Hey, does anyone remember about 10 or 15 years ago when Apple introduced a campaign at one of their conferences to get everyone to change their pronunciation of the acronym SCSI from "scuzzy" to "sexy"?
Spamhaus has *appropriated* IPs belonging to EMarketersAmerica member organizations for their own use and profit. (Tell me, how on Earth do you do that? I want to steal MS's block...)
Did they actually use the abbreviation "IP" specifically with respect to TCP/IP address bocks? I wonder if by "IP" they meant "Intellectual Property"?
It makes more sense than believing these morons can understand how internet addesses and packet routing works well enough to set up a fairly sophisticated and successful network of systems designed to deliver email messages by deceiving every other internet system in existence about their true intentions, AND THEN go on to sue someone else for somehow using IP addresses allocated to them without reconfiguring all the other routers on the internet.
Mmmm, okayyy, but 15 is the *minimum* number of pieces of flair. Do you want to be satisfied just doing the minimum? I thought you said you wanted to express youself -- like Brian over there...
I've used a few different version of Omnipage PRO, and it works OK if the layout is not complicated, it uses standard fonts, the text is clean and clear and it doesn't have too many weird logos or symbols. You still have to proofread everything and correct it by hand, though, so I'm not convinced it's a time saver as much as it is a typing saver.
OmniPage Pro does do a MUCH better job of identifying words that the free version they throw in with scanners because it uses spelling and grammar checkers to help ID words from context. The free version is as close to useless as you can get in the software world - it's really just an ad for Pro.
*** For those of you who don't know who the "Thompson Twins" are, DesqView was a DOS task switching shell from Quarterdeck from the 80's and 90's. It ran DOS, OSs/2 and Windows 3.x (I think) programs in different memory subspaces and was later evolved into a DOS X Windows shell after Windows 3.1 made it (mostly) irrelevant.
That is, create a special distro, make a narrow list of the hardware supported, and let people build their own consoles with those specs. Make sure that users, console-builders, and developers (probably all the same people, actually) all know exactly what hardware is 'officially' supported, so that everybody's compatable. Build the distro in such a way that any developer can just drop his game in, burn it to disc, and boot right into it.
Any enterprising person could build his own one of these consoles, or buy one prebuilt. Most games for such a thing would be free (in both senses), but there'd be nothing to stop one from selling them.
Maybe what you do is use TWO disks - the first boots the "OpenConsole OS" (drivers, core library support and management code) and the second (provided by the game developer) with the game code on it.
That way, when you upgrade your video card or buy a new PC, you just have to re-download and burn the latest OpenConsole image that includes drivers for your platform.
Or how about this - instead of distributing a prebuilt fixed OpenConsole OS CD, you distribute an OpenConsole distribution **BUILDER** CD. It would:
CD
1) Detects and verifies your hardware
2) Downloads any needed drivers and libraries
3) Build optimized code from source if you want (like Gentoo)
4) Provide full testing suite to guarantee compatability
5) Let you add additional features (MP3, Kazaa/FTP download support), etc.
6) Finally, it would then BURN THE BOOT CD FOR YOU.
7) Alternately, you could create a small bootable "OpenConsole OS" partition on your hard drive and boot it from there
Hmmm. That might work, but your still have the problem of having to reboot just to play games. Maybe we could design a "DirectX"-like set of libraries that could also be installed into any standard linux setup, but I don't now how feasable that is.
Of course, that really only applies to people who want to use a
Microsoft product for building games. ...
In reality I think dotnet is what everyone thinks, a competitor
to Java. How many highgrade professional games are written in
Java currently?
You got me thinking, so I'm going to take a flyer here.
Remember back in the **OLD** days when Atari, Commodore and Apple games weren't launched from the OS, they were loaded from a boot floppy because we really didn't have OS's back then? (Unless you purchased CP/M, of course.)
Well, Knoppix has demonstrated an absolutely ridiculous level of competence at autodetecting hardware, and since . Would the gaming industry consider the possibility of using Linux as a development platform in a trend back to using bootable disks for games?
Think about it: a bootable CD that has the Linux kernel, drivers, support libraries and your game code.
PRO:
[Fully customizable and optimized kernel]
+ [NO OS OVERHEAD or CPU/RAM competition]
-----------------
= [Mad crazy performance out the wazoo regardless of what other spyware crap the boneheaded user has been suckered into installing.]
PRO: OpenGL, Internet Integration, divers filesystem support for saving games to floppy, hard drive, memory card, cdrw, THE INTERNET.
PRO and CON: Potential for DRM and proprietary CDROM file systems to limit piracy and legal backups.
PRO: Their kernels would be open source, so we could see if they were spying on our hard drives or personal data. (This might be a big problem because you're giving their cd exclusive control of your PC to play a game.)
PRO: Reduced support costs - you'd be distributing an embedded system that only includes the drivers YOU specifically choose.
CON: Game developers may start developing drivers again. (**shudder**)
CON: No downloading or listening to MP3's in the background while playing Half-Life anymore, though they could certainly throw in those feature if they wanted to.
After looking at the article for a couple of minutes, a couple of things are clear to me:
1) being able to encode logic circuts using DNA != being able to program nano-size virus-like bio-bots to follow your instructions. The "processors" that drive life in virii, bacteria and cells do not follow instructions of this sort. Sure, you might be able to produce an organic computer that can 'run the program', but it won't be alive, it won't reproduce and it'll be a hell of a lot slower than a similar computer built on silicon. You can build logic circuits out of water and buckets if you like, but other than the intellectual curiosity, there just isn't much point.
2) I'm getting a little tired of this sort of "soon we'll be able to re-program living organism" articles. Talk about a God complex!
Look at it this way: is the paper aware of the circuit diagram I've drawn on it?
Methinks somebody needs to lay off the LSD for a while.
After posting, I realized that I should have also asked for some historical context, and am ticked someone read between the lines deeply enough to educate me.
The page design is loud and annoying and that makes difficult to tell which pages are ads and which are articles. It's like Maxim or Cosmo for computers - looooong on (really bad) style and short on brainpower. The border is freakin' ORANGE AND GREEN for crying out loud.
They also spend an inordinate amount of pagespace discussing dumb-ass but important sounding issues like "Breaking in to the Hollywood network (an expose of how movie deals are made)", "Instant messaging in the workplace", "Games are teaching kids the things schools are not" and "What metro areas are the biggest for wireless networking".....AND THAT'S JUST THIS MONTH!
If computers got you laid, this would be your monthly instruction manual. Imagine a computer magazine who's target audience is Jim Rome. It's like a bunch of cool people set out to write a magazine about how geeky they thing they are and failed miserably because they aren't eggheaded enough to pull it off.
Really!
There's not a single damn unnecessary Lego(tm) robot project anywhere near that rag! How are they supposed to have any credibility? Hell, they just caught up with the "classic gaming" fanbase with an article about that guy that re-builds Atari 2600's into hand-held units. Next month they'll probably have a cover story on case mods. "Oooh, Buffy, look. People are installing colored lights in their PC's and cutting windows in the side so..." Arrrrrrgh! I can't even finish the gag it's so stupid.
If they wanted to make themselves useful, they'd publish articles like "How to still MS software and keep from getting screwed by Licensing 6.0", "Why you should ignore web services just a little while longer" and "Why is Larry Ellison such a psycho?"
THAT'S info I would pay for.
On another note, don't these people realize that the niche/canned business software market is STILL DIGESTING AND IMPLEMENTING STANDARDS THAT WERE WRITTEN 5 YEARS AGO? Example: My company is probably going to upgrade one of our two major apps this summer. The major innovation? It's a web based product, so there's a zero client install, it pulls info from credit bureaus automatically and it sends email status updates to applicants. (The old app it is replacing was Win16/ODBC and integrated with MS Office 6.0 standards. Ick!) It's a very powerful and flexible package, but it's brand spanking new with a tiny little installed base, so you KNOW it's going to be problematic. But, enough ranting.
I've read one issue of Wired, and it's mostly catbox liner as far as I'm concerned. Maybe if I were 25, lived in San Francisco and had schitzophrenic ADD it would be amusing, but it really makes me miss "Creative Computing" and "Compute!". You see, back in the good old days, computer magazines published the source for useful BASIC programs every month!
Oh, yeah... "Shock and Awe"... That's a **GREAT** idea for a game....
ME: Let's see, disk in Playstation: Check. ME: Power on: Check. ME: Memory card: Check. ME: Controller: Check. ME: Ahhh, nothing quite like getting a new video game....
This has been making my life a living hell for the past 2 months, every night my parents go on and check to see if i have any homework and won't let me do anything till it's done"
1) To inform your client what options are available, as well as their associated consequences. (R&D)
2) To manage your client's expectations. (Process Managment)
If you have done your job correctly and communitated well, your client will be well aware of the consequences of making any decision by your advice (counter to your recommendations or not) and if they do something you don't agree with, they will probably have a very good reason, good or bad, for doing so.
It is important for you to realize that these really are not your decisions to make.
In the words of one of my former mentors, "I'll sweep your floors for $100/hour, but I will also advise you that this is not the best use of my time."
If you fear legal repercussions, keep records of your correspondence in a folder and consult an attorney about drafting appropriate liability release paperwork. Well-designed documentation at the start of a contract and/or relationaship will generally eliminate this issue altogether.
I was working as a tech when Windows 95 came out, so I spent a LOT of time driver-wrestling. After a few weeks with Windows, it became patently obvious that the automatic hardware detection and driver handling in Win95 was so new and bad (partly because of poor hardware vendor support, incorrect INF files and so on) that often times, updating a driver became an exercise in trying to talk Windows info believing that I had a better driver than it did. When I realized that persuading children to do something basically works the same way, I started wondering HOW OLD IN HUMAN YEARS Windows 95 would score on a developmental test. Three years? Four years? Six Months?
Anyway, I never wrote a paper on it and tried to get it published because, well, it's a stupid idea. I'm pretty sure that anything our blinky-boxes are doing that might look like a level of intelligence worthy of psychological inquiry is pretty much due to the engineers that designed the thing getting their sh*t together and specifying the protocols more thoroughly.
One of the the really good things Windows did (that people love to forget about) is that it forced the standardization of hardware autodetection, peripheral interfaces and driver support across the industry. In 1995, every vendor had their own way of doing *EVERYTHING*, and when Microsoft told them you're gonna follow our spec or we're not supporting you, most of them listened. Sure we all bitch about driver problems and feature support, but trust me, The world is a better place now.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, does anyone remember about 10 or 15 years ago when Apple introduced a campaign at one of their conferences to get everyone to change their pronunciation of the acronym SCSI from "scuzzy" to "sexy"?
That was a good one.
Spamhaus has *appropriated* IPs belonging to EMarketersAmerica member organizations for their own use and profit. (Tell me, how on Earth do you do that? I want to steal MS's block...)
Did they actually use the abbreviation "IP" specifically with respect to TCP/IP address bocks? I wonder if by "IP" they meant "Intellectual Property"?
It makes more sense than believing these morons can understand how internet addesses and packet routing works well enough to set up a fairly sophisticated and successful network of systems designed to deliver email messages by deceiving every other internet system in existence about their true intentions, AND THEN go on to sue someone else for somehow using IP addresses allocated to them without reconfiguring all the other routers on the internet.
This is just stupid.
Dear Slashdot,
What is this "Mall" thing you keep talking about. Is it like a Best Buy?
Sincerely,
Debbie Gibson Fan Club Member #1337
Mmmm, okayyy, but 15 is the *minimum* number of pieces of flair. Do you want to be satisfied just doing the minimum? I thought you said you wanted to express youself -- like Brian over there...
Good luck!
I've used a few different version of Omnipage PRO, and it works OK if the layout is not complicated, it uses standard fonts, the text is clean and clear and it doesn't have too many weird logos or symbols. You still have to proofread everything and correct it by hand, though, so I'm not convinced it's a time saver as much as it is a typing saver.
OmniPage Pro does do a MUCH better job of identifying words that the free version they throw in with scanners because it uses spelling and grammar checkers to help ID words from context. The free version is as close to useless as you can get in the software world - it's really just an ad for Pro.
Engineering and math symbols are right out.
Oh, one more thing.
That may be the one case mod I've seen that is *absolutely* *guaranteed* to get the wife to pack her bags and call an attorney.
WOAH! YOU DIDN'T SAY THESE WERE LIFE SIZE!
There's something sick about doing a case in the shape of a life-size chick, man. I mean, check this out!
Friend: Say, what the heck happened to your PC?
Me: Oh, the hard drive took a dump.
Not right, man... not right.
(**shudder**)
Even worse, it would be illegal for you to send an initial email requesting their response.
Egg, meet chicken. Chicken, this is egg.
Holy Crap!
You just invented DesqView***!
[grin]
*** For those of you who don't know who the "Thompson Twins" are, DesqView was a DOS task switching shell from Quarterdeck from the 80's and 90's. It ran DOS, OSs/2 and Windows 3.x (I think) programs in different memory subspaces and was later evolved into a DOS X Windows shell after Windows 3.1 made it (mostly) irrelevant.
That is, create a special distro, make a narrow list of the hardware supported, and let people build their own consoles with those specs. Make sure that users, console-builders, and developers (probably all the same people, actually) all know exactly what hardware is 'officially' supported, so that everybody's compatable. Build the distro in such a way that any developer can just drop his game in, burn it to disc, and boot right into it.
Any enterprising person could build his own one of these consoles, or buy one prebuilt. Most games for such a thing would be free (in both senses), but there'd be nothing to stop one from selling them.
Maybe what you do is use TWO disks - the first boots the "OpenConsole OS" (drivers, core library support and management code) and the second (provided by the game developer) with the game code on it.
That way, when you upgrade your video card or buy a new PC, you just have to re-download and burn the latest OpenConsole image that includes drivers for your platform.
Or how about this - instead of distributing a prebuilt fixed OpenConsole OS CD, you distribute an OpenConsole distribution **BUILDER** CD. It would:
CD 1) Detects and verifies your hardware
2) Downloads any needed drivers and libraries
3) Build optimized code from source if you want (like Gentoo)
4) Provide full testing suite to guarantee compatability
5) Let you add additional features (MP3, Kazaa/FTP download support), etc.
6) Finally, it would then BURN THE BOOT CD FOR YOU.
7) Alternately, you could create a small bootable "OpenConsole OS" partition on your hard drive and boot it from there
Hmmm. That might work, but your still have the problem of having to reboot just to play games. Maybe we could design a "DirectX"-like set of libraries that could also be installed into any standard linux setup, but I don't now how feasable that is.
Of course, that really only applies to people who want to use a Microsoft product for building games.
In reality I think dotnet is what everyone thinks, a competitor to Java. How many highgrade professional games are written in Java currently?
You got me thinking, so I'm going to take a flyer here.
Remember back in the **OLD** days when Atari, Commodore and Apple games weren't launched from the OS, they were loaded from a boot floppy because we really didn't have OS's back then? (Unless you purchased CP/M, of course.)
Well, Knoppix has demonstrated an absolutely ridiculous level of competence at autodetecting hardware, and since . Would the gaming industry consider the possibility of using Linux as a development platform in a trend back to using bootable disks for games?
Think about it: a bootable CD that has the Linux kernel, drivers, support libraries and your game code.
PRO:
[Fully customizable and optimized kernel]
+ [NO OS OVERHEAD or CPU/RAM competition]
-----------------
= [Mad crazy performance out the wazoo regardless of what other spyware crap the boneheaded user has been suckered into installing.]
PRO: OpenGL, Internet Integration, divers filesystem support for saving games to floppy, hard drive, memory card, cdrw, THE INTERNET.
PRO and CON: Potential for DRM and proprietary CDROM file systems to limit piracy and legal backups.
PRO: Their kernels would be open source, so we could see if they were spying on our hard drives or personal data. (This might be a big problem because you're giving their cd exclusive control of your PC to play a game.)
PRO: Reduced support costs - you'd be distributing an embedded system that only includes the drivers YOU specifically choose.
CON: Game developers may start developing drivers again. (**shudder**)
CON: No downloading or listening to MP3's in the background while playing Half-Life anymore, though they could certainly throw in those feature if they wanted to.
Woah... Am I on to something?
Anyone else have any ideas to add?
Wow, that's ironic. My first draft concluded with "... sounds like somebody wants their funding increased."
Maybe we should start a club, eh?
After looking at the article for a couple of minutes, a couple of things are clear to me:
1) being able to encode logic circuts using DNA != being able to program nano-size virus-like bio-bots to follow your instructions. The "processors" that drive life in virii, bacteria and cells do not follow instructions of this sort. Sure, you might be able to produce an organic computer that can 'run the program', but it won't be alive, it won't reproduce and it'll be a hell of a lot slower than a similar computer built on silicon. You can build logic circuits out of water and buckets if you like, but other than the intellectual curiosity, there just isn't much point.
2) I'm getting a little tired of this sort of "soon we'll be able to re-program living organism" articles. Talk about a God complex!
Look at it this way: is the paper aware of the circuit diagram I've drawn on it?
Methinks somebody needs to lay off the LSD for a while.
Shock and awe to you! That was perfect!
Thanks!
After posting, I realized that I should have also asked for some historical context, and am ticked someone read between the lines deeply enough to educate me.
Cheerio!
Anybody know exactly what the expression "puts paid to" means?
Am I close in interpreting this as "discredits"?
It's an Australian thang, isn't it?
Either way, this project is going NOWHERE until they bolt on a spill-proof cupholder.
Yep.
....AND THAT'S JUST THIS MONTH!
The page design is loud and annoying and that makes difficult to tell which pages are ads and which are articles. It's like Maxim or Cosmo for computers - looooong on (really bad) style and short on brainpower. The border is freakin' ORANGE AND GREEN for crying out loud.
They also spend an inordinate amount of pagespace discussing dumb-ass but important sounding issues like "Breaking in to the Hollywood network (an expose of how movie deals are made)", "Instant messaging in the workplace", "Games are teaching kids the things schools are not" and "What metro areas are the biggest for wireless networking".
If computers got you laid, this would be your monthly instruction manual. Imagine a computer magazine who's target audience is Jim Rome. It's like a bunch of cool people set out to write a magazine about how geeky they thing they are and failed miserably because they aren't eggheaded enough to pull it off.
Really!
There's not a single damn unnecessary Lego(tm) robot project anywhere near that rag! How are they supposed to have any credibility? Hell, they just caught up with the "classic gaming" fanbase with an article about that guy that re-builds Atari 2600's into hand-held units. Next month they'll probably have a cover story on case mods. "Oooh, Buffy, look. People are installing colored lights in their PC's and cutting windows in the side so..." Arrrrrrgh! I can't even finish the gag it's so stupid.
If they wanted to make themselves useful, they'd publish articles like "How to still MS software and keep from getting screwed by Licensing 6.0", "Why you should ignore web services just a little while longer" and "Why is Larry Ellison such a psycho?"
THAT'S info I would pay for.
On another note, don't these people realize that the niche/canned business software market is STILL DIGESTING AND IMPLEMENTING STANDARDS THAT WERE WRITTEN 5 YEARS AGO? Example: My company is probably going to upgrade one of our two major apps this summer. The major innovation? It's a web based product, so there's a zero client install, it pulls info from credit bureaus automatically and it sends email status updates to applicants. (The old app it is replacing was Win16/ODBC and integrated with MS Office 6.0 standards. Ick!) It's a very powerful and flexible package, but it's brand spanking new with a tiny little installed base, so you KNOW it's going to be problematic. But, enough ranting.
I've read one issue of Wired, and it's mostly catbox liner as far as I'm concerned. Maybe if I were 25, lived in San Francisco and had schitzophrenic ADD it would be amusing, but it really makes me miss "Creative Computing" and "Compute!". You see, back in the good old days, computer magazines published the source for useful BASIC programs every month!
You should try reading their magazine. (~~shudder~~)
If Wired is involved, I'm pretty sure one of them won't be a time machine.
Oh, yeah... "Shock and Awe"... That's a **GREAT** idea for a game....
;)
ME: Let's see, disk in Playstation: Check.
ME: Power on: Check.
ME: Memory card: Check.
ME: Controller: Check.
ME: Ahhh, nothing quite like getting a new video game....
PS: (PS boot sequence) Dee-do-dooooooo
PS: **SHOCK**
PS: **AND**
PS: **AWE**
PS: (20 minute intro cinematic).
ME: Woah.
PS: Press START to Begin...
ME: [START]
PS: "Iraq is run by the evil tyrant Saddam Hussein. Press [X] to begin SHOCK AND AWE campaign to remove him from power."
ME: [X]
PS: ****BOOM****
PS: **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM**
PS: **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM**
PS: **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM**
PS: **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM**
PS: **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM** **BOOM**
(....30 seconds later.....)
PS: Congratulations! You have defeated Saddam's forces and liberated the oppressed people of Iraq.
PS: YOU WIN!
PS: (20 minute end credits cinematic)
I mean, honestly: It probably took you longer to read this dumb-ass post than it would to win THAT game.
Stupid Sony.
I can't wait to get the "Civil Unrest Police Action" and "Humanitarian Aid" mission packs.
This has been making my life a living hell for the past 2 months, every night my parents go on and check to see if i have any homework and won't let me do anything till it's done"
Hmmm, sounds like it's working.
You have two responsibilities as a consultant:
1) To inform your client what options are available, as well as their associated consequences. (R&D)
2) To manage your client's expectations. (Process Managment)
If you have done your job correctly and communitated well, your client will be well aware of the consequences of making any decision by your advice (counter to your recommendations or not) and if they do something you don't agree with, they will probably have a very good reason, good or bad, for doing so.
It is important for you to realize that these really are not your decisions to make.
In the words of one of my former mentors, "I'll sweep your floors for $100/hour, but I will also advise you that this is not the best use of my time."
If you fear legal repercussions, keep records of your correspondence in a folder and consult an attorney about drafting appropriate liability release paperwork. Well-designed documentation at the start of a contract and/or relationaship will generally eliminate this issue altogether.
I was working as a tech when Windows 95 came out, so I spent a LOT of time driver-wrestling. After a few weeks with Windows, it became patently obvious that the automatic hardware detection and driver handling in Win95 was so new and bad (partly because of poor hardware vendor support, incorrect INF files and so on) that often times, updating a driver became an exercise in trying to talk Windows info believing that I had a better driver than it did. When I realized that persuading children to do something basically works the same way, I started wondering HOW OLD IN HUMAN YEARS Windows 95 would score on a developmental test. Three years? Four years? Six Months?
Anyway, I never wrote a paper on it and tried to get it published because, well, it's a stupid idea. I'm pretty sure that anything our blinky-boxes are doing that might look like a level of intelligence worthy of psychological inquiry is pretty much due to the engineers that designed the thing getting their sh*t together and specifying the protocols more thoroughly.
One of the the really good things Windows did (that people love to forget about) is that it forced the standardization of hardware autodetection, peripheral interfaces and driver support across the industry. In 1995, every vendor had their own way of doing *EVERYTHING*, and when Microsoft told them you're gonna follow our spec or we're not supporting you, most of them listened. Sure we all bitch about driver problems and feature support, but trust me, The world is a better place now.
AHA!
So **THAT'S** why the Phoenix 0.6 release is almost three freaking months late.
Hee-hee! Phoenix just went from "Gee, I hope they didn't give up on it" to "Holy crap, you mean it's now the STANDARD?!?!" in about three attoseconds.
Great job, guys! Now let's get to work on putting all those "prefs.js" hacks in as standard options on the config dialogs.