and yet are required for SEC reporting and basically running their business.
This should be illegal. There was a case in Texas I read about. I don't remember all the details, but this is the general deal. There was a building code law in this town, as all towns usually have. One of the things you had to comply with to meet code was a standard which was copyrighted/patented by a local company. They wouldn't tell anyone how to meet the code because it was a trade secret. The judge ruled that the law can't be secret. If the law is secret people can't obey it.
What does this mean? It means the government can't force you to report to them in a proprietary format. If there is a law that I have to submit something to the feds, and they only accept.doc that means the government requires me to get/use MS Word. If the SEC requires you to use some proprietary windows only program to send them reports required by law and you want to use linux, you should start a lawsuit. You'll win too if you site this case and other cases as precedent.
Yes, linux has trouble in vertical markets because nobody is going to make the quality piece of software to run a real estate agency for example. But vertical markets is where linux has the most potential for use. Most people at home pay for windows via the windows tax or piracy. They don't feel the hurt in the wallet for windows whether it exists or not. Small businesses feel the hurt from windows licensing bad, or they feel the hurt from the BSA. If they can replace the one or two 3rd party apps they absolutely need with linux alternatives they will switch in a second.
Wow, this is great, now all my friends can re-enjoy one of the best games ever. It will be just like before they fscked it up. Only if I could find the necessary stuff to run a tribes 2 linux server in classic mode. Anyone know where to get it from and what the newest version is???
Plug the LCD into the better of the two computers. Make sure both computers are networked together. Set up an X server on both machines. Set it up to switch the displays when you push a certain keystroke.
This is probably a lot easier to set up than what I'm trying to do. I've got a 17" crt and a 17" lcd plugged into a dual head geforce fx. I'm trying to configure X so that I can get one window manager on the left and another window manager on the right. Then I want to use x2x or something to move the mouse and keyboard between the two. Apparently this is very difficult given I have only one video card as opposed to two. If anyone knows how, please tell me.
Here's what you do. First get a cellphone, a must these days. Next, make sure your pc is always connected to the net. Next write a piece of software. This piece of software will erase absolutely all of your data completely and irreperably. Or at least anything you don't want getting out. You can also write it to send data to certain people/places. In fact, you can write it to do anything you want with your data. Just set up a thing where you contact your computer directly or via cellphone to prevent it from doing its stuff. In the event of your death your data goes to where it should. You could even have it IM/E-mail friends about your death and put up a website about your life and such.
Heck, if you are really good you can write the program to simulate your daily digital life. In effect making it so people who only know you on the net think you are alive. He died on thursday? I IMed him on friday and he posted to/. on saturday!!!!
Oh, just so you know, I'm actually dead and this is a program I wrote that is posting to slashdot. ph33r!!!!
oh, there sure is a better alternative. If you don't care about refresh rates and you want more than 17" in size DO NOT buy this monitor. Especially don't buy this monitor if you care about getting the best deal.
But if 17" 1280x1024 is enough for you and you need that 12ms real bad, buy this. It's sooooo bright! Your star burns!
Right, so they modify the html. And firefox modifies it right back to where it came from with my handy dandy user-content.css. If they work some evil magik that gets around it I'll just use that adblock extension. Remember, there is NO WAY to stop the determined geek.
I recently bought one of these. I was in the market for a new monitor, and let me tell you, everything you hear about this monitor is true. You get what you pay for. And for the price newegg charges you are getting the best lcd monitor I have ever seen. When the price drops to the 300 area I'll probably buy another one and do dual screen with them. Check my slashjournal for the epic tale of my monitor purchase.
Gimp 1 had a terrible interface. No bones about it. Gimp 2 however, has a decent UI. It's not super amazing, but its good enough, above average.
The problem is that these Photoshop users are used to photoshop. Any other UI no matter how slick and perfect will be worse for them. They are trained on photoshop so well that using anything else kills their efficiency. Like driving stick for the first time after driving automatic your whole life.
I'm no graphic wizard, just a programmer. And I recently got gimp 2 for windows and linux. I couldn't do fancy things right away, but its not because I couldn't find the buttons or they were in bad or hidden places. It's because I don't know anything about making graphics. If graphics people start out on the gimp instead of photoshop they will be just as good on that.
So don't try to convert people to gimp. Just get new people who are about to pirate photoshop for the first time to use gimp instead.
Why is there a special p2p for I2? Here at RIT we have I2 and it just works automatically. If you try to connect to an I2 computre the router does everything transparently. So whenever we connect to another college student with a p2p app I2 is used automagically.
All they need to do is stick a cellphone in one of these things and I'm sold. Instead the only thing they make that suits my needs is the yet to be released Treo 610. The 600 would be good enough, but no bluetooth. Well, I'll start saving now.
I'm on quite a few mailing lists, and I get almost no spam. In fact, I get such a small amount of spam that I use the thunderbird filter to get rid of non-spam e-mails that I just don't want. The miniscule amount of spam that I do get is filtered 99% perfectly.
I don't know what everyone else is doing that is bringing them so much spam. If you play your cards right and use a filter it really isn't a problem anymore.
I'll admit it, I'm a whiner when it comes to cheese. The way I see it is this. If there is a game where cheese is possible. For example, a fighting game. Then the design of the game is flawed. Now if its like a tournament or something with a prize, all is fair cheese away. But when you're playing with friends the idea is to have fun. If everybody just does the cheese move what's the point? There's no fun there, it's just plain stupid. Everyone lines up to push the same exact buttons as the previous guy, and if they don't push those same exact buttons they lose because the cheese is unstoppable. (I know its not always unstoppable, but often it might as well be ).
So, if you have a poorly designed game in which cheese exists and you want to play it with friends and have fun. Don't do the cheese or you're going to ruin everyone's fun. If there is a cheese whore in the current group of gamers you must play a game that has no cheese. So as a whiner even though I'm saying with my mouth "Stop that you cheesy whore!" what I really mean is "ok, this game sucks and has bad design, but we can have fun with it anyway if we don't do the cheesy crap. Losing isn't a big deal fanboy, pick a different character for once".
Re:Why were MP ever such a big deal?
on
Beyond Megapixels
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Yup. I remember when I was at CompUSA once and some stupid guy was buying a computer. He was interested in only a few things. Will I be able to burn cds with this? Can I do e-mail? Can I plug my camera into it? etc. You just need enough power to be able to get the functionality you desire. Excess power is money wasted.
This is the problem I'm having buying a laptop. I want something small and cheap that just has a wireless card, a little hard drive, a nice slow cpu, a stick of ram, a usb hole and a vga hole. All I want is to browse the web on the go. Nobody makes a lite enough laptop for me. Features are more important than power.
my friends like to give weird names to their computers. Then they call their computers by the names. I mean sure, you have to name computers for dns purposes. Or if you have a lot of boxen you have to be able differentiate between them. I have two computers, bedroom server and desktop machine. The one in the bedroom is protoman and the desktop machine is apreche. I dont' ever actually call them by their names though. I say "the bedroom server" or "my computer". Other people actually call their main machines by the names they give them. It's freaky, geeky and weird. Polly shouldn't be as we like to say (see the simpsons episode where homer has a crayon in his nose). Don't be a freak. Your computer is not a person, it is a machine/tool. Treat it as such.
blue ring? wuss. First of all if you get the "it's a secret to everybody" guys you can get the blue ring before you get anything else in the game. Secondly don't you think you would beat the game a lot faster if you didn't get useless items like the blue ring? When going for a speed record you need to get only what is absolutely necessary to get to the end. Leave all other items behind.
So far, every MMO I've seen (and I've seen most of them) is just a glorified chat room. It's IRC plus fancy 3d graphics and sound. Sometimes there is also a progress quest included as well. No MMO that I've seen actually has skill based gameplay, which is what makes something no longer a chat room, but a GAME.
Puzzle Pirates is the only MMOish thing I play. Why? Because success is almost entirely skill based. Theoretically someone who has a trial account and has never played before can defeat the person who has been playing the game since day 1 if their skill is great enough. Not only that, but the major factor in any victory is always skill. Not only that, but the people in puzzle pirates actually role play and aren't asshats. What started as random people on the net became my crew and now me hearties, arrr! You don't get that anywhere else.
Give puzzle pirates the attention and respect it deserves. It's probably the most original and well designed game to come out in a long time.
I use 3 things to make websites. Well, technically four, but really 3. First I use nedit. It's a text editor, my text editor of choice. Any text editor will do. Second I use nvu. nvu is like Mozilla Composer, but it has been "Firefoxized". Third I use firefox itself, to view the pages. The technical fourth thing is a firefox extension that lest me edit css live to make sure its perfect. Any real self respecting geek writes the html and css in the raw. It's the only way.
DOS gaming works ok. Things like quest for glory work great in dosbox. Some games like Descent just work in windows xp without any help. But some games just wont go. I've been trying to make Mechwarrior 2 work in XP for months, still no go. I can get it to run, but as soon as it gets to the point where the real game starts it hangs up. Other problems I have are playing old Windows 95 era games. Stuff like Red Alert and the original GTA. Having two monitors and a dual head video card really screw these games up, if they run to begin with. Sure windows is backwards compatible, but not like the PS2 where every PS1 game works perfectly.
This is why open source rules. Any open source game will always run on any os and any machine no matter what. Because anyone can take the source, port it and recompile it for the right system. I really wish the companies that own the rights to old games either re-release them for modern oses and sell them on the cheap ($5?) or release the source. I mean seriously. What does anyone have to lose by giving up the Mechwarrior 2 source code???
Futurama and Family Guy are more popular than they realize. Me and my roomate no longer watch television. Over the course of the 4 years of college we've had TV go from that thing we watch to being hated enemy. Of course there are 3 shows we download and watch. The third is the Simpsons. If they make new episodes that would be great, because then I can download and watch those too. It really sucks when you've downloaded and seen every single episode and there's nothing new. Buying the DVDs is good too.
Slashdot Mirror
and yet are required for SEC reporting and basically running their business.
.doc that means the government requires me to get/use MS Word. If the SEC requires you to use some proprietary windows only program to send them reports required by law and you want to use linux, you should start a lawsuit. You'll win too if you site this case and other cases as precedent.
This should be illegal. There was a case in Texas I read about. I don't remember all the details, but this is the general deal. There was a building code law in this town, as all towns usually have. One of the things you had to comply with to meet code was a standard which was copyrighted/patented by a local company. They wouldn't tell anyone how to meet the code because it was a trade secret. The judge ruled that the law can't be secret. If the law is secret people can't obey it.
What does this mean? It means the government can't force you to report to them in a proprietary format. If there is a law that I have to submit something to the feds, and they only accept
Yes, linux has trouble in vertical markets because nobody is going to make the quality piece of software to run a real estate agency for example. But vertical markets is where linux has the most potential for use. Most people at home pay for windows via the windows tax or piracy. They don't feel the hurt in the wallet for windows whether it exists or not. Small businesses feel the hurt from windows licensing bad, or they feel the hurt from the BSA. If they can replace the one or two 3rd party apps they absolutely need with linux alternatives they will switch in a second.
Read my journal for the complete CompUSA story.
/me mods this article up +10 what I've always been saying
Wow, this is great, now all my friends can re-enjoy one of the best games ever. It will be just like before they fscked it up. Only if I could find the necessary stuff to run a tribes 2 linux server in classic mode. Anyone know where to get it from and what the newest version is???
Plug the LCD into the better of the two computers. Make sure both computers are networked together. Set up an X server on both machines. Set it up to switch the displays when you push a certain keystroke.
This is probably a lot easier to set up than what I'm trying to do. I've got a 17" crt and a 17" lcd plugged into a dual head geforce fx. I'm trying to configure X so that I can get one window manager on the left and another window manager on the right. Then I want to use x2x or something to move the mouse and keyboard between the two. Apparently this is very difficult given I have only one video card as opposed to two. If anyone knows how, please tell me.
Here's what you do. First get a cellphone, a must these days. Next, make sure your pc is always connected to the net. Next write a piece of software. This piece of software will erase absolutely all of your data completely and irreperably. Or at least anything you don't want getting out. You can also write it to send data to certain people/places. In fact, you can write it to do anything you want with your data. Just set up a thing where you contact your computer directly or via cellphone to prevent it from doing its stuff. In the event of your death your data goes to where it should. You could even have it IM/E-mail friends about your death and put up a website about your life and such.
/. on saturday!!!!
Heck, if you are really good you can write the program to simulate your daily digital life. In effect making it so people who only know you on the net think you are alive. He died on thursday? I IMed him on friday and he posted to
Oh, just so you know, I'm actually dead and this is a program I wrote that is posting to slashdot. ph33r!!!!
oh, there sure is a better alternative. If you don't care about refresh rates and you want more than 17" in size DO NOT buy this monitor. Especially don't buy this monitor if you care about getting the best deal.
But if 17" 1280x1024 is enough for you and you need that 12ms real bad, buy this. It's sooooo bright!
Your star burns!
Right, so they modify the html. And firefox modifies it right back to where it came from with my handy dandy user-content.css. If they work some evil magik that gets around it I'll just use that adblock extension. Remember, there is NO WAY to stop the determined geek.
I recently bought one of these. I was in the market for a new monitor, and let me tell you, everything you hear about this monitor is true. You get what you pay for. And for the price newegg charges you are getting the best lcd monitor I have ever seen. When the price drops to the 300 area I'll probably buy another one and do dual screen with them. Check my slashjournal for the epic tale of my monitor purchase.
The FCC is going to require firewire on all cable boxes.
link
Gimp 1 had a terrible interface. No bones about it. Gimp 2 however, has a decent UI. It's not super amazing, but its good enough, above average.
The problem is that these Photoshop users are used to photoshop. Any other UI no matter how slick and perfect will be worse for them. They are trained on photoshop so well that using anything else kills their efficiency. Like driving stick for the first time after driving automatic your whole life.
I'm no graphic wizard, just a programmer. And I recently got gimp 2 for windows and linux. I couldn't do fancy things right away, but its not because I couldn't find the buttons or they were in bad or hidden places. It's because I don't know anything about making graphics. If graphics people start out on the gimp instead of photoshop they will be just as good on that.
So don't try to convert people to gimp. Just get new people who are about to pirate photoshop for the first time to use gimp instead.
That's about it...
Why is there a special p2p for I2? Here at RIT we have I2 and it just works automatically. If you try to connect to an I2 computre the router does everything transparently. So whenever we connect to another college student with a p2p app I2 is used automagically.
All they need to do is stick a cellphone in one of these things and I'm sold. Instead the only thing they make that suits my needs is the yet to be released Treo 610. The 600 would be good enough, but no bluetooth. Well, I'll start saving now.
If I would have won the lottery yesterday you would see a Ferrari, or maybe a Ford GT in my driveway. Maybe not anymore, holy shit.
windows
1. winamp
2. gaim
3. firefox
4. thunderbird
5. gimp 2.0
6. abiword
7. nvidia drivers
8. more nvidia drivers
9. sound blaster drives
10. other drivers
linux
1. firefox
2. gaim
3. xmms
4. mplayer
5. gimp
6. abiword
7. thunderbird
8. gkrellm
9. nedit
10. xfce4
I'm on quite a few mailing lists, and I get almost no spam. In fact, I get such a small amount of spam that I use the thunderbird filter to get rid of non-spam e-mails that I just don't want. The miniscule amount of spam that I do get is filtered 99% perfectly.
I don't know what everyone else is doing that is bringing them so much spam. If you play your cards right and use a filter it really isn't a problem anymore.
I'll admit it, I'm a whiner when it comes to cheese. The way I see it is this. If there is a game where cheese is possible. For example, a fighting game. Then the design of the game is flawed. Now if its like a tournament or something with a prize, all is fair cheese away. But when you're playing with friends the idea is to have fun. If everybody just does the cheese move what's the point? There's no fun there, it's just plain stupid. Everyone lines up to push the same exact buttons as the previous guy, and if they don't push those same exact buttons they lose because the cheese is unstoppable. (I know its not always unstoppable, but often it might as well be ).
So, if you have a poorly designed game in which cheese exists and you want to play it with friends and have fun. Don't do the cheese or you're going to ruin everyone's fun. If there is a cheese whore in the current group of gamers you must play a game that has no cheese. So as a whiner even though I'm saying with my mouth "Stop that you cheesy whore!" what I really mean is "ok, this game sucks and has bad design, but we can have fun with it anyway if we don't do the cheesy crap. Losing isn't a big deal fanboy, pick a different character for once".
Yup. I remember when I was at CompUSA once and some stupid guy was buying a computer. He was interested in only a few things. Will I be able to burn cds with this? Can I do e-mail? Can I plug my camera into it? etc. You just need enough power to be able to get the functionality you desire. Excess power is money wasted.
This is the problem I'm having buying a laptop. I want something small and cheap that just has a wireless card, a little hard drive, a nice slow cpu, a stick of ram, a usb hole and a vga hole. All I want is to browse the web on the go. Nobody makes a lite enough laptop for me. Features are more important than power.
my friends like to give weird names to their computers. Then they call their computers by the names. I mean sure, you have to name computers for dns purposes. Or if you have a lot of boxen you have to be able differentiate between them. I have two computers, bedroom server and desktop machine. The one in the bedroom is protoman and the desktop machine is apreche. I dont' ever actually call them by their names though. I say "the bedroom server" or "my computer". Other people actually call their main machines by the names they give them. It's freaky, geeky and weird. Polly shouldn't be as we like to say (see the simpsons episode where homer has a crayon in his nose). Don't be a freak. Your computer is not a person, it is a machine/tool. Treat it as such.
blue ring? wuss. First of all if you get the "it's a secret to everybody" guys you can get the blue ring before you get anything else in the game. Secondly don't you think you would beat the game a lot faster if you didn't get useless items like the blue ring? When going for a speed record you need to get only what is absolutely necessary to get to the end. Leave all other items behind.
Why is puzzle pirates being neglected so much?
So far, every MMO I've seen (and I've seen most of them) is just a glorified chat room. It's IRC plus fancy 3d graphics and sound. Sometimes there is also a progress quest included as well. No MMO that I've seen actually has skill based gameplay, which is what makes something no longer a chat room, but a GAME.
Puzzle Pirates is the only MMOish thing I play. Why? Because success is almost entirely skill based. Theoretically someone who has a trial account and has never played before can defeat the person who has been playing the game since day 1 if their skill is great enough. Not only that, but the major factor in any victory is always skill. Not only that, but the people in puzzle pirates actually role play and aren't asshats. What started as random people on the net became my crew and now me hearties, arrr! You don't get that anywhere else.
Give puzzle pirates the attention and respect it deserves. It's probably the most original and well designed game to come out in a long time.
I use 3 things to make websites. Well, technically four, but really 3. First I use nedit. It's a text editor, my text editor of choice. Any text editor will do. Second I use nvu. nvu is like Mozilla Composer, but it has been "Firefoxized". Third I use firefox itself, to view the pages. The technical fourth thing is a firefox extension that lest me edit css live to make sure its perfect. Any real self respecting geek writes the html and css in the raw. It's the only way.
My friend uses it.
http://www.blosxom.com/
DOS gaming works ok. Things like quest for glory work great in dosbox. Some games like Descent just work in windows xp without any help. But some games just wont go. I've been trying to make Mechwarrior 2 work in XP for months, still no go. I can get it to run, but as soon as it gets to the point where the real game starts it hangs up. Other problems I have are playing old Windows 95 era games. Stuff like Red Alert and the original GTA. Having two monitors and a dual head video card really screw these games up, if they run to begin with. Sure windows is backwards compatible, but not like the PS2 where every PS1 game works perfectly.
This is why open source rules. Any open source game will always run on any os and any machine no matter what. Because anyone can take the source, port it and recompile it for the right system. I really wish the companies that own the rights to old games either re-release them for modern oses and sell them on the cheap ($5?) or release the source. I mean seriously. What does anyone have to lose by giving up the Mechwarrior 2 source code???
Futurama and Family Guy are more popular than they realize. Me and my roomate no longer watch television. Over the course of the 4 years of college we've had TV go from that thing we watch to being hated enemy. Of course there are 3 shows we download and watch. The third is the Simpsons. If they make new episodes that would be great, because then I can download and watch those too. It really sucks when you've downloaded and seen every single episode and there's nothing new. Buying the DVDs is good too.
Tribes 2 was the best game ever until they fudged it up. I paid 50$ for it the day it came out 3 years ago. Now it's free. Sorrow.