I purchase games. It's just easier, especially now that most online games check your cd-key to make sure it's correct.
However, I will almost always crack all the games I buy because I don't want to put the damned CD in the drive to play the game! Recently I've been simply making CloneCD images of all the games that require CD Checks; it works very well in conjunction with Daemon Tools (just mount up the image in it's virtual CD Rom drive - and Daemon tools is free) to play games without the CD. It is a bit costly on space but drives are cheap.
So basically, I have to work harder as a legitimate owner of the software to make it run with less hassle. If I had just downloaded the game, I would just unzip, run, and play.
Anyone who thinks that their new copy protection schemes will work is diluting themselves. It's been 20 good years of companies creating new protection methods and I've yet to encounter an "uncrackable" software title. And they are usually cracked as soon as they hit the shelves.
Even complex on-line activation schemes are no trouble for the experienced cracker.
Agreed that you should "contribute", but I think everyone has gotten a little too touchy when someone disagrees with them and they immediately shout "Stop Flaming!! TROLL!"
I don't agree that 'contribute' necessarily means "say something meaningful" however; only the very off-topic and unrelated things are which I consider meaningless. I am always interested in what people have to say, be it full of all sorts of meaning or a fluffy comment.
As far as understanding; it's really impossible to know if someone understands the discussion from a short paragraph or two from them. It seems as though you are *assuming* that some people don't understand when they type out something that you consider meaningless.
Of course, this is very off-topic thus a meaningless contribution to the discussion, so ignore all of the above.
The nice thing about digital is that you can potentially keep data *forever* in full original quality.
You just need to change it's medium every so often. Digital data can be copied with no loss of quality; analog data will age and copies are never as good as the original.
All this talk about "You won't be able to read a CD in 100 years" is moot; you can transfer the data to something that CAN be read in 100 years well before there are no CD Readers left on earth.
When you want to run a giant website on a machine with 100's of CPU's, you CAN'T turn x86; there is no such machine.
There's not many OS options when you are talking about machines like that; you have to use the OS that the manufacurer provies.
You turn to Solaris because that's what Sun machines use, and Sun machines can offer a ton of computing power while still being a lot less money then large scale mainframe offerings from IBM and Sgi.
Not to say that the *only* reason people choose Solaris is because they have to use it when using Sun machines; I'm sure a lot of times people choose Sun machines because of Solaris.
Well, I wasn't going that fast around corners or anything.. and I would drive at hours when there would be nobody on the roads.
The STS is a really quick car though, too bad there's a new problem with them every 2,000 miles and the dealerships never seem to find any problems, even though the damned dashboard display is telling you "Oil Pressure Low."
I'd love to say I'd buy another one, I mean, I love the car, but there's too many problems that I can't get fixed. You know, the intermittent "Only when 5 miles away from the dealership" problems.
The examples they have on their site sound terrible.
It sounded like... a bunch of cell phones all ringing at once. The "solo performances" sounded a *little* better, just to be joined back up again by the mess of all the other noises again.
I just don't see what is special about making cell phones ring at the same time. Call me cultureless. Or something.
I was much more impressed by a live set someone did on a 980Khz Commodore 64 at Assembly '02. (You can get all the demos and videos of Asm'02 at scene.org)
The more the government gets involved and stops these e-mails from being sent, the less we'll see, in my opinion.
It won't stop JoeBobSmith from sending the Get Rich Quick e-mails, but it could stop the "legitimate" company spams. I get about four e-mails (each) a day from E-Mode, Classmates.com, and credit card companies.
Plus, stopping these companies could help reduce the overall spam; if they are not collecting e-mail addresses to sell, there will be less lists to buy.
Ohh and unsubscribe? Tried that. I have a feeling that when you click the "unsubscribe" links, you are putting yourself on a "I am here!" e-mail list that is even more likely to get spam..
Alas, you're right but the point still remains. It is possible to use IIS with WinXP Home, and by using a trick to make it go is probably worse then having it out of the box.
Many of students at schools do lots of things with their computers, so I would say that the "well, normal users wouldn't do that" rule doesn't exactly fit.
Throwing the book at Windows NT and 2000 is a pretty cheezy way to prevent network problems. And Windows XP won't make these problems go away.
The "problems" they mentioned were both IIS "flaws" which have been corrected for some time now. Any other flaws exploited will also most likely be present on Windows XP Home, which has IIS as well (called Personal Web Server; incidently you can install a version of it for Win9x as well.)
"But how would they be able to tell if you have the latest service pack installed," you ask? I say, "The same way that they will be checking to see what OS you're using."
This kind of thing is almost expected at a University that is dominantly Macintosh. I worked at Brown University, and it was the same way. The general idea is: Mac = Secure, easy, perfect, flawless and PC = Impossible, buggy, useless. And all this because Apple has always pushed their machines on the schools.
Then all these students get out into the workplace and say "Uhh... where's the Macs?"
Are you kidding me? You're telling me that ink would *spill* out of the printer?
I think maybe someone was messing with the thing or playing a joke... or something.. I dunno. That's ridiculous. I've dealt with many many HP printers and I've never had ink spill on me.
The original Photosmart printer from HP has a 6 color system (the moon and sun cartridges I referred to in my previous post.)
I know at least one of the new Photosmart printers has a 4 color system, but the other more expensive models may have a 6 color system, I don't know.
As a side note... I always prefer HP printers if for nothing else but the fact that the cartridges themselves contain the print heads. On an Epson, the print head is in the printer, and the ink is stored in their "ink tanks".
I've owned Epson printers, and you spend so much of your time cleaning the damned print heads before you can use the printer. My friend just got a new Epson recently, and every time he goes to print he has to run the cleaning cycle.
On an HP printer, you can run a cleaning of the print heads if need be, but it won't happen too often because you replace them every time you need ink. This way you use a lot less ink due to the cleaning process, and you always get a sharp reliable print. (and if the print heads completely crap out, replace the cartridges, rather then the printer..)
All this, and the Epson "Ink Tanks" offer no price difference over the HP Ink Cartridges.
Not to say that Epson makes a bad inkjet printer.. HP Printers have just always seemed to produce better prints and be more relaible in my experience.
And if you really need to see your video or still shots over the lan, you can always get a capture board or DV Media Convertor for cheap, and have something that is useful for other things too.
Until the price is really cheap, these are just expensive quick-cams IMO.
Actually, the HP Photosmart printers DO shoot the ink in piles. Meaning, it will drop different amounts of the available colors on top of each other to blend and make new colors. There's no dithering. This is why they can make truely stunning prints (when used with glossy photo paper) at relatively low resolutions (250dpi - 300dpi) and the Epson prints in all their 1440dpi glory still look like they were printed from an Inkjet instead of a developed photo snapped from a camera.
I own an old Photosmart printer, the big huge one. I get better prints from this printer then the big huge color lazer printers at Kinko's. (It prints really slow though, and is not good for normal printing of documents)
The new photosmart printers use a more traditional ink color selection (CMY), but the one I have uses the "lighter color (sun)" "darker color (moon)" cartridges. I don't know which is better (the new photosmart printers do print very nice pictures) but they are far superior to anything Epson has to offer in the consumer market.
This wasn't intended as a Epson vs HP printer comment, just a comparison - the DPI isn't the final answer.
As a foot note, we're talking about printing photographs here, so the only paper we should be using is high gloss photo paper; the only paper that truely makes Inkjet printers shine. (No pun intended)
How do you come to the conclusion that the *only* form of entertainment that I enjoy is TV from a post?
I don't know about you; I like some variety. I watch some shows, and I like fooling around with Linux, I enjoy Slashdot, I like roller-coasters.. Maybe you can read news on CNN.com all day long and be satisfied; I'm not.
It *IS* possible to watch some TV and also do other things, you know.
You make it sound like TV Manufacturers give their TV's away for free.
If Sony has to Retool, they will do it, and they probably do it every few years or so anyways so it wouldn't be a big deal.
You also fail to realize that DTV is actually better then analog TV. You get a more consistent and in many cases sharper pictures when the signal is digital.
Yea, and then you'll donate half your paycheck to charity and help the elderly for free right? And after that relax with a nice white wine and listen to some clasical by the fire?
By insulting shows like Survivor you're insulting a great deal of the population, myself included. It's not bad entertainment, if you would stop being so closed-minded and give it a chance.
I hate this "I am more intelligent then thou" attitude.
But why rush? I mean, I'm still happy with my TV the way it is. The quality of my analog cable service isn't bad. I don't want to do "thousnds of new and exciting thing" with my TV. I want to turn it on, and put down the remote control.
And yea, high speed internet over the air would be cool, but I don't need that right now.
So who cares is Europe or China "takes the lead" when it comes to these things? I don't. You know why? Because I live HERE, not THERE. My car will still run. The air will still contain oxygen. If these other countries "win" this apparent "war on the lead" of yours, will the USA fall into anarchy? I am betting on no.
And don't even talk about "crashing towers" it just makes you sound even more like a lemming.
I don't think anyone NEEDS TV. But since when is the TV only about news and movies?
I like television SHOWS. I like reruns of Star Trek. I like "King of Queens" and I like Survivor. I can't pop into nbc.com and watch these shows on my PC. And if I could, it would be in a 120x80 pixel box in the middle of a big white browser window running at eight frames per second.
Sometimes you just want to sit down with a Coke and some crackers or something and stare at the TV screen. You don't want to download "SupranosS3E1-DiVX.r01" and the 400 files after that from usenet just to watch the show.
I like TV.
Well, no.. the post saying that he was found at his home in Maine is a discrepency.
I have been watching the news channels and the news web pages, and internet sites about Stephen King, and have been unable to verify your post in any way shape or form. This should be bigger news, if it's true.
Slashdot Mirror
I purchase games. It's just easier, especially now that most online games check your cd-key to make sure it's correct.
However, I will almost always crack all the games I buy because I don't want to put the damned CD in the drive to play the game! Recently I've been simply making CloneCD images of all the games that require CD Checks; it works very well in conjunction with Daemon Tools (just mount up the image in it's virtual CD Rom drive - and Daemon tools is free) to play games without the CD. It is a bit costly on space but drives are cheap.
So basically, I have to work harder as a legitimate owner of the software to make it run with less hassle. If I had just downloaded the game, I would just unzip, run, and play.
Anyone who thinks that their new copy protection schemes will work is diluting themselves. It's been 20 good years of companies creating new protection methods and I've yet to encounter an "uncrackable" software title. And they are usually cracked as soon as they hit the shelves.
Even complex on-line activation schemes are no trouble for the experienced cracker.
So why bother with this copy protection nonsense?
Agreed that you should "contribute", but I think everyone has gotten a little too touchy when someone disagrees with them and they immediately shout "Stop Flaming!! TROLL!"
I don't agree that 'contribute' necessarily means "say something meaningful" however; only the very off-topic and unrelated things are which I consider meaningless. I am always interested in what people have to say, be it full of all sorts of meaning or a fluffy comment.
As far as understanding; it's really impossible to know if someone understands the discussion from a short paragraph or two from them. It seems as though you are *assuming* that some people don't understand when they type out something that you consider meaningless.
Of course, this is very off-topic thus a meaningless contribution to the discussion, so ignore all of the above.
I thought this was a discussion board. Hmm. I guess discussion is ONLY valid if you all agree?
That's no fun.
The nice thing about digital is that you can potentially keep data *forever* in full original quality.
You just need to change it's medium every so often. Digital data can be copied with no loss of quality; analog data will age and copies are never as good as the original.
All this talk about "You won't be able to read a CD in 100 years" is moot; you can transfer the data to something that CAN be read in 100 years well before there are no CD Readers left on earth.
When you want to run a giant website on a machine with 100's of CPU's, you CAN'T turn x86; there is no such machine.
There's not many OS options when you are talking about machines like that; you have to use the OS that the manufacurer provies.
You turn to Solaris because that's what Sun machines use, and Sun machines can offer a ton of computing power while still being a lot less money then large scale mainframe offerings from IBM and Sgi.
Not to say that the *only* reason people choose Solaris is because they have to use it when using Sun machines; I'm sure a lot of times people choose Sun machines because of Solaris.
Well, I wasn't going that fast around corners or anything.. and I would drive at hours when there would be nobody on the roads.
The STS is a really quick car though, too bad there's a new problem with them every 2,000 miles and the dealerships never seem to find any problems, even though the damned dashboard display is telling you "Oil Pressure Low."
I'd love to say I'd buy another one, I mean, I love the car, but there's too many problems that I can't get fixed. You know, the intermittent "Only when 5 miles away from the dealership" problems.
Sorry for the even more off topic stuff.
Saves on space? This vehicle is longer than many limos.
My '99 Caddilac STS can sure as hell hit 150, I've done it many times between here and NYC.
And the engine isn't to the limit. Put a better suspension on that thing and who knows.
Of course, I have very good tires on the thing, and although the stock STS tires are decent, I wouldn't recommend 150Mph.
Many cars with a halfway decent motor can hit 150 no problem. Just make sure you have good tires.
The examples they have on their site sound terrible.
It sounded like... a bunch of cell phones all ringing at once. The "solo performances" sounded a *little* better, just to be joined back up again by the mess of all the other noises again.
I just don't see what is special about making cell phones ring at the same time. Call me cultureless. Or something.
I was much more impressed by a live set someone did on a 980Khz Commodore 64 at Assembly '02. (You can get all the demos and videos of Asm'02 at scene.org)
The more the government gets involved and stops these e-mails from being sent, the less we'll see, in my opinion.
It won't stop JoeBobSmith from sending the Get Rich Quick e-mails, but it could stop the "legitimate" company spams. I get about four e-mails (each) a day from E-Mode, Classmates.com, and credit card companies.
Plus, stopping these companies could help reduce the overall spam; if they are not collecting e-mail addresses to sell, there will be less lists to buy.
Ohh and unsubscribe? Tried that. I have a feeling that when you click the "unsubscribe" links, you are putting yourself on a "I am here!" e-mail list that is even more likely to get spam..
Alas, you're right but the point still remains. It is possible to use IIS with WinXP Home, and by using a trick to make it go is probably worse then having it out of the box.
Many of students at schools do lots of things with their computers, so I would say that the "well, normal users wouldn't do that" rule doesn't exactly fit.
Throwing the book at Windows NT and 2000 is a pretty cheezy way to prevent network problems. And Windows XP won't make these problems go away.
The "problems" they mentioned were both IIS "flaws" which have been corrected for some time now. Any other flaws exploited will also most likely be present on Windows XP Home, which has IIS as well (called Personal Web Server; incidently you can install a version of it for Win9x as well.)
"But how would they be able to tell if you have the latest service pack installed," you ask? I say, "The same way that they will be checking to see what OS you're using."
This kind of thing is almost expected at a University that is dominantly Macintosh. I worked at Brown University, and it was the same way. The general idea is: Mac = Secure, easy, perfect, flawless and PC = Impossible, buggy, useless. And all this because Apple has always pushed their machines on the schools.
Then all these students get out into the workplace and say "Uhh... where's the Macs?"
Are you kidding me? You're telling me that ink would *spill* out of the printer? I think maybe someone was messing with the thing or playing a joke... or something.. I dunno. That's ridiculous. I've dealt with many many HP printers and I've never had ink spill on me.
The original Photosmart printer from HP has a 6 color system (the moon and sun cartridges I referred to in my previous post.)
I know at least one of the new Photosmart printers has a 4 color system, but the other more expensive models may have a 6 color system, I don't know.
As a side note... I always prefer HP printers if for nothing else but the fact that the cartridges themselves contain the print heads. On an Epson, the print head is in the printer, and the ink is stored in their "ink tanks".
I've owned Epson printers, and you spend so much of your time cleaning the damned print heads before you can use the printer. My friend just got a new Epson recently, and every time he goes to print he has to run the cleaning cycle.
On an HP printer, you can run a cleaning of the print heads if need be, but it won't happen too often because you replace them every time you need ink. This way you use a lot less ink due to the cleaning process, and you always get a sharp reliable print. (and if the print heads completely crap out, replace the cartridges, rather then the printer..)
All this, and the Epson "Ink Tanks" offer no price difference over the HP Ink Cartridges.
Not to say that Epson makes a bad inkjet printer.. HP Printers have just always seemed to produce better prints and be more relaible in my experience.
I agree.
And if you really need to see your video or still shots over the lan, you can always get a capture board or DV Media Convertor for cheap, and have something that is useful for other things too.
Until the price is really cheap, these are just expensive quick-cams IMO.
Actually, the HP Photosmart printers DO shoot the ink in piles. Meaning, it will drop different amounts of the available colors on top of each other to blend and make new colors. There's no dithering. This is why they can make truely stunning prints (when used with glossy photo paper) at relatively low resolutions (250dpi - 300dpi) and the Epson prints in all their 1440dpi glory still look like they were printed from an Inkjet instead of a developed photo snapped from a camera.
I own an old Photosmart printer, the big huge one. I get better prints from this printer then the big huge color lazer printers at Kinko's. (It prints really slow though, and is not good for normal printing of documents)
The new photosmart printers use a more traditional ink color selection (CMY), but the one I have uses the "lighter color (sun)" "darker color (moon)" cartridges. I don't know which is better (the new photosmart printers do print very nice pictures) but they are far superior to anything Epson has to offer in the consumer market.
This wasn't intended as a Epson vs HP printer comment, just a comparison - the DPI isn't the final answer.
As a foot note, we're talking about printing photographs here, so the only paper we should be using is high gloss photo paper; the only paper that truely makes Inkjet printers shine. (No pun intended)
How do you come to the conclusion that the *only* form of entertainment that I enjoy is TV from a post?
I don't know about you; I like some variety. I watch some shows, and I like fooling around with Linux, I enjoy Slashdot, I like roller-coasters.. Maybe you can read news on CNN.com all day long and be satisfied; I'm not.
It *IS* possible to watch some TV and also do other things, you know.
Warez.
You make it sound like TV Manufacturers give their TV's away for free.
If Sony has to Retool, they will do it, and they probably do it every few years or so anyways so it wouldn't be a big deal.
You also fail to realize that DTV is actually better then analog TV. You get a more consistent and in many cases sharper pictures when the signal is digital.
Yea, and then you'll donate half your paycheck to charity and help the elderly for free right? And after that relax with a nice white wine and listen to some clasical by the fire?
By insulting shows like Survivor you're insulting a great deal of the population, myself included. It's not bad entertainment, if you would stop being so closed-minded and give it a chance.
I hate this "I am more intelligent then thou" attitude.
Okay...
But why rush? I mean, I'm still happy with my TV the way it is. The quality of my analog cable service isn't bad. I don't want to do "thousnds of new and exciting thing" with my TV. I want to turn it on, and put down the remote control.
And yea, high speed internet over the air would be cool, but I don't need that right now.
So who cares is Europe or China "takes the lead" when it comes to these things? I don't. You know why? Because I live HERE, not THERE. My car will still run. The air will still contain oxygen. If these other countries "win" this apparent "war on the lead" of yours, will the USA fall into anarchy? I am betting on no.
And don't even talk about "crashing towers" it just makes you sound even more like a lemming.
I don't think anyone NEEDS TV. But since when is the TV only about news and movies? I like television SHOWS. I like reruns of Star Trek. I like "King of Queens" and I like Survivor. I can't pop into nbc.com and watch these shows on my PC. And if I could, it would be in a 120x80 pixel box in the middle of a big white browser window running at eight frames per second. Sometimes you just want to sit down with a Coke and some crackers or something and stare at the TV screen. You don't want to download "SupranosS3E1-DiVX.r01" and the 400 files after that from usenet just to watch the show. I like TV.
Can't someone remove the link on the above post?
Well, no.. the post saying that he was found at his home in Maine is a discrepency. I have been watching the news channels and the news web pages, and internet sites about Stephen King, and have been unable to verify your post in any way shape or form. This should be bigger news, if it's true.
Didn't he move to Florida?