Perhaps I'm doing something with those webpages other than displaying them in my web browser. How would you like to have your debian mirror randomly interspersed with broken packages because your router keeps occasionally downloading Belkin's ad instead? Perhaps it restricts itself to.html documents only. What if I'm mirroring a website?
Redirecting http requests at random is asinine and unforgivable. I have had it with EULAs, register now forms, please give us your personal information if you want to continue forms, all of it. The clickthrough information gathering stops here.
Re:Bad for users of alternative browsers?
on
IE To Block Pop-Ups
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· Score: 1
Amen to that. This is actually a really big bandwagon. I measured it myself before I bought it, rather than just reading the ads that said it was "supersize!".:P
Re:Bad for users of alternative browsers?
on
IE To Block Pop-Ups
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I guess you've never heard of Privoxy (a fork of the long-unmaintained Internet Junkbuster proxy). It blocks ad banners, ad popups, ad tracking cookies, ad iframes, referrer strings and keeps the site intact and viewable. Although sometimes it messes around with webpages' javascript code a little too much for my liking. It is completely configurable using regular expressions and filtering rules.
Thanks to it, I only rarely see ads of any sort. Including here. To those of you who are going to suggest this is stealing: shut up, I don't care about your tirade.
It's part of coding in a given environment. I've been coding MFC programs for almost 3 years now, and I've completely picked up the MFC naming conventions, despite the fact that I always have (and still do) despise them. Most of the stuff in my company's libraries fits in so well with the MFC conventions that I rarely know offhand whether it's in our toolbox or in MFC itself.
If you were going to come up with a more generic, cross-format version of MFC's CBitmap, how much do you want to bet it's going to be called CImage? There are many such classes out there. Yes, it could've been called CGraphic or CGenericBitmap or CPixelArray. But it isn't. It's called CImage, because that fits in with MFC's set of objects nicely. (Of course, MFC is likely going to include that name eventually and it'll bite all of us in the ass, but that's not the point).
MFC often uses lpszMessage as the variable name for a string. Ugly and nonsensical you say? I agree! Does it stop everyone from using that for their string variables? Not a chance!
Just because There Is More Than One Way To Do It, does not mean that more than one way will be used. It's part of fitting in with the language you're writing in. Java does not use underscore characters often, for example, although they are common in C/C++. Shortened names are also uncommon in Java, in my experience. CELLPADDING sounds like a perfectly reasonable name to me. Because that's what it is. It's not Pad Cell, or Cell Pad. It's Cell Padding, and that's what the majority of Java programmers would call it.
I was planning on going out after work to pick up a Belkin 802.11g router/access point. The decision was close between Belkin and D-Link, but the Belkin had more features.
Now the scales have tilted the other direction. Congratulations Belkin, you've just lost yourself a sale. And I mean *right now*, this sale was going to occur in about an hour.
There is no excuse for that sort of behaviour. I am long since tired of being subjected to ads by the DVDs and games I buy. When hardware starts advertising at me, that's where I draw the line. No more.
Perhaps that's because Darl is not in any way a major stockholder of SCO. It is therefore very difficult for him to make much money dumping stock. He is simply the CEO on their elected board of directors.
Actually, Canada does not have free market capitalism, at least not in the sense that Americans know it. We lean heavily towards socialism, and generally we are content with it that way. And that does in fact mean that the government should enforce these sorts of things, that's part of what socialism is all about.
Personally I think it is nice to have a government you can hold accountable for the companies they regulate being able to abuse consumers, rather than being forced to blame it on free market economics and 'vote with your wallet' which is not always feasable. Not that it's perfect, or anything, but it does have some advantages.
BS. I was running a Linux desktop (Enlightenment on Debian) 2 years ago on my laptop and it was wonderful. I have since switched to a Powerbook G4 running Mac OS X, but not because there was anything wrong with my Linux desktop. I switched because of battery life, plus after owning 3 PC laptops I was absolutely awed by the usefulness of Apple's insta-sleep/insta-wake feature.
There were plenty of things that I actually liked better on my Linux desktop vs. OS X, and only with Panther's Expose have I found anything that's even close to Enlightenment's multi-desktops and pagers. E is a bitch to get setup properly, but once it is, it's actually really slick. I lament the fact that development seems to have stopped on it as a Window manager, (sarcasm)since they're changing it into a text editor or a time machine or whatever the current direction for the glorious next version is(/sarcasm).
The Linux desktop is usable even in comparison to current operating systems. And if they could agree on a few minor things (*cough* serious, for-every-app clipboard standards) it would be ready not just usable for Linux enthusiasts (me) but also for everyone.
Perhaps you don't understand the magnitude of not having ethernet drivers available on any Linux install, and having to download them from the Internet, which is difficult, since you have no ethernet connection.
Until now, I have considered my nForce boards impossible to install Linux on because I am not willing to spend days downloading, burning, and installing ISOs and installing all the development tools that I don't need, downloading the drivers, rebuilding the kernel to finally tweak the thing into working and then uninstalling all the development tools when I have a debian packages mirror sitting on my fileserver.
The law is supposed to be blind, and the draconian punishments it allows protect ANYONE's copyright claim. Why doesn't a copyright holder on portions of the code issue a takedown notice to SCO's upstream provider and get them taken off the net?
No one will miss SCO, and once companies start seeing the very damaging takedown notices that can be inflicted upon them (as opposed to some random weirdo's weblog) that portion of the law at least may be in danger.
IANAL, nor an American, so I don't know. Just a thought.
This particular feature isn't something a marketing person is going to put on a box. Hell, half of them have enough problems just listing technical standards. "Includes safe firmware flashing feature!" isn't going to appear in a jagged "flash" label on the front of the box, and it's unlikely to appear in the list of technical features either.
It's funny you would say that. I have a Gigabyte motherboard box sitting right here which states as it's second major "feature", "DualBIOS: A new revolution in Motherboard." Although it admittedly follows the DualBIOS advertisement up with the nonsensical tagline "Doubles your PC's stability". It also had a large sticker for DualBIOS across the PCI slots when I first opened it up. DualBIOS is a secondary BIOS which can be toggled in place of the primary BIOS if a flash goes bad or a nasty virus comes along.
While I love digital cameras, there are a few major pitfalls that you need to be aware of if you plan on ditching the versatility afforded to you by an SLR camera.
Bulb photography (holding the shutter open for a long-exposure shot, very useful at night) is very hard to find. Even if you do find a digital camera with long-exposure support, the amount of time a non-cooled CCD can continue to accumulate light before the picture turns into randomized mush is limited.
Low-light photography in general is very hard to do, regardless of bulb support. Most digital cameras are pitiful at dark shots compared to a film camera.
Remote shutter buttons are also hard to find in digital cameras, although I admit I'm not sure about the new Canon one in particular. You'll never find a film SLR that doesn't support them. They eliminate almost all jitter when shooting on a tripod. Very important for those super high quality shots.
I've already had a few calls for users about Messenger popups advertising cheap university degrees, on Windows-based ultrasounds. MicroHTML sounds all well and good, but it's about 10 years behind the times for medical devices.
How can you put these two statements next to each other and not notice something is wrong?
Behind the times? Was the Saturn V behind the times because it could only carry 3 passengers when a car could already carry 4?
I don't want someone playing solitare on the X-ray machine. There is no excuse for putting a full network+desktop OS on it. Do you run an SQL server on your firewall? sendmail on your router? Do you understand anything about security? If you're getting Windows popup spam, well, let's just say that I sincerely hope the next Windows exploit worm doesn't carry a payload to manipulate medical devices.
and the people who shop in that market are most easily brainwashed with strong branding, rock- and sports stars, and loud commercials.
Is this actually true, or is this just some ongoing fallacy promoted by marketers? I mean, I realize that the sheeple are very unwilling to make their own decisions, but do sports stars and commercials actually sell products? I mean, sure, I know who Pepsi is, I know who Coke is. Does it make me want to buy their products over the random store brand I've never tried before? No, actually. Nor do I feel any desire to buy overpriced Nike shoes, drink Gatorade, use a MasterCard, or buy a Dell.
There is a specific threshhold of advertising that is useful -- here is my product, and here is what it does, and here is what it is called. Anything above that is completely wasted on me. Google Text Ads? Yes, these make sense. Flashing 800x600 popunders? Feel the wrath of my apathy.
I spent the majority of my childhood in a house about 40 feet from a lot-sized 45kV to 120V transformer substation. The 45kV lines went above my front yard. I never noticed any ill effects health-wise (but then, with the amount of pollution-related health problems in Southern Ontario I'm not sure I ever would've noticed anyway)
Never had any problems with EMF or anything either. Several TVs, fluorescent lights, a few miscellaneous wireless devices (outdoor temperature monitor for example) and none of them ever acted odd.
We did have one problem though. One year they decided to "upgrade" the transformer by replacing the old transformer with two brand new ones. Ever since then, the AC in the house has occasionally (usually hours or days between incidents) developed a slight harmonic flicker that fades in and then back out over the course of about 5-10 minutes. I can see the lights flicker, personally, but no one else ever could even when I pointed it out to them. Confirmed the harmonic with my Dad's oscilloscope, though.
I'm not sure whether it was simply a result of the two transformers occasionally getting out of phase with one another or what, but I personally would've recommended a UPS for any sensitive equipment in that house. My grandmother lives there now, and runs her computer directly off the socket, and has never had a problem though, so *shrug*.
And if you live in Northern Canada, beware going outside at night. If you can see the sky spirits glowing red, that is a clue that they may be very angry with you.
In other words, when you have a peer-reviewed scientific study to show us, then you may start criticising people for doing something that may or may not be unsafe. Until then, your baseless superstitions are just that: superstitions.
The most important fact here is that most powerplants are not emitting their pollution directly onto crowded downtown streets.
Whether they emit more pollution en masse than vehicles do is irrelevant, as those are not normalized statistics. Electricity is used for just about everything these days, but combustion engines are used for transportation and very little else. Is it really any wonder that power plants generate more pollution? They're providing much more power overall, even despite transmission line losses (which are quite low, compared to the inefficiency of a typical gasoline combustion engine).
If you could take away 33% of the CO2 emissions (vehicles) and add back maybe 10% of that by adding new power plants, does that sound like a good deal to you? They're more efficient, it really is that simple.
Re:What's soo bad about games.slashdot.com?
on
ALA 3 Goes Online
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· Score: 1
Is that all people are bitching about? Jeez. I thought that maybe my Privoxy proxy was eating out the retardedness or something, but they're complaining about the way the gradient backgrounds of the HEADLINES ONLY are a little hard to read?
I happen to think the color scheme on games.slashdot.org is pretty slick. In fact, I don't even have any trouble reading the headlines personally.
I've seen a hell of a lot more irritating, unreadable, stupid site designs than that. Starting with anything that uses Javascript menus.
Do you want an annoying ringer with your PDA?
on
Death of the PDA?
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· Score: 1
I think I'd like my PDA without cell-phone features thanks.
I am probably in the minority, but I am never again getting a cell phone. I don't like getting phone calls in the first place, even when I'm at home. But I'll admit it's useful.
Cell phones, on the other hand, let me be annoyed by other people wherever I go and as a bonus I get to annoy other people around me. They typically charge ridiculous per-minute billing even for local or incoming calls, unless you pay through the nose for a super-duper-flat-rate (but probably only when the planets are aligned and the moon is 3 degrees above the horizon).
So yeah, I'm happy with my cell-phone-less existance. No cell-phone-PDAs for me. Gimme a big screen and a stylus over a numeric keypad anyday.
Umm, that's going a bit far. I'll grant you your statements about FF Anthology (FF5+FF6) It was the first attempt. No updated graphics, no new cutscenes, and a lot of shitty performance issues with the menus. It did at least come with some nifty art gallery stuff, and a fully translated FF5. But don't judge the other two games based on it, because Square fixed almost all of the problems once they had a little bit of experience porting these games.
FF Chronology (FF4+CT) is way above Anthology. It had many of the major cutscenes replaced with FMVs (3D rendered for FF4, Anime style for CT), a full set of extras (artwork, etc), some gameplay fixes, and the menu issues were dealt with. FF Origins (FF1+FF2) is yet another full translation, the menus are slick, the graphics are slick, and it simply reeks of polish. You can tell that this is how they wanted the games to be way back when they first released them.
I was sure that link was merely some anti-abortion site, but after taking a look I must say I am moved. My mother works for a brain injury rehabilitation center -- these people can and do recover. It is somewhat horrific that her husband wants her dead.
Completely off-topic, but felt like I had to say something.
Well, FF2/4j is my favourite Final Fantasy by far (as if one couldn't tell from my username) but even I have to admit the music doesn't rank among my favourites except for a select few songs (Within the Giant comes to mind). They're otherwise a little bit too short and repetitive, IMHO.
For a good, solid, all-around excellent soundtrack, I'd have to turn more towards FF7. I can only think of one song on that entire OST I don't like listening to on a regular basis, and that's only because the part of the game it was played at was long and depressing, and the music reflects that much too accurately (The Sandy Badlands)
Anyway, back on topic, GameMusic.com is where the videogame soundtracks are. Sure, they're imports, but do you really trust them to release something here and not fuck it up? See most of the soundtracks that *were* released over here for confirmation of this. Also, take a look at a good chunk of games that were released over here. They just suck compared to the Japanese versions.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps I'm doing something with those webpages other than displaying them in my web browser. How would you like to have your debian mirror randomly interspersed with broken packages because your router keeps occasionally downloading Belkin's ad instead? Perhaps it restricts itself to .html documents only. What if I'm mirroring a website?
Redirecting http requests at random is asinine and unforgivable. I have had it with EULAs, register now forms, please give us your personal information if you want to continue forms, all of it. The clickthrough information gathering stops here.
Amen to that. This is actually a really big bandwagon. I measured it myself before I bought it, rather than just reading the ads that said it was "supersize!". :P
I guess you've never heard of Privoxy (a fork of the long-unmaintained Internet Junkbuster proxy). It blocks ad banners, ad popups, ad tracking cookies, ad iframes, referrer strings and keeps the site intact and viewable. Although sometimes it messes around with webpages' javascript code a little too much for my liking. It is completely configurable using regular expressions and filtering rules.
Thanks to it, I only rarely see ads of any sort. Including here. To those of you who are going to suggest this is stealing: shut up, I don't care about your tirade.
It's part of coding in a given environment. I've been coding MFC programs for almost 3 years now, and I've completely picked up the MFC naming conventions, despite the fact that I always have (and still do) despise them. Most of the stuff in my company's libraries fits in so well with the MFC conventions that I rarely know offhand whether it's in our toolbox or in MFC itself.
If you were going to come up with a more generic, cross-format version of MFC's CBitmap, how much do you want to bet it's going to be called CImage? There are many such classes out there. Yes, it could've been called CGraphic or CGenericBitmap or CPixelArray. But it isn't. It's called CImage, because that fits in with MFC's set of objects nicely. (Of course, MFC is likely going to include that name eventually and it'll bite all of us in the ass, but that's not the point).
MFC often uses lpszMessage as the variable name for a string. Ugly and nonsensical you say? I agree! Does it stop everyone from using that for their string variables? Not a chance!
Just because There Is More Than One Way To Do It, does not mean that more than one way will be used. It's part of fitting in with the language you're writing in. Java does not use underscore characters often, for example, although they are common in C/C++. Shortened names are also uncommon in Java, in my experience. CELLPADDING sounds like a perfectly reasonable name to me. Because that's what it is. It's not Pad Cell, or Cell Pad. It's Cell Padding, and that's what the majority of Java programmers would call it.
I was planning on going out after work to pick up a Belkin 802.11g router/access point. The decision was close between Belkin and D-Link, but the Belkin had more features.
Now the scales have tilted the other direction. Congratulations Belkin, you've just lost yourself a sale. And I mean *right now*, this sale was going to occur in about an hour.
There is no excuse for that sort of behaviour. I am long since tired of being subjected to ads by the DVDs and games I buy. When hardware starts advertising at me, that's where I draw the line. No more.
Perhaps that's because Darl is not in any way a major stockholder of SCO. It is therefore very difficult for him to make much money dumping stock. He is simply the CEO on their elected board of directors.
The interesting people to watch are the major SCO stockholders: The VPs and Controllers, not Darl. Specificially, Michael Olson, Jeff Hunsaker, Reginald Broughton, and Robert Bench.
Actually, Canada does not have free market capitalism, at least not in the sense that Americans know it. We lean heavily towards socialism, and generally we are content with it that way. And that does in fact mean that the government should enforce these sorts of things, that's part of what socialism is all about.
Personally I think it is nice to have a government you can hold accountable for the companies they regulate being able to abuse consumers, rather than being forced to blame it on free market economics and 'vote with your wallet' which is not always feasable. Not that it's perfect, or anything, but it does have some advantages.
BS. I was running a Linux desktop (Enlightenment on Debian) 2 years ago on my laptop and it was wonderful. I have since switched to a Powerbook G4 running Mac OS X, but not because there was anything wrong with my Linux desktop. I switched because of battery life, plus after owning 3 PC laptops I was absolutely awed by the usefulness of Apple's insta-sleep/insta-wake feature.
There were plenty of things that I actually liked better on my Linux desktop vs. OS X, and only with Panther's Expose have I found anything that's even close to Enlightenment's multi-desktops and pagers. E is a bitch to get setup properly, but once it is, it's actually really slick. I lament the fact that development seems to have stopped on it as a Window manager, (sarcasm)since they're changing it into a text editor or a time machine or whatever the current direction for the glorious next version is(/sarcasm).
The Linux desktop is usable even in comparison to current operating systems. And if they could agree on a few minor things (*cough* serious, for-every-app clipboard standards) it would be ready not just usable for Linux enthusiasts (me) but also for everyone.
Yes. Yes it is.
Perhaps you don't understand the magnitude of not having ethernet drivers available on any Linux install, and having to download them from the Internet, which is difficult, since you have no ethernet connection.
Until now, I have considered my nForce boards impossible to install Linux on because I am not willing to spend days downloading, burning, and installing ISOs and installing all the development tools that I don't need, downloading the drivers, rebuilding the kernel to finally tweak the thing into working and then uninstalling all the development tools when I have a debian packages mirror sitting on my fileserver.
This is good news.
The law is supposed to be blind, and the draconian punishments it allows protect ANYONE's copyright claim. Why doesn't a copyright holder on portions of the code issue a takedown notice to SCO's upstream provider and get them taken off the net?
No one will miss SCO, and once companies start seeing the very damaging takedown notices that can be inflicted upon them (as opposed to some random weirdo's weblog) that portion of the law at least may be in danger.
IANAL, nor an American, so I don't know. Just a thought.
This particular feature isn't something a marketing person is going to put on a box. Hell, half of them have enough problems just listing technical standards. "Includes safe firmware flashing feature!" isn't going to appear in a jagged "flash" label on the front of the box, and it's unlikely to appear in the list of technical features either.
It's funny you would say that. I have a Gigabyte motherboard box sitting right here which states as it's second major "feature", "DualBIOS: A new revolution in Motherboard." Although it admittedly follows the DualBIOS advertisement up with the nonsensical tagline "Doubles your PC's stability". It also had a large sticker for DualBIOS across the PCI slots when I first opened it up. DualBIOS is a secondary BIOS which can be toggled in place of the primary BIOS if a flash goes bad or a nasty virus comes along.
While I love digital cameras, there are a few major pitfalls that you need to be aware of if you plan on ditching the versatility afforded to you by an SLR camera.
Bulb photography (holding the shutter open for a long-exposure shot, very useful at night) is very hard to find. Even if you do find a digital camera with long-exposure support, the amount of time a non-cooled CCD can continue to accumulate light before the picture turns into randomized mush is limited.
Low-light photography in general is very hard to do, regardless of bulb support. Most digital cameras are pitiful at dark shots compared to a film camera.
Remote shutter buttons are also hard to find in digital cameras, although I admit I'm not sure about the new Canon one in particular. You'll never find a film SLR that doesn't support them. They eliminate almost all jitter when shooting on a tripod. Very important for those super high quality shots.
I've already had a few calls for users about Messenger popups advertising cheap university degrees, on Windows-based ultrasounds. MicroHTML sounds all well and good, but it's about 10 years behind the times for medical devices.
How can you put these two statements next to each other and not notice something is wrong?
Behind the times? Was the Saturn V behind the times because it could only carry 3 passengers when a car could already carry 4?
I don't want someone playing solitare on the X-ray machine. There is no excuse for putting a full network+desktop OS on it. Do you run an SQL server on your firewall? sendmail on your router? Do you understand anything about security? If you're getting Windows popup spam, well, let's just say that I sincerely hope the next Windows exploit worm doesn't carry a payload to manipulate medical devices.
and the people who shop in that market are most easily brainwashed with strong branding, rock- and sports stars, and loud commercials.
Is this actually true, or is this just some ongoing fallacy promoted by marketers? I mean, I realize that the sheeple are very unwilling to make their own decisions, but do sports stars and commercials actually sell products? I mean, sure, I know who Pepsi is, I know who Coke is. Does it make me want to buy their products over the random store brand I've never tried before? No, actually. Nor do I feel any desire to buy overpriced Nike shoes, drink Gatorade, use a MasterCard, or buy a Dell.
There is a specific threshhold of advertising that is useful -- here is my product, and here is what it does, and here is what it is called. Anything above that is completely wasted on me. Google Text Ads? Yes, these make sense. Flashing 800x600 popunders? Feel the wrath of my apathy.
I spent the majority of my childhood in a house about 40 feet from a lot-sized 45kV to 120V transformer substation. The 45kV lines went above my front yard. I never noticed any ill effects health-wise (but then, with the amount of pollution-related health problems in Southern Ontario I'm not sure I ever would've noticed anyway)
Never had any problems with EMF or anything either. Several TVs, fluorescent lights, a few miscellaneous wireless devices (outdoor temperature monitor for example) and none of them ever acted odd.
We did have one problem though. One year they decided to "upgrade" the transformer by replacing the old transformer with two brand new ones. Ever since then, the AC in the house has occasionally (usually hours or days between incidents) developed a slight harmonic flicker that fades in and then back out over the course of about 5-10 minutes. I can see the lights flicker, personally, but no one else ever could even when I pointed it out to them. Confirmed the harmonic with my Dad's oscilloscope, though.
I'm not sure whether it was simply a result of the two transformers occasionally getting out of phase with one another or what, but I personally would've recommended a UPS for any sensitive equipment in that house. My grandmother lives there now, and runs her computer directly off the socket, and has never had a problem though, so *shrug*.
For what it's worth.
And if you live in Northern Canada, beware going outside at night. If you can see the sky spirits glowing red, that is a clue that they may be very angry with you.
In other words, when you have a peer-reviewed scientific study to show us, then you may start criticising people for doing something that may or may not be unsafe. Until then, your baseless superstitions are just that: superstitions.
The most important fact here is that most powerplants are not emitting their pollution directly onto crowded downtown streets.
Whether they emit more pollution en masse than vehicles do is irrelevant, as those are not normalized statistics. Electricity is used for just about everything these days, but combustion engines are used for transportation and very little else. Is it really any wonder that power plants generate more pollution? They're providing much more power overall, even despite transmission line losses (which are quite low, compared to the inefficiency of a typical gasoline combustion engine).
If you could take away 33% of the CO2 emissions (vehicles) and add back maybe 10% of that by adding new power plants, does that sound like a good deal to you? They're more efficient, it really is that simple.
Is that all people are bitching about? Jeez. I thought that maybe my Privoxy proxy was eating out the retardedness or something, but they're complaining about the way the gradient backgrounds of the HEADLINES ONLY are a little hard to read?
I happen to think the color scheme on games.slashdot.org is pretty slick. In fact, I don't even have any trouble reading the headlines personally.
I've seen a hell of a lot more irritating, unreadable, stupid site designs than that. Starting with anything that uses Javascript menus.
I think I'd like my PDA without cell-phone features thanks.
I am probably in the minority, but I am never again getting a cell phone. I don't like getting phone calls in the first place, even when I'm at home. But I'll admit it's useful.
Cell phones, on the other hand, let me be annoyed by other people wherever I go and as a bonus I get to annoy other people around me. They typically charge ridiculous per-minute billing even for local or incoming calls, unless you pay through the nose for a super-duper-flat-rate (but probably only when the planets are aligned and the moon is 3 degrees above the horizon).
So yeah, I'm happy with my cell-phone-less existance. No cell-phone-PDAs for me. Gimme a big screen and a stylus over a numeric keypad anyday.
Umm, that's going a bit far. I'll grant you your statements about FF Anthology (FF5+FF6) It was the first attempt. No updated graphics, no new cutscenes, and a lot of shitty performance issues with the menus. It did at least come with some nifty art gallery stuff, and a fully translated FF5. But don't judge the other two games based on it, because Square fixed almost all of the problems once they had a little bit of experience porting these games.
FF Chronology (FF4+CT) is way above Anthology. It had many of the major cutscenes replaced with FMVs (3D rendered for FF4, Anime style for CT), a full set of extras (artwork, etc), some gameplay fixes, and the menu issues were dealt with. FF Origins (FF1+FF2) is yet another full translation, the menus are slick, the graphics are slick, and it simply reeks of polish. You can tell that this is how they wanted the games to be way back when they first released them.
I was sure that link was merely some anti-abortion site, but after taking a look I must say I am moved. My mother works for a brain injury rehabilitation center -- these people can and do recover. It is somewhat horrific that her husband wants her dead.
Completely off-topic, but felt like I had to say something.
but there's no microkernels currently remotely popular for desktop use
... you sure?
Uh. *glances at his Powerbook running Mac OS X* *glances at Mach microkernel*
Well, FF2/4j is my favourite Final Fantasy by far (as if one couldn't tell from my username) but even I have to admit the music doesn't rank among my favourites except for a select few songs (Within the Giant comes to mind). They're otherwise a little bit too short and repetitive, IMHO.
For a good, solid, all-around excellent soundtrack, I'd have to turn more towards FF7. I can only think of one song on that entire OST I don't like listening to on a regular basis, and that's only because the part of the game it was played at was long and depressing, and the music reflects that much too accurately (The Sandy Badlands)
Anyway, back on topic, GameMusic.com is where the videogame soundtracks are. Sure, they're imports, but do you really trust them to release something here and not fuck it up? See most of the soundtracks that *were* released over here for confirmation of this. Also, take a look at a good chunk of games that were released over here. They just suck compared to the Japanese versions.
Stranger still is that they did not register any of these things which they consider to be trademarks.
Check out OpenNIC, a democratic and open approach to the whole DNS problem.
They seem much closer to being in line with the methodology the Internet has used to prosper than Verisign/ICANN are.