my friend beats ALL of you. His payment is 80 bucks (bastard!). Course he lives in a town of 100 and the house sucks but he his game habit is WELL fed...
you may find this usefull as well. pac file I use it in addition to a decent hosts file. I even combined the two. That way the freeking browser doesnt even ASK to be nuked. Before popup blocker was put into Mozilla and IE this is what I used. I rarely saw a popup, and my spyware count went to 0. Sometimes it pukes on itself but someone was kind enough to put a 'turn it off for now' thing. Which is kind of cool as with a hosts file you have to move it out of the way then back when done. There is also a plugin for mozilla I belive that does something similar. But for someone who has to use both its pretty easy to keep running.
The reason I like the pac thing a little better as it snags whole domains. Where as a hosts file only gets 1 site. Also sometimes you want to goto one site but not part of that site. Its pretty powerfull...
I found the best way was to get a 900mhz phone. I have yet to find a 'decent' 2.4ghz phone. There is just too much stuff fighting for that space. Plus since 900mhz is 'old stuff' you can get em fairly cheap.
Some 'reset' buttons on CE boxes are actually just a soft reset. They only reset the CPU. Mine has a 'on/off', 'on', and 'reset'.
Reset - resets cpu only and reboots. on - brings the thing back from susspend on/off - only turn off you you do not care about anything in your ram data store. Which for most devies is things like drivers and all the stuff you've been playing with. Also some units do not have this. This flavor wipes out the memory too. Not the flash disk that some have just the memory.
You can also let the battery run out and its OFF. I have done this a few times. But I do not use mine much at all. Thought I would. Sure glad I got the thing for free.
Interesting idea you just gave me! The RSS thing would be good for the initial 'got to have it now' school. But after a day or so all those people would drop off. Yet there could still be demand for the orginal file for months or years even. Yet mirrors are good for the locality and the speed you get. So you could use RSS+BT to setup the mirrors too? Both could be of good use? Mirrors could actually help each other out? The mirrors could in effect become permanent seeds?
Yes, it might be harder to communicate, but all ideas are commutable through e-mail This is a utter crap. You can NOT run a busness this way. At times you must get everyone together and just hash it out. Do you know what it costs to fly to another country? The outsourced agencies will CHARGE you an arm and leg to do it. On the other hand you can go there and it costs YOU time and money. I have played the e-mail game with english speaking people and STILL I end up picking up the phone/walking over and saying "explain to me point by point what you are doing".
Now, looking past the accent This has never bothered me. Anyone who says it does is being bigoted. Now I have met many people with 'accents' that are bigoted if not even more so than some of us 'Americans'. Being a dippo does not take an accent. I also work and have worked with many talented people that have 'accents'.
If it wasn't delivering acceptable results such that the final product were comparable to US products, would you really think that big corporations would be willing to send these important jobs overseas?
The answer is yes they would. COST above all drives many things. It is the "lowest bidder" mentality. There is always someone out there willing to take the money and run and not produce anything of substance. I have seen a few of these 'offshore' things go down. Products that could change whole industries and make tons of dosh are outsourced. Either because it is cheaper or is in the way of someone elses pet project. Now the quality of these products was not even worth the time. But boy could these guys crank out documentation. It seemed they could do that by the ton. Then when it came time to actually produce something crap was produced, then oportunities were missed. Then here is the kicker they would squeeze you to try to get more money to fix what THEY broke in the first place.
I do not worry about it much. This sort of thing has been going on for years. Once everyone realizes its a pain to run things through email/phone. Yes it IS on the other side of the globe with a different timezone. You are not getting what you paid for, due to accountablity. It will swing back the other way some. Some stuff will stick others will not. Also if there REALLY is that much demand going on over there the average pay will go up dramaticly there (good for them). People will start job hoping like they were doing here a few years ago. Then the 'new' market will be somewhere else.
Yes but gamers are a seriously fickel lot. I know I am. Read one bad review and you leave the game on the shelf or in this case you will not dl it. Even a bad rep can still hurt you down the road. Steam was seriously broken when it first came out, may still be? Also take ATI for instance, I STILL hesitate to this day because I got burned 2 or 3 times on bad drivers from them. I know they have better ones now but it STILL makes me hesitate. How many 2nd gen games have been passed over by people simpily because the first gen sucked? HL2 could be hurt just because no one wants to hassel with steam. It could run perfectly and people would skip it.
Also pay as you go will alienate a lot of people. They forget their core audiance is people where 50 bucks IS a lot of money. Then 10 every month would mean they don't buy from them again.
I know I have passed over several VERY good games. That simpily because they want 10 from me every month, plus the 20-50 up front. To me there are thousands of great games out there. In the 20 or so years I have been doing this I have only found 2 or 3 games ever that are worth 150 bucks for 1 year, and I did not pay nearly that.
Once a company forgets who they are making games for. They usually go under quite quickly.
Also 'activation' is not exactly a new thing to this industry. I have over the years had to endure 'read page x line 2 word 4', red plastic, decoder wheels, online activation, 16 letter keys, and all sorts of other things. All because people that buy 3k rigs cant pry 30 bucks out of their wallet.
They wouldn't need anything MUCH bigger. Most of those rockets were used to just get out of the earths pull of gravity. Once you've done that you coast it. Now getting back on the other hand....
I used to goto UNL and they had a display of one of the lunar modules in front of the museum. They took it down and hid it. People were spray painting it and stealing chunks of it. At one point some administrator had painted over the heat shield, 'it didnt look nice'. So the burn marks were painted over. Instead of moving it inside where they could control vandalism. They moved it to some outdoor storage shed then sold it to another museum? I think it was for Apollo 6. The coolest thing I ever saw in front of that was a group of Japanese students first seeing it. They were PUMPED to see it. They all had to get pictures of it. I had seen the thing my whole life and thought it was cool, but didnt think much of it. But to them it was like they had found gold.
I would have to say the biggest hinderance was the install. Please install disk 6 of 20. 8 discs latter please insert disk 6 again. Why OH Why couldnt you have copied it the FIRST time!
Very true. I for one when I had that problem would chose sorta flexible type pens. Such as the cheap plastic ones. After that it was a matter of just picking one with a decent point. I usually prefered the bic biro medium point. Dont know if they make em anymore. The problem with the flexiable type is they will LEAK if you put them in your pocket, because it squishs the ink out. Not a fun thing to have happen.
Also loosen up your grip a bit, and get one where the ink flows a bit faster, and dont press so hard... That is what is causing the indentation. It takes a bit of practice but it sounds like you are doing a large amount of writting... Also find an art store. They have more pens than you can imagine. Once upon a time I was using a pen meant for architecture (was going to be one). That had a reservoir ink cartridge. But if you did it wrong you ended up with ink everywhere. So I stuck to the 30 cent pen instead of the 15 dollar pen. For nice straight lines nothing could beat a ink reservoir type. But for just homework and notes. Get one that can flow quick and doesnt gum up. Above all stay away from the 'erasable' type. Those are horible to write with. The reason they are eraseable is because the ink is 'gummy' and that doesnt flow fast. If you need to erase things get a decent mechanical pencil. Or do what I always ended up doing. Just strike it out. If you absolutly find you can not change your writting style here is where the art store will come in handy again. They usually have grips you can buy and put on ANY pen.
These days I usually am near a computer and can just pop open a text doc and type in what I need. Or I pick a pen that is nearly indestructable. As I have a temmper and the first thing I do is break pens in half when someone is about to break what I have been working on for the past 6 months.
But on the up side I can write my name in any font style I want, and I have choosen illegible.:)
I prefer the pen that is 1) closest 2) someone hasnt walked off with 3) I havent left somewhere 4) not under the HUGE stack of paper next to my computer in my 'paperless office'. 5) not dryed out
Not only that it TRIES to ping that site. How much crap are they going to get till they undo it. This will only last till they get the BW bill. Whoever owns their lines is probably like "YESSSSS". Because they are going to be getting a serious amount of traffic.
I think a major provider just figured out a way to DOS itself! Its annoying sure. But it MUST be hella expensive. So not only are they paying for the goofie request. They will also be paying to show you some goofie web site (maybe). But also paying for any bogus traffic that comes in for OTHER services. So instead of bad requests being dropped at the client level (which scales much better), they are being dropped at the server level (which will not scale).
So BASICLY they want to pay for people who spell bad. Good for them. Needed someone to fund my missadventures in misspelling.
One use is for physical therapy. My grandma used about a 2 pound chunk while recovering once from a fall. They gave it to her for building up her grip strength and to grip while in pain when trying to walk. When she died I snaged the 2 pound chunk. No one else wanted it...
The interesting things is companies may already be doing something about it but not at the ISP level.
They are doing it at the customer level. But they may or may not realize they are doing it. Many companies are starting to use routers that have this sort of stuff built in. Its usually turned on by default too. A couple of companies around where I live ship these out to customers.
Also just got an advertisment from Time Warner talking about their new 'wireless' service for 10 bucks a month. Well more than likely its a router that has this sort of stuff built in, and on by default.
More than likely this is going to be the responses of the isp's. Ship these boxs out by default this way. Let the people with a sorta clue figure out how to mess with the settings.
The only one that bugs me is an ISP that lets you send out forged ip packets. That sort of crap should not even happen. Its like 1 or 2 lines in a ACL list in a semi decent router.
Internet Nebraska they still around? Havent used them since I lived there:).
CSS was a way to enforce 'region controls'. Belive it or not this sort of thing is actually illegal in many countries. Now however they positioned it in such a way that it was for 'copyright' control. To keep those nasty pirates at bay. Like they say follow the money and you will find who benifits the most from this system being in place. I can tell you it is not the consumer.
It was never about stoping people from copying. It was about makeing sure they get your last dollar out of you.
Now the 'unlock the drive' is a way they have tried to continue to enforce the CSS schema. The drive actually looks at the data on the DVD and decides after so many plays its a 'region x' type drive. It will show up as data that does not read correctly for 'unknown regions'.
All DeCSS does is remove the region controls and the encryption they used for it. ANY dvd drive can read any disk. The software (players) and firmware (drives) is the only thing that enforces the 'read error' problem. That is why they do not like DeCSS. As there are drives out there that just ignor the region control part and just shovel data like they should.
There are people out there that have access to the ablity to make dvd18 disks. Do you think they care one iota about DeCSS? They can blast the whole disk bit for bit and still sell them. And the disk will work just fine in any properly regioned dvd player. There are also players out there that are 'region free'. Meaning they can play any disk from any part of the globe.
The recording industry is not going to sue the tens of thousands of Americans who engage in these practices. But it hopes to make an example of a few users to add teeth to the infringement warnings that file-swapping services send to their customers--and to pressure those services to pressure their customers to stop copying files.
They has a few usefull tips. However in a few years the only way to play any of those games will be through some sort of full on DOS emulation. Not the cheese version built into NT. Or just keep an old 486 around for these sorts of things. Not that I would ever do that.
Avoid people who want your help. Note not need your help, but want your help. You will find people that just want a 'second' of your time. That second becomes an hour. Because the next person in line sees that your helping someone else get something done you loose 3 hours. Ive wasted whole days just helping others. Neglecting my own tasks. The best strategy for people like this is to let them sit for an hour before you rush over and help them. They usually can figure it out themselves, but become lazy when you are around. It would maybe take them an extra minute or two if your not around. But thats ok, you do have your own work to attend to. And fixing the printer is not as high a priority as the bug that has grinded the whole testing team to a dead halt. But Im just being bitter there...
The list thing works VERY well. It also has the effect that if you have a bad memory you can pick it up the next day.
You can also use lists to keep people from overloading you with trival 'keep you busy' tasks. You can pick up the list and either add it or say, 'hmm want that now? it will be after X, Y and Z.' Suddenly that task is not so important as it was 2 seconds ago.
Right now I am using a laptop to type this in. That cleartype SEEMED like a good idea. Instead it made everything super blury. I found myself squinting at it all the time, and giving myself headaches. Turned it off and headaches went away. At a higher res like 1600x1200 it may be better. But my laptop only does 1024x768:(
And on a CRT cleartype doesnt even work. The OS will just turn it off. On the Mac does it leave it on? Or do all macs come with lcd these days? Havent touched a mac for about 10 years. Windows does have the 'standard' font smoothing. But thats just aliasing which to me also looks blury and makes me squint.
For a decent way of how it works see this grc. Hes a bit opinionated about it but gives a decent explination of it.
However the real issue is that fonts have not scaled correctly with windows. Point sizes are based on a 72dpi. However just at the res I run at its more like 120 dpi. So a 8pt font will end up being about half as big as it should be. Meaning to get the size I am currently using I should be using a 4pt font. Instead fonts have been scaling along with the monitor size. At 640x480 it was about 1 to 1. But at 1600x1200 its now about 4 to 1. That is the real issue. Its a misuse of what point size was meant to be. But this has been sort of a short cut for them. You can now get twice as many windows on the screen with the same font size. So that way the guy who just bought the fancy new monitor can actually use the extra screen he just bought. If they were being rendered the way point sizes were meant to be used my 1024x768 would look like a 640x480 screen at the font size I am using.
Printers have been scalling like crazy. Some claim to have like 1200dpi. Which means if you printed fonts the same way as windows, the fonts would be unreadble smudges due to smearing.
Oh I do not dispute that some of it has been there since 95. In fact that was what drove me bonkers about it. It almost worked, but wasnt quite there. I just feel that they took a decent step forward with XP. Like the Large Font switch. It just goooooooofed everything up. It just made things bigger but the font seemed to stay about the same.
The thing is some 'pro' apps do not even take it into account. But that is because they sometimes feel they need the latest and greatest control. So they make a custom one that doesnt quite work right. Or if you change your font the whole window goes bezerk and things are overlapping all over the place. I just stick to MS San Serif. Its not the best font. But at least the overlapping controls dont bug me. After doing it for 3 years I can usually spot a control that is 1 du off and it bugs me:)
Also some 'pro' apps feel they are better than everyone else and do not even care if the controls overlapp in some conditions. They take the attitude of 'use it the way we say, not the way you want'. I work on a project like that now. I gave up yelling at them. They started to think I was off my rocker.
I used to make GUI apps in Windows. Its a REAL pain to get just right for any font at any res. Even with what is called the dialog unit. The problem is you need to develop your app in a wide/tall fixed width font. Then let windows scale it.
Now the dialog unit is based on the font metrics you are currently using. What is selected into that window context at that time. You can create each control individually. This is a real pain to get child/parent relationships correct with. You could also use the.rc method. However the underlying window resources are based partialy in not dialog units but pixels. It takes whatever font is currently defined for the parent window and uses that for the children. But what if that font is different? Well it may not scale 'just right'. It will be close. You then need to make each control on each window just a bit bigger.
The font that always drove me bonkers was this 2-6pt font my boss found somewhere. It was the font that broke the most things. Overlapping controls was the biggest problem. Especialy with radio button text and static controls.
XP is probably the first windows that takes some of what the original poster was bitching about. It lets you scale most things. However I would be willing to bet most third party windows do not take these sorts of things into account. You will not see it with things like a web browser or word. Its usually more seen in the windows that popup and have 100 controls on them (yuck!). Like right now I am using XP. Most people bitch about how much real estate that title bar takes up. But you can change the size in the control panel. It also lets you make your desktop icons bigger. I tried this a few months ago. It has made hitting icons MUCH easier when the are bigger.
Higher res's are nothing to be really scared of. Things just need to scale a bit. You can not basicly end up with a 2pt font and use it. Even though it is readable if you lean in real close. Its all a mater of scale.
Oh you wanted some examples. Pick just about ANY RTS game. Change the res and suddely you have more playing field with microscopic fonts. I think all the C&C's have done this. Also Dungeon Siege does this.
Slashdot Mirror
my friend beats ALL of you. His payment is 80 bucks (bastard!). Course he lives in a town of 100 and the house sucks but he his game habit is WELL fed...
you may find this usefull as well.
pac file
I use it in addition to a decent hosts file. I even combined the two. That way the freeking browser doesnt even ASK to be nuked. Before popup blocker was put into Mozilla and IE this is what I used. I rarely saw a popup, and my spyware count went to 0. Sometimes it pukes on itself but someone was kind enough to put a 'turn it off for now' thing. Which is kind of cool as with a hosts file you have to move it out of the way then back when done. There is also a plugin for mozilla I belive that does something similar. But for someone who has to use both its pretty easy to keep running.
The reason I like the pac thing a little better as it snags whole domains. Where as a hosts file only gets 1 site. Also sometimes you want to goto one site but not part of that site. Its pretty powerfull...
I found the best way was to get a 900mhz phone. I have yet to find a 'decent' 2.4ghz phone. There is just too much stuff fighting for that space. Plus since 900mhz is 'old stuff' you can get em fairly cheap.
Some 'reset' buttons on CE boxes are actually just a soft reset. They only reset the CPU. Mine has a 'on/off', 'on', and 'reset'.
Reset - resets cpu only and reboots.
on - brings the thing back from susspend
on/off - only turn off you you do not care about anything in your ram data store. Which for most devies is things like drivers and all the stuff you've been playing with. Also some units do not have this. This flavor wipes out the memory too. Not the flash disk that some have just the memory.
You can also let the battery run out and its OFF. I have done this a few times. But I do not use mine much at all. Thought I would. Sure glad I got the thing for free.
Interesting idea you just gave me! The RSS thing would be good for the initial 'got to have it now' school. But after a day or so all those people would drop off. Yet there could still be demand for the orginal file for months or years even. Yet mirrors are good for the locality and the speed you get. So you could use RSS+BT to setup the mirrors too? Both could be of good use? Mirrors could actually help each other out? The mirrors could in effect become permanent seeds?
Is this like the Kessel run?
Sorry I must get in here and answer these.
Yes, it might be harder to communicate, but all ideas are commutable through e-mail
This is a utter crap. You can NOT run a busness this way. At times you must get everyone together and just hash it out. Do you know what it costs to fly to another country? The outsourced agencies will CHARGE you an arm and leg to do it. On the other hand you can go there and it costs YOU time and money. I have played the e-mail game with english speaking people and STILL I end up picking up the phone/walking over and saying "explain to me point by point what you are doing".
Now, looking past the accent
This has never bothered me. Anyone who says it does is being bigoted. Now I have met many people with 'accents' that are bigoted if not even more so than some of us 'Americans'. Being a dippo does not take an accent. I also work and have worked with many talented people that have 'accents'.
If it wasn't delivering acceptable results such that the final product were comparable to US products, would you really think that big corporations would be willing to send these important jobs overseas?
The answer is yes they would. COST above all drives many things. It is the "lowest bidder" mentality. There is always someone out there willing to take the money and run and not produce anything of substance. I have seen a few of these 'offshore' things go down. Products that could change whole industries and make tons of dosh are outsourced. Either because it is cheaper or is in the way of someone elses pet project. Now the quality of these products was not even worth the time. But boy could these guys crank out documentation. It seemed they could do that by the ton. Then when it came time to actually produce something crap was produced, then oportunities were missed. Then here is the kicker they would squeeze you to try to get more money to fix what THEY broke in the first place.
I do not worry about it much. This sort of thing has been going on for years. Once everyone realizes its a pain to run things through email/phone. Yes it IS on the other side of the globe with a different timezone. You are not getting what you paid for, due to accountablity. It will swing back the other way some. Some stuff will stick others will not. Also if there REALLY is that much demand going on over there the average pay will go up dramaticly there (good for them). People will start job hoping like they were doing here a few years ago. Then the 'new' market will be somewhere else.
Yes but gamers are a seriously fickel lot. I know I am. Read one bad review and you leave the game on the shelf or in this case you will not dl it. Even a bad rep can still hurt you down the road. Steam was seriously broken when it first came out, may still be? Also take ATI for instance, I STILL hesitate to this day because I got burned 2 or 3 times on bad drivers from them. I know they have better ones now but it STILL makes me hesitate. How many 2nd gen games have been passed over by people simpily because the first gen sucked? HL2 could be hurt just because no one wants to hassel with steam. It could run perfectly and people would skip it.
Also pay as you go will alienate a lot of people. They forget their core audiance is people where 50 bucks IS a lot of money. Then 10 every month would mean they don't buy from them again.
I know I have passed over several VERY good games. That simpily because they want 10 from me every month, plus the 20-50 up front. To me there are thousands of great games out there. In the 20 or so years I have been doing this I have only found 2 or 3 games ever that are worth 150 bucks for 1 year, and I did not pay nearly that.
Once a company forgets who they are making games for. They usually go under quite quickly.
Also 'activation' is not exactly a new thing to this industry. I have over the years had to endure 'read page x line 2 word 4', red plastic, decoder wheels, online activation, 16 letter keys, and all sorts of other things. All because people that buy 3k rigs cant pry 30 bucks out of their wallet.
They wouldn't need anything MUCH bigger. Most of those rockets were used to just get out of the earths pull of gravity. Once you've done that you coast it. Now getting back on the other hand....
I used to goto UNL and they had a display of one of the lunar modules in front of the museum. They took it down and hid it. People were spray painting it and stealing chunks of it. At one point some administrator had painted over the heat shield, 'it didnt look nice'. So the burn marks were painted over. Instead of moving it inside where they could control vandalism. They moved it to some outdoor storage shed then sold it to another museum? I think it was for Apollo 6. The coolest thing I ever saw in front of that was a group of Japanese students first seeing it. They were PUMPED to see it. They all had to get pictures of it. I had seen the thing my whole life and thought it was cool, but didnt think much of it. But to them it was like they had found gold.
Im thinking it will be released in 2 weeks!
I would have to say the biggest hinderance was the install. Please install disk 6 of 20. 8 discs latter please insert disk 6 again. Why OH Why couldnt you have copied it the FIRST time!
Very true. I for one when I had that problem would chose sorta flexible type pens. Such as the cheap plastic ones. After that it was a matter of just picking one with a decent point. I usually prefered the bic biro medium point. Dont know if they make em anymore. The problem with the flexiable type is they will LEAK if you put them in your pocket, because it squishs the ink out. Not a fun thing to have happen.
:)
Also loosen up your grip a bit, and get one where the ink flows a bit faster, and dont press so hard... That is what is causing the indentation. It takes a bit of practice but it sounds like you are doing a large amount of writting... Also find an art store. They have more pens than you can imagine. Once upon a time I was using a pen meant for architecture (was going to be one). That had a reservoir ink cartridge. But if you did it wrong you ended up with ink everywhere. So I stuck to the 30 cent pen instead of the 15 dollar pen. For nice straight lines nothing could beat a ink reservoir type. But for just homework and notes. Get one that can flow quick and doesnt gum up. Above all stay away from the 'erasable' type. Those are horible to write with. The reason they are eraseable is because the ink is 'gummy' and that doesnt flow fast. If you need to erase things get a decent mechanical pencil. Or do what I always ended up doing. Just strike it out. If you absolutly find you can not change your writting style here is where the art store will come in handy again. They usually have grips you can buy and put on ANY pen.
These days I usually am near a computer and can just pop open a text doc and type in what I need. Or I pick a pen that is nearly indestructable. As I have a temmper and the first thing I do is break pens in half when someone is about to break what I have been working on for the past 6 months.
But on the up side I can write my name in any font style I want, and I have choosen illegible.
I prefer the pen that is
1) closest
2) someone hasnt walked off with
3) I havent left somewhere
4) not under the HUGE stack of paper next to my computer in my 'paperless office'.
5) not dryed out
Not only that it TRIES to ping that site. How much crap are they going to get till they undo it. This will only last till they get the BW bill. Whoever owns their lines is probably like "YESSSSS". Because they are going to be getting a serious amount of traffic.
I think a major provider just figured out a way to DOS itself! Its annoying sure. But it MUST be hella expensive. So not only are they paying for the goofie request. They will also be paying to show you some goofie web site (maybe). But also paying for any bogus traffic that comes in for OTHER services. So instead of bad requests being dropped at the client level (which scales much better), they are being dropped at the server level (which will not scale).
So BASICLY they want to pay for people who spell bad. Good for them. Needed someone to fund my missadventures in misspelling.
One use is for physical therapy. My grandma used about a 2 pound chunk while recovering once from a fall. They gave it to her for building up her grip strength and to grip while in pain when trying to walk. When she died I snaged the 2 pound chunk. No one else wanted it...
What you talking about? My first inclination was where do I lay my hands on some sodium borate.
The interesting things is companies may already be doing something about it but not at the ISP level.
:).
They are doing it at the customer level. But they may or may not realize they are doing it. Many companies are starting to use routers that have this sort of stuff built in. Its usually turned on by default too. A couple of companies around where I live ship these out to customers.
Also just got an advertisment from Time Warner talking about their new 'wireless' service for 10 bucks a month. Well more than likely its a router that has this sort of stuff built in, and on by default.
More than likely this is going to be the responses of the isp's. Ship these boxs out by default this way. Let the people with a sorta clue figure out how to mess with the settings.
The only one that bugs me is an ISP that lets you send out forged ip packets. That sort of crap should not even happen. Its like 1 or 2 lines in a ACL list in a semi decent router.
Internet Nebraska they still around? Havent used them since I lived there
Thats partialy wrong.
CSS was a way to enforce 'region controls'. Belive it or not this sort of thing is actually illegal in many countries. Now however they positioned it in such a way that it was for 'copyright' control. To keep those nasty pirates at bay. Like they say follow the money and you will find who benifits the most from this system being in place. I can tell you it is not the consumer.
It was never about stoping people from copying. It was about makeing sure they get your last dollar out of you.
Now the 'unlock the drive' is a way they have tried to continue to enforce the CSS schema. The drive actually looks at the data on the DVD and decides after so many plays its a 'region x' type drive. It will show up as data that does not read correctly for 'unknown regions'.
All DeCSS does is remove the region controls and the encryption they used for it. ANY dvd drive can read any disk. The software (players) and firmware (drives) is the only thing that enforces the 'read error' problem. That is why they do not like DeCSS. As there are drives out there that just ignor the region control part and just shovel data like they should.
There are people out there that have access to the ablity to make dvd18 disks. Do you think they care one iota about DeCSS? They can blast the whole disk bit for bit and still sell them. And the disk will work just fine in any properly regioned dvd player. There are also players out there that are 'region free'. Meaning they can play any disk from any part of the globe.
we hope to reduce the risk to Xfree86 of incorporating new drivers and features
:)
Am I the ONLY one that read that as 'we do not want new drivers, only old ones?'
The recording industry is not going to sue the tens of thousands of Americans who engage in these practices. But it hopes to make an example of a few users to add teeth to the infringement warnings that file-swapping services send to their customers--and to pressure those services to pressure their customers to stop copying files.
hmm isnt that extortion? m-w
give this site a shot. vorgons
They has a few usefull tips. However in a few years the only way to play any of those games will be through some sort of full on DOS emulation. Not the cheese version built into NT. Or just keep an old 486 around for these sorts of things. Not that I would ever do that.
I would add another to your list.
Avoid people who want your help. Note not need your help, but want your help. You will find people that just want a 'second' of your time. That second becomes an hour. Because the next person in line sees that your helping someone else get something done you loose 3 hours. Ive wasted whole days just helping others. Neglecting my own tasks. The best strategy for people like this is to let them sit for an hour before you rush over and help them. They usually can figure it out themselves, but become lazy when you are around. It would maybe take them an extra minute or two if your not around. But thats ok, you do have your own work to attend to. And fixing the printer is not as high a priority as the bug that has grinded the whole testing team to a dead halt. But Im just being bitter there...
The list thing works VERY well. It also has the effect that if you have a bad memory you can pick it up the next day.
You can also use lists to keep people from overloading you with trival 'keep you busy' tasks. You can pick up the list and either add it or say, 'hmm want that now? it will be after X, Y and Z.' Suddenly that task is not so important as it was 2 seconds ago.
Right now I am using a laptop to type this in. That cleartype SEEMED like a good idea. Instead it made everything super blury. I found myself squinting at it all the time, and giving myself headaches. Turned it off and headaches went away. At a higher res like 1600x1200 it may be better. But my laptop only does 1024x768 :(
And on a CRT cleartype doesnt even work. The OS will just turn it off. On the Mac does it leave it on? Or do all macs come with lcd these days? Havent touched a mac for about 10 years. Windows does have the 'standard' font smoothing. But thats just aliasing which to me also looks blury and makes me squint.
For a decent way of how it works see this grc. Hes a bit opinionated about it but gives a decent explination of it.
However the real issue is that fonts have not scaled correctly with windows. Point sizes are based on a 72dpi. However just at the res I run at its more like 120 dpi. So a 8pt font will end up being about half as big as it should be. Meaning to get the size I am currently using I should be using a 4pt font. Instead fonts have been scaling along with the monitor size. At 640x480 it was about 1 to 1. But at 1600x1200 its now about 4 to 1. That is the real issue. Its a misuse of what point size was meant to be. But this has been sort of a short cut for them. You can now get twice as many windows on the screen with the same font size. So that way the guy who just bought the fancy new monitor can actually use the extra screen he just bought. If they were being rendered the way point sizes were meant to be used my 1024x768 would look like a 640x480 screen at the font size I am using.
Printers have been scalling like crazy. Some claim to have like 1200dpi. Which means if you printed fonts the same way as windows, the fonts would be unreadble smudges due to smearing.
Oh I do not dispute that some of it has been there since 95. In fact that was what drove me bonkers about it. It almost worked, but wasnt quite there. I just feel that they took a decent step forward with XP. Like the Large Font switch. It just goooooooofed everything up. It just made things bigger but the font seemed to stay about the same.
:)
The thing is some 'pro' apps do not even take it into account. But that is because they sometimes feel they need the latest and greatest control. So they make a custom one that doesnt quite work right. Or if you change your font the whole window goes bezerk and things are overlapping all over the place. I just stick to MS San Serif. Its not the best font. But at least the overlapping controls dont bug me. After doing it for 3 years I can usually spot a control that is 1 du off and it bugs me
Also some 'pro' apps feel they are better than everyone else and do not even care if the controls overlapp in some conditions. They take the attitude of 'use it the way we say, not the way you want'. I work on a project like that now. I gave up yelling at them. They started to think I was off my rocker.
I used to make GUI apps in Windows. Its a REAL pain to get just right for any font at any res. Even with what is called the dialog unit. The problem is you need to develop your app in a wide/tall fixed width font. Then let windows scale it.
.rc method. However the underlying window resources are based partialy in not dialog units but pixels. It takes whatever font is currently defined for the parent window and uses that for the children. But what if that font is different? Well it may not scale 'just right'. It will be close. You then need to make each control on each window just a bit bigger.
Now the dialog unit is based on the font metrics you are currently using. What is selected into that window context at that time. You can create each control individually. This is a real pain to get child/parent relationships correct with. You could also use the
The font that always drove me bonkers was this 2-6pt font my boss found somewhere. It was the font that broke the most things. Overlapping controls was the biggest problem. Especialy with radio button text and static controls.
XP is probably the first windows that takes some of what the original poster was bitching about. It lets you scale most things. However I would be willing to bet most third party windows do not take these sorts of things into account. You will not see it with things like a web browser or word. Its usually more seen in the windows that popup and have 100 controls on them (yuck!). Like right now I am using XP. Most people bitch about how much real estate that title bar takes up. But you can change the size in the control panel. It also lets you make your desktop icons bigger. I tried this a few months ago. It has made hitting icons MUCH easier when the are bigger.
Higher res's are nothing to be really scared of. Things just need to scale a bit. You can not basicly end up with a 2pt font and use it. Even though it is readable if you lean in real close. Its all a mater of scale.
Oh you wanted some examples. Pick just about ANY RTS game. Change the res and suddely you have more playing field with microscopic fonts. I think all the C&C's have done this. Also Dungeon Siege does this.