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That was messed up btw, I'm on a static IP and my proxy is very much disabled...
I've seen a P4 2,4ghz, 512mb RAM, 64mb VGA card, 40 or 60gb HD, CD-R(W)/DVD combo, with 15 inch screen for just 999,-, including MS XP and MS Works. Didn't buy one because I simply don't have a need for a laptop. Besides, any OS can be deleted and replaced by some other one.
Like harvesting the info about some (rand(10)+15) year old person writing bullshit about (boyfriends|girlfriends|music|movies|stupid online quizes|webrings) with a site design that's usually so horrible they could be succesfully sued for crimes against huminity. All the marketing companies would encounter is the hype they created a few days before the harvest. So it might work to check if hypes/trends work out, but looking at "blogs" (the very word disgusts me) for something new an innovative is about as futile as trying to comprehend Bush' ramblings. The few remaining web logs or journals, as I prefer to call them without retching, are mainly technical. What trends are they going to squeeze out of the journal of a team of developers who want to keep the outside world up to date about what has happened lately? That such and so compiler sucks? That the network admin is a bitch? That the coffee tastes like sewage waste?
Heck, if any of those marketing companies are GOOD, they'll MAKE their own trends, not ride around on the succes of others.
Nuclear stuff isn't launched into orbit because of something like Challanger/Columbia. While both events are a tragedy in itself, a nuclear filled shuttle that would explode would be like chernobyl + Columbia.
However, to reduce the TCO... Mass drivers anyone?
This info might be rather outdated, considering I do not have any access to more then one modern BIOS. However, when are these things going to become a bit more standard? It seems like every BIOS is vastyl different from any other BIOS. I mean, if you take away the most logical stuff such a different vendors and motherboard capabilities, there are no real standards. Some BIOSes allow you to select where to boot from by giving you a limited set of capabilities designated by standard C:, D:, etcetera, while other BIOSes (even made by the same vendor) give you a much wider choise or even better, allow you to manually select a boot order using devices, not logical station name. (boot from Primary IDE, Master... Like that.) Even worse, some mobos I had didn't even allow slightly more exotic choices such as SCSI/IDE controllers, RAID (SCSI/IDE) controllers and network booting...
I'd like the possibility of having more then three choices and to be able to delect from which device I boot, listed by IDE connection. Also, which is mighty handy, some sort of boot menu which can be called during boot, allowing you to select where to boot from. My current computer has it, if I want to boot from CD, I just have to select it... Very handy.
If I remember clearly, FTP is prefered over HTTP for downloading larger files for various reasons. First of all, HTTP is stateless, meaning it will accept your connection, pump out whatever data it returns and doesn't do much more really. FTP isn't stateless, meaning you connect to it, it responds, negotiates a transfer and actively tries to keep things going, resulting in (somewhat) slower initial connection because of more protocol overhead, but far more reliable down/uploads. Also, FTP security can be as good as you want it to be. Disallow anonymous access, set proper users accesses, chroot them into their home directory and use a decent, up-to-date server such as Proftpd. Also, you can't (easily) upload files with HTTP, though it is possible. However, FTP uploading is far more elegant and again, more reliable.
Dune 2, however, was a total different kettle of fish. That truely was the first real-time strategy where you build units, move them around, click back and forth real fast to avoid getting eaten by a sandworm, etc. There were other real-time strategies before that - the one that sticks in my mind is an old (80s era) CGA game called Sun Tzu's Art of War or something, but nothing broke through like Dune 2 did. Everyone liked Dune 2. The difficulty was very well-balanced, the interface was simple (unlike today's 25-hotkey RTS games) and the music and sound effects worked very cleverly with the game - subtlely changing with action on the screen. I think this was one of the first truly successful (read subtle) implementations of interactive music.
I remember playing Dune 2 on the Amiga 500 & 2000 ages ago. I imported it from the UK for about 25 USD and it came on 4 (or so) floppies because CD-ROM drives were rarer then diamonds back then. It was a great game on the Amiga though, with music, in game sound and even different voices as you ordered your units around a bit. That is where my addiction to RTS games began, the moment I ordered my first Harkonen (sp?) trooperer to engage some Atreides infantry attacking my precious big red lump of pixels which was my harvester. All I remember after that is making HUGE bases that are completely walled with rocket turrets at every corner and the fact I never really finished the game because the two vs one end levels were too hard for me back then:(
Great game and pretty original back then as well. Receives a well deserved place amoung my personal RTF "Hall of Fame" which also includes "Total Annihilation" (despite the cheap name) and "Homeworld"
In the name of Eris, stop bitching about Sept 11 already. We're talking about a GAME here which thousands of people, including me, have enjoyed. Not because of the fact it involved blowing up US stuff, but because the game simply was quite fun to play. Yes, I enjoyed flattening entire US cities for fun, but I also enjoyed playing on the German side when playing Operation Market Garden in Battlefield 1942 and I also enjoyed nuking Amsterdam when playing Superpower, both involving my own country. Besides, flattening US cities or taking on an US armour platoon in a GAME doesn't have much political "power" anyways.
What has GameSpy got to do with games? Last time I looke it involved reposting stuff from various fansites, cram it all in some dumb www.planet.com URL and then wait for stupid people to do even more stupid things like opting-in to various spam lists to be able to download DEMOS (Blasphemy. I remember CDs full of demos on various magazines. No spam, not shitty slow downloads...) or maybe downloading a spyware infected client which isn't just tremendously inferior to it's alternative, The All Seeing Eye, and it's about as user friendly as RMS before his morning coffee.
You know, we got offline text documents if you really want just yourself as an audience;) Anyways, my journal doesn't contain that much, just two mad one liners and something odd I thought off, adressed to whoever it may concern. Perhaps someone will post something interesting, perhaps someone will have soms advice for either me or someone elese or perhaps I will just attract trolls. Heck, I don't really care, it's there for anyone to mess around with.
The zoo system is quite entertaining if you think about it. Why hate someone if you disagree with that person? Even more, why suddenly befriend someone who agrees with you a few times? I often find myself having more interesting conversations with people who actually disagree with me... The only people who I got listed at foes (only because that allows me to stick a nice fat -6 modifier to their posts) are because of people with no sense humour or the occasional self-righteous American who think patriotism equals going to war with anything. I'd much rather have just normal functions such as "Ignore" and "Highlight", which either ignores a poster completely or puts highlighted people on top. Much less confusing, much more efficient imho.
Meganet offers a patented non-linear data mapping technology, called VME (Virtual Matrix Encryption), that creates exceptionally random cipher text and combines it with a one million-bit key, which is unheard of in today's data security markets.
That means: "Not unbreakable, but certainly not feasible to even try with current technology." Why is it that as soon as something becomes hard to do it is considered impossible and thus vastly overrated untill the opposite proves itself? I can imagine that quite allot of Good Things(tm) have gone to hell and back again only because they were kickstarted into a hype of invulnerability untill the opposite happened, causing everyone to suddenly ditch it...
You should have seen the clear plastic wedding
dress that I wore for gay pride last year.
Horribly offtopic and absolutely NOT meant as a flame, but...
Why?
No, seriously, why? I don't have anything against gay people, so please don't think of me as a homophobe, but what is the use of participating in a parade which is considered degrading, humiliating, perverse and generally disgusting by most other people? Even by other homosexual people and couples that I know both online as well as for real. I'm for allot of things such as same-sex marriages that are officially recognized, the ability for same-sex couples to be equal to different-sex couples in legal terms and for generally breaking the taboo on homosexuality and get it to be more accepted by the general public... Then why destroy some of all that hard work, all the effort people do to be accepted and be considered equal, by holding one huge parade which immediatly re-affirms allot of the stereotypes and presumptions that are around about homosexual people?
Note: Sorry for being so horribly off-topic... Just curious, that's all
I also heard a story where someone took a bunch
of these and fashioned a skirt out of them. He
attatched them together using monofiliment line.
When he wore that skirt and did a twirl, it would
be an awsome sight and the sound could be heard
from quite a distance away.
Actually, I'd be mighty worried if I saw a GUY in a SKIRT made out of HD PLATTERS do a TWIRL...
Serial Ports: How else are you supposed to hook up a dumb terminal to your computer. USB?
Will the 0.02% of the population using dumb-terminals on their home PCs please stand up?
Let us broaden our horizon! How about smart UPSes, I believe most of them connect to a serial port. Or how about various kinds of industrial devices that can be hooked up to a computer? One time I had to set up an computerized lathe because they were still using ancient metallic monsters and they fellt they needed to update a bit. Anyways, the thing needed to be connected to the serial port and the technician told me MOST of their equipment uses serial ports for inter-device communications. Psion PDAs are connected to the PC using serial ports as well. Yes, the serial port, as well as most other ports like it (game port, parallel port, etc) are all old, but still serve their use.
But back on topic for a bit; I suggest a more capable REPLACEMENT for floppy drives instead of simply discarding them. Truth be told, I still use them for various things. Some products (mainly NICs) come with drivers on a floppy and I still have to use them to transfer files between college and home. (We students dont get remote logins for some reason.) CDs require some BIOS magic to become bootable I believe. I read somewhere it involves making ta BIOS think the CD was a floppy drive so only the first 1,44mb of the CD can be used for bootable stuff. Maybe I'm totally wrong here, please correct me if I am. USB pen drives are something else. USB ports are (usually) on the back of the PC and I dont recall ever hearing anything about USB drives being bootable. Besides, they are external devices and we all know how anti-technical users treat their hardware, so you can be sure that admins everywhere will end up with USB drivers that broke off... How about these tiny CC sized HDs I read about earlier?
Oh noes! 14 year old script kiddies recruited by Al-Queada are going to DDOS the White House using NETBIOS over TCP/IP exploits they found out when portscanning stuff with NANOPROBES who all buffer overflowed million of WindowsXP UNIVERSAL PLUG AND PLAY ports while zip disks all over the world are DYING along with BSD! Oh woe is me! Fortunately, our New Age online Messiah Steve Gibson will save us with his 1337 routers that can stop DDoSes and his advanced godlike ASM programming skills! HUZZAH FOR LORD GIBSON!
MIRC. Simple as that. Take a look at most zombie packages and MOST will install a MIRC client, hide it in the background and then the join some botchannel to await the command for another DDoS. Eithet that, or it's used as some sort of FTP server (fserve) to host various kinds of crap that shouldn't be on the internet. (emule is much better anyways) Also, MIRC is one of the most vile and annoying programs I have EVER encountered, ranking with stuff like RealPlayer and Quicktime, mainly because of the bloat and the fact MIRC never does ANYTHING that it should. That, and the fact it's one of the biggest threats to internet security due to the fact it makes an excellent DDoS zombie, makes me hate that program and it's creators. I hope RI/MPAA will press charges against the programmers of MIRC to get them out of business and that IRC servers will be hardcoded to refuse MIRC clients.
There's no good reason to continue using the obsolete and dangerous shuttle technology forever.
I agree with you fully, however, keep in mind that NASA is under terrible pressure, both financially as wel as politically. They get less money, yet they have to keep up with things in order to maintain the flow of scraps they get. They simply cant afford to maintain a space program and a large scale research project like the Venture Star. But if I'm not mistaken, the Japanese space agency is working on a new kind of shuttle...
Patriotic Americans are hopefully in the Gulf region, getting ready to fight for what they believe in and hopefully die there as well, leaving America up to run by less violent, more rational Americans who aren't so keen on playing "world cop" by bombing third world countries and overthrowing various democratic goverments.
This counts for you couch-patriots as well.
Needed to vent for a bit, the phrase "patriotic Americans" equals "nazi Germans" to me and allot of other people I know. The people aren't wrong, the idea is.
To hell with those warring factions though. Although Sims vs Everquest would be entertaining and realistic, with the Sims respawning like mad and the EQ players camping them as usual. We should mix games with equal mentalities. Everquest vs Counterstrike; spawncamping, (p|t)killing and wallhacks, all in ONE game. Woo!
Now, if there will ever be a true RTS/FPS (one builds, others drive around and blow stuff up with built units) or Space Strategy/Space RTS (Homeworld 2 + MOO3) crossover, I'd be happy.
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Point being?
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That was messed up btw, I'm on a static IP and my proxy is very much disabled...
I've seen a P4 2,4ghz, 512mb RAM, 64mb VGA card, 40 or 60gb HD, CD-R(W)/DVD combo, with 15 inch screen for just 999,-, including MS XP and MS Works. Didn't buy one because I simply don't have a need for a laptop. Besides, any OS can be deleted and replaced by some other one.
Like harvesting the info about some (rand(10)+15) year old person writing bullshit about (boyfriends|girlfriends|music|movies|stupid online quizes|webrings) with a site design that's usually so horrible they could be succesfully sued for crimes against huminity. All the marketing companies would encounter is the hype they created a few days before the harvest. So it might work to check if hypes/trends work out, but looking at "blogs" (the very word disgusts me) for something new an innovative is about as futile as trying to comprehend Bush' ramblings. The few remaining web logs or journals, as I prefer to call them without retching, are mainly technical. What trends are they going to squeeze out of the journal of a team of developers who want to keep the outside world up to date about what has happened lately? That such and so compiler sucks? That the network admin is a bitch? That the coffee tastes like sewage waste?
Heck, if any of those marketing companies are GOOD, they'll MAKE their own trends, not ride around on the succes of others.
Nuclear stuff isn't launched into orbit because of something like Challanger/Columbia. While both events are a tragedy in itself, a nuclear filled shuttle that would explode would be like chernobyl + Columbia.
However, to reduce the TCO... Mass drivers anyone?
This info might be rather outdated, considering I do not have any access to more then one modern BIOS. However, when are these things going to become a bit more standard? It seems like every BIOS is vastyl different from any other BIOS. I mean, if you take away the most logical stuff such a different vendors and motherboard capabilities, there are no real standards. Some BIOSes allow you to select where to boot from by giving you a limited set of capabilities designated by standard C:, D:, etcetera, while other BIOSes (even made by the same vendor) give you a much wider choise or even better, allow you to manually select a boot order using devices, not logical station name. (boot from Primary IDE, Master... Like that.) Even worse, some mobos I had didn't even allow slightly more exotic choices such as SCSI/IDE controllers, RAID (SCSI/IDE) controllers and network booting...
I'd like the possibility of having more then three choices and to be able to delect from which device I boot, listed by IDE connection. Also, which is mighty handy, some sort of boot menu which can be called during boot, allowing you to select where to boot from. My current computer has it, if I want to boot from CD, I just have to select it... Very handy.
You mean it isn't one in the first place? BLIMEY!
That's easy enough already! *starts to rub his feet vigorously on the carpet* Gimme a few minutes though...
If I remember clearly, FTP is prefered over HTTP for downloading larger files for various reasons. First of all, HTTP is stateless, meaning it will accept your connection, pump out whatever data it returns and doesn't do much more really. FTP isn't stateless, meaning you connect to it, it responds, negotiates a transfer and actively tries to keep things going, resulting in (somewhat) slower initial connection because of more protocol overhead, but far more reliable down/uploads. Also, FTP security can be as good as you want it to be. Disallow anonymous access, set proper users accesses, chroot them into their home directory and use a decent, up-to-date server such as Proftpd. Also, you can't (easily) upload files with HTTP, though it is possible. However, FTP uploading is far more elegant and again, more reliable.
I remember playing Dune 2 on the Amiga 500 & 2000 ages ago. I imported it from the UK for about 25 USD and it came on 4 (or so) floppies because CD-ROM drives were rarer then diamonds back then. It was a great game on the Amiga though, with music, in game sound and even different voices as you ordered your units around a bit. That is where my addiction to RTS games began, the moment I ordered my first Harkonen (sp?) trooperer to engage some Atreides infantry attacking my precious big red lump of pixels which was my harvester. All I remember after that is making HUGE bases that are completely walled with rocket turrets at every corner and the fact I never really finished the game because the two vs one end levels were too hard for me back then :(
Great game and pretty original back then as well. Receives a well deserved place amoung my personal RTF "Hall of Fame" which also includes "Total Annihilation" (despite the cheap name) and "Homeworld"
In the name of Eris, stop bitching about Sept 11 already. We're talking about a GAME here which thousands of people, including me, have enjoyed. Not because of the fact it involved blowing up US stuff, but because the game simply was quite fun to play. Yes, I enjoyed flattening entire US cities for fun, but I also enjoyed playing on the German side when playing Operation Market Garden in Battlefield 1942 and I also enjoyed nuking Amsterdam when playing Superpower, both involving my own country. Besides, flattening US cities or taking on an US armour platoon in a GAME doesn't have much political "power" anyways.
What has GameSpy got to do with games? Last time I looke it involved reposting stuff from various fansites, cram it all in some dumb www.planet.com URL and then wait for stupid people to do even more stupid things like opting-in to various spam lists to be able to download DEMOS (Blasphemy. I remember CDs full of demos on various magazines. No spam, not shitty slow downloads...) or maybe downloading a spyware infected client which isn't just tremendously inferior to it's alternative, The All Seeing Eye, and it's about as user friendly as RMS before his morning coffee.
What pants?
You know, we got offline text documents if you really want just yourself as an audience ;) Anyways, my journal doesn't contain that much, just two mad one liners and something odd I thought off, adressed to whoever it may concern. Perhaps someone will post something interesting, perhaps someone will have soms advice for either me or someone elese or perhaps I will just attract trolls. Heck, I don't really care, it's there for anyone to mess around with.
The zoo system is quite entertaining if you think about it. Why hate someone if you disagree with that person? Even more, why suddenly befriend someone who agrees with you a few times? I often find myself having more interesting conversations with people who actually disagree with me... The only people who I got listed at foes (only because that allows me to stick a nice fat -6 modifier to their posts) are because of people with no sense humour or the occasional self-righteous American who think patriotism equals going to war with anything. I'd much rather have just normal functions such as "Ignore" and "Highlight", which either ignores a poster completely or puts highlighted people on top. Much less confusing, much more efficient imho.
Ah well...
That means: "Not unbreakable, but certainly not feasible to even try with current technology." Why is it that as soon as something becomes hard to do it is considered impossible and thus vastly overrated untill the opposite proves itself? I can imagine that quite allot of Good Things(tm) have gone to hell and back again only because they were kickstarted into a hype of invulnerability untill the opposite happened, causing everyone to suddenly ditch it...
Horribly offtopic and absolutely NOT meant as a flame, but...
Why?
No, seriously, why? I don't have anything against gay people, so please don't think of me as a homophobe, but what is the use of participating in a parade which is considered degrading, humiliating, perverse and generally disgusting by most other people? Even by other homosexual people and couples that I know both online as well as for real. I'm for allot of things such as same-sex marriages that are officially recognized, the ability for same-sex couples to be equal to different-sex couples in legal terms and for generally breaking the taboo on homosexuality and get it to be more accepted by the general public... Then why destroy some of all that hard work, all the effort people do to be accepted and be considered equal, by holding one huge parade which immediatly re-affirms allot of the stereotypes and presumptions that are around about homosexual people?
Note: Sorry for being so horribly off-topic... Just curious, that's all
Actually, I'd be mighty worried if I saw a GUY in a SKIRT made out of HD PLATTERS do a TWIRL...
Conclusion: Never buy a second hand printer advertised on http://www.ebay.iq/
Let us broaden our horizon! How about smart UPSes, I believe most of them connect to a serial port. Or how about various kinds of industrial devices that can be hooked up to a computer? One time I had to set up an computerized lathe because they were still using ancient metallic monsters and they fellt they needed to update a bit. Anyways, the thing needed to be connected to the serial port and the technician told me MOST of their equipment uses serial ports for inter-device communications. Psion PDAs are connected to the PC using serial ports as well. Yes, the serial port, as well as most other ports like it (game port, parallel port, etc) are all old, but still serve their use.
But back on topic for a bit; I suggest a more capable REPLACEMENT for floppy drives instead of simply discarding them. Truth be told, I still use them for various things. Some products (mainly NICs) come with drivers on a floppy and I still have to use them to transfer files between college and home. (We students dont get remote logins for some reason.) CDs require some BIOS magic to become bootable I believe. I read somewhere it involves making ta BIOS think the CD was a floppy drive so only the first 1,44mb of the CD can be used for bootable stuff. Maybe I'm totally wrong here, please correct me if I am. USB pen drives are something else. USB ports are (usually) on the back of the PC and I dont recall ever hearing anything about USB drives being bootable. Besides, they are external devices and we all know how anti-technical users treat their hardware, so you can be sure that admins everywhere will end up with USB drivers that broke off... How about these tiny CC sized HDs I read about earlier?
Oh noes! 14 year old script kiddies recruited by Al-Queada are going to DDOS the White House using NETBIOS over TCP/IP exploits they found out when portscanning stuff with NANOPROBES who all buffer overflowed million of WindowsXP UNIVERSAL PLUG AND PLAY ports while zip disks all over the world are DYING along with BSD! Oh woe is me! Fortunately, our New Age online Messiah Steve Gibson will save us with his 1337 routers that can stop DDoSes and his advanced godlike ASM programming skills! HUZZAH FOR LORD GIBSON!
MIRC. Simple as that. Take a look at most zombie packages and MOST will install a MIRC client, hide it in the background and then the join some botchannel to await the command for another DDoS. Eithet that, or it's used as some sort of FTP server (fserve) to host various kinds of crap that shouldn't be on the internet. (emule is much better anyways) Also, MIRC is one of the most vile and annoying programs I have EVER encountered, ranking with stuff like RealPlayer and Quicktime, mainly because of the bloat and the fact MIRC never does ANYTHING that it should. That, and the fact it's one of the biggest threats to internet security due to the fact it makes an excellent DDoS zombie, makes me hate that program and it's creators. I hope RI/MPAA will press charges against the programmers of MIRC to get them out of business and that IRC servers will be hardcoded to refuse MIRC clients.
End of rant.
I agree with you fully, however, keep in mind that NASA is under terrible pressure, both financially as wel as politically. They get less money, yet they have to keep up with things in order to maintain the flow of scraps they get. They simply cant afford to maintain a space program and a large scale research project like the Venture Star. But if I'm not mistaken, the Japanese space agency is working on a new kind of shuttle...
The RIAA is going to have a field day with this one...
I do not need to fight nor to die to "do" what I believe in.
Think about that one...
Patriotic Americans are hopefully in the Gulf region, getting ready to fight for what they believe in and hopefully die there as well, leaving America up to run by less violent, more rational Americans who aren't so keen on playing "world cop" by bombing third world countries and overthrowing various democratic goverments.
This counts for you couch-patriots as well.
Needed to vent for a bit, the phrase "patriotic Americans" equals "nazi Germans" to me and allot of other people I know. The people aren't wrong, the idea is.
To hell with those warring factions though. Although Sims vs Everquest would be entertaining and realistic, with the Sims respawning like mad and the EQ players camping them as usual. We should mix games with equal mentalities. Everquest vs Counterstrike; spawncamping, (p|t)killing and wallhacks, all in ONE game. Woo!
Now, if there will ever be a true RTS/FPS (one builds, others drive around and blow stuff up with built units) or Space Strategy/Space RTS (Homeworld 2 + MOO3) crossover, I'd be happy.