Why, oh why, won't someone come out with a disc carousel with a CD/DVD ROM drive integrated into it. Something like Sony's 400 CD/DVD changer, but that will handle CDROMs too.
Load up your CDROM game disks into the thing and never search for the CD again when you want to play, and don't have to hassle with game cracks. Seriously, how hard can that be?
"The game would flash a yellow-ish light in the direction that you were supposed to move the joystick just before you had to enter the move"
Absolutely. Anyone who didn't get this would likely be frustrated by the game. That's not to say that the flashes were always helpful because most of the time you would rely on memorization rather than waiting for the flashes. Initially I spent far more time watching others play than I did playing, which is great for learning the moves. It could be damn frustrating when you screwed up, especially when you thought you have memorized a series of moves. To make matters worse, at random, some of the scenes were mirror images, and some scene sequences played in a different order. I completed the game a number of times, which really isn't all that difficult once you've memorized the sequence of moves, yet it still was tricky to get the timing right.
I think the appeal of this game was that you got the sense of making progress because as you advanced, each scene was completely different. Despite the poor sense of feedback from the controls, this was a pretty revolutionary for games at that time.
I have 3 PCs in my office. My main one is Windows XP, but the others are Windows 98 and Windows 95 machines. These are all software development platforms, and it is not practical to upgrade the OS on them since they are older machines with limited horsepower and memory. It also isn't practical to move the software development tools to the new PC because of compatibility issues. The Win95 machines gets used occasionally, but the Win98 is used almost daily (I connect to it with UltraVNC).
I'm not concerned about the lack of Microsoft support. I don't use it to surf the net or read email and I never install anything on it.
"Windows XP SP2 changed this behavior and will use the autorun.inf file to autorun."
Really? I have XP (Professional) SP2, and I can't get it to do this (not that I want to). When I pop in a USB drive with an AUTORUN.INF, it pops up a window asking me what I want to do
-Open Folder to View Files
-Take No Action
Maybe autorun only works in XP home, not professional?
I'll second that vote for Pair Networks. Been using them to host my company's website for a couple of years (based on a recommendation from Ask Slashdot, come to think of it). They were way less expensive than our previous provider and offered way more features/storage/bandwidth. Sure, they are a bit more than the "value" hosts, but isn't that point of the Ask Slashdot in the first place? After all, you get what you pay for.
Dilbert (to PHB): Here's your problem. The connection to the network is broken. Uh-oh. It's a "token ring" LAN. That means the token fell out and it's in this room someplace. *PHB searches for token under desk* Dilbert (to Wally): I'll wait a week then tell him the token must be in the "ethernet" Wally: You are the wind beneath my wings.
In the latter case, the challenge-response key exchange ensures that even if someone is snooping on the entire transaction, they don't get anything of value. This would not be possible unless the card had enough logic to do the encryption on its own.
In theory anyway. IIRC, the weakness with the Mobil Speedpass was that with only a couple of challenges, the responses were captured and used to crack the private key. Not a big deal if all you can do with a cracked tag is buy some gas, but clearly not strong enough for large scale widely accepted payment systems or for controlled access to high security locations.
"Well if they really wanted to do a better job, they would provide a thumbs up and thumbs down for comercials"
Exactly!
Instead of downloading the mostly useless Showcase ads, why can't Tivo learn what products I am/not interested in, download ads for those products instead, and overlay them over the broadcast ads that I don't care about? Sure, the advertiser I'm not watching gets shafted, but they could easily come up with a way to track that and compensate them appropriately. And advertisers would get valuable demographic information as well (79% of people who like Ford Mustang commercials don't like Tampax commercials)
Tivo is also missing the boat by not allowing viewers to get more information on an advertised product they are interested in. Why not allow you to a) get more info on screen b) get more info by e/snail mail c) go directly to a TV optimized website for more info (seriously, how hard would it be to build a web browser right into the Tivo)
Fear not though. The US is a comparitively young nation, and given enough time I'm sure we'll rise to the challenge of increasing taxation for seemingly minimal benefit of the citizens.
"I'd imagine the VAT replaces the American income tax system entirely." Nope, not even close
You must be getting something we Yanks aren't for all the extra taxes you are paying (National health insurance?) Granted, most states also have a sales tax similar to the VAT, but it's much smaller (on the order of 5-6%)
Some good info on our taxes can be found here. They're you'll find some of our other taxes like Council Tax, Capital Gains and Stamp Duty.
Interesting info. I love the picture of the woman reading all about taxes with a big smile on her face. Usually when I read about taxes, I've got one hand pulling out my hair, the other on a drink and you can bet there isn't any smiling going on.
How is it an unfair comparison? American's are complaining about the price of petrol they pay at the pump, which is still half of what people in the UK are paying at the pump. Yes, the high price of petrol is in many ways our own fault, but as the media keeps hammering home that people should be getting the warm fuzzies from such high taxes/prices as it "helps the environment", it's not going to change soon. It almost did a few years back, but the protests soon fizzled out
Not saying it's an unfair comparison, just that the gasoline itself isn't generally more expensive in the UK than it is in the US. The media often highlights the significant different in the price paid at the pump, as if we Americans should consider ourselves damn lucky to have "cheap" gasoline. Presumably the huge taxes are going somewhere productive, and I'd imagine the VAT replaces the American income tax system entirely.
As of 2005 fuel duty in the United Kingdom is: 47.1 pence per litre (83/L, US$3.13/USgal) for ultra-low sulphur unleaded petrol/diesel Note: in the UK, Value Added Tax (VAT), currently at 17.5%, is also charged on the price of the fuel and on the duty.
The U.S. federal gasoline tax as of 2005 was 18.4/gal (4.86/L), and the gasoline taxes in the various states range from 10 cents to 33 cents, with an average about 22 cents per U.S. gallon (5.8/L). Unlike most goods in the U.S., the price displayed includes all taxes, rather than being calculated at the point of purchase.
For the UK, ignoring VAT, that's $3.13/gal in just tax. If you factor in the VAT, which gets applied to the price of the fuel as well as the gas tax (nice, double taxation), you are probably closer to $4.50/gal in just taxes.
In the US, the tax is only about 40 cents/gal on average.
Ignoring the taxes, the fuel prices are pretty comparable.
BTW, you forgot to mention the congestion charge. Driving in London must be damn expensive.
2600 Pacman had to be the most disappointing game ever. My brother and I saved up our paper route money, bottle and can deposits, etc, preordered the game, waited about a month for it, popped it in and "WTF is this? You call *THIS* PACMAN?!?!"
I was always amazed at how Activision games had such awesome graphics (by 1980 standards), and some of Atari's very own programmers couldn't code their way out of a paper bag.
Yes, you'd be amazed at the "junk" you can get rid of with Freecycle.
My company had a pile of older computers (from 286s up to low end Pentiums) to get rid of. Rather than paying the local computer recycler to haul them away, we offered them on Freecycle. One guy took them all, and was going to put them to use for data collection for vending machines.
It's a great way to unload all that extra junk in your garage/basement too.
"The way it should work (in my opinion) is that if you want to patent something, you had better have something tangible to present with your filing. In this case, NTP only held a piece of paper saying they invented something. They did not write any code or develop any product (or component of a product). Essentially, there were only three possible sources of revenue for NTP: Investments, Licensing, and Lawsuits"
I agree with you to a point about having something "tangible", but don't think it should be required. Rather, if you come up with some clever process/invention/whatever, and sit on it, your patent protection is limited to, say 3 years. You either use it or lose it.
8:30 Arrive at Microsoft 8:32 Find penny in parking lot. Pick it up. 8:37 Open my office door. Add penny to the "Digital Whiteboard Fund" jar on my desk. I've got about $100 in there now, and am hoping to
have enough to get one by next year. 8:39 Look at my 3 monitor setup and chuckle about the rest of the world running Windows(TM) on their little 15" flat panel. Peasants. 9:15 Write up advert^H^H^H^H^Hrticle about my typical day, making sure to plug as many Microsoft(TM) products as possible. 9:30 Email advert^H^H^H^H^Hrticle (DAMMIT, did it again) to Fortune Magazine. Fortune *chuckle*.... how apropos! 9:35 Profit!
Slashdot Mirror
In that case, I'm afraid your patent is invalid.
Based on your high slashdot UID, I'm sorry to say there is *significant* prior art.
"I am tempted to sue Creative for sucking"
Because you invented "sucking" and hold the patent?
"A disc carousel?"
Why, oh why, won't someone come out with a disc carousel with a CD/DVD ROM drive integrated into it.
Something like Sony's 400 CD/DVD changer, but that will handle CDROMs too.
Load up your CDROM game disks into the thing and never search for the CD again when you want to play,
and don't have to hassle with game cracks. Seriously, how hard can that be?
"The game would flash a yellow-ish light in the direction that you were supposed to move the joystick just before you had to enter the move"
Absolutely. Anyone who didn't get this would likely be frustrated by the game. That's not to say that the flashes were always helpful
because most of the time you would rely on memorization rather than waiting for the flashes. Initially I spent far more time watching others
play than I did playing, which is great for learning the moves. It could be damn frustrating when you screwed up, especially when you thought you
have memorized a series of moves. To make matters worse, at random, some of the scenes were mirror images, and some scene sequences played in a
different order. I completed the game a number of times, which really isn't all that difficult once you've memorized the sequence of moves, yet
it still was tricky to get the timing right.
I think the appeal of this game was that you got the sense of making progress because as you advanced, each scene was completely different.
Despite the poor sense of feedback from the controls, this was a pretty revolutionary for games at that time.
"Well, it would be news if they got it to boot on a pre-BootCamp Intel Mac"
Hell, all they'd have to do to make it "news" would be boot Vista on a PC with the processor fan running at 12 volts
"The PM of France might just have a few things on his plate that he considers more important."
Yes, Mr Stallman, the Prime Minister would love to meet with you but I'm afraid he will be busy washing his hair that day.
Good suggestion. I might give that a shot with the Win98 box, :-)
but unless VMWare can virtualize the ISA bus, I'm stuck with the Win95 box
"How many people still actually run Windows 98?"
I have 3 PCs in my office. My main one is Windows XP, but the others are Windows 98 and Windows 95 machines.
These are all software development platforms, and it is not practical to upgrade the OS on them since they are older
machines with limited horsepower and memory. It also isn't practical to move the software development tools to
the new PC because of compatibility issues. The Win95 machines gets used occasionally, but the Win98 is used almost daily
(I connect to it with UltraVNC).
I'm not concerned about the lack of Microsoft support. I don't use it to surf the net or read email and
I never install anything on it.
"Windows XP SP2 changed this behavior and will use the autorun.inf file to autorun."
Really? I have XP (Professional) SP2, and I can't get it to do this (not that I want to).
When I pop in a USB drive with an AUTORUN.INF, it pops up a window asking me what I want to do
-Open Folder to View Files
-Take No Action
Maybe autorun only works in XP home, not professional?
I'll second that vote for Pair Networks. Been using them to host my company's website for a couple of years (based on a recommendation from Ask Slashdot, come to think of it).
They were way less expensive than our previous provider and offered way more features/storage/bandwidth.
Sure, they are a bit more than the "value" hosts, but isn't that point of the Ask Slashdot in the first place? After all, you get what you pay for.
(From an old Dilbert comic IIRC)
Looking at it on my wall right now....
Dilbert (to PHB): Here's your problem. The connection to the network is broken. Uh-oh. It's a "token ring" LAN. That means the token fell out and it's in this room someplace.
*PHB searches for token under desk*
Dilbert (to Wally): I'll wait a week then tell him the token must be in the "ethernet"
Wally: You are the wind beneath my wings.
In the latter case, the challenge-response key exchange ensures that even if someone is snooping on the entire transaction, they don't get anything of value. This would not be possible unless the card had enough logic to do the encryption on its own.
In theory anyway. IIRC, the weakness with the Mobil Speedpass was that with only a couple of challenges, the responses were captured and used to crack the private key. Not a big deal if all you can do with a cracked tag is buy some gas, but clearly not strong enough for large scale widely accepted payment systems or for controlled access to high security locations.
"Well if they really wanted to do a better job, they would provide a thumbs up and thumbs down for comercials"
Exactly!
Instead of downloading the mostly useless Showcase ads, why can't Tivo learn what products I am/not interested in,
download ads for those products instead, and overlay them over the broadcast ads that I don't care about?
Sure, the advertiser I'm not watching gets shafted, but they could easily come up with a way to track that
and compensate them appropriately. And advertisers would get valuable demographic information as well (79% of people who like
Ford Mustang commercials don't like Tampax commercials)
Tivo is also missing the boat by not allowing viewers to get more information on an advertised product they are
interested in. Why not allow you to a) get more info on screen b) get more info by e/snail mail c) go directly to a
TV optimized website for more info (seriously, how hard would it be to build a web browser right into the Tivo)
" Did I mention the TV Tax? :-)"
LOL. Always loved that one.
Fear not though. The US is a comparitively young nation, and given enough time I'm sure we'll rise to the challenge of increasing taxation for seemingly minimal benefit of the citizens.
"I'd imagine the VAT replaces the American income tax system entirely."
Nope, not even close
You must be getting something we Yanks aren't for all the extra taxes you are paying (National health insurance?)
Granted, most states also have a sales tax similar to the VAT, but it's much smaller (on the order of 5-6%)
Some good info on our taxes can be found here. They're you'll find some of our other taxes like Council Tax, Capital Gains and Stamp Duty.
Interesting info. I love the picture of the woman reading all about taxes with a big smile on her face. Usually when I read about taxes, I've got one hand pulling out my hair, the other on a drink and you can bet there isn't any smiling going on.
How is it an unfair comparison? American's are complaining about the price of petrol they pay at the pump, which is still half of what people in the UK are paying at the pump. Yes, the high price of petrol is in many ways our own fault, but as the media keeps hammering home that people should be getting the warm fuzzies from such high taxes/prices as it "helps the environment", it's not going to change soon. It almost did a few years back, but the protests soon fizzled out
Not saying it's an unfair comparison, just that the gasoline itself isn't generally more expensive in the UK than it is in the US. The media often highlights the significant different in the price paid at the pump, as if we Americans should consider ourselves damn lucky to have "cheap" gasoline. Presumably the huge taxes are going somewhere productive, and I'd imagine the VAT replaces the American income tax system entirely.
To be fair, that's hardly an apples-to-apples comparison, since much of the price you pay is taxes.
According to Wikipedia
For the UK, ignoring VAT, that's $3.13/gal in just tax. If you factor in the VAT, which gets applied to the
price of the fuel as well as the gas tax (nice, double taxation), you are probably closer to $4.50/gal in just taxes.
In the US, the tax is only about 40 cents/gal on average.
Ignoring the taxes, the fuel prices are pretty comparable.
BTW, you forgot to mention the congestion charge. Driving in London must be damn expensive.
"Pac-Man was the best for this"
At least it was good for something then....
2600 Pacman had to be the most disappointing game ever.
My brother and I saved up our paper route money, bottle and can deposits, etc, preordered the game, waited about a month for it, popped it in and "WTF is this? You call *THIS* PACMAN?!?!"
I was always amazed at how Activision games had such awesome graphics (by 1980 standards), and some of Atari's very own programmers couldn't code their way out of a paper bag.
Yes, you'd be amazed at the "junk" you can get rid of with Freecycle.
My company had a pile of older computers (from 286s up to low end Pentiums) to get rid of. Rather than paying the local computer recycler to haul them away, we offered them on Freecycle.
One guy took them all, and was going to put them to use for data collection for vending machines.
It's a great way to unload all that extra junk in your garage/basement too.
"The way it should work (in my opinion) is that if you want to patent something, you had better have something tangible to present with your filing. In this case, NTP only held a piece of paper saying they invented something. They did not write any code or develop any product (or component of a product). Essentially, there were only three possible sources of revenue for NTP: Investments, Licensing, and Lawsuits"
I agree with you to a point about having something "tangible", but don't think it should be required.
Rather, if you come up with some clever process/invention/whatever, and sit on it, your patent protection is limited to, say 3 years. You either use it or lose it.
"So Bill Gates uses vi?"
And Linux too. After all, his PC only has 640K
Article summary:
.... how apropos!
8:30 Arrive at Microsoft
8:32 Find penny in parking lot. Pick it up.
8:37 Open my office door. Add penny to the "Digital Whiteboard Fund" jar on my desk. I've got about $100 in there now, and am hoping to
have enough to get one by next year.
8:39 Look at my 3 monitor setup and chuckle about the rest of the world running Windows(TM) on their little 15" flat panel. Peasants.
9:15 Write up advert^H^H^H^H^Hrticle about my typical day, making sure to plug as many Microsoft(TM) products as possible.
9:30 Email advert^H^H^H^H^Hrticle (DAMMIT, did it again) to Fortune Magazine. Fortune *chuckle*
9:35 Profit!
"Esp. if you count in the cost of the tractor needed to move the Elbonian MP3 player..."
Yes, but it's worth it just for the lips.
"Now, if you really don't want a TPM chip in your machine"
Just put your laptop in the microwave, along with your RFID tags.
"It seems slashdotters are so afraid of these chips they won't even comment on them."
Maybe they tried but the TPM chips in their computer blocked them.
I'm glad I don't hav#&DFGsj3lwkj.s9)
NO CARRIER