i'd like to see multithreading on the Linux desktop.. just imagine low latency and multithreading for Xfree. A pipe dream, maybe, but 'twould be nice nevertheless.
this Russian guy I went to school with is currently holding down an unpaid job with zero benefits. He does it because he's got no work experience in tech over here, and they pay his bus pass.. "live on unemployment insurance, get free transportation, donate 8 hours daily, and look for job in the spare time" says the guy.
Work without pay is better than sitting at home losing your skills on the couch. Or playing Everquest.
I think "accuracy" might be a good reason to change it. WTF are you thinking?? We should all 'educate' our future generations with inaccurate BS? Come on man. That's a very American thing to suggest. No offense if you're not actually one of them.
heh. some of my warez games don't have sound or movies either;) Commandos is more playable without the music anyways. NWN doesn't need music or movies, it just bloats the ISO.
Try this if you want newsworthy.. even though one could have guessed as much. This thing really is that fast. The real trick is getting that kind of power into a laptop of reasonable (ie, sub-4-pound) size and getting 5 hours of use out of it.
you might have noticed some MS.NET adverts at the top of your/. articles lately. Those ads weren't mistakenly placed there... Taco's not "falling" for anything. This is just another advertisement. Obviously. ANybody who's seen the Amazing Tablet PC can tell you the same. Hype. Good character recognition, but not much better than the average iPAQ with Calligrapher - except that it'll recognize when you write at a funny angle too. WOW. It's an oversized PDA that runs like my old PII-266 cranking along under Win2K Advanced Server.
As anybody from BC knows, we have a two-tier system in which injured hockey-players (for us, here in BC, that means the Canucks) get priority treatment and regularly jump lineups. Our best doctors and surgeons are leaving us and some places (ie. Golden, BC and many many others) are paying tuition fees and huge signing bonuses just to attract fresh grads - who also happen to lack the experience that would make them attractive to American hospitals. I have a friend from school who is a quadriplegic because of an untrained surgeon's error... he was imported from India and his credentials were taken at face value. The story made several newspapers and is typical of the treatment one can receive at a Vancouver hospital. This is the plight that we are in here thanks to our socialist health-care system. Another case (prominently featured in the Province and Sun) dealt with a woman who couldn't save her own life by buying a liver transplant operation. The organ was ready, her money was good, but the queue was full. In a capitalist system, that demand would have been filled to the betterment of society.
My uncle recently had cancer and the only option for immediate treatment was to travel to Seattle. Canadian doctors had botched a stent implant, creating a slow internal bleed. He couldn't get scheduled for a complete scan in Canada, so we rushed him to Seattle where they found the bleeding and gave him seven units of packed cells -- ultimately it didn't save him, but the effort was made. His 50% chance was ZERO percent in Canada. Some people have attempted to start private hospitals, but you wouldn't believe how the socialists scream when it happens. It's embarrassing, to tell the truth. I'm Canadian, and I know how badly our system is broken -- but at least it's better than the USA:P
Please don't start all that "fair use backup copy" shit with me. There's only one reason why you want your X-box to play copied games, and it's piracy.
As anybody can see here, we have a second-rate troll posting here - one who would claim that we should be willing to pay twice (or as many times as need be, one presumes) for Xbox games if, indeed, the original was damaged beyond recovery.. since the poster is averse to people legitimately making a backup copy (even erecting pretense of moral grounds for this argument.. a cover-up for insufficient power to the logic circuits I dare say!) we should go to great lengths in order to enjoy that game again. Exhibit B:
If the disk was damaged or faulty, you'd return it under warranty.
Here Monsieur Troll evidently values our games so little that we should be willing to wait whatever period of time the manufacturer deems necessary before damaged games are replaced - provided, of course, that our (seemingly undervalued or non-existent) games are still available... thanks to M. Troll's skewed view of fair use, we should be at the mercy of manufacturers of games even if we don't need to. "Bend over and like it if your game breaks, please" says M. Troll. Waiting for replacement games is much like waiting for a rebate, or like a crapshoot. Try replacing an original StarCraft (or ANY old-school game worth playing) game disc by crying to the manufacturer and prove me wrong. You won't get far.
To the extreme, he rocks the mic like a vandal., September 25, 2002
Reviewer: Admiral Piett from Gungan Sacred Place, Naboo It's time to grab a stick of butter and a pillow to bite on, because this CD is off tha HOOK. Clocking in at a mere 2 hours 45 minutes, this album is sure to rock out either your drum n' bass show or bridge party. Each song is textured differently with assorted marimba or tango beats, but it is David Hasselhoff's amazing voice which is the constant here. His melodic baritone sounds remarkably like a cross between a badger being drop kicked and a deaf mute yelling in traffic. But it's probably his good looks and charisma that have captured the imagination of so many teenage girls. I attended a show of his at a local Denny's, and I have to say it is almost as good as one of those laser shows at the planetarium. The song "Hot Shot City" is particularly good.
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I voted "YES!" and put a crisp Benjamin on the computer.
I hear ya brother. If I take my laptop on the road I *detest* bringing along a fat sack of discs - nevermind bringing my only copy! But - even worse - I've got a Compaq Armada M300 and it doesn't have a CDROM internally. CD-checking games (all SecuROM and SafeDisc plus 99% of the rest) piss in my sandwich.
Here's a portion of my (currently unhosted) website dedicated to users who have experienced similar problems with copy prevention schemes designed to rob us of fair use. (thanks to Slashdot for this intermediate hosting arrangement! three cheers and all that..)
BACKGROUND INFO - diatribe from which one could conceivably deduce a mission statement
It is truly unfortunate that many software companies refuse to sell their programs in M300-compatible form.
I commonly install programs from a network, as I have no CD-ROM drive built into my machine. Unfortunately, this means that in order to use some programs, I must be networked with the original CD (copy prevention included) in another machine's CD drive. I find this situation to be less than acceptable, since I like to use my M300 notebook computer even when I'm NOT at home or in sight of a free CD drive! I believe that M300 owners (OK, the rest of you ultra-portable owners too) should not be the victims of this heinous discrimination. When one pays for a program, one expects to get fair use of that program; fair use should not exclude those lacking the means to afford persistent access to an external CDROM drive - or those with no desire for one, should it be affordable in any case..
It truly is a pity that some manufacturers do not inform the user PRIOR TO PURCHASE that they will not be able to play their favorite games or other software on an M300 (or ANY machine without a CD-ROM drive) unless they have CONSTANT ACCESS to a CD-ROM drive. Instead, a CD drive is nominally listed under System Requirements - for the obvious purpose of installing the program, one would deduce. Hey! Guess what! I've found that a full install makes games run much more smoothly than an install that constantly reads from the CD. So - it would appear logically - that means I should be able to play my game from the hard drive. That sounds fair, eh?
I have also found that NOT A SINGLE PROGRAM I OWN really requires a CD drive beyond the initial install (or subsequent re-installs.. c'est la vie, nest-ce pas?).
If a CD is constantly needed, then it would be fair to say that one is REQUIRED. However, if the CD is needed only at install time, then this REQUIREMENT is in fact NOT an actual requirement per se. I would like to see a warning on products that constantly demand CD access, and for which no crack is easily obtainable;) However, there are no programs yet that can demonstrate such a need to my satisfaction. It would be more accurate (and conversely less mis-leading) to list INITIAL SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS, and to have a separate listing of SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS based on the install options.
A warning would also make my purchase decisions less painful - especially when I can't return an opened software package! What am I supposed to do with it then? Decorate my rearview mirror a la those ridiculous AOL coasters? Copy it and sell copies to make my money back? Gimme a break! Such practices are deceptive, and tantamount to robbery - robbery of ME, the paying customer..
From the purely functional standpoint, CD-check routines embedded in popular Safedisc and SecuROM copy prevention doodads make zero sense because they decrease performance, effectively cripple my favorite computer, and render my CD drive (if I even have one.. not bloody likely) useless while a CD-checking prog is run. What if I want to listen to my choice of music while playing a game? Most game music is offensive (sorry WarCraft 2) or drives me nuts... should I be denied the use of my own music collection when I'm running a dog-in-the-manger program?! No.
If you've read this far you probably deserve a break. Thank you for your patience. I get quite wound up sometimes when pondering the gaping a**holes who have ripped me off with their archaic "anti-piracy" routines. I have a few other thoughts on that, but I'll stow it for now... except for three brief spews:
Message for the perpetrators of the CD-CHECK and COPY-PREVENTION CRAP (AKA CCCC):
You are ignorant but I do not pity you because you lack the capacity to reason. As one does not pity the lower animals for their lesser cognitive capacities, thusly do I with-hold my pity. Please shove your rancid anachronistic cd-checking code up your p-hole where it belongs.
IF YOU LIKE AND WANT TO USE A PROGRAM, BUY IT!!!*
This simple statement has stopped more computer piracy than any cd-check or copy-protection scheme, in my personal experience.
* Just make sure you don't get screwed by the jerks who force a cd-check on you. They can be awfully hard to spot, so be careful and have a site like mine handy! [editor's note - I had links to my favourite "M300 accessibility options" sites like Megagames.com and Gamecopyworld.com but in the interest of brevity I won't attempt to mirror the whole site here.... thanks for your understanding]
and one final MESSAGE for all you losers that think that SecuROM (or your copy prevention of choice) or any kind of CD-check IS a legitimate copy-protection scheme:
I fart in your general direction! A CD-check only prevents a program from being used in the absence of the original CDROM, or a darned good replica thereof. Smart software pirates know that hard-disk real estate is considerably more expensive than a 25-cent CDR, so they copy it to CD for future use. They don't let 25 dollar borrowed games clutter up hundreds of dollars worth of disk space forever. Hard-disk space is finite, but CDR has very few (spatial versus cost) limitations! This renders the cd-check effectively obsolete.
This applies mainly to rented games and all that... For the bought games, the smart pirates know that it's better to crack a game and burn the cracked copy than an original with CD-crippleware intact. I won't get into online games that constantly demand updates because this was supposed to be a short rant and I've overstepped my griping boundaries already. Peace to all.
the big differences from a security standpoint are several:
-lotsa bugfixes and plenty new bugs to fool around with... basically no net gain or loss here -WinXP Home has no support for joining a domain... this is a bad thing if you rely on NT domain-style security (term used loosely here thanks you people for noticing) -by default, you have to really try hard to find the three-finger-salute logon option.. you know, the one that generates a hw interrupt for local logon, that kind of thing. This, again, is a point in Win2K favour -WinXP comes with a neato remote-DOS exploit in the form of the SSDP sevice (Universal Plug'n'Pray, the one the FBI was decrying as such a security threat. Those over-active whiners!;) -XP also comes with a "firewall" which basically does nothing - or, more likely, fools users (hey anybody dumb enough to use XP seriously deserves it) into thinking they're secure from remote attack. Until the latest worm snipes 'em, that is..
i think that's it... but those are the big ones that I've come across in my workplace. We don't use WinXP at all if we can avoid it, and the good news is that if you have an XP license (OEM too! woohoo!) you can upgrade for free to Win2k.
pints of Guinness, all night -- real men don't drink fermented urine (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). Nor do we drink American "beer," for as H. Allen Smith quoth those many years ago,
You're missing the best part, amigo.. here in Canada we spend all our quality togetherness time as a family whenever the commercials start. Don't get me wrong - I think "commercial-free" is an admirable goal for some, but just think of the consequences before you advocate for the rest of us.
yeah, plus there's the fact that you have 10 fingers and only ONE focal point... and your hands are waaaaaay faster than eyeballz will ever be for shiznat like typing. I think the purpose of this is to help crippled folks surf the 'net more effectively. I think. It's a pretty stupid idea for the rest of us, excepting only those who type at 4-5 WPM..
Other watches worn in space include models by Poljot, the Russian manufacturer. Their watches were the first to travel there.
I have a classic Accutron (waterproof to 666 feet! how devilish) and need a new crystal.. parts are fairly common on Ebay if you take a look. Good luck.
you don't obviously have much knowledge of your own American way, amigo.. try out the DMCA for starters, and the PATRIOT Act. It's a sham, claiming that 'free speech' is respected, when you have Sklyarov imprisoned for exercising his 'constitutionally protected right.'
The American Way is about hypocrisy, and kickbacks for corrupt politicians (Fritz Hollings et al) and major automobile manufacturers
JACK -- "I'm a recall coordinator. My job is to apply the formula. It's a story problem.
TECHNICIAN #1 -- Here's where the infant went through the windshield. Three points.
JACK -- A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 miles per hour. The rear differential locks up.
TECHNICIAN #2 -- The teenager's braces around the backseat ashtray would make a good "anti-smoking" ad.
JACK -- The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now: do we initiate a recall?
TECHNICIAN #1 -- The father must've been huge. See how the fat burnt into the driver's seat with his polyester shirt? Very "modern art."
JACK -- Take the number of vehicles in the field, (A), and multiply it by the probable rate of failure, (B), then multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement, (C). A times B times C equals X...
CUT TO: INT. AIRPLANE CABIN - MOVING DOWN RUNWAY
Jack is speaking to the BUSINESSWOMAN next to him.
JACK -- If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
BUSISNESS WOMAN -- Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
JACK -- Oh, you wouldn't believe.
BUSINESS WOMAN --... Which... car company do you work for?
here's an excerpt I particularly enjoyed... for those too lazy to read it, you're missing a fantastic interview. The best so far.
Now, as to the political old guard approaching obsolescence, for a microcosmic view of what I'm talking about, look at the music and film industries. I could write a book--or at least a chapter--describing the insanities of the studio system, but, in a nutshell, the situation is that big music or movie distributors find it easier to distribute a homogeneous product. It's cheaper to sell a billion copies of one record than a million copies each of a thousand discs. So they're squeezing the variety, thinking that they're selling a physical product--but they're not: they're trying to sell ideas. There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the term "intellectual property," because information isn't transferred between brains: it's copied. The music and film industries are finally waking up to the fact that as they squeeze their product range down, people lose interest in the range and look outside it for independent productions. So they're panicking, blaming the new business model, fighting a zero-sum rear-guard action, and trying to ban progress.
They may succeed. If so, I fear we're doomed to live in a world not unlike that of Rebecca Ore's Outlaw School (Tor, 2000). And I really don't want to go there.
for a neato (actually, the best I've found) gaming resource check out Flipcode. Has excellent articles on many other relevant subjects.. check it out. C, C++, etc is well represented and theory too. Dig it.
Slashdot Mirror
First logged-in post baby yeah!!
Suck it Trebek!
Fucking eh. Go Canada.
score: -1 too true
i'd like to see multithreading on the Linux desktop.. just imagine low latency and multithreading for Xfree. A pipe dream, maybe, but 'twould be nice nevertheless.
Dude. Only dirty GNU hippies ever need hookers to get laid. Hookers carry almost as many diseases as gay people.
no no no. that's all wrong. the thing to do is to find a freak and marry her. obviously. cheaters are lame because they can't get sex at home.
this Russian guy I went to school with is currently holding down an unpaid job with zero benefits. He does it because he's got no work experience in tech over here, and they pay his bus pass.. "live on unemployment insurance, get free transportation, donate 8 hours daily, and look for job in the spare time" says the guy.
Work without pay is better than sitting at home losing your skills on the couch. Or playing Everquest.
I think "accuracy" might be a good reason to change it. WTF are you thinking?? We should all 'educate' our future generations with inaccurate BS? Come on man. That's a very American thing to suggest. No offense if you're not actually one of them.
hypocritical condescension? you must be a dirty GNU hippie.
fucking fake.
heh. some of my warez games don't have sound or movies either ;) Commandos is more playable without the music anyways. NWN doesn't need music or movies, it just bloats the ISO.
-1 troll!! oh no!
Try this if you want newsworthy.. even though one could have guessed as much. This thing really is that fast. The real trick is getting that kind of power into a laptop of reasonable (ie, sub-4-pound) size and getting 5 hours of use out of it.
funnily enough, the original draft of that letter is right here. MS lawyers felt it a little too offensive, apparently...
you might have noticed some MS.NET adverts at the top of your /. articles lately. Those ads weren't mistakenly placed there...
Taco's not "falling" for anything. This is just another advertisement. Obviously. ANybody who's seen the Amazing Tablet PC can tell you the same. Hype. Good character recognition, but not much better than the average iPAQ with Calligrapher - except that it'll recognize when you write at a funny angle too. WOW. It's an oversized PDA that runs like my old PII-266 cranking along under Win2K Advanced Server.
As anybody from BC knows, we have a two-tier system in which injured hockey-players (for us, here in BC, that means the Canucks) get priority treatment and regularly jump lineups. Our best doctors and surgeons are leaving us and some places (ie. Golden, BC and many many others) are paying tuition fees and huge signing bonuses just to attract fresh grads - who also happen to lack the experience that would make them attractive to American hospitals.
:P
I have a friend from school who is a quadriplegic because of an untrained surgeon's error... he was imported from India and his credentials were taken at face value. The story made several newspapers and is typical of the treatment one can receive at a Vancouver hospital.
This is the plight that we are in here thanks to our socialist health-care system.
Another case (prominently featured in the Province and Sun) dealt with a woman who couldn't save her own life by buying a liver transplant operation. The organ was ready, her money was good, but the queue was full. In a capitalist system, that demand would have been filled to the betterment of society.
My uncle recently had cancer and the only option for immediate treatment was to travel to Seattle. Canadian doctors had botched a stent implant, creating a slow internal bleed. He couldn't get scheduled for a complete scan in Canada, so we rushed him to Seattle where they found the bleeding and gave him seven units of packed cells -- ultimately it didn't save him, but the effort was made. His 50% chance was ZERO percent in Canada.
Some people have attempted to start private hospitals, but you wouldn't believe how the socialists scream when it happens. It's embarrassing, to tell the truth. I'm Canadian, and I know how badly our system is broken -- but at least it's better than the USA
As anybody can see here, we have a second-rate troll posting here - one who would claim that we should be willing to pay twice (or as many times as need be, one presumes) for Xbox games if, indeed, the original was damaged beyond recovery.. since the poster is averse to people legitimately making a backup copy (even erecting pretense of moral grounds for this argument.. a cover-up for insufficient power to the logic circuits I dare say!) we should go to great lengths in order to enjoy that game again.
Exhibit B:Here Monsieur Troll evidently values our games so little that we should be willing to wait whatever period of time the manufacturer deems necessary before damaged games are replaced - provided, of course, that our (seemingly undervalued or non-existent) games are still available... thanks to M. Troll's skewed view of fair use, we should be at the mercy of manufacturers of games even if we don't need to. "Bend over and like it if your game breaks, please" says M. Troll.
Waiting for replacement games is much like waiting for a rebate, or like a crapshoot. Try replacing an original StarCraft (or ANY old-school game worth playing) game disc by crying to the manufacturer and prove me wrong. You won't get far.
sorry for feeding the troll! H.N.
Here's a portion of my (currently unhosted) website dedicated to users who have experienced similar problems with copy prevention schemes designed to rob us of fair use. (thanks to Slashdot for this intermediate hosting arrangement! three cheers and all that..)
BACKGROUND INFO - diatribe from which one could conceivably deduce a mission statement It is truly unfortunate that many software companies refuse to sell their programs in M300-compatible form. I commonly install programs from a network, as I have no CD-ROM drive built into my machine. Unfortunately, this means that in order to use some programs, I must be networked with the original CD (copy prevention included) in another machine's CD drive. I find this situation to be less than acceptable, since I like to use my M300 notebook computer even when I'm NOT at home or in sight of a free CD drive! I believe that M300 owners (OK, the rest of you ultra-portable owners too) should not be the victims of this heinous discrimination. When one pays for a program, one expects to get fair use of that program; fair use should not exclude those lacking the means to afford persistent access to an external CDROM drive - or those with no desire for one, should it be affordable in any case..
It truly is a pity that some manufacturers do not inform the user PRIOR TO PURCHASE that they will not be able to play their favorite games or other software on an M300 (or ANY machine without a CD-ROM drive) unless they have CONSTANT ACCESS to a CD-ROM drive. Instead, a CD drive is nominally listed under System Requirements - for the obvious purpose of installing the program, one would deduce. Hey! Guess what! I've found that a full install makes games run much more smoothly than an install that constantly reads from the CD. So - it would appear logically - that means I should be able to play my game from the hard drive. That sounds fair, eh?
I have also found that NOT A SINGLE PROGRAM I OWN really requires a CD drive beyond the initial install (or subsequent re-installs.. c'est la vie, nest-ce pas?). If a CD is constantly needed, then it would be fair to say that one is REQUIRED. However, if the CD is needed only at install time, then this REQUIREMENT is in fact NOT an actual requirement per se. I would like to see a warning on products that constantly demand CD access, and for which no crack is easily obtainable
From the purely functional standpoint, CD-check routines embedded in popular Safedisc and SecuROM copy prevention doodads make zero sense because they decrease performance, effectively cripple my favorite computer, and render my CD drive (if I even have one.. not bloody likely) useless while a CD-checking prog is run. What if I want to listen to my choice of music while playing a game? Most game music is offensive (sorry WarCraft 2) or drives me nuts... should I be denied the use of my own music collection when I'm running a dog-in-the-manger program?! No.
If you've read this far you probably deserve a break. Thank you for your patience. I get quite wound up sometimes when pondering the gaping a**holes who have ripped me off with their archaic "anti-piracy" routines. I have a few other thoughts on that, but I'll stow it for now... except for three brief spews:
Message for the perpetrators of the CD-CHECK and COPY-PREVENTION CRAP (AKA CCCC): IF YOU LIKE AND WANT TO USE A PROGRAM, BUY IT!!!* * Just make sure you don't get screwed by the jerks who force a cd-check on you. They can be awfully hard to spot, so be careful and have a site like mine handy! [editor's note - I had links to my favourite "M300 accessibility options" sites like Megagames.com and Gamecopyworld.com but in the interest of brevity I won't attempt to mirror the whole site here.... thanks for your understanding]
and one final MESSAGE for all you losers that think that SecuROM (or your copy prevention of choice) or any kind of CD-check IS a legitimate copy-protection scheme: This applies mainly to rented games and all that... For the bought games, the smart pirates know that it's better to crack a game and burn the cracked copy than an original with CD-crippleware intact. I won't get into online games that constantly demand updates because this was supposed to be a short rant and I've overstepped my griping boundaries already. Peace to all.
the big differences from a security standpoint are several:
;)
-lotsa bugfixes and plenty new bugs to fool around with... basically no net gain or loss here
-WinXP Home has no support for joining a domain... this is a bad thing if you rely on NT domain-style security (term used loosely here thanks you people for noticing)
-by default, you have to really try hard to find the three-finger-salute logon option.. you know, the one that generates a hw interrupt for local logon, that kind of thing. This, again, is a point in Win2K favour
-WinXP comes with a neato remote-DOS exploit in the form of the SSDP sevice (Universal Plug'n'Pray, the one the FBI was decrying as such a security threat. Those over-active whiners!
-XP also comes with a "firewall" which basically does nothing - or, more likely, fools users (hey anybody dumb enough to use XP seriously deserves it) into thinking they're secure from remote attack. Until the latest worm snipes 'em, that is..
i think that's it... but those are the big ones that I've come across in my workplace. We don't use WinXP at all if we can avoid it, and the good news is that if you have an XP license (OEM too! woohoo!) you can upgrade for free to Win2k.
Aren't you the popular one at gift-giving festivals! ;O)
Nor do we drink American "beer," for as H. Allen Smith quoth those many years ago,
You're missing the best part, amigo.. here in Canada we spend all our quality togetherness time as a family whenever the commercials start. Don't get me wrong - I think "commercial-free" is an admirable goal for some, but just think of the consequences before you advocate for the rest of us.
yeah, plus there's the fact that you have 10 fingers and only ONE focal point... and your hands are waaaaaay faster than eyeballz will ever be for shiznat like typing. I think the purpose of this is to help crippled folks surf the 'net more effectively. I think. It's a pretty stupid idea for the rest of us, excepting only those who type at 4-5 WPM..
Other watches worn in space include models by Poljot, the Russian manufacturer. Their watches were the first to travel there.
I have a classic Accutron (waterproof to 666 feet! how devilish) and need a new crystal.. parts are fairly common on Ebay if you take a look. Good luck.
The American Way is about hypocrisy, and kickbacks for corrupt politicians (Fritz Hollings et al) and major automobile manufacturers
for a neato (actually, the best I've found) gaming resource check out Flipcode. Has excellent articles on many other relevant subjects.. check it out. C, C++, etc is well represented and theory too. Dig it.