...how they captured the image data to that level without massive pixelation. It's not that impressive. You zoom in extensively and it just gets fuzzy. So big deal: they just interpolate the color values between each pixel "point" instead of drawing huge square pixels.
What's interesting is how delicate the tiles are. I saw a presentation by a NASA guy some time ago and I was allowed to hold the tiles. They're extremely light, almost feeling like their core is some kind of foam. The black ceramic layer on top is surprisingly thin.
I asked the presenter specifically about how delicate they felt. He then "flicked"/snapped the tile with his finger/fingernail, which put a sizeable dent into the tile, easily cracking the brittle black layer, and you could see the white foam underneath.
Therefore, it's no surprise to me to see this kind of damage. It probably wasn't even impacted with what could be considered excessive force.
Makes you wonder what kind of tile damage shuttles had -- all those successfully landed shuttle missions -- before such close scrutiny.
Good point. I've seen multiple posts on the internet where confused people think "dual link" DVI means it requires both of the DVI ports on your graphics card. If you look at the plug-ends of that single "dual link" cable, you realize it actually has a lot more pins packed in there than standard DVI cables! So the name, while maybe accurately descriptive, is perhaps a misnomer to consumers.
Also, it should be "vaguely"... as an adverb modifying the verb "presented."
He should've said this:
"The topics are vague, the history vague, and the lessons presented too vaguely to be applicable."
That way he could have gone for three and been even more engaging! Uh, and this guy is reviewing books? This is middle school stuff, if not grade school... like mixing up "then" & "than" as we often see here.
Personally, I thought your transcription was worthwhile. Thanks!
Romero so longs for the old days because he hasn't done much of significance since. Poor guy. He hasn't moved on like Carmack has. Carmack certainly isn't looking back.
I see your point, but... Then you're doing a disk access (or zillions) at runtime... perhaps well into the game... plus, if it's human readable (hence extensible like XML without re-coding everything), end-users can get in, edit, and monkey with your stuff!
In our C# work, we did have XML files that we compiled-in as resources. That was nice....but maybe that was part of the problem too!
I just figure it's 6-of-1/half-dozen-of-the-other... You gotta get those values in there somehow, and if they're not human readable, you gotta get 'em in there, well, somehow. Thus you might assume a compile/run might be possible in a reasonable time.
We commonly write package tools to accumulate all our assets into big data files (and simulate a filesystem therein), but too many little bits of initialization data for myriad game classes might become a maintenance nightmare, in my opinion. Then to generate the package becomes yet another part of the build! Our crunches are bad enough as it is. Sometimes ya just gotta do it and be done with it... so the perfect solution remains elusive.:-)
P.S. - Even for something like scripting that we hand off to the Designers to "tweak" gameplay... our best approach has always been to have 'em use a "script lib" of game-level functions, which they actually compile in C++! Thus we already have the benefit of a well-established debugger, etc...
I understand what you're saying and you raise good points. My issue is more with what happens *after* I build -- the amount of time the JIT compile process takes, the bigger-than-they-should-be size of my app and libraries, the time it takes to load those, tie in the CLR, whathaveyou. For a big, broad project, that can all take a lot of time. Way too much in my opinion.
...and it's not just me. I actually have extensive experience with the Reality Engine, which has a sizeable C# component. That can take forever to load too!
Oh, and some of the posts below are laughable. As if C# is a dynamic language!...and I never argued the performance issues of managed vs. unmanaged. I assume it's all the same code inside the wrapper.
I just want my pointers back. (Although not having to dick with.h files was sure nice!)
Three minutes is a r-e-a-l-l-y l-o-n-g time when you've only changed one source file! No, I wasn't rebuilding the whole solution/project each time in such instances... just making tiny tweaks to specific lines of code, initial values (positions, velocities, durations, etc.), state machine states, etc. It was well designed code too.
We started with a 3D engine written (under contract) in C++. When that "work for hire" contract ended, we didn't own it, so decided to write our new engine from scratch and in C#, to further distance us from the notion that any of the new engine was *derived* from the old.
Big mistake. We figured C#/.NET might make us more efficient... but we had no idea. My productivity nose dived. I'd spend longer days getting less done. L-o-t-s o-f t-i-m-e w-a-i-t-i-n-g f-o-r i-t t-o r-u-n.
I really hope C# doesn't take hold (I still don't think it has, but maybe I'm in denial). It's like training wheels. Like working in a Microsoft-imposed padded playpen. I really consider it to be Visual Basic made to look like C++... as others have suggested here. It's some kind of ugly malformed hybrid creature underneath with a real pretty face on top. I wish it would crawl away and die.
I spent a year developing games (yes, believe it or not) in C# under "managed" DirectX. Keeping up with the various versions of the runtimes required (D3DX) was difficult... and just to test our game, it took over 3 minutes to recompile and get it to come up under the just-in-time compiler. That was for each tweak-code/recompile/test-to-see-how-it-looks iteration -- talk about killing my productivity! The first opportunity I got to take a job back in the C++ "non managed code" games world, I took it! Good riddance. I see why they don't want to use it either. Just more bloat from the kings of overkilled Fronkenschtinian solutions.
I had PRK done just over a year ago. I'm an example of what I believe to be relatively few people with very high corrections who opt for PRK. My overall opinion of it continues to be somewhat mixed. For the most part, I'm glad I had it done (although I know there's no going back!). My vision isn't "perfect," although I think my left eye is "usually" 20/20 (I'll explain the "usually" later) and my right eye isn't too far behind. This hasn't been an easy experience, though. Sorry this post is long, but maybe it'll be helpful to someone in a similar situation as I was.
I did extensive research (mainly on LASIK at first), picked one of the most reputable eye centers in the Dallas area (price was no object), went to their seminar, then they tested my eyes and I spoke to them...
Their prognosis, as I was already well aware, but FYI: my vision beforehand was HORRIBLE; 9.5 to 10 diopters of correction each, perhaps 20/2000 as it was estimated to me. I'm sure that's legally blind. I've always been that way, since glasses in grade school and every year my vision would worsen, until stabilizing in college. My glasses were like bottle bottoms (although I'd never let anyone see me in them), I tolerated contacts perfectly (gas perms) since jr. high school and they could always correct me to 20/20 (till my vision would slip again).
Prognosis #2 from the laser doctor: my corneas were too thin for me to get LASIK. That is, by the time they cut the flap (using IntraLASE, but as much as 200 microns) and lased-away the amount of cornea necessary, it would only leave 140 microns of intact cornea, which they didn't feel safe or comfortable with. They said some laser centers would probably still do it, but they didn't want to. So my only alternative was PRK or glasses/contacts.
Honestly I was disappointed. I know 5 people who got LASIK and they say they've never regretted it... so I was disappointed with my "alternatives"... especially when I researched PRK and learned of the risks... like the destruction of the Bowman's layer and layers of nerves, perhaps leading to chronic dry eye (although these things can vary greatly per patient), or the concept of "loss of visual accuity" or "best corrected vision," meaning that your eyes' optical qualities can be changed or perhaps "disturbed" enough so that even with *optimal correction*, there's the possiblity that you still may not be correctable to 20/25 at best, or 20/30 at best, or rarely but still possibly, worse. Again, that means that if your eyes get messed up enough, they can't even be corrected with external lenses. The worst-case alternative would be a corneal transplant.
I kept researching... on the flip side, there were still instances of success, lots... in what I'd guess to be 50% of the cases (i.e., 20/20). The majority of the rest suffered from the aforementioned loss of accuity, or overcorrection/undercorrection, or from dry eye. I looked at graphs of estimated and reported success rates. In the half that weren't great outcomes, there were still large numbers that were close. The curves would taper off in a quadratic fashion, of course (you know, a geometric drop -- the worse the result, the fewer there were).
Anyway, long story short (I'll spare you my speal about being a lifelong adventurer and risk taker)... I decided to do it. Even though I wore contacts very well, I was tired of living my life as a slave to them. My glasses were horribly dated too, lenses scratched, but I didn't want to buy new ones. I was ready for a big change, something new.
I was out of the gas perms for a month and a half. The center gave me soft lenses in the interim (they don't deform your eye much), up until a week before the time of my surgery when I went to glasses.
The procedure went well, no complications, the pain didn't bother me much, then or after. The first couple of weeks completely sucked though, because I absolutely couldn't see anything clearly. I couldn't even read a book with the page 4 inches
...and I'm not saying that just because we agree. Yours are good additional insights (hence your "insightful" mods up!:-)
I agree with the reply-post below too, saying that if they'd made their system a bit more fault-tolerant, then the problem might have been more easily recovered from. Sixty reboots in a row in a day seems a little excessive! Don't they have counters to detect that very thing? Don't they have a failsafe/debug OS burned into ROM (not flash) to load automatically in just such an event? Such are the risks when you're reloading a whole new OS remotely!
However, maybe they do have such things, or equivalent. I don't think their method of recovery was "accidental" (or a hack) either, although I'm making assumptions and I haven't seen their spec. The key is that they recovered from the error... and I now assume that they have recovered completely.
What I found interesting was NASA's initial assessment that the flash ROM was failing -- a hardware failure. The media jumped all over that and reported it, so the rest of us were thinking, "Great, the rover is crippled and will never be the same.:-( "
Now, turns out it was just a software error. Where's the mainstream media now? ("EE Times" is hardly mainstream!) Can the rover's recovery now be considered a "complete recovery"?
If this story goes mainstream, will it make NASA look bad for screwing up... or look good for making a full recovery? I'm not sure. (Of course, smart people make mistakes too, lots of them, but the key to being smart is covering your ass beforehand!:-)
"The outcome strikes me as an extremely Lucky Hack..."
The outcome does not strike me as a "Lucky Hack." They made the system flexible, that flexibility got them into some trouble, and it's also what got them out of it. Anyone else agree?
The article mentions two technologies. One is the fog screen (as seen at SIGGRAPH), where the fog unit hangs from the ceiling and its clearly-visible vapor flows downward.
This other technology seems to involve a "sit on your desk" unit, out of which some kind of vapor appears to blow upwards. They have three videos showing this on their website (IO2 Technology) although it's light on technical specifics. The vids are filmed from in front of the unit, which seems to have a more extensive projection system hiding back behind it -- which as the guy moves his hand into the image, you can see projecting bright light up onto his arm. The "sheet" of vapor is surprisingly transparent, but you can notice its "laminar flow" being disrupted by his hand movement.
I, too, have my questions: What the vapor is and if it's toxic or messy... and how he'll do 3D (which is implied as being the next step) because the technology I see is basically a 2D "screen" and a long way from 3D.
I agree... Sad that VDK/VDKBuilder got ignored! I've used it to develop some pretty big GUIs and it saved me TONS of time.
VDKBuilder's graphical dialog layout tools (drag & drop widgets, code is auto-generated to handle them) reminds me of Microsoft's Visual Studio... of which I guess Borland is similar too. You can even make custom controls or edit the auto-generated code to fine tune your GUI.
Best of all (of course) when compared to Visual Studio, VDKBuilder is free... yet I found the two of them relatively comparable.
After visiting the URL I just posted above (it had been a long time), I must mention: you might want to be more careful than I had initially suggested.
The site immediately pops up that bogus Windows' "Do you want to install and run..." dialog, so DEFINITELY DO NOT agree to that.
Then the site is hard to leave without subsequent redirections to porn-related stuff. I hate those web-weenie-bastards who do that stuff.
Re:Where can I find this Trojan?
on
The Virus Did It
·
· Score: 1
Check out the home page, but don't click on any of the pictures!
Their Privacy Policy is worth a look... It's a doozy. That link is safe, but I wouldn't trust those guys beyond that.
(I got infected by this once when I clicked on a pop-up that hid the title bar and spoofed its little [X] close button. (Watch for "rb32.exe" running in your process list, started in your registry.) )
"Credibility?" End your Photoshop snobbery! You must not have used Paint Shop Pro in a long time. JASC has put a ton of work into it and it's bordering on being as powerful as Photoshop. There's always been a lot that Photoshop could do that PSP couldn't, but that's down to "not much" these days. Nowadays there's a lot that PSP can do that Photoshop can't (like picture tubes, which are cool), and in many cases, PSP is EASIER to use. I use both and love both, and think that both complement each other. Plus Paint Shop Pro is about 10x cheaper than Photoshop, which is kinda nice too.
...and don't forget the copy "protection" -- or should I say "retribution" -- on a few ANCIENT Commodore 64 games ("Raid Over Moscow" as I recall):
Pirate the game and then when you run it, if it can detect it's been copied, it RUINS your floppy drive! It did so by exploiting a mechanical bug in the 1541 drive, whereby it's possible to move the read head beyond its maximum range of travel... and the drive cannot get it back! Hence your drive would no longer work, so you'd have to take it in for service -- unless you knew that you could fix it by opening up the drive and simply pushing the head back toward the middle of its rail with your finger. (Think how many computer shops overcharged 1980s-pirate-wannabes for that one!)
I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't resorted to something similar.:-)
Zimm, I liked your post and think you made a good point. I would've imagined it'd be modded up instead of down. However, your post might "hit home" a bit too much with some frequenters here!:-(
Good points. Especially about someone who's already blind, who would have nothing to lose (in theory).
If any of that's driven by software, however, it's going to have to be reliable. [Insert obligitory Windows-crash-BSoD-direct-to-neural-implant comment here.]
I didn't mean to imply that I'm not inspired by authors like Gibson or Stephenson... just that some people seem to think that kind of stuff is right around the corner (like flying cars). Sci-fi should inspire us, but too many people assume that's the way our future will be, and they don't give much thought to its actual implementation implications (holodeck is a good example). They're exposed lightly to sci-fi ideas, then think "been there, done that!"
Slashdot Mirror
...how they captured the image data to that level without massive pixelation. It's not that impressive. You zoom in extensively and it just gets fuzzy. So big deal: they just interpolate the color values between each pixel "point" instead of drawing huge square pixels.I was much more impressed with PicLens.
What's interesting is how delicate the tiles are. I saw a presentation by a NASA guy some time ago and I was allowed to hold the tiles. They're extremely light, almost feeling like their core is some kind of foam. The black ceramic layer on top is surprisingly thin.
I asked the presenter specifically about how delicate they felt. He then "flicked"/snapped the tile with his finger/fingernail, which put a sizeable dent into the tile, easily cracking the brittle black layer, and you could see the white foam underneath.
Therefore, it's no surprise to me to see this kind of damage. It probably wasn't even impacted with what could be considered excessive force.
Makes you wonder what kind of tile damage shuttles had -- all those successfully landed shuttle missions -- before such close scrutiny.
Good point. I've seen multiple posts on the internet where confused people think "dual link" DVI means it requires both of the DVI ports on your graphics card. If you look at the plug-ends of that single "dual link" cable, you realize it actually has a lot more pins packed in there than standard DVI cables! So the name, while maybe accurately descriptive, is perhaps a misnomer to consumers.
Also, it should be "vaguely"... as an adverb modifying the verb "presented."
He should've said this:
"The topics are vague, the history vague, and the lessons presented too vaguely to be applicable."
That way he could have gone for three and been even more engaging! Uh, and this guy is reviewing books? This is middle school stuff, if not grade school... like mixing up "then" & "than" as we often see here.
Okay youngsters...
Bolternborg == "bulletin board"
Personally, I thought your transcription was worthwhile. Thanks!
Romero so longs for the old days because he hasn't done much of significance since. Poor guy. He hasn't moved on like Carmack has. Carmack certainly isn't looking back.
I see your point, but... Then you're doing a disk access (or zillions) at runtime... perhaps well into the game... plus, if it's human readable (hence extensible like XML without re-coding everything), end-users can get in, edit, and monkey with your stuff!
...but maybe that was part of the problem too!
:-)
In our C# work, we did have XML files that we compiled-in as resources. That was nice.
I just figure it's 6-of-1/half-dozen-of-the-other... You gotta get those values in there somehow, and if they're not human readable, you gotta get 'em in there, well, somehow. Thus you might assume a compile/run might be possible in a reasonable time.
We commonly write package tools to accumulate all our assets into big data files (and simulate a filesystem therein), but too many little bits of initialization data for myriad game classes might become a maintenance nightmare, in my opinion. Then to generate the package becomes yet another part of the build! Our crunches are bad enough as it is. Sometimes ya just gotta do it and be done with it... so the perfect solution remains elusive.
P.S. - Even for something like scripting that we hand off to the Designers to "tweak" gameplay... our best approach has always been to have 'em use a "script lib" of game-level functions, which they actually compile in C++! Thus we already have the benefit of a well-established debugger, etc...
I understand what you're saying and you raise good points. My issue is more with what happens *after* I build -- the amount of time the JIT compile process takes, the bigger-than-they-should-be size of my app and libraries, the time it takes to load those, tie in the CLR, whathaveyou. For a big, broad project, that can all take a lot of time. Way too much in my opinion.
...and it's not just me. I actually have extensive experience with the Reality Engine, which has a sizeable C# component. That can take forever to load too!
...and I never argued the performance issues of managed vs. unmanaged. I assume it's all the same code inside the wrapper.
.h files was sure nice!)
Oh, and some of the posts below are laughable. As if C# is a dynamic language!
I just want my pointers back. (Although not having to dick with
Three minutes is a r-e-a-l-l-y l-o-n-g time when you've only changed one source file! No, I wasn't rebuilding the whole solution/project each time in such instances... just making tiny tweaks to specific lines of code, initial values (positions, velocities, durations, etc.), state machine states, etc. It was well designed code too.
We started with a 3D engine written (under contract) in C++. When that "work for hire" contract ended, we didn't own it, so decided to write our new engine from scratch and in C#, to further distance us from the notion that any of the new engine was *derived* from the old.
Big mistake. We figured C#/.NET might make us more efficient... but we had no idea. My productivity nose dived. I'd spend longer days getting less done. L-o-t-s o-f t-i-m-e w-a-i-t-i-n-g f-o-r i-t t-o r-u-n.
I really hope C# doesn't take hold (I still don't think it has, but maybe I'm in denial). It's like training wheels. Like working in a Microsoft-imposed padded playpen. I really consider it to be Visual Basic made to look like C++... as others have suggested here. It's some kind of ugly malformed hybrid creature underneath with a real pretty face on top. I wish it would crawl away and die.
Yeah, that's how I really feel.
I spent a year developing games (yes, believe it or not) in C# under "managed" DirectX. Keeping up with the various versions of the runtimes required (D3DX) was difficult... and just to test our game, it took over 3 minutes to recompile and get it to come up under the just-in-time compiler. That was for each tweak-code/recompile/test-to-see-how-it-looks iteration -- talk about killing my productivity! The first opportunity I got to take a job back in the C++ "non managed code" games world, I took it! Good riddance. I see why they don't want to use it either. Just more bloat from the kings of overkilled Fronkenschtinian solutions.
I had PRK done just over a year ago. I'm an example of what I believe to be relatively few people with very high corrections who opt for PRK. My overall opinion of it continues to be somewhat mixed. For the most part, I'm glad I had it done (although I know there's no going back!). My vision isn't "perfect," although I think my left eye is "usually" 20/20 (I'll explain the "usually" later) and my right eye isn't too far behind. This hasn't been an easy experience, though. Sorry this post is long, but maybe it'll be helpful to someone in a similar situation as I was.
I did extensive research (mainly on LASIK at first), picked one of the most reputable eye centers in the Dallas area (price was no object), went to their seminar, then they tested my eyes and I spoke to them...
Their prognosis, as I was already well aware, but FYI: my vision beforehand was HORRIBLE; 9.5 to 10 diopters of correction each, perhaps 20/2000 as it was estimated to me. I'm sure that's legally blind. I've always been that way, since glasses in grade school and every year my vision would worsen, until stabilizing in college. My glasses were like bottle bottoms (although I'd never let anyone see me in them), I tolerated contacts perfectly (gas perms) since jr. high school and they could always correct me to 20/20 (till my vision would slip again).
Prognosis #2 from the laser doctor: my corneas were too thin for me to get LASIK. That is, by the time they cut the flap (using IntraLASE, but as much as 200 microns) and lased-away the amount of cornea necessary, it would only leave 140 microns of intact cornea, which they didn't feel safe or comfortable with. They said some laser centers would probably still do it, but they didn't want to. So my only alternative was PRK or glasses/contacts.
Honestly I was disappointed. I know 5 people who got LASIK and they say they've never regretted it... so I was disappointed with my "alternatives"... especially when I researched PRK and learned of the risks... like the destruction of the Bowman's layer and layers of nerves, perhaps leading to chronic dry eye (although these things can vary greatly per patient), or the concept of "loss of visual accuity" or "best corrected vision," meaning that your eyes' optical qualities can be changed or perhaps "disturbed" enough so that even with *optimal correction*, there's the possiblity that you still may not be correctable to 20/25 at best, or 20/30 at best, or rarely but still possibly, worse. Again, that means that if your eyes get messed up enough, they can't even be corrected with external lenses. The worst-case alternative would be a corneal transplant.
I kept researching... on the flip side, there were still instances of success, lots... in what I'd guess to be 50% of the cases (i.e., 20/20). The majority of the rest suffered from the aforementioned loss of accuity, or overcorrection/undercorrection, or from dry eye. I looked at graphs of estimated and reported success rates. In the half that weren't great outcomes, there were still large numbers that were close. The curves would taper off in a quadratic fashion, of course (you know, a geometric drop -- the worse the result, the fewer there were).
Anyway, long story short (I'll spare you my speal about being a lifelong adventurer and risk taker)... I decided to do it. Even though I wore contacts very well, I was tired of living my life as a slave to them. My glasses were horribly dated too, lenses scratched, but I didn't want to buy new ones. I was ready for a big change, something new.
I was out of the gas perms for a month and a half. The center gave me soft lenses in the interim (they don't deform your eye much), up until a week before the time of my surgery when I went to glasses.
The procedure went well, no complications, the pain didn't bother me much, then or after. The first couple of weeks completely sucked though, because I absolutely couldn't see anything clearly. I couldn't even read a book with the page 4 inches
...and I'm not saying that just because we agree. Yours are good additional insights (hence your "insightful" mods up! :-)
:-( "
:-)
I agree with the reply-post below too, saying that if they'd made their system a bit more fault-tolerant, then the problem might have been more easily recovered from. Sixty reboots in a row in a day seems a little excessive! Don't they have counters to detect that very thing? Don't they have a failsafe/debug OS burned into ROM (not flash) to load automatically in just such an event? Such are the risks when you're reloading a whole new OS remotely!
However, maybe they do have such things, or equivalent. I don't think their method of recovery was "accidental" (or a hack) either, although I'm making assumptions and I haven't seen their spec. The key is that they recovered from the error... and I now assume that they have recovered completely.
What I found interesting was NASA's initial assessment that the flash ROM was failing -- a hardware failure. The media jumped all over that and reported it, so the rest of us were thinking, "Great, the rover is crippled and will never be the same.
Now, turns out it was just a software error. Where's the mainstream media now? ("EE Times" is hardly mainstream!) Can the rover's recovery now be considered a "complete recovery"?
If this story goes mainstream, will it make NASA look bad for screwing up... or look good for making a full recovery? I'm not sure. (Of course, smart people make mistakes too, lots of them, but the key to being smart is covering your ass beforehand!
"The outcome strikes me as an extremely Lucky Hack..."
The outcome does not strike me as a "Lucky Hack." They made the system flexible, that flexibility got them into some trouble, and it's also what got them out of it. Anyone else agree?
...and why on earth would they ask this clown to do their keynote speech?
I guess I just answered my own question. CDXPO must be some ragtag Comdex wannabe.
They probably would've rather asked Scott Peterson or the DC Snipers to do the keynote, but they were tied up in court.
The article mentions two technologies. One is the fog screen (as seen at SIGGRAPH), where the fog unit hangs from the ceiling and its clearly-visible vapor flows downward.
This other technology seems to involve a "sit on your desk" unit, out of which some kind of vapor appears to blow upwards. They have three videos showing this on their website (IO2 Technology) although it's light on technical specifics. The vids are filmed from in front of the unit, which seems to have a more extensive projection system hiding back behind it -- which as the guy moves his hand into the image, you can see projecting bright light up onto his arm. The "sheet" of vapor is surprisingly transparent, but you can notice its "laminar flow" being disrupted by his hand movement.
I, too, have my questions: What the vapor is and if it's toxic or messy... and how he'll do 3D (which is implied as being the next step) because the technology I see is basically a 2D "screen" and a long way from 3D.
I agree... Sad that VDK/VDKBuilder got ignored! I've used it to develop some pretty big GUIs and it saved me TONS of time.
VDKBuilder's graphical dialog layout tools (drag & drop widgets, code is auto-generated to handle them) reminds me of Microsoft's Visual Studio... of which I guess Borland is similar too. You can even make custom controls or edit the auto-generated code to fine tune your GUI.
Best of all (of course) when compared to Visual Studio, VDKBuilder is free... yet I found the two of them relatively comparable.
He should've included the DEL key in with those ALT/CTRL/... keys. That would've been fun.
After visiting the URL I just posted above (it had been a long time), I must mention: you might want to be more careful than I had initially suggested.
The site immediately pops up that bogus Windows' "Do you want to install and run..." dialog, so DEFINITELY DO NOT agree to that.
Then the site is hard to leave without subsequent redirections to porn-related stuff. I hate those web-weenie-bastards who do that stuff.
Here's one:
http://www.rapidblaster.com
Check out the home page, but don't click on any of the pictures!
Their Privacy Policy is worth a look... It's a doozy. That link is safe, but I wouldn't trust those guys beyond that.
(I got infected by this once when I clicked on a pop-up that hid the title bar and spoofed its little [X] close button. (Watch for "rb32.exe" running in your process list, started in your registry.) )
"Credibility?" End your Photoshop snobbery! You must not have used Paint Shop Pro in a long time. JASC has put a ton of work into it and it's bordering on being as powerful as Photoshop. There's always been a lot that Photoshop could do that PSP couldn't, but that's down to "not much" these days. Nowadays there's a lot that PSP can do that Photoshop can't (like picture tubes, which are cool), and in many cases, PSP is EASIER to use. I use both and love both, and think that both complement each other. Plus Paint Shop Pro is about 10x cheaper than Photoshop, which is kinda nice too.
...and don't forget the copy "protection" -- or should I say "retribution" -- on a few ANCIENT Commodore 64 games ("Raid Over Moscow" as I recall):
:-)
Pirate the game and then when you run it, if it can detect it's been copied, it RUINS your floppy drive! It did so by exploiting a mechanical bug in the 1541 drive, whereby it's possible to move the read head beyond its maximum range of travel... and the drive cannot get it back! Hence your drive would no longer work, so you'd have to take it in for service -- unless you knew that you could fix it by opening up the drive and simply pushing the head back toward the middle of its rail with your finger. (Think how many computer shops overcharged 1980s-pirate-wannabes for that one!)
I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't resorted to something similar.
WAY... TOO... FUNNY!!!!
Zimm, I liked your post and think you made a good point. I would've imagined it'd be modded up instead of down. However, your post might "hit home" a bit too much with some frequenters here! :-(
Thanks Moofie. Glad I'm not the only one here who ain't a kid too young to know who Morris was.
I didn't see that... but am just reading it now. All I can say is "wow!"
Thanks BusterB
Good points. Especially about someone who's already blind, who would have nothing to lose (in theory).
If any of that's driven by software, however, it's going to have to be reliable. [Insert obligitory Windows-crash-BSoD-direct-to-neural-implant comment here.]
I didn't mean to imply that I'm not inspired by authors like Gibson or Stephenson... just that some people seem to think that kind of stuff is right around the corner (like flying cars). Sci-fi should inspire us, but too many people assume that's the way our future will be, and they don't give much thought to its actual implementation implications (holodeck is a good example). They're exposed lightly to sci-fi ideas, then think "been there, done that!"