The vehicle is not for sale... if people just look at the site they would have found out that this... was entirely build for EXPEDITIONS! It isn't meant to be used as a recreational vehicle.
SUV's in general (Jeep, Range Rover) were originally meant for expeditions and military use - not recreational or personal use. But they are now a menace to drivers everywhere. So... uh, what was your point again?
By publicizing yet another outsized vehicle, they are doing their part (even if it's only a small one) to accelerate the disturbing trend of using these wasteful and dangerous "cars" as family vehicles. Even if this vehicle isn't for sale, there's little doubt that it will stimilate a few Unimog sales at least. Publicity works.
I'm going to have a great reply to this important story. It's going to have all the latest stuff - it will be broken down into paragraphs and have a high degree of relevancy. My reply will be ready in two weeks, give or take a month or so, if the powers that be decide it also must contain links and be spelled correctly.
OWL and MFC were both written to create an OO shell around the pre-existing Windows window-management stuff. In a sense, they are hacks, not clean-sheet designs. As a result, they have some rather odd characteristics (well, at least MFC does - I haven't used OWL).
So it may be that someone interested in starting from scratch on a new, OO-based windowing system would be better served by studying something else, like Java's AWT or Swing.
It's like the difference between Legos and carpentry. Sure, it's a little harder to cut wood to the right length and you nails or screws to put it together, but would you want to live in a house made of legos?
Would you want to build a house by starting with a handful of acorns?
Unless you write software by scribbling hex codes onto a legal pad, then entering them into the front panel of your box a byte at a time, you are probably taking advantage of quite a lot of pre-fab, pre-tested software artifacts that make your job easier. Like editors, compilers, operating systems, libraries, etc. Design patterns, like compilers, are another step toward automating the nitty-gritty details of a software development project. Nothing more. Like other tools, there are times when they're a great help and times when they're innappropriate.
Why would you draw a line in the sand at any particular level of abstraction and say "Beyond this line lies the path to crummy code?" Crummy code was in plentiful supply when assembly was the language of choice, and it will continue to be in plentiful supply when Java sounds as modern as COBOL sounds now. The tools don't create or destroy crummy code - people do. And until we get the people out of the process (hold(mybreath)!=1), software quality will continue to run the gamut.
Is this a UK thing? Why would you not choose the most efficient way of doing something?
In the US, gasoline is cheaper than bottled water or milk. (US$0.95 per US gallon, last time I filled up). In the US, single commuters drive 5000 pound, V8-powered, 4x4 trucks for the 60-mile round trip commute to work, cruising at 80 MPH on the freeway, achieving about 12 MPG. Every day. In the US, if you DON'T drive a humungous off-road vehicle as far as the next time zone at insane speeds every day, you're obviously some kind of tree-hugging-commie-liberal-pussy.
In other words, efficiency is generally not the chief concern here. In fact, advocating an increase in efficiency is seen by some as un-American (for interfering with Our Way Of Life) and anti-business (for God only knows what half-baked reasons), and that's no exaggeration.
All audio CD players implement error correction, price nonwithstanding. Error correction is a part of the Red Book CD standard, it's not an option. There is a substantial amount of careful error-avoidance and error-correction encoding going on in the Red Book format, and it's quite impossible to read the audio data at all without using at least some of these mechanisms (the EFM encoding, in particular).
More expensive players may be able to read dirty/scratched/warped discs better. They may be able to handle huge data losses that overwhelm the CD's built-in error correction codes more gracefully than cheaper players. But the error correction system is thoroughly specified and deterministic. There are no variations on the application of the technique that could produce "more correct" results, since proper application results in perfectly correct results.
CD-ROMs use even more error-correction data than audio CDs do, because the data is more important.
Why video game companies are willing to risk large sums on a traditionally low yield business (movie making) when their own video game market is already larger than the revenue stream for movies.
This bogus statistic was widely circulated, and subsequently very quitely debunked. What was actually true was that *worldwide* video game grosses were larger than *U.S.* movie ticket sales, which is much less surprising and much less signifigant.
What's more, when combined with some other numbers, the video game biz looks like a better candidate for the "low yield" club than the movie business. From Wired News:
The [computer and video game] industry created more than 219,000 jobs and paid $7.2 billion in wages in 2000, according to the study. Retail sales of computer and video game hardware and software totaled about $7.8 billion.
So, according to this article, the combined pc/video game business watched very nearly it's entire revenue stream go right back out the door in salaries alone, last year, at least. No wonder PC games are under seige and the more profitable console games are front and center.
The movie business has had some famous flops, but in general, there are more opportunities in the movie business to use sheer marketing firepower to ensure that a crummy product still makes big money.
I'm not saying that I think video game companies can make good movies - heck, 90% of the time, they can't even make good video games - but I can understand the desire to move into a market that has more predictable revenues and great tie-in opportunities.
As long as SonicBlue can play the legal game just well enough to keep selling their boxes, the legal battles are free publicity for them. They get to ride the RIAA/MPAA-is-evil-let's-stick-it-to-the-man bandwagon all the way to the bank. If the opposition manages to actually prevent sales with an injunction of some kind, then they're in trouble.
I don't see how it's a good thing to excuse individuals from responsibility for what they say on the Web.
Now, in this particular case, I think it's insane that PC maker would sue one of their own disgruntled customers for expressing his disgruntlement. They were idiots to sue, and the suit should have gone nowhere fast. But a blanket assertion that message board contents is strictly a matter of opinion seems like going too far in the other direction.
So now I've got the freedom to use a message board to say "My Acme widget turned out to suck, the Acme tech support sucked, and I think everyone at Acme has their head up their butt!"
But Acme can now use the same message board to say "Baba Abhui is a rotten liar. He never even bought our widget, he probably stole a broken one from God-knows-where. He'd beat up his own grandmother for a nickel! And he's a karma whore, too!" Since that's just Acme's opinion, there's nothing I can do.
The real problem is libelous companies that use their superior resources to quell individual troublemakers. If a large corporation brings libel or slander charges against me, they'll end up hurting me (time and money) even if they actually lose the case. Maybe what's needed is some mechanism to stem the tide of frivolous lawsuits like this, rather than a blanket assertion that what you say on the web just doesn't count.
That's an interesting idea, but if such a thing were to happen, I doubt it would be possible to keep it secret for very long.
Magic Lantern doesn't do the Feds any good if it doesn't phone home from time to time, so there would be some network traffic. There are a lot of mixed networks out there; plenty of XP desktops operating from behind Unix/Linux/BSD firewalls, proxy servers, and network analyzers. The mysterious XP network traffic would become evident pretty quickly, I'd imagine.
No, vinyl doesn't use anything so complex. It's AM, in radio terms. There are no carrier signals. A 2KHz note is "encoded" by wiggling the groove 2000 times per second. To play back an LP, you can shove a cactus needle through the bottom of a paper cup, and drag the protruding needle in the record's groove. No fancy demodulation required.
When you consider how crude and ancient the whole scheme is, it's amazing how good decent vinyl playback sounds, actually.
Have you tried compressing raw CD audio with one of these zip programs? The compression is likely to be more than one or two percent; hardly worth the bother. You need a codec designed for audio to do this effectively.
The security hole effects IE 5.5 and 6.0, not 5.0. Perhaps you, a 5.0 user, can see the page OK. That's not what the OP was about.
I have IE 6.0, with active scripting turned off. When I view the MS page, the meat of the article under "Technical Details," "Frequently Asked Questions," and "Additional Information About This Patch" is hidden inside three non-funcitonal active scripting links.
I just tried viewing this page with the OffByOne browser. That browser does display the page readably, although the style is quite different.
- Which part of this large and growing field used to thrill you
- Which part of this large and growing field has burnt you out
Which would probably help you get better advice from everyone.
But it may just be a case of getting bored with the tiny, unrealistic projects that are typically used to teach computer science. Maybe it's not CS that has you down, maybe it's just college burnout. Applications in the real world tend to be more interesting in the sense that they're much, much larger, but less interesting algorithmically (is that a word?) speaking. You may find the real world to be a breath of fresh air, or you may find it even more oppressive.
In either case, finish your degree. You're too close to the end to give up on it. If you try some real-world CS and still hate it, you can try something else.
I've never understood why a movie studio, television network, or record company would go to so much bother to establish a brand. When I buy a movie ticket, CD, or choose a TV station, I do it because I'm interested in the content - the story or the music - not because I'm a fan of the production company. I couldn't even tell you what studios produced my all-time favorite movies or what labels produce my all-time favorite records, and I suspect I'm not alone.
I don't watch much TV, but I would have a hard time believing that anyone would turn to a particluar TV station to watch a show they dislike just because it's on their favorite network. And the logos don't serve any other purpose.
I don't think the bandwidth would be a big deal. I think their T1 is much more than sufficient for 25 games.
Internet Nethack is played by telnetting to the server, and the server only sends updates to the screen, not full screens, for each move. The bandwidth requirements for a single game, at least, are pretty minimal. I've played over the internet with a dial-up 33.6 connection, and I imagine a single game could play adequately with even less bandwidth than that. As is so often the case in internet gaming, latency is a bigger issue than bandwidth.
I'm surprised they don't have more processing power for their server, though. A 133Mhz Pentium is overkill for a single game instance, but 25? I'm guessing that will bog down a bit if more than a few people play on crowded levels at once.
But I don't want to sound like I'm complaining - we can't expect them to buy a shiny new computer for the Nethack tournament, so they're just using what they've got handy.
APC's PowerChute caused so many problems on my new (Win98) office system that I deleted it the day after I installed it. I told it quite explicitly to never, ever send network messages to anyone for any reason, but it insisted on transmitting annoying popup messages to *everyone* at the office that my box had been powered up, powered down, couldn't talk to the UPS, could talk to the UPS again, was running on battery power, was no longer running on battery power, etc.
And on top of all that, it wouldn't do the one important thing it should have done: shut the system down when the power went out.
All in all, it was 100% liability with no benefit.
There's another (WinNT4) PC here that's been using PowerChute perfectly for years. So your mileage may vary. The OP is about building a Win98 box for games; if the OS is what made my PowerChute so unusable, then he'd do well to steer clear of it too.
Here's my reality... I work for a software company, maintaining 15 year old DOS Software.
We have 2 applications... A nasty DOS app written in Qbasic, using a Btrieve database on a Novell Server, all running over our favorite protocol, IPX.
Sounds good? Well, its my nightmare!!!
Its a sad fact that there are companies STILL working with DOS programs. Sad.
Well, speaking from a deep well of ignorance (being unfamiliar with your product and it's history), it sounds to me like the problem isn't DOS, it's that you're working with a crufty old app that's been forcefully-evolved for a long time. I think any app (for almost any OS) that had been updated and added to for 15 years would get pretty... eccentric.
I don't think there's anything sad about still maintaining a DOS app in and of itself. It's sad that management won't always approve the capital expenditure needed to refactor and improve old projects before adding more crap to them. I think DOS still has a place in some applications. While enthusiasts (like us) might be upset at buying a product only to discover that it's a DOS app, business people won't be, if it does the job, and does it well.
Does Gates really want to get rid fo a command prompt? All sorts of tools need command prompts.
Command prompt != DOS.
Well, under Winddows 95/98/ME, yeah, the command prompt is DOS.
But Windows NT (and now 2000 and XP) has always had a DOS-like (yet non-DOS) command prompt.
Oddly enough, a default install of Windows NT 4.0 would use the "MS-DOS" icon for the command prompt shortcut. But it was a lie; the NT command prompt was a 32-bit flat-mode process, like any other Win32 executable. It looked a lot like DOS, but it didn't work the same way inside. It could launch a 16-bit compatibility sub-system to run many DOS programs, but it didn't even try to be extremely DOS compatible.
But anyhow, no, getting rid of DOS doesn't mean getting rid of the CLI.
Hear hear, mod this up. The problem isn't that MS has censored their thesaurus - it's that the Word 2000 version is just way, way, too small. Any pocket paperback thesaurus puts it to shame.
Slashdot Mirror
Geesh. The flywheels are not on board the train. Did you actually read the story?
The vehicle is not for sale... if people just look at the site they would have found out that this... was entirely build for EXPEDITIONS! It isn't meant to be used as a recreational vehicle.
SUV's in general (Jeep, Range Rover) were originally meant for expeditions and military use - not recreational or personal use. But they are now a menace to drivers everywhere. So... uh, what was your point again?
By publicizing yet another outsized vehicle, they are doing their part (even if it's only a small one) to accelerate the disturbing trend of using these wasteful and dangerous "cars" as family vehicles. Even if this vehicle isn't for sale, there's little doubt that it will stimilate a few Unimog sales at least. Publicity works.
I'm going to have a great reply to this important story. It's going to have all the latest stuff - it will be broken down into paragraphs and have a high degree of relevancy. My reply will be ready in two weeks, give or take a month or so, if the powers that be decide it also must contain links and be spelled correctly.
OWL and MFC were both written to create an OO shell around the pre-existing Windows window-management stuff. In a sense, they are hacks, not clean-sheet designs. As a result, they have some rather odd characteristics (well, at least MFC does - I haven't used OWL).
So it may be that someone interested in starting from scratch on a new, OO-based windowing system would be better served by studying something else, like Java's AWT or Swing.
It's like the difference between Legos and carpentry. Sure, it's a little harder to cut wood to the right length and you nails or screws to put it together, but would you want to live in a house made of legos?
Would you want to build a house by starting with a handful of acorns?
Unless you write software by scribbling hex codes onto a legal pad, then entering them into the front panel of your box a byte at a time, you are probably taking advantage of quite a lot of pre-fab, pre-tested software artifacts that make your job easier. Like editors, compilers, operating systems, libraries, etc. Design patterns, like compilers, are another step toward automating the nitty-gritty details of a software development project. Nothing more. Like other tools, there are times when they're a great help and times when they're innappropriate.
Why would you draw a line in the sand at any particular level of abstraction and say "Beyond this line lies the path to crummy code?" Crummy code was in plentiful supply when assembly was the language of choice, and it will continue to be in plentiful supply when Java sounds as modern as COBOL sounds now. The tools don't create or destroy crummy code - people do. And until we get the people out of the process (hold(mybreath)!=1), software quality will continue to run the gamut.
Is this a UK thing? Why would you not choose the most efficient way of doing something?
In the US, gasoline is cheaper than bottled water or milk. (US$0.95 per US gallon, last time I filled up). In the US, single commuters drive 5000 pound, V8-powered, 4x4 trucks for the 60-mile round trip commute to work, cruising at 80 MPH on the freeway, achieving about 12 MPG. Every day. In the US, if you DON'T drive a humungous off-road vehicle as far as the next time zone at insane speeds every day, you're obviously some kind of tree-hugging-commie-liberal-pussy.
In other words, efficiency is generally not the chief concern here. In fact, advocating an increase in efficiency is seen by some as un-American (for interfering with Our Way Of Life) and anti-business (for God only knows what half-baked reasons), and that's no exaggeration.
All audio CD players implement error correction, price nonwithstanding. Error correction is a part of the Red Book CD standard, it's not an option. There is a substantial amount of careful error-avoidance and error-correction encoding going on in the Red Book format, and it's quite impossible to read the audio data at all without using at least some of these mechanisms (the EFM encoding, in particular).
More expensive players may be able to read dirty/scratched/warped discs better. They may be able to handle huge data losses that overwhelm the CD's built-in error correction codes more gracefully than cheaper players. But the error correction system is thoroughly specified and deterministic. There are no variations on the application of the technique that could produce "more correct" results, since proper application results in perfectly correct results.
CD-ROMs use even more error-correction data than audio CDs do, because the data is more important.
More info in the form of some EE class lectures.
Why video game companies are willing to risk large sums on a traditionally low yield business (movie making) when their own video game market is already larger than the revenue stream for movies.
This bogus statistic was widely circulated, and subsequently very quitely debunked. What was actually true was that *worldwide* video game grosses were larger than *U.S.* movie ticket sales, which is much less surprising and much less signifigant.
What's more, when combined with some other numbers, the video game biz looks like a better candidate for the "low yield" club than the movie business. From Wired News:
The [computer and video game] industry created more than 219,000 jobs and paid $7.2 billion in wages in 2000, according to the study. Retail sales of computer and video game hardware and software totaled about $7.8 billion.
So, according to this article, the combined pc/video game business watched very nearly it's entire revenue stream go right back out the door in salaries alone, last year, at least. No wonder PC games are under seige and the more profitable console games are front and center.
The movie business has had some famous flops, but in general, there are more opportunities in the movie business to use sheer marketing firepower to ensure that a crummy product still makes big money.
I'm not saying that I think video game companies can make good movies - heck, 90% of the time, they can't even make good video games - but I can understand the desire to move into a market that has more predictable revenues and great tie-in opportunities.
As long as SonicBlue can play the legal game just well enough to keep selling their boxes, the legal battles are free publicity for them. They get to ride the RIAA/MPAA-is-evil-let's-stick-it-to-the-man bandwagon all the way to the bank. If the opposition manages to actually prevent sales with an injunction of some kind, then they're in trouble.
(Blanket assertion about the inherent superiority of free/open-source software)
[Optional rant about how author personally will stick with free/open-source software come what may]
(Cheap, yet not undeserved shot at a large, famous software company (guess who!))
(Angry rant about unfair biz practices of aforementioned company)
(Random mispelling due to unusable nature of free/open-source spell checker)
[Optional signature that you've seen before]
I don't see how it's a good thing to excuse individuals from responsibility for what they say on the Web.
Now, in this particular case, I think it's insane that PC maker would sue one of their own disgruntled customers for expressing his disgruntlement. They were idiots to sue, and the suit should have gone nowhere fast. But a blanket assertion that message board contents is strictly a matter of opinion seems like going too far in the other direction.
So now I've got the freedom to use a message board to say "My Acme widget turned out to suck, the Acme tech support sucked, and I think everyone at Acme has their head up their butt!"
But Acme can now use the same message board to say "Baba Abhui is a rotten liar. He never even bought our widget, he probably stole a broken one from God-knows-where. He'd beat up his own grandmother for a nickel! And he's a karma whore, too!" Since that's just Acme's opinion, there's nothing I can do.
The real problem is libelous companies that use their superior resources to quell individual troublemakers. If a large corporation brings libel or slander charges against me, they'll end up hurting me (time and money) even if they actually lose the case. Maybe what's needed is some mechanism to stem the tide of frivolous lawsuits like this, rather than a blanket assertion that what you say on the web just doesn't count.
That's an interesting idea, but if such a thing were to happen, I doubt it would be possible to keep it secret for very long.
Magic Lantern doesn't do the Feds any good if it doesn't phone home from time to time, so there would be some network traffic. There are a lot of mixed networks out there; plenty of XP desktops operating from behind Unix/Linux/BSD firewalls, proxy servers, and network analyzers. The mysterious XP network traffic would become evident pretty quickly, I'd imagine.
No, vinyl doesn't use anything so complex. It's AM, in radio terms. There are no carrier signals. A 2KHz note is "encoded" by wiggling the groove 2000 times per second. To play back an LP, you can shove a cactus needle through the bottom of a paper cup, and drag the protruding needle in the record's groove. No fancy demodulation required.
When you consider how crude and ancient the whole scheme is, it's amazing how good decent vinyl playback sounds, actually.
Have you tried compressing raw CD audio with one of these zip programs? The compression is likely to be more than one or two percent; hardly worth the bother. You need a codec designed for audio to do this effectively.
This is the first time I've heard of robots.cnn.com. It seems to work extremely well, which is great.
But what is it? Why doesn't CNN have some way of pointing the cnn.com URL at a system like this at times like this?
The security hole effects IE 5.5 and 6.0, not 5.0. Perhaps you, a 5.0 user, can see the page OK. That's not what the OP was about.
I have IE 6.0, with active scripting turned off. When I view the MS page, the meat of the article under "Technical Details," "Frequently Asked Questions," and "Additional Information About This Patch" is hidden inside three non-funcitonal active scripting links.
I just tried viewing this page with the OffByOne browser. That browser does display the page readably, although the style is quite different.
I also have disabled IE scripting, and I also cannot read the details about the bug on MS's web site. I don't think there's any lying involved.
You're not too specific about:
- Which part of this large and growing field used to thrill you
- Which part of this large and growing field has burnt you out
Which would probably help you get better advice from everyone.
But it may just be a case of getting bored with the tiny, unrealistic projects that are typically used to teach computer science. Maybe it's not CS that has you down, maybe it's just college burnout. Applications in the real world tend to be more interesting in the sense that they're much, much larger, but less interesting algorithmically (is that a word?) speaking. You may find the real world to be a breath of fresh air, or you may find it even more oppressive.
In either case, finish your degree. You're too close to the end to give up on it. If you try some real-world CS and still hate it, you can try something else.
The logos annoy me too, away with them, I say.
I've never understood why a movie studio, television network, or record company would go to so much bother to establish a brand. When I buy a movie ticket, CD, or choose a TV station, I do it because I'm interested in the content - the story or the music - not because I'm a fan of the production company. I couldn't even tell you what studios produced my all-time favorite movies or what labels produce my all-time favorite records, and I suspect I'm not alone.
I don't watch much TV, but I would have a hard time believing that anyone would turn to a particluar TV station to watch a show they dislike just because it's on their favorite network. And the logos don't serve any other purpose.
If it was software, then it falls under the whole licensing rigamarole that most software does.
If DVD movies ARE found to be software, does that give users the legal right to make backup copies? Could this suit actually legitimize DeCSS?
I don't think the bandwidth would be a big deal. I think their T1 is much more than sufficient for 25 games.
Internet Nethack is played by telnetting to the server, and the server only sends updates to the screen, not full screens, for each move. The bandwidth requirements for a single game, at least, are pretty minimal. I've played over the internet with a dial-up 33.6 connection, and I imagine a single game could play adequately with even less bandwidth than that. As is so often the case in internet gaming, latency is a bigger issue than bandwidth.
I'm surprised they don't have more processing power for their server, though. A 133Mhz Pentium is overkill for a single game instance, but 25? I'm guessing that will bog down a bit if more than a few people play on crowded levels at once.
But I don't want to sound like I'm complaining - we can't expect them to buy a shiny new computer for the Nethack tournament, so they're just using what they've got handy.
Warning, angry counter-anecdote!
APC's PowerChute caused so many problems on my new (Win98) office system that I deleted it the day after I installed it. I told it quite explicitly to never, ever send network messages to anyone for any reason, but it insisted on transmitting annoying popup messages to *everyone* at the office that my box had been powered up, powered down, couldn't talk to the UPS, could talk to the UPS again, was running on battery power, was no longer running on battery power, etc.
And on top of all that, it wouldn't do the one important thing it should have done: shut the system down when the power went out.
All in all, it was 100% liability with no benefit.
There's another (WinNT4) PC here that's been using PowerChute perfectly for years. So your mileage may vary. The OP is about building a Win98 box for games; if the OS is what made my PowerChute so unusable, then he'd do well to steer clear of it too.
Here's my reality... I work for a software company, maintaining 15 year old DOS Software.
We have 2 applications... A nasty DOS app written in Qbasic, using a Btrieve database on a Novell Server, all running over our favorite protocol, IPX.
Sounds good? Well, its my nightmare!!!
Its a sad fact that there are companies STILL working with DOS programs. Sad.
Well, speaking from a deep well of ignorance (being unfamiliar with your product and it's history), it sounds to me like the problem isn't DOS, it's that you're working with a crufty old app that's been forcefully-evolved for a long time. I think any app (for almost any OS) that had been updated and added to for 15 years would get pretty... eccentric.
I don't think there's anything sad about still maintaining a DOS app in and of itself. It's sad that management won't always approve the capital expenditure needed to refactor and improve old projects before adding more crap to them. I think DOS still has a place in some applications. While enthusiasts (like us) might be upset at buying a product only to discover that it's a DOS app, business people won't be, if it does the job, and does it well.
Does Gates really want to get rid fo a command prompt? All sorts of tools need command prompts.
Command prompt != DOS.
Well, under Winddows 95/98/ME, yeah, the command prompt is DOS.
But Windows NT (and now 2000 and XP) has always had a DOS-like (yet non-DOS) command prompt.
Oddly enough, a default install of Windows NT 4.0 would use the "MS-DOS" icon for the command prompt shortcut. But it was a lie; the NT command prompt was a 32-bit flat-mode process, like any other Win32 executable. It looked a lot like DOS, but it didn't work the same way inside. It could launch a 16-bit compatibility sub-system to run many DOS programs, but it didn't even try to be extremely DOS compatible.
But anyhow, no, getting rid of DOS doesn't mean getting rid of the CLI.
Hear hear, mod this up. The problem isn't that MS has censored their thesaurus - it's that the Word 2000 version is just way, way, too small. Any pocket paperback thesaurus puts it to shame.