It may be 15 bytes, but they're cheating because they are using CISC processors. Try using a RISC for real demo studliness.:-/
Eventually, you get to the point where it is silly. Setting a particular limit forces people to be creative and efficient, something that most software companies forgot decades ago.
Whether it's 512B animations in POV, 256B images, 4K demos using OpenGL, 4k assembly hacks, or whatever, they are all exercises in creativity and cleverness, and just really cool nerd-fu.
By the way, POV-Ray totally rocks. Some of those animations are amazing... coming from source code you could write on a Post-It note. I've been using it since 0.5, and it's an incredibly fun tool that can do some amazing things.
I've probably got all of them since I bought Dragon pretty regularly through about 84 or 85. I also have the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM collection with all the magazines in PDF format. Still it's cool to have them all in a nice format, because the PDFs are a little lower-res than I would prefer. Plus, they are running "Buck Godot", which I have a few issues of, and "Girl Genius", which I'd never heard of, but looks pretty cool.
Phil's done lots of cool work over the years, including the Myth adaptations, and I've been a big fan of his stuff.
I've been saying this for about a year now: Incompetence no longer suffices to describe how Microsoft treats its customers. It has to be malice. Microsoft hates you. Microsoft hates me. They hate the fact that we expect something for our money and that they can't just knock us down, sit on us and take it. Steve Ballmer must lie awake at night swearing like a sailor with Tourette's on crack. The whole company is suffering from his derangement. The biggest victims, however, must be the devs at Microsoft, who know they could deliver so much more, if management would just let them, and stop sabotaging their efforts.
That is the funny part. WGA is a solid failure, yet Microsoft will not give up on it
That's because Microsoft hates you. They say "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence", right? Well, in the past year or so, I've come to the conclusion that incompetence is no longer sufficient to explain Microsoft's products, therefore they must be the result of malice.
Actually, thinking about it, it's not even how you describe it. You give control of your computer to Microsoft, they allow you to use the computer with Windows. While their software is on it, while you might have physical possession of the computer, it is theirs to do with as they see fit, and any functionality and value you get out of it is solely at their discretion.
I haven't bothered with anything but foxit since the adobe reader became bloatware
It's been around that long? The Acrobat Reader is a funny piece of software. The first 3 versions were complete crap. Then it got good for about two versions, then they turned it back into crap. That's the one thing I've found about a lot of commercial software... they can never leave well enough alone because they need to force the upgrade cycle, so even once you get a good version, it just as liable to get completely ruined in the relentless drive to "force" people to upgrade.
Look at Vista, where they literally eliminated every reason anyone would ever want to use it (except for some improved security, which is offset by vastly increased annoyances) and then finally just shipped it out of desperation of needing _anything_ to sell.
If MS didn't need to force upgrades to feed their monopoly they could have stuck with perfecting XP. I don't know why Adobe keeps making the Acrobat Reader, or I guess it's just called Reader now, bigger, slower and more bloated with each version, except that they probably need it to see more copies of Acrobat.
And thus, we see the real flaw of commercial software, just like we see the real flaw of government agencies. If they actually did their job right, you wouldn't need them any more.
I'm still wondering how many years this stupid tagging beta thing will be left running until the Powers That Be realize it's only another vehicle to make stupid (and occasionally clever) commentary, and is never actually used for "tagging".
Hey, in the 21st century, being Green is like being Congress. All that matters is that you look like you are Doing Something, and by the time people realize you've only made things worse, it will be someone else's problem.
Almost everything Microsoft does makes a whole lot of more sense if you look at it from the standpoint that they hate their customers, but still want their money. I have never worked with products that exude more of a sense of contempt than those from Microsoft, and Vista is possibly the best example.
Perhaps, but Google doesn't suck. Also I think the "serving the ads" part is part of it. Plus, Google is smart enough to have ads that people like you and me don't instinctively block. I think the the GoogleSense text ads or whatever they're called are great. Even if they are irrelevant or spammy they aren't these ludicrous epilepsy-inducing intelligence-insulting concentration-breaking banners that most companies use. AOL is strictly lowest common denominator. You can't use their stuff without going into some kind of sensory overload fugue, which I suppose just mimics the intellectual capacity of their target audience. But that's just me. I'm about as opposite to an AOL customer as its possible to be while still actually being an Internet user.
AOL's been spinning off their dial-up stuff for years. In Europe, they sold everything in 2006, and have been doing the same in the U.S.. They are putting all their eggs in a basket called "ad revenue", which while being a bad bet in the long run, in my book, is better than relying on selling something almost no one buys any more.
Hillary Clinton can game the political system, no doubt. In that aspect, she is smart, shrewd and competent. But when it comes to "getting things done", what's she got to show for herself? In that regard, I don't see any difference between her and Obama. Their positions on the "issues" are almost identical. She never held an elected, or even an appointed position before 2000. She wants to take credit for all of her husband's successes, but always has a bullet-proof alibi when it comes to his failures, after all, she wasn't in on the security briefings, etc, etc. So while you point is well-made, I don't see how Senator Clinton fits your bill as someone who can get something done. She's never _run_ anything, and her record in the Senate has been lackluster at best.
It's funny, I recall at one point when NT4 was the latest version, the calculation for copying files was ridiculously inaccurate and would do all kinds of weird things like say "30 seconds remaining" for 5 minutes, etc. And then with one of the SPs it got a whole lot better. The funny thing is that in the years since, it seems to have gone backwards in actually being able to give me an estimate based on anything other than a guess.
This is the same problem that MS has had for something like 10 years. When they first snuck indexing into Office, your computer would slow to a crawl for no apparent reason until you turned it off (assuming you could figure out what was causing it, which 95% of users would _not_ be able to do). Then there was the indexing service in XP which was a big performance hit. The problem with Microsoft is that they never learn a lesson.
Regardless though, your next sentence still gives me hope for our country:
That said, however, if he were to win, I would have no problem supporting him despite not agreeing with his politics, as I would support any President of the U.S., but unlike some other candidates (*cough*Clinton*cough*) I wouldn't have to hold my nose while doing so.
Well, I'm glad you feel that way, but given the ridiculous levels of unbridled rancor directed against President Bush, and President Clinton before him got his share of "hate speech" as well, I might be in the minority. See, I disagreed with a lot both those Presidents have done, but I don't hate them. So much commentary these days, however, seems to be driven by hate. I don't even hate Hillary Clinton, although she strains the limit of "dislike" for me. But regardless, I would not talk about her, or anyone else, the way too many people talk about President Bush.
A perfect example is one of my Senators, Jim Webb. After he was elected, he used his very first opportunity to really "dis" President Bush. I was greatly disappointed in his childish, unprofessional behavior. There are plenty of ways he could have handled the situation with respect, but without being disrespectful to the President of the United States. Regardless of how the President is executing his job, he is owed respect out of respect for Office, if not the man. That's how I see it anyway. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with him or criticizing him (I do plenty of both), but it can still be done with respect.
I'm probably a real throwback, but I find it ironic that while the country races to implement Orwellian "thoughtcrime" legislation, otherwise known as "hate crime laws", so much of our political discourse has devolved into little more than hate speech, and not clever and amusing hate speech like, say, H. L. Mencken or Ambrose Bierce could have written, but just schoolyard name-calling: "Shrub", "Darth Cheney", "Hitlery", "Rethuglicans", "Lamocrats". I mean I'm not above taking shots at politicians who are "just asking for it", Sens. Kennedy and Stevens come to mind, but if I had a dollar for every empty comparison to Nazis, every use of the word "fascist", and other unimaginative and, often irrelevant, kinds of statement, often from politicians themselves, well I could buy them all a copy of Roget's, at least.
So, while I disagree with Obama, I also have some for respect him, and think that he has potential as a candidate, if not now, certainly in the future. Hopefully, even if he loses, he will set the stage for more constructive dialog in this country, just as I think people like Paul and Kucinich have set an example of actually holding guiding principles and being willing to live by them. On the other hand, I am still not optimistic about this election, nor for the near future of the country the way things have been going.
He does a great job of appearing that way, and hopefully he really is, but his biggest advantage is not having years or decades of political history that gives people reason to think he's anything other than a shining knight. In other words, his biggest asset is that he's able to present himself well, AND we really don't know enough about him to have reason to doubt his rosy portrayal.
Well, I think Obama has a lot going for him. He's generally taking the high road in terms of campaigning, which is itself a huge indicator that the man actually has some principles, unlike his two biggest competitors who have either no principles other than "anything goes" or in the case of Edwards, wasn't smart enough to actually have principles.
Obama's oratory style and skill is certainly useful as well, and he lacks the almost all of the political baggage that weighs down every other candidate on both sides. However, I have two major problems: First his lack of experience. The President of the U.S. is rightly considered the most powerful person in the world. It is not an entry-level executive position. And secondly, I find his actual views to just be a rehash of the same tired liberal ideas we've seen disproved time and again for the last two generations. I think Obama should continue to serve and would make a much stronger candidate in 5, 10 or 15 years.
That said, however, if he were to win, I would have no problem supporting him despite not agreeing with his politics, as I would support any President of the U.S., but unlike some other candidates (*cough*Clinton*cough*) I wouldn't have to hold my nose while doing so.
It seems feasible except that the time and effort involved would be something like an order of magnitude more than is required now. However, your idea could be the basis of something really good, except for the fact that it will never happen. They'll have to try every half-assed and no-assed idea they can come up with first, and that will take as long as the Republic will continue to exist.
Looks like it'll be another case of "voting for the lesser of two evils" for me.
This is why U.S. politics is in such a sorry state. We need to stop voting for the "lesser evil" just to defeat a "greater evil. I'm tired of voting "against" someone, I'd really like to vote "for" someone, even if that means the greater of two evils gets elected. If everyone took the time to find and vote for someone they honestly believed in, we might actually start to get some candidates that people could support.
But "evangelical Christians", "pro-business types" and "war hawks" are fairly orthogonal designations, which is one reason why it's hard for many people to choose. I like some aspects of each, but also find flaws that prevent me from wanting to vote for any of them.
Slashdot Mirror
It may be 15 bytes, but they're cheating because they are using CISC processors. Try using a RISC for real demo studliness. :-/
Eventually, you get to the point where it is silly. Setting a particular limit forces people to be creative and efficient, something that most software companies forgot decades ago.
Whether it's 512B animations in POV, 256B images, 4K demos using OpenGL, 4k assembly hacks, or whatever, they are all exercises in creativity and cleverness, and just really cool nerd-fu.
By the way, POV-Ray totally rocks. Some of those animations are amazing... coming from source code you could write on a Post-It note. I've been using it since 0.5, and it's an incredibly fun tool that can do some amazing things.
And that wooshing sound is the noise of your joke going over the head of the OP. :-)
I've probably got all of them since I bought Dragon pretty regularly through about 84 or 85. I also have the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM collection with all the magazines in PDF format. Still it's cool to have them all in a nice format, because the PDFs are a little lower-res than I would prefer. Plus, they are running "Buck Godot", which I have a few issues of, and "Girl Genius", which I'd never heard of, but looks pretty cool.
Phil's done lots of cool work over the years, including the Myth adaptations, and I've been a big fan of his stuff.
GROWF!
Did they ever get around to "Sex and D&D"?!
I've been saying this for about a year now: Incompetence no longer suffices to describe how Microsoft treats its customers. It has to be malice. Microsoft hates you. Microsoft hates me. They hate the fact that we expect something for our money and that they can't just knock us down, sit on us and take it. Steve Ballmer must lie awake at night swearing like a sailor with Tourette's on crack. The whole company is suffering from his derangement. The biggest victims, however, must be the devs at Microsoft, who know they could deliver so much more, if management would just let them, and stop sabotaging their efforts.
That is the funny part. WGA is a solid failure, yet Microsoft will not give up on it
That's because Microsoft hates you. They say "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence", right? Well, in the past year or so, I've come to the conclusion that incompetence is no longer sufficient to explain Microsoft's products, therefore they must be the result of malice.
Ah, the days of CopyIIPC... copy protection on floppies was doubly stupid because floppies were a much more volatile medium than CDs.
OK, you got me. That and "itsatrap" are incredibly informative.
Thanks for the correction.
Actually, thinking about it, it's not even how you describe it. You give control of your computer to Microsoft, they allow you to use the computer with Windows. While their software is on it, while you might have physical possession of the computer, it is theirs to do with as they see fit, and any functionality and value you get out of it is solely at their discretion.
I haven't bothered with anything but foxit since the adobe reader became bloatware
It's been around that long? The Acrobat Reader is a funny piece of software. The first 3 versions were complete crap. Then it got good for about two versions, then they turned it back into crap. That's the one thing I've found about a lot of commercial software... they can never leave well enough alone because they need to force the upgrade cycle, so even once you get a good version, it just as liable to get completely ruined in the relentless drive to "force" people to upgrade.
Look at Vista, where they literally eliminated every reason anyone would ever want to use it (except for some improved security, which is offset by vastly increased annoyances) and then finally just shipped it out of desperation of needing _anything_ to sell.
If MS didn't need to force upgrades to feed their monopoly they could have stuck with perfecting XP. I don't know why Adobe keeps making the Acrobat Reader, or I guess it's just called Reader now, bigger, slower and more bloated with each version, except that they probably need it to see more copies of Acrobat.
And thus, we see the real flaw of commercial software, just like we see the real flaw of government agencies. If they actually did their job right, you wouldn't need them any more.
You seem to have confused voting with moderating :-)
Let's see:
Hillary Clinton, -5 Flamebait
John Edwards, -5 Troll
Barack Obama, +2 Insightful, +2 Funny, -5 Still Selling the Same Politics as the Other Two
I could dig moderation instead of voting.
I'm still wondering how many years this stupid tagging beta thing will be left running until the Powers That Be realize it's only another vehicle to make stupid (and occasionally clever) commentary, and is never actually used for "tagging".
Hey, in the 21st century, being Green is like being Congress. All that matters is that you look like you are Doing Something, and by the time people realize you've only made things worse, it will be someone else's problem.
Almost everything Microsoft does makes a whole lot of more sense if you look at it from the standpoint that they hate their customers, but still want their money. I have never worked with products that exude more of a sense of contempt than those from Microsoft, and Vista is possibly the best example.
Perhaps, but Google doesn't suck. Also I think the "serving the ads" part is part of it. Plus, Google is smart enough to have ads that people like you and me don't instinctively block. I think the the GoogleSense text ads or whatever they're called are great. Even if they are irrelevant or spammy they aren't these ludicrous epilepsy-inducing intelligence-insulting concentration-breaking banners that most companies use. AOL is strictly lowest common denominator. You can't use their stuff without going into some kind of sensory overload fugue, which I suppose just mimics the intellectual capacity of their target audience. But that's just me. I'm about as opposite to an AOL customer as its possible to be while still actually being an Internet user.
AOL's been spinning off their dial-up stuff for years. In Europe, they sold everything in 2006, and have been doing the same in the U.S.. They are putting all their eggs in a basket called "ad revenue", which while being a bad bet in the long run, in my book, is better than relying on selling something almost no one buys any more.
Hillary Clinton can game the political system, no doubt. In that aspect, she is smart, shrewd and competent. But when it comes to "getting things done", what's she got to show for herself? In that regard, I don't see any difference between her and Obama. Their positions on the "issues" are almost identical. She never held an elected, or even an appointed position before 2000. She wants to take credit for all of her husband's successes, but always has a bullet-proof alibi when it comes to his failures, after all, she wasn't in on the security briefings, etc, etc. So while you point is well-made, I don't see how Senator Clinton fits your bill as someone who can get something done. She's never _run_ anything, and her record in the Senate has been lackluster at best.
It's funny, I recall at one point when NT4 was the latest version, the calculation for copying files was ridiculously inaccurate and would do all kinds of weird things like say "30 seconds remaining" for 5 minutes, etc. And then with one of the SPs it got a whole lot better. The funny thing is that in the years since, it seems to have gone backwards in actually being able to give me an estimate based on anything other than a guess.
This is the same problem that MS has had for something like 10 years. When they first snuck indexing into Office, your computer would slow to a crawl for no apparent reason until you turned it off (assuming you could figure out what was causing it, which 95% of users would _not_ be able to do). Then there was the indexing service in XP which was a big performance hit. The problem with Microsoft is that they never learn a lesson.
Regardless though, your next sentence still gives me hope for our country:
That said, however, if he were to win, I would have no problem supporting him despite not agreeing with his politics, as I would support any President of the U.S., but unlike some other candidates (*cough*Clinton*cough*) I wouldn't have to hold my nose while doing so.
Well, I'm glad you feel that way, but given the ridiculous levels of unbridled rancor directed against President Bush, and President Clinton before him got his share of "hate speech" as well, I might be in the minority. See, I disagreed with a lot both those Presidents have done, but I don't hate them. So much commentary these days, however, seems to be driven by hate. I don't even hate Hillary Clinton, although she strains the limit of "dislike" for me. But regardless, I would not talk about her, or anyone else, the way too many people talk about President Bush.
A perfect example is one of my Senators, Jim Webb. After he was elected, he used his very first opportunity to really "dis" President Bush. I was greatly disappointed in his childish, unprofessional behavior. There are plenty of ways he could have handled the situation with respect, but without being disrespectful to the President of the United States. Regardless of how the President is executing his job, he is owed respect out of respect for Office, if not the man. That's how I see it anyway. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with him or criticizing him (I do plenty of both), but it can still be done with respect.
I'm probably a real throwback, but I find it ironic that while the country races to implement Orwellian "thoughtcrime" legislation, otherwise known as "hate crime laws", so much of our political discourse has devolved into little more than hate speech, and not clever and amusing hate speech like, say, H. L. Mencken or Ambrose Bierce could have written, but just schoolyard name-calling: "Shrub", "Darth Cheney", "Hitlery", "Rethuglicans", "Lamocrats". I mean I'm not above taking shots at politicians who are "just asking for it", Sens. Kennedy and Stevens come to mind, but if I had a dollar for every empty comparison to Nazis, every use of the word "fascist", and other unimaginative and, often irrelevant, kinds of statement, often from politicians themselves, well I could buy them all a copy of Roget's, at least.
So, while I disagree with Obama, I also have some for respect him, and think that he has potential as a candidate, if not now, certainly in the future. Hopefully, even if he loses, he will set the stage for more constructive dialog in this country, just as I think people like Paul and Kucinich have set an example of actually holding guiding principles and being willing to live by them. On the other hand, I am still not optimistic about this election, nor for the near future of the country the way things have been going.
He does a great job of appearing that way, and hopefully he really is, but his biggest advantage is not having years or decades of political history that gives people reason to think he's anything other than a shining knight. In other words, his biggest asset is that he's able to present himself well, AND we really don't know enough about him to have reason to doubt his rosy portrayal.
Well, I think Obama has a lot going for him. He's generally taking the high road in terms of campaigning, which is itself a huge indicator that the man actually has some principles, unlike his two biggest competitors who have either no principles other than "anything goes" or in the case of Edwards, wasn't smart enough to actually have principles.
Obama's oratory style and skill is certainly useful as well, and he lacks the almost all of the political baggage that weighs down every other candidate on both sides. However, I have two major problems: First his lack of experience. The President of the U.S. is rightly considered the most powerful person in the world. It is not an entry-level executive position. And secondly, I find his actual views to just be a rehash of the same tired liberal ideas we've seen disproved time and again for the last two generations. I think Obama should continue to serve and would make a much stronger candidate in 5, 10 or 15 years.
That said, however, if he were to win, I would have no problem supporting him despite not agreeing with his politics, as I would support any President of the U.S., but unlike some other candidates (*cough*Clinton*cough*) I wouldn't have to hold my nose while doing so.
It seems feasible except that the time and effort involved would be something like an order of magnitude more than is required now. However, your idea could be the basis of something really good, except for the fact that it will never happen. They'll have to try every half-assed and no-assed idea they can come up with first, and that will take as long as the Republic will continue to exist.
Looks like it'll be another case of "voting for the lesser of two evils" for me.
This is why U.S. politics is in such a sorry state. We need to stop voting for the "lesser evil" just to defeat a "greater evil.
I'm tired of voting "against" someone, I'd really like to vote "for" someone, even if that means the greater of two evils gets elected. If everyone took the time to find and vote for someone they honestly believed in, we might actually start to get some candidates that people could support.
But "evangelical Christians", "pro-business types" and "war hawks" are fairly orthogonal designations, which is one reason why it's hard for many people to choose. I like some aspects of each, but also find flaws that prevent me from wanting to vote for any of them.