I had once to repair a user PC (average Joe's) with about 1447 installed whatnot... (according to adaware) It was taking the darn thing 35 minutes just to boot up and was veryyyy slow when operating. And she was having quite a powerfull machine too..
Is that 1447 including cookies? I hate how adaware equates cookies with spyware.
The article said they are going to allow people to download mail to third party email clients. This is great! Yahoo seems to be saying: We don't care about the pittance we make off email banner adverts, we are willing to TRUELY GIVE you a larger mailbox than your ISP just to keep you using yahoo for other stuff.
Yahoo used to offer free POP3 access but they stopped in early 2002. I guess they figured so few people used it they could charge money for this feature and not lose too many customers. I'm glad if it's changing back to free P0P3.
We've never had problems like this in Canada. This whole punch card/e-voting/dress up like you who want to vote for thing really just makes things more difficult. Much easier just putting an X in the box next to the candidate. Hard to screw up that one.
Canada's been lucky. The problem with just putting an X in the box is the problem of spoiled ballots, somtimes wether somthing is an X is a matter of opinion, it might be written lightly or shaped funny or there might be some mark someplace else.
During the Quebec referendum on seperation, there was some controversy because more NO ballots got rejected than YES ballots. But the NO side had won so didn't become this Florida style scandal.
If you want to charge for airtime on your radio station, you should be able to. And if nobody wants to pay you, then tough Schitt.
Well there's the problem of the airwaves belonging to the public. I think if a radio station wants to accept payola they don't deserve a government enforced monopoly over a part of the airwaves.
Personally I'd like to see less FCC and some more democratic process where crap stations can be voted off the air and their radio license give to some more promising competitor.
If it was internet radio I wouldn't care because there isn't quite the scarcity of that medium.
But repeated tests of the Windows XP Internet Time utility produced a variety of unharmonious results. Compared with the NIST's atomic clock, Microsoft was repeatedly off by as much as nine minutes.
Maybe that was the problem. Microsoft has since fixed it.
I agree with a lot of these criticisms. I've used Winzip encryption, the strangest thing is that instead of encrypting the zipfile, it encrypts the files within the zipfile. This is contrary to how most people expect an encryption program to work.
I disagree that the filename should be authenticated, changing the filename should be allowed since different systems allows different characters. If I had an encrypted zipfile that I had trouble sending because the filename was too long or had spaces or something in it, I should be able to simply rename it and send it without having to decrypt and encrypt it all over again.
The social engineering is a bit of a stretch, if someone is dumb enough to send back error files, then it would be simpler to send them a corrupt file then later ask them what password they had typed in.
A lot of these problems could be worked around by first putting your files into a zipfile and using Winzip to encrypt that file.
Physical models can still look goddamn remarkable.
Yeah, I find it interesting that the makers of the upcoming "Aliens vs. Predator" movie are emphasising how they used rubber outfits and animatronics to make all the creatures. They're using CG to make the aliens tail whip around but the rest they're trying to keep "real".
Yeah I don't agree that new technology is driving up the cost of producing games.
Rather, I'd say it was competition driving up develpoment costs. One company spends 20 million making a game that sells millions of copies and makes a big profit, so others companies see that and try to make a blockbuster themselves.
I guess that in Japan, society is a lot more regimented and order-driven than in the west, and so they'll seek games that are similar.....
Grand Theft Auto sold surprisingly well in Japan, but I sort of wonder what they're doing in it. Maybe they're just driving around, obeying traffic signals, listening to the radio, watching the sunset...
All it takes to get rich without making anything good is to track down those stupid enough to buy your crap - the easiest way to hit alot of morons is to saturate the web, you'll piss off millions, but still hit thousands willing to give you money.
Actually a lot of spammers are middlemen, they make money wether a product sells or not, they work as advertisers and get paid by the people selling the product. What they rely on is the percecption that "spam works", so people will hire them to do spam campaigns.
Appalling wasn't it. Yet it was quite possible to make a good film pout of that. Likewise Resident Evil - terrible piece of crap, but there was good potential.
Actually the game Tomb Raider is unofficially a modern updating and borrows a lot from the Indiana Jones films, also Resident Evil borrows a lot from Romero's "Living Dead" films. Quite a few games do this (Vice City -> Scarface, Medal of Honor -> Saving Private Ryan).
Since the games were based on good films, there is no intrinsic reason those games couldn't in turn become good films. Until like five years Hollywood would rarely make successful comic book adaptations, now it's not so rare, I don't know what changed, maybe directors didn't understand the material before.
There are constitutional reasons why you can't have a Canadian style nation wide standard for voting.
The question you should be asking is, why doesn't Texas have a state standard?
It would be cheaper if you had a single body running the election in each state, making ballots and buying equipment in bulk, making sure the poor communities have the same equipment as rich communites. I've read this isn't done for buget reasons, most states pass the costs for elections onto individual communities.
No... I have a better idea, instead of getting the government involved if you don't like it then you can choose to use a email service more to your liking.
Personally I like the encryption idea and wish it was integrated into more webmail sites. Hushmail has a pretty interesting implementation of this, having all the email stored encrypted on the server and the user views their email locally by decrypting it with a java applet. I'm dissapointed more people aren't interested in encryption (if more people were maybe there would be more services like this).
Though I'm not sure if that could be implemented with gmail, how would you search and organize a gig of email without decrypting all of it?
Well I'm Ukrainian and I'm proud to see that a Ukrainian development team put together such an impressive looking game. Ukraine has had a lot of difficulties, it has a struggling economy and a corrupt government. I think it's great to see Ukrainian programmmers creating an original game about Ukraine instead of being exploited by rich countries doing outsourcing.
By the way, Vic Romano is actually internationally acclaimed actor/director Takeshi Kitano (Fireworks, Battle Royale, Johnny Mneumonic, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and lots of others.)
But those criminals (well some of them anyway), get paid millions and who pays for it? The average Joe and his family end up paying $300 to see the game
Ticket prices are high because that's what the market will bear. If players made less you'd think they'd lower prices? Hell no, the owners would just pocket the extra profits.
I was just reading an IGN article that noted RE4 will have all of its cinemas use the in-game engine for rendering, rather than using pre-rendered FMVs. This trend is sweeping through all sorts of games.
I think Metal Gear Solid for the PS1 was the first game to really popularize doing FMV-style sequences "in engine".
You're right a lot of games are abandoning pre-rendered FMV, though I did like how some of the FF games, like FFVIII, would have near-seamless transistions between FMVs and in-game action.
I've heard this argument before, the most common explanation I've read is that the majority of the profits in G-Rated films are from Disney/Pixar films, and that Disney is exceptionally good at creating synergy through it's various businesses to promote their movies.
When other studios have tried to emulate this success it's been pretty hit and miss (Spirited Away and Iron Giant were brilliant and went nowhere at the box office, but Ice Age did well). So the reason more G-Rated films aren't being produced is that studios beside Disney/Pixar have had only mixed success with them.
Someone last month posted a interesting theory on why so many games are pushed out unfinished into a crowded Christmas marketplace, something about investors desire for a "big Christmas" to keep the stock up.
I don't quite understand myself exactly why investors would want rushed games to come out and sell less copies but someone must think it's a good idea.
I don't know, try the demo: lifeline pc voice recognition demo, I got it to work 80% of the time, seems kinda sloppy though, thing crashed on me after a while too.
Actually imdb says i'm wrong about Hannibal and Eyes Wide Shut, that they were rated 18A (18 or older unless with an adult, like an R rating in the U.S.), but I could of sworn those movies had the harsher 18+ rating, anyway here's a list from imdb of Canadian R (18+) movies). Okay films like 8mm and Kill Bill got the harsher 18+ rating, along with Life of Brian!?
And you're right a lot of films actually get a lighter rating in Ontario, I don't think swearing matters much, so an American R-rated film like 13 Conversations About One Thing, which has nearly no sex or violence but has some swearing, gets a lighter rating in Canada. Still violence will generally get a harsher rating.
Hmm, this is not much different than what the ESRB is asking. The ESRB suggests Manhunt should be 17+ while the R rating in Ontario means 18+ (it's different from an MPAA R) so we're talking a difference of one year.
Another interesting thing, in the U.S. ratings are voluntary but in Canada they're decided by the Provincial governments, and (in Ontario at least) they're a bit stricter than the U.S., i.e. a few of the more extreme American R-rated films (Eyes Wide Shut, Hannibal) and all(?) NC-17 films get the 18+ rating in Canada.
Ironically, the 18+ rating is slapped on so many films it's not seen as a big deal. That's why Canada got the uncut version of American Psycho in theatres, while the producers wanted to avoid the NC-17 in the U.S., in Canada it was going to get rated 18+ anyway so there was no point in making cuts. Crash similarly had no problems in getting shown in Canadian theatres.
Maybe we'll get 'Canadian' versions of games with extra nudity and violence, since the 18+ rating is the strictest available there's no reason to hold back.
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Is that 1447 including cookies? I hate how adaware equates cookies with spyware.
Yahoo used to offer free POP3 access but they stopped in early 2002. I guess they figured so few people used it they could charge money for this feature and not lose too many customers. I'm glad if it's changing back to free P0P3.
Canada's been lucky. The problem with just putting an X in the box is the problem of spoiled ballots, somtimes wether somthing is an X is a matter of opinion, it might be written lightly or shaped funny or there might be some mark someplace else.
During the Quebec referendum on seperation, there was some controversy because more NO ballots got rejected than YES ballots. But the NO side had won so didn't become this Florida style scandal.
Well there's the problem of the airwaves belonging to the public. I think if a radio station wants to accept payola they don't deserve a government enforced monopoly over a part of the airwaves.
Personally I'd like to see less FCC and some more democratic process where crap stations can be voted off the air and their radio license give to some more promising competitor.
If it was internet radio I wouldn't care because there isn't quite the scarcity of that medium.
Actually hard drive capacity generally doubles every 12 months, so I wouldn't be surprised if we saw terabyte iPods in less than five years.
But repeated tests of the Windows XP Internet Time utility produced a variety of unharmonious results. Compared with the NIST's atomic clock, Microsoft was repeatedly off by as much as nine minutes.
Maybe that was the problem. Microsoft has since fixed it.
Interesting, there are only a couple sites that end in .arpa listed by google, and they're both down.
I've always been skeptical of that rumour.
I disagree that the filename should be authenticated, changing the filename should be allowed since different systems allows different characters. If I had an encrypted zipfile that I had trouble sending because the filename was too long or had spaces or something in it, I should be able to simply rename it and send it without having to decrypt and encrypt it all over again.
The social engineering is a bit of a stretch, if someone is dumb enough to send back error files, then it would be simpler to send them a corrupt file then later ask them what password they had typed in.
A lot of these problems could be worked around by first putting your files into a zipfile and using Winzip to encrypt that file.
Yeah, I find it interesting that the makers of the upcoming "Aliens vs. Predator" movie are emphasising how they used rubber outfits and animatronics to make all the creatures. They're using CG to make the aliens tail whip around but the rest they're trying to keep "real".
Rather, I'd say it was competition driving up develpoment costs. One company spends 20 million making a game that sells millions of copies and makes a big profit, so others companies see that and try to make a blockbuster themselves.
Grand Theft Auto sold surprisingly well in Japan, but I sort of wonder what they're doing in it. Maybe they're just driving around, obeying traffic signals, listening to the radio, watching the sunset...
Actually a lot of spammers are middlemen, they make money wether a product sells or not, they work as advertisers and get paid by the people selling the product. What they rely on is the percecption that "spam works", so people will hire them to do spam campaigns.
Spammers make profits without making a sale
Actually the game Tomb Raider is unofficially a modern updating and borrows a lot from the Indiana Jones films, also Resident Evil borrows a lot from Romero's "Living Dead" films. Quite a few games do this (Vice City -> Scarface, Medal of Honor -> Saving Private Ryan).
Since the games were based on good films, there is no intrinsic reason those games couldn't in turn become good films. Until like five years Hollywood would rarely make successful comic book adaptations, now it's not so rare, I don't know what changed, maybe directors didn't understand the material before.
There are constitutional reasons why you can't have a Canadian style nation wide standard for voting.
The question you should be asking is, why doesn't Texas have a state standard?
It would be cheaper if you had a single body running the election in each state, making ballots and buying equipment in bulk, making sure the poor communities have the same equipment as rich communites. I've read this isn't done for buget reasons, most states pass the costs for elections onto individual communities.
Personally I like the encryption idea and wish it was integrated into more webmail sites. Hushmail has a pretty interesting implementation of this, having all the email stored encrypted on the server and the user views their email locally by decrypting it with a java applet. I'm dissapointed more people aren't interested in encryption (if more people were maybe there would be more services like this).
Though I'm not sure if that could be implemented with gmail, how would you search and organize a gig of email without decrypting all of it?
Well I'm Ukrainian and I'm proud to see that a Ukrainian development team put together such an impressive looking game. Ukraine has had a lot of difficulties, it has a struggling economy and a corrupt government. I think it's great to see Ukrainian programmmers creating an original game about Ukraine instead of being exploited by rich countries doing outsourcing.
By the way, Vic Romano is actually internationally acclaimed actor/director Takeshi Kitano (Fireworks, Battle Royale, Johnny Mneumonic, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and lots of others.)
Ticket prices are high because that's what the market will bear. If players made less you'd think they'd lower prices? Hell no, the owners would just pocket the extra profits.
I think Metal Gear Solid for the PS1 was the first game to really popularize doing FMV-style sequences "in engine".
You're right a lot of games are abandoning pre-rendered FMV, though I did like how some of the FF games, like FFVIII, would have near-seamless transistions between FMVs and in-game action.
When other studios have tried to emulate this success it's been pretty hit and miss (Spirited Away and Iron Giant were brilliant and went nowhere at the box office, but Ice Age did well). So the reason more G-Rated films aren't being produced is that studios beside Disney/Pixar have had only mixed success with them.
I don't quite understand myself exactly why investors would want rushed games to come out and sell less copies but someone must think it's a good idea.
I don't know, try the demo: lifeline pc voice recognition demo, I got it to work 80% of the time, seems kinda sloppy though, thing crashed on me after a while too.
And you're right a lot of films actually get a lighter rating in Ontario, I don't think swearing matters much, so an American R-rated film like 13 Conversations About One Thing, which has nearly no sex or violence but has some swearing, gets a lighter rating in Canada. Still violence will generally get a harsher rating.
Another interesting thing, in the U.S. ratings are voluntary but in Canada they're decided by the Provincial governments, and (in Ontario at least) they're a bit stricter than the U.S., i.e. a few of the more extreme American R-rated films (Eyes Wide Shut, Hannibal) and all(?) NC-17 films get the 18+ rating in Canada.
Ironically, the 18+ rating is slapped on so many films it's not seen as a big deal. That's why Canada got the uncut version of American Psycho in theatres, while the producers wanted to avoid the NC-17 in the U.S., in Canada it was going to get rated 18+ anyway so there was no point in making cuts. Crash similarly had no problems in getting shown in Canadian theatres.
Maybe we'll get 'Canadian' versions of games with extra nudity and violence, since the 18+ rating is the strictest available there's no reason to hold back.