I didn't mind the few graphical glitches that I encountered.
I'm not a big console fan and my interest in Bleem! was to be able to play with one game I liked without buying a playstation. Bleem! worked perfectly well for that and I've never regretted making the purchase. SONY should thank Bleem!, since they got money for at least one PSX game they would have never gotten otherwise.
Actually, if you go look at the information that was published (HardOCP and Tech-Report), you'll see that ATI DID sacrifice image quality for speed, only in the case of Quake3. To give some background, in the early 90's a card company tried to do this to PC Magazine's benchmarks by hard coding the text fill string used by PC Magazine in their BIOS. In principle, This is no different.
This is all fairly moot at this point, since ATI has fixed the drivers so they don't screw with the default texture settings when you are running quake3.
However, the damage is done. And I know I sure as hell won't be buying an ATI card for a while.
Have you ever seen heavy computer equipment shipped in bubble wrap?
Hell, even the last mother board I got was shipped in anti-static bubble wrap, between two layers of foam, in a heavy duty box, in packing peanuts, inside a box about 3 times larger than necessary.
Bubble wrap is not good packing material for heavy items beyond preventing scrapes and scratches and the dense foam sheets work better for that.
Good luck with UPS, but your description of the packing doesn't sound effective at all.
Dense foam supports with foam wrapping and packing peanuts in the air gaps, with double wall boxes. That is adequate packing.
That is fine and dandy for those particular applications. The real implications of this are that to work effortlessly with windows any driver developer now has to have the drivers certified by Microsoft.
Microsoft gets to decide if they want to certify a driver or not. That allows Microsoft to control what technologies and companies will work with windows.
Just like so many other things with XP, this may seem harmless now, but the potential for abuse this introduces is overwhelming.
You would think this would be a goldmine of publicity to show what a success linux can be on the desktop...
I'm pretty surprised that none of the major linux distros have stepped up to the plate to help keep create a whole generation of Linux users in Mexico...
Or maybe there aren't enough spanish speaking Linux gurus?;-)
Suggestions:
"The C Programming Language"
"The C++ Programming Language"
"Programming Perl"/"Learning Perl"
"Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software"
"Data Model Patterns: Conventions of Thought"
"Designing Web Usability"
Categories:
A book on Discrete Mathematics
A book on set theory
A book on cryptographic theory
A book on problem solving ("How To Solve it" is a good example)
A book on the design and analysis of algoritms
Somewhat OT:
A machine with a CD-RW drive and links to www.linuxiso.org, promo.net/pg/ (project guttenburg), and similar sites. Let people BYOB (Bring Your Own Blanks) and let them burn CDs for stuff that is FREELY available on the net. Sell blank discs at cost+handling, like libraries do with other supplies.
It's just another way of looking at Microsoft's activation scheme that highlights the potential problems that no one has seemed to have thought much about yet.
1. Virus/trojan authors could take advantage of the activation mechanism as a way to disable a PC.
2. DDoS authors could take advantage of the activation mechanism as a way to attack microsoft's activation servers.
3. Warez crackers could take advantage of key generation programs to forge activations for different license keys. If your key is chosen, then you would face deactivation and resulting hassle of trying to convince Microsoft that you did not warez your copy.
4a. Risk of security holes in the activation process itself, as you mentioned.
4b. Risk of security holes in the activation servers. The windows update server was just infected by Code Red, after all. That means the server was open to an full-control exploit for over a month.
You might not want to use Windows Update until Microsoft announces that they have audited the server, since Windows Update uses an ActiveX control that has full access to your PC.
5. Potential for Microsoft to force upgrades on their whim by being able to disable every copy of XP.
6. Potential for Microsoft to abuse their ability to deactivate particular installs of XP for political or other harrassment reasons.
This is not a direct benefit to consumers and is a protectionist action on behalf of other corporations located in NYS, like Kodak.
Perhaps someone should point out to Sen. Schumer that the consumer edition of XP will include a remote deactivation backdoor placed in the OS by Microsoft that could be used to leverage their monopoly position to force users into unnecessary upgrades at Microsoft's whim.
Considering Microsoft's "stellar" security record, even Sen. Schumer should be able comprehend the danger of having a backdoor capable of deactivating your OS in so many voter... err... users machines...
Funny, my wife drew direct comparisons to Princess Mononoke in it.
She's seen three Anime before: Ghost in The Shell, Akira, and Princess Mononoke. She immediately classified the movie as anime. I agree with her and I've seen a helluva lot more.
Last I heard there had been a helluva lot of last minute scrambling around that movie.
Doesn't usually bode well.
Oh, and Final Fantasy is one of the better, accessable, pieces of anime I've seen. I can't wait to watch the subtitled Japanese version of the story that wasn't dumbed down for Americans.
I fear for the future of this country if so many people had trouble following the plot of a fairly straightforward anime.
This gets down to the basics of the contracts that we have to sign to get access to this service.
They make a lot of promises in advertising, but write all sorts of legalese crap into their contracts that disallows them from actually having to do much of anything while simultaneously restricting what you can and cannot do with the alleged bandwidth you are supposedly paying for.
It looks and works just like.... MS Works. No thanks, I gave up that all-in-one crap back int he bad old days of DOS...
I like having my loosly coupled application suite. K-Office has more promise for me than Star Office does.
For me, the biggest failing of Linux as a desktop tool is the lack of a unified control interface. In windows, I can control everything pretty much either from right clicking on the desktop or from the control panel. In KDE, you have half a dozen different places you have to hunt for stuff to work, each with it's own look and feel and quirks.
The second biggest failing is the application install process. This is getting WAY better than it used to be, but there are still far too many hoops to jump through to get something working.
While anti-aliasing of fonts was a recent boon, a real killer app for the linux desktop would be the ability to emulate cleartype-style font rendering and to have fonts as clean and clear as those that come with windows. Font sizing and readability always seems to be a major hassle in Linux, but never in windows or mac os or BeOS.
Time for the UnderNET?
on
Smart Routers
·
· Score: 1
Hrm. I wonder how long it will be before I start using BBSes on dialup again.
Already starting to see some crop up on the 'net. They will be in good position to keep on going once the corps make it impossible to have any freedom on the internet.
There really needs to be two internets. One that is corporate and non-anonymous, and an anonymous one where the government and corporations are not allowed.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't mind the few graphical glitches that I encountered.
I'm not a big console fan and my interest in Bleem! was to be able to play with one game I liked without buying a playstation. Bleem! worked perfectly well for that and I've never regretted making the purchase. SONY should thank Bleem!, since they got money for at least one PSX game they would have never gotten otherwise.
Actually, if you go look at the information that was published (HardOCP and Tech-Report), you'll see that ATI DID sacrifice image quality for speed, only in the case of Quake3. To give some background, in the early 90's a card company tried to do this to PC Magazine's benchmarks by hard coding the text fill string used by PC Magazine in their BIOS. In principle, This is no different.
This is all fairly moot at this point, since ATI has fixed the drivers so they don't screw with the default texture settings when you are running quake3.
However, the damage is done. And I know I sure as hell won't be buying an ATI card for a while.
One question...
Have you ever seen heavy computer equipment shipped in bubble wrap?
Hell, even the last mother board I got was shipped in anti-static bubble wrap, between two layers of foam, in a heavy duty box, in packing peanuts, inside a box about 3 times larger than necessary.
Bubble wrap is not good packing material for heavy items beyond preventing scrapes and scratches and the dense foam sheets work better for that.
Good luck with UPS, but your description of the packing doesn't sound effective at all.
Dense foam supports with foam wrapping and packing peanuts in the air gaps, with double wall boxes. That is adequate packing.
That is fine and dandy for those particular applications. The real implications of this are that to work effortlessly with windows any driver developer now has to have the drivers certified by Microsoft.
Microsoft gets to decide if they want to certify a driver or not. That allows Microsoft to control what technologies and companies will work with windows.
Just like so many other things with XP, this may seem harmless now, but the potential for abuse this introduces is overwhelming.
You would think this would be a goldmine of publicity to show what a success linux can be on the desktop...
;-)
I'm pretty surprised that none of the major linux distros have stepped up to the plate to help keep create a whole generation of Linux users in Mexico...
Or maybe there aren't enough spanish speaking Linux gurus?
Redhat 5.1
Redhat 5.2
Caldera 2.3
SuSE 6.1
SuSE 6.4
Mandrake 8.0
SuSE 7.2
I'll never pay retail for windows. Closest I came is ordering W2K OEM edition so I could have a reference copy
Suggestions:
"The C Programming Language"
"The C++ Programming Language"
"Programming Perl"/"Learning Perl"
"Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software"
"Data Model Patterns: Conventions of Thought"
"Designing Web Usability"
Categories:
A book on Discrete Mathematics
A book on set theory
A book on cryptographic theory
A book on problem solving ("How To Solve it" is a good example)
A book on the design and analysis of algoritms
Somewhat OT:
A machine with a CD-RW drive and links to www.linuxiso.org, promo.net/pg/ (project guttenburg), and similar sites. Let people BYOB (Bring Your Own Blanks) and let them burn CDs for stuff that is FREELY available on the net. Sell blank discs at cost+handling, like libraries do with other supplies.
Maybe it's time to start planning the Fight Club ending...
Our government is no long of the people and for the people and there seems to be no way get it back again.
It's just another way of looking at Microsoft's activation scheme that highlights the potential problems that no one has seemed to have thought much about yet.
1. Virus/trojan authors could take advantage of the activation mechanism as a way to disable a PC.
2. DDoS authors could take advantage of the activation mechanism as a way to attack microsoft's activation servers.
3. Warez crackers could take advantage of key generation programs to forge activations for different license keys. If your key is chosen, then you would face deactivation and resulting hassle of trying to convince Microsoft that you did not warez your copy.
4a. Risk of security holes in the activation process itself, as you mentioned.
4b. Risk of security holes in the activation servers. The windows update server was just infected by Code Red, after all. That means the server was open to an full-control exploit for over a month.
You might not want to use Windows Update until Microsoft announces that they have audited the server, since Windows Update uses an ActiveX control that has full access to your PC.
5. Potential for Microsoft to force upgrades on their whim by being able to disable every copy of XP.
6. Potential for Microsoft to abuse their ability to deactivate particular installs of XP for political or other harrassment reasons.
Cool!
;-)
I didn't realize that the US had annexed "The Australian Capital Terrority," where they were doing that Debian project
Maybe I can get Fosters cheaper now...
When they say "open", they must be talking about their security...
This is not a direct benefit to consumers and is a protectionist action on behalf of other corporations located in NYS, like Kodak.
Perhaps someone should point out to Sen. Schumer that the consumer edition of XP will include a remote deactivation backdoor placed in the OS by Microsoft that could be used to leverage their monopoly position to force users into unnecessary upgrades at Microsoft's whim.
Considering Microsoft's "stellar" security record, even Sen. Schumer should be able comprehend the danger of having a backdoor capable of deactivating your OS in so many voter... err... users machines...
Had to find this link again:
/ r/ e/rei/WWW/Expl.html
http://www.mit.edu:8001/afs/athena.mit.edu/user
One of the better explorations on the nature of anime and manga that I know of.
Style is only one of the aspects of the artform. The nature of the story and the themes in FF are pure anime.
Yeah, I just checked into it again and I was obviously having a major brain-fart.
Must have been some other anime that was getting dumbed-down for American audiences and I got my wires crossed.
I still can't believe some people were complaining tha the story was too complex. Yeesh.
Funny, my wife drew direct comparisons to Princess Mononoke in it.
She's seen three Anime before: Ghost in The Shell, Akira, and Princess Mononoke. She immediately classified the movie as anime. I agree with her and I've seen a helluva lot more.
One might, if they were trying to twist the situation around so they could lash out in hatred.
I find it quite funny that a so-called member of Mensa like yourself would so totally misunderstand what I wrote.
Let me translate it for you:
American version of Final Fantasy was too simple.
I would like to see the original version that was NOT dumbed down.
Did lowly ogg translate grunt speech well enough for big-brain?
Did they finish editing the movie yet?
Last I heard there had been a helluva lot of last minute scrambling around that movie.
Doesn't usually bode well.
Oh, and Final Fantasy is one of the better, accessable, pieces of anime I've seen. I can't wait to watch the subtitled Japanese version of the story that wasn't dumbed down for Americans.
I fear for the future of this country if so many people had trouble following the plot of a fairly straightforward anime.
What better way to discourage and drive out the malcontents who might resist?
This gets down to the basics of the contracts that we have to sign to get access to this service.
They make a lot of promises in advertising, but write all sorts of legalese crap into their contracts that disallows them from actually having to do much of anything while simultaneously restricting what you can and cannot do with the alleged bandwidth you are supposedly paying for.
Star Office is no competition for MS Office.
It looks and works just like.... MS Works. No thanks, I gave up that all-in-one crap back int he bad old days of DOS...
I like having my loosly coupled application suite. K-Office has more promise for me than Star Office does.
For me, the biggest failing of Linux as a desktop tool is the lack of a unified control interface. In windows, I can control everything pretty much either from right clicking on the desktop or from the control panel. In KDE, you have half a dozen different places you have to hunt for stuff to work, each with it's own look and feel and quirks.
The second biggest failing is the application install process. This is getting WAY better than it used to be, but there are still far too many hoops to jump through to get something working.
While anti-aliasing of fonts was a recent boon, a real killer app for the linux desktop would be the ability to emulate cleartype-style font rendering and to have fonts as clean and clear as those that come with windows. Font sizing and readability always seems to be a major hassle in Linux, but never in windows or mac os or BeOS.
Hrm. I wonder how long it will be before I start using BBSes on dialup again.
Already starting to see some crop up on the 'net. They will be in good position to keep on going once the corps make it impossible to have any freedom on the internet.
There really needs to be two internets. One that is corporate and non-anonymous, and an anonymous one where the government and corporations are not allowed.
I've heard reports that the Game Cube crashed a couple of times as well.
Guess it is easier to jump all over Microsoft.
If they would ditch the horrid all-in-one desktop metaphor, I would be a hell of a lot more interested in using it instead of MS Office.
I like it.
Slower than both IE and Konquerer, but is a major step in the right direction for speed.
A few more releases like this and there will be more converts