is there a fast food place anywhere on the planet that has RC from the fountain?
If your local stores don't carry it bottled, you can always order some from The Soda Shop.
~Philly
My boss and I were wondering why someone like Coke or Pepsi is allowed to ensure exclusivity with its distributors (fast food chains, etc)?
Well in the case of PepsiCo, they either own, or own a large interest in another company that owns: Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, D'Angelo's Sandwich Shop, Chevy's, and California Pizza Kitchen.
Exclusivity deals like this are not a problem, because Joe Consumer still has a choice-- if you don't want to drink Pepsi products with the food you get from those places, you can always take the food home and drink whatever you want with it there, or you can eat someplace that offers Coca Cola products instead.
~Philly
Anyone running Microsoft software has accepted the EULA for that software. No matter what Microsoft claims in their marketing materials about how robust, secure, etc. their products are, the EULA usually quite specifically absolves Microsoft of any liability at all, should their products not perform as advertised and instead cause damage to or destruction of the hardware on which it is used, monetary loss, injury or loss of life, or anything else that most people would term "bad" and start looking for someone to sue over.
This is patently ridiculous, IMHO. Imagine if GM bragged in their commercials about how safe their cars are because they have airbags, and then printed a EULA on their airbags that absolved them of any liability if the user died from using the airbag. Would people still buy GM cars? Probably not. Until software companies can be held totally accountable for the claims they make about the robustness and security of their products, the users of those products will always get the shaft, and have little recourse when they do.
~Philly
I have nothing else to say, though I am required to write something here, so consider this it.
I amazingly never had an Erector set when I was a kid, but I still have all of my Lego stuff. Also had a ton of Tinkertoys, Lincoln Logs, Bristle Blocks, and Ringamajigs, which looked a lot like the thing they stick into the middle of your pizza so the box doesn't get crushed down into the cheese, except the circular part was (obviously) a ring instead of a solid circle. There were 4 nubs on top of the ring, 90 degrees apart from each other, and the rings sat on legs about an inch or so high that had hollows in the bottom that the nubs snapped into. They were kind of limited, but made for some pretty colorful structures. A quick Google search uncovered the rather impressive resume of their inventor.
~Philly
Tactical nukes are definitely not ruled out at this point, especially if this anthrax thing in Florida is linked to the terrorists.
The United States lumps together nuclear, chemical and biological agents as "weapons of mass destruction." Technically, the U.S. would be in accordance with its policy on 'first use,' if it used nukes now. If the anthrax incident can be traced to terrorists, then it becomes even more likely that the dust will be blown off our stockpile of battlefield nukes.
~Philly
Here are the differences between then and now (read carefully, for they are subtle ones):
1991: Iraq invades Kuwait, on the other side of the globe, killing zero Americans in the process, depriving rich Kuwaitis of their gold and Rolls Royces, and making Americans pay a couple cents more per gallon while gassing up their SUVs and filling their heating oil tanks for a few months.
2001: Terrorist fucknuts slam planes into buildings on American soil, killing thousands of ordinary Americans in the process, wounding thousands more ordinary Americans, depriving still thousands more ordinary Americans of their parents, children, spouses, or livelihoods, and (probably) sending the U.S. economy, if not the global economy, down the crapper for a while.
In 1991, the American populace's support of our forces in the Gulf War began to waver, once the missions became more dangerous than dropping bombs from the security of planes aloft in coalition-controlled skies. Bush the First chose poorly in not having the coalition ground forces press on, take Baghad, and kick the balls off of Saddam Hussein in the town square. He went on to become a one-term president in part because of that choice, ironically the result he was fearing if he had instructed our forces to take Baghdad.
In 2001, the American populace will support significantly more dangerous missions, because we'll have a hard time feeling safe in our own cities until Osama bin Laden and as many of his ilk as possible are dead-- and if the military has to seal off the borders of Afghanistan and sweep through the whole country a square mile at a time until they find and kill as many of the terrorists as possible, the American people will likely be fine with that, for at least a while longer than they would have been with it happening in Iraq 10 years ago.
~Philly
To paraphrase of my favorite quotes, I believe it was from a general in the Gulf War:
"Yes, the bombing being done by the B-52's is 100% accurate. The bombs hit the ground, every time."
~Philly
Back in 1995, Claris introduced Emailer, a Mac e-mail client application that could retrieve AOL mail, along with many other kinds of mail accounts. Development was continued on it for about 3 years or so, but it became an orphan when Claris became Filemaker, Inc and divested itself of non-database products. It was neglected and finally end-of-lifed by Apple in November 1998 at version 2.0v3. Most of the team that created it went on to develop Outlook Express for the Mac, which does not do AOL mail because AOL decided to stop licensing out the protocol. I can only assume that AOL realized they could make more money by forcing everyone to use their shitty built-in mail client and bombarding them with paid advertisements the entire time, than by licensing out the protocol to other software companies creating clean, elegantly-designed mail clients.
Six years later, Emailer still works great on Mac OS 9.x, and the original developers do not believe it should break under OS X. I still use it (as do a lot of people) and I still think it's the best mail client I've ever used, because it doesn't do HTML mail. Nothing but pure, speedy text.
~Philly
What happens if I don't have the application that created the file?
It depends.
If you have MacLinkPlus installed, double-clicking on a document whose creator app you don't have, will bring up a dialog listing the other apps you do have that can open it.
Otherwise, the Mac will probably just give you a dialog telling you "The file cannot be opened because its creator app can't be found."
If you have a general idea of what kind of file you're dealing with, try dragging it onto the icon of an application... if the application's icon turns dark, that usually means that it can read that type of file. Dropping the file icon onto the application icon will cause that application to launch, and then try to open that file. You could then do a Save As... and save the file in the format of your chosen app.
Lastly, you can do batch conversions of filetypes and creator codes with a utility called FileTyper. For on-the-fly editing of type and creator codes from the file's Get Info window, you can use Snitch.
~Philly
Yeah, sure seems that way when you consider that true Islam eschews murder, suicide, etc, and yet OBL and his minions have no trouble with doing any of those things.
Oh, and let's not forget having respect for women, which I'm sure is why some of the hijackers were reported to have been getting lap dances at some titty bar in Florida a day or two before heading off to meet Allah.
Bin Laden and his ilk just seem to pick and choose which tenets of Islam they want to follow, so wondering whether or not he'd chow down on some scrapple if he was offered nothing else to eat is hardly ignorant. Might be kind of nice for all the other Muslims who worship this guy to see what a charlatan he is, just conveniently chucking aspects of his alleged faith when they become inconvenient to him.
Osama's prison menu should be all-you-can-eat ham, bacon, pork chops... you get the idea. I'm interested to see just how devout a Muslim that fucker is-- would he starve to death, or eat the flesh of an unclean animal?
Also, what's a terrible way for a Muslim to die? I know Osama thinks he'll become a martyr and go off to paradise with his friggin' virgins or whatever-- what could be done to him so he'll believe he'll be damned, and not greet the Reaper with open arms? Someone on here wrote a while back that a dishonorable death would be if he were killed and/or buried while wrapped in the skin of a pig. Any truth to that?
~Philly
Don't forget that the SR-71 was developed from a lot of work that went into designing a hydrogen fueled aircraft.
Yes, one of the more entertaining parts of Skunk Works, IMHO, is the section where Ben Rich talks about his research and experimentation with liquid hydrogen.
~Philly
No?! Dammit, that was one of the funniest Simpsons episodes ever! They can't pull it!!
From what I've heard, FOX took it out of syndication immediately after the 11th.
The only remaining question is, will it be missing from the eventually-forthcoming "The Complete nth Season" DVD that will cover the season in which it premiered? If so, I suggest the buyers of that DVD initiate a class-action lawsuit for false advertising-- because without "The City of New York versus Homer Simpson," it's not the complete season.
Oh, and I saw Zoolander last night. It was incredibly stupid, but I thought it was quite funny. And I was howling at the '2001' reference.
~Philly
I went there from '91 to '93, and hated it. The curriculum was SHIT. I was a Comp Sci major, forced to take more physics and chemistry than MacGyver did. I dropped out-- walked out of a class one afternoon in July of 1993 (For those who didn't know, Drexel is a co-op school, so you get to sit in a hot-ass lecture hall in the summer while your friends are down the shore) and never went back-- and got a job in the real world. Ten years later, none of the shit they said I had to learn to get a degree in CompSci has EVER come up. Imagine that.
To keep this post somewhat on topic-- I think it's a real dick move on Drexel's part trying to sit on all those domains just so nobody else can use them for anything.
~Philly
AT&T WorldNet was the dialup ISP I left when I got my Comcast@Home service. Cable or not, I was about to leave them anyway.
AT&T WorldNet, who offered me "unlimited" internet access for ~ $20 per month, and then complained that their network was overtaxed when I used it as per our agreement. A couple months before I finally went to cable, they switched from ~$20/month for unlimited, to ~$20/month for x hours, and then ridiculous additional charges for going over x. Fuck AT&T.
They ought to change their advertisting slogan to "AT&T. We have altered the deal. Pray we do not alter if further."
Try
NET SEND [idiot's IP address] Hey idiot, your friggin' computer is infected with [IIS virus of the week], why don't you get a clue and fix it?
My Mac server's firewall software has been logging these attempts forever. I'm currently looking for an AppleScriptable Mac program that can send out these NET SEND messages to the idiots automatically. For now, I have to print the firewall log from my Mac and send the messages manually from my PC.
~Philly
Still closer... :-)
You could just pick up this month's Maxim (at least the U.S. edition), which features Jolene Blaylock and will probably be a little easier to conceal from your wife.
~Philly
For once, Intel is a cheaper decision.
Perhaps Intel made Gateway an offer they, in their increasingly-desperate financial straits, could not refuse. An offer like, "If you exclusively sell machines based on Intel processors, we'll give you a significant discount over what you'd pay if you offered your customers a choice."
This is a Microsoft tactic from way back, used with great effect to obtain their OS monopoly. The Microsoft File gives a detailed account of them using this tactic to stop Vobis, a German PC maker from offering DR-DOS. Microsoft gave Vobis a huge discount on the then-new Windows 3.x if they would exclusively sell MS-DOS and stop distributing DR-DOS.
~Philly
The janitor at the place had just bought a brand-new car, but was complaining that the dealership almost wouldn't sell it to him. Why not? Because he had paid in CASH. $26,000 in cash.
This happened to me back in '94, when I bought a new car with some money I inherited. Only I wrote out a personal check for the full amount, just under $18,000.
I anticipated hesitation on the dealer's part, so I made sure to bring a copy of my last bank statement, and an interim statement from an ATM that was produced that day. Took them a while to verify the funds, but they sold me the car. The look on the salesman's face when he asked me, "How would you like to finance this?" and I whipped out my checkbook and replied, "How about 100% down, and 0% interest?" was definitely worth the wait while they verified me.
~Philly
I remember seeing a Compaq DeskPro with USB on the logic board in early or mid 1997.
Who had the hardware first is irrelevant. Until Windows 98 added functional USB support (Win95 OSR2 does not count because its USB support was half-assed crap), those USB ports were little more than extra holes in the backplate. And aren't DeskPros aimed at the corporate market anyway, where (since NT is the "recommended" OS) USB was unusable until Windows 2000 was released in 1999?
Even with the USB support that came with Windows 98, Wintel users still hung on to those serial and parallel port devices for their dear little lives. Apple was the first company to fully support USB, which it did by producing a product that exclusively used USB to connect peripherals-- and that is what created the market for USB.
You can argue that forcing people to replace their legacy devices or buy adapters so they can continue to use them kind of sucks, but it is a tactic that is sometimes necessary. For example, to make sure people used the mouse on the first Macintosh, its keyboard had no cursor keys, so they couldn't stick with the 'old' ways. Once the mouse became accepted and it was shown that cursor keys still had a useful place on the keyboard, they were reinstated on the keyboards of subsequent Mac models.
~Philly
Why not just build on top of that rubble with a new structure?
Ask the guys who didn't worry about the stability of the ground under the Tower of Pisa.
If there's one thing you need when you're building a structure tens of stories high and weighing hundreds of thousands of tons, it's a damned rock-stable piece of ground for the structure to sit on. According to reports, the owner of the site wants to put up four 50 story buildings in place of the twin towers, so they will need to clear everything out and reestablish a good foundation.
Another reason they can't just plow it under is the infrastructure buried beneath. They're not going to just write off the train tunnel to NJ, presumably thousands of commuters relied on it every day. Rebuilt offices will need close-by transit to bring the workers in. And they definitely have to shore up that 'bathtub' that holds back the waters of the Hudson. If that is breached, it could negatively affect the foundation stability of the buildings that survived in the area.
~Philly
Actually, I think you're right. Most companies that could afford to keep their offices in the WTC, could also afford a decent off-site backup strategy. It would seem that many invested in one. Judging by a report I read recently but can't find now, one of the larger off-site backup companies (Iron Mountain, maybe?) said their affected customers started calling a few minutes after the first plane hit.
One company that landed on its feet with a great deal of luck got a writeup on CNN. Seems the CEO's fiancee, who also worked at the company, had the presence of mind to grab their backup tapes on her way out the door.
Most people are more worried about the largely-irreplaceable paper-based records that either burned up, were buried under rubble, or spread from hell to breakfast over lower Manhattan when the towers came down. I believe NYC, or maybe even NY state has suspended or outright eliminated statues of limitations on many kinds of proceedings, in anticipation of the resulting bureaucratic mess the missing records will eventually create.
~Philly