Exchange admin here. Your right, Exchange looks nice on the surface, but once you start actually using it for a while you realize that its not much better than the unix equiv.
I've got a broken web interface for my spam filter (McAfee Spamkiller == spamassassin); a desktop client which serves up a java applet to config it.
I've got a special application to config the anti-virus (Trend Micro ScanMail) filters, whos interface looks like a cross between eudora and outlook 2000.
But on the MS side of things, I've got DNS, Active Directory, Certificates, Event Manager, Message Tracking Center, Exchange, IIS, and Services all in one package I call Admin Console.msc. Just start > run > MMC and File > Add consoles to your hearts content. I can administrate almost any aspect of all 5 servers from one console, including defrags and registry edits,
but if I want to change a setting on the Spam Filter, or the Anti-Virus software, I've got to TermSvc into a box and get at some funky software with a GUI designed by an idiot. Please, give me MSC files to administrate my 3rd party Exchange tools, for the love of God, there is nothing special about your software, just tie it into M$'s standard MMC. It doesnt matter whos right, whos prettier, I just need to plug everything into one tree and relax.
Paramount Pictures called my ISP. My Cable internet got cut off. I called security department, was told to get off torrent. Happened to a friend of mine too. Whats going on?
Anyone know of a free (OSS Optional) program to record your typing speed and acuracy (how often you hit backspace, etc)? I've always wondered how fast I actually type but never knew. Once I got out of the habbit of looking at the keyboard while typing I got more comfortable and now I can type way faster than I can write, and almost faster than I can think. I checked sourceforge once but came up with nothing.
Oh yeah, and the one thing that kills my speed while writing business emails is not how fast I type, but the amount of time I spend after writing the email reading over it and replacing words like 'but' with 'however' and 'do' with 'implement'. I know, I know, it sucks speaking managementeese but its a fact of business.
Now if only I spent half the time checking my slashdot posts for errors as I do my business emails I wouldnt get 'cat got your tounge' all the time.
PS, apostrophys are only for quoting things, and even then \" words best. I dont bother with apostrophys. nor can I spell without F7
I'm a System Administrator and I failed my middle school typing class. My problem was that I had already been programming in basic on a PC XT (no thats not an ATI video card for you newbies out there) for a few years before the typing class. I had already come up with my own way of typing. I started out hunting and pecking with two fingers, then it gradually became 4, then all 8 fingers (poor thumbs, all they get to do is hit spacebar (which is never long enough now a days)); I know I'm not the only one in this camp. Trying to unlearn something is nearly impossible once you've got your own system in place.
basic computer skills, even if they are just windows skills, are very important. I dont understand why they dont teach things like how to defrag or scandisk your hard drive, or how to uninstall applications. These are the primary skills that most people need help with. Spend half the class on typing, the other half on actually using the computer (and no not just word), and they'll pick up the typing thing as they learn. I'm sure most of them can type pretty well already (prolly dont spell 2 well w/ AIM, Y!, and MSN IM @ home ne-way;)
With a 5.25 inch drive. They fit in 5.25 inch bays, right below your CD-ROM. Also, we've got External USB 3.5" drives, I see no reason why the same technology wouldnt work for 5.25" drives.
Or they could just enable hibernation and hit Shift-H when shutting down. What, they dont have a hibernation function, fuck it, get em super-high and hope there arent any psyscho computers controlling the ship.
Buy Athlon 64 3000+ rather than 3200+. Save $64. Get a socket 939 motherboard thats upgradable as socket 754 will be for AMD budget chips. Overclock the 3000+ and get better performance than the 3200+ not overclocked (duh), or leave it stock and stay within 10% on high resolution in most games.
Interesting,
Far Cry benchmarks at 1024:
Athlon 64 3200+ - 36.26 FPS Athlon 64 3000+ - 33.21 FPS
Quake 3 benchmarks at 1024 (why do they still bench it?):
Athlon 64 3200+ - 322.7 FPS Athlon 64 3000+ - 321.8 FPS
a 3 frame lead makes a difference when your only in the 30 FPS ballpark, nothing a few graphics settings cant fix, but when we talk about 322 vs 321 FPS I'm blown away that anyone would care.
Although there is no official 64-bit version of Windows, the chip can run 32-bit code natively. For those who are anti-Microsoft, there are some 64-bit versions of Linux, but if you're feeling adventurous, you can always pick up a beta of Windows XP 64-Bit Edition.
Since when was running Linux an anti-Microsoft thing? This is the kind of crap the OSS community needs to stomp out in order to give Linux the reputation it deserves and broaden its adoption, especially on the desktop.
On a more constructive note, since UT2003/4, Quake3, Doom3, and a handfull of other badass games are supported by Linux why isnt there a Linux-Gamers distro. Even if it were just a bootable knoppix CD that could take advantage of the Athlon 64 and play these games off your harddrive it would really help get linux on the desktop in the gamers croud. I can just hear the taunts coming from the LAN dude playing Doom3 on Linux in 64 bit, "You wanna piece of me, you cant handle my BFG! I got 64 bits with your name on it", etc...
Now specifically at work, but when my girlfriend calls I launch UT2003 and play a zoom-instagib deathmatch game using one hand (thum button forwards, left click shoot, right click jump, middle click zoom, pinky button backwards). This helps to keep me sane while talking to her.
Whats interesting is that this win-spy program probably does not grab the screen durring full screen opengl games. Maybe his boss should have played neverball or neverputt instead.
I'm also a network admin at my company and I regularly read slashdot, as well as most of you reading this, so I'm preaching to the coir when I say that it doesnt effect the job at hand.
Its truly sad that Windows XP Service Pack 2 sets the messenger service to disabled by default. It was always nice to know that no matter if you friend on a lan was on AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, etc, you could send them a message. Its a shame marketing agencies abused this. I for one leave write on in *nix and messenger on in windows because I'm behind a NAT and dont get these annoyances, and sure every once in a while at a LAN party someone will annoy you with it when your playing a full screen game, but none the less its a shame that this functionality is going away by default, it was truly a cool feature in windows.
Oh, yeah, this is slashdot, um, in Soviet Russis you annoy popups
If Sony (or any other company) releases free development environments then they should be applauded because at least it gives anyone the opportunity of turning a good idea into a tangible game or piece of software.
The problem I have is with the game companies themselves because making money from games and having a constant supply of good quality games are mutually exclusive.
Thats what Sony does. While Nintendo has fewer games their quality meets Nintendo's standards. Sony will let just about anyone create a game for the PSX, and thats what made it wildly popular. Independent labels (ok, not bedroom programmers) were able to get into a market with the big guys and thats where we saw innovation. Then again, among the hundreds of games for the PSX we're going to have a ton of crap. You've got to take the good with the bad.
For starters, I don't understand why there is a necessity to constantly re-invent the wheel and create gaming engines from scratch just about each time a new game is released.
Most PC games license engines. A few years ago there were really only a copule of engines being used for FPS style games at least. I cant count how many games I've played on the Quake3 engine.
Surely it would be better to throw out the source code to current gaming engines to the Internet community to see what enhancements get added as a result
id gives the source away to its older games. If it didnt, the amazing port of Quake to Pocket PC would not be possible. I cant wait for the source to quake 3 to be released!
My point is that we need a return to the good old days of the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum & Amiga when it was possible for "bedroom programmers" to create good quality games.
"Bedroom programmers" are still able to make good games, but not by themselves anymore, and they're not really games, they're called mods, or TC's and they're one of the things that will get your foot in the door in the gaming industry. Take a look at the wildly popular Half-Life mod Counter-Strike. I know tons of people who bought HL just for this mod, which started as a hobby project by a VT student (someone correct me if it was another university).
Incidentally, I don't, for one minute, expect this to happen because there are far too many concerns about making money
If you want to make games, then by all means do so. Nobody is expecting you to code away an awesome engine, draw fantastic graphics and models, and design interesting levels all by yourself. Get the doom3 SDK when it comes out and spend a week RTFMing and experimenting. Get on a project or start your own, maybe it will get popular, maybe it will be mentioned on slashdot, maybe you'll get picked up by a game company, I dont know, but I do know that complaining on slashdot about how its not like the old days isnt going to get you very far.
but I guarantee most game players have spent far more money on disappointing games than good ones.
Thats why theres suprnova and usenet. Its called try before you buy. or just buy the game and if it sucks take it back and say you didnt agree to the EULA. I played Call of Duty, which was awesome. Finished it and wanted more WWII action, so i bought metal of honor, big waste of money, took it back, said i didnt agree, no questions.
Now dont get me wrong, im not encouraging piracy, just dont waste your hard earned cash on crap, its common sense. support the developers and become one if you so wish. I for one will be buying doom3 the day it comes out. I'm not going to bother with a demo, I'm not going to pirate it, I'm going to *proudly* display my box on top of my monitor. I dont need to try before I buy, its id, its going to rock.
I've had great success with hot swapping PCI cards, Hard Drives, and CD Drives with XP. The trick is in device manager:
Remove Device:
In Device Manager right click the device you wish to remove and select disable. Gently remove the device from your computer.
Install Device:
Gently install device. In Device Manager right click $COMPUTERNAME and select Scan for hardware changes.
I was able to install a new sound card this way, except I selected Uninstall Device before removing the old sound card. Once I poped in the new sound card and refreshed device man it was just a matter of installing drivers (which required a reboot of course:)
The only time I've had problems doing this is with a friends computer with a sensitive PSU. Plugging in a drive would short out the PSU and required you to unplug the power cord to reset. My PSU seems to be friendly when it comes to plugging in molex plugs when the machine is on.
I've heard you can insert more ram by setting your computer to hibernate (start > shutdown > shift-H if you use the XP eyecandy login), plugging in another dimm, and starting up again, but I havent confirmed it.
We just recently replaced our CRTs with 19" LCDs in the office. Our manager sent a thank you to the CFO who authorized the purchase to say thank you, adding that the increased resolution (1280) enhances productivity. She didnt realize that her CRT could go up to 1600. I was CC'd and as soon as I got the email I went to her office to tell her that with 2 19" LCDs I would be TWICE as productive.
Just Imagine, a screen for slashdot, a screen for work! But no, I'm still using one screen, and every so often I've got to minimize mozilla and get back to the code.:(.
I just went to your site to check out what you've been doing since I left the PPC gaming scene in late '02. I might pick it back up when I get a PPC Phone. OMG, you've ported Quake II! Sure this is a pointless post but I dont think you get enough thanks for all that you've done for the community. I hope you at least get free tickets to Quake Con and a T-Shirt:).
gotta start somewhere. I did a demo once of what we could do with a $10 webcam, microphone, and "off the shelf" consumer IM clients. There was a big meeting in our HQ while I'm at a satelite office of 4 people. The CEO is at HQ giving his presentation and I've got an IT guy in the back streaming it to us, audio and video, through Yahoo Messenger no less (works through firewalls). Operations Manager poped in a said, whats that? Oh, a clever hack i whipped up so we could see the meeting. This way we dont have to pay the outragous fees on the conference call line and I can actually hear what is going on (CEO was using lapel mic).
Just because it didnt come in a big blue box from IBM with a pricetag through the roof doesnt mean it wont get the job done.
Granted I wouldnt expect to rely on a solution such as Yahoo IM for our video conferencing needs but to see the big picture in at the HQ on short notice, it was a need concept.
Saving money (unless we're being penny-wise and pound-foolish) is a very
important etc...
After reading what you wrote I understand now. As others have pointed out, its not he cost of the software, its the training and support that can rack up to even higher had we just gone with the "trusted solution" in the first place. Sure I want to preach the OSS gospel, sure I would love to see our company save lots of money by using linux + apache + mysql + ph perl ython but if I were in his shooes, directly responsible for the users that cant be bothered with learning alternative software by reading a 3 minute help text, I would have made the same decision.
I guess the old saying goes, nobody ever got fired for buying "________"
Ever wonder why Radio Smack stopped carying its "Optimous" brand of stereo and AV equiptment? It was all made by RCA. Now, they just cary the RCA brand on the shelves.
Isnt this like the whole "Frosted Mini-Wheats" VS. "Frosted Mini-Spooners" (Brand X) debate? I think a Kroger grocery store billboard in Richmond VA put it best. There is a picture of a field of String Peas plants on a farm. In the middle is a LARGE string pea sliced open. On the left is an arrow pointing to the top pea in the pod which says "National Brand" while the pea in the middle has an arrow on the right pointing to it which says "Kroger Brand".
Not too off-topic: I tried to convince my CIO that we could save money by using 7-Zip instead of licensing Winzip (not at the point to recommend Open Office or Linux yet) and he turned it down because "Winzip is the trusted name in ZIP compression", WTF, its actually PK's format! Dont even get me started on his views of PDFCreator vs. Acrobat.
I've got Vision, and I only pay $5/mo for unlimited (they've since jacked up the price a bunch, one of the reasons I'm not getting a new handset any time soon). And no, the speeds are more like 5-10 KILOBYTES / Second. I've seen peaks around 30-40 but thats usually just when initiating a download, then it starts to level off around 5-10KB/s. Just shows you that the bandwidth is there.
The old "Wireless Web" plan was 14.4kb/s (~1.4 KB/s) which sucked but at the time there wasnt anything better
Oh, and if Sprint PCS is reading, um, I got my data cable so I could download my photos to my laptop, not check my email when I'm on business trips. Stupid greedy twits.
In other news, All your base are belong to us is planning a sequal. Net citicens all around the world unite in a single yawn.
Yes, I watched RvsB S1, yes it was funny, but much of it was pointless filler. The only thing I remembered through it all was a conversation that went something like "We're out here in the middle of nowhere defending the blue flag, why, because the red guys are over there with a flag of their own. Its fucking stupid! If we left there would be no blue flag for them to capture and no point in defending their red flag!"... something like that.
Now its kinda cool seeing the Red VS Blue guys at Bestbuy on the X-box displays doing commercials, gives you a warm grass roots feeling inside, but thats a topic for another rambling.
Awesome, a client for both Windows and Linux! That rocks! I cant wait to port this to my Treo 600! I wonder if it will work on Sprint PCS's 2.5G data network? Any J2ME coders out there wanna help with this project, it'll be uber-r33t. I cant wait until I see the look On the Sprint PCS guys face when I show him that I could just use my data minutes to, um, wait. EERG!!
Browser that supports WAP, HTML, Frames, Flash, Shockwave, Tabbed Browsing, and thumb-guestures
8 MegaPixel camera with 6x optical zoom that takes SLR lenses
Calander and contacts that syncs with microsoft exchange
2.2" display with 65K colors and 480x640 resolution
802.11g and bluetooth (that works) with kismet
12 cell LiIon battery with 14 day standby and 6 hour talk time
media player capable of playing MOV, MPG2,4, AVI (divx and xvid), RM, DVD,
HDTV that syncs with your tivo, direct-tv, XP-MCE, or mythPC (sorry MyHTPC and freevo, not enough room in ROM)
Direct TV connection with 400 channels
Cheap custom ringtones that dont suck (no more paying 99 cents for a 50 cent ringtone)
Vibrate, Pulsate, Ultra-Vibrate, and Orgasmobrate (for her pleasure)
authentic TOS trek sound for when the clam shell flips open
Walkie-Talkie function that be used without speakphone
SDIO card for memory expansion
4G 1MB/s internet connection
RSS feeds on your "desktop"
9 button thats not pre-programmed to 911
full QWERTY thumbboard with touchpad
VNC, TightVNC, and Terminal Services
Vi, Emacs, Notepad, and that thing macs use
Powerpoint support with included VGA dongle for presentations
SMS, MMS, EMS, and PMS
synchronization support for pop3, imap4, and active-sync
drivers for linux (source included)
dual boot mode with windows CE and linux (2.7)
included sample cowboy neal ringtones
j2me, perl, and C# support
graphing calculator
Included USB cable makes phone act as USB flash drive on any PC (w2k+)
GPS with included geocaches
ability to turn reciever into promiscuious mode with ethercap
SSH (1,2) and Telnet clients that work!
1GHz Transmeta processor
Via Eden 600 MHz backup processor
dual blue cold cathodes with case window
Support for CD-R / RW, DVD-R-RW+R+RW-RAM, MMC, SD, CF, PCMCIA, and 5.25" (double density)
Did I miss anything...
Oh yeah, Phone. Maybe next revision, until then you can hook it up to your vonage box.
Ok, so I was only joking on a few of those things, but seriously some of these features need to be considered. I want an open platform phone that allows me to put RSS feeds on my "desktop" and can SSH and VNC into boxen (sp?)
Slashdot Mirror
Exchange admin here. Your right, Exchange looks nice on the surface, but once you start actually using it for a while you realize that its not much better than the unix equiv.
I've got a broken web interface for my spam filter (McAfee Spamkiller == spamassassin); a desktop client which serves up a java applet to config it.
I've got a special application to config the anti-virus (Trend Micro ScanMail) filters, whos interface looks like a cross between eudora and outlook 2000.
But on the MS side of things, I've got DNS, Active Directory, Certificates, Event Manager, Message Tracking Center, Exchange, IIS, and Services all in one package I call Admin Console.msc. Just start > run > MMC and File > Add consoles to your hearts content. I can administrate almost any aspect of all 5 servers from one console, including defrags and registry edits,
but if I want to change a setting on the Spam Filter, or the Anti-Virus software, I've got to TermSvc into a box and get at some funky software with a GUI designed by an idiot. Please, give me MSC files to administrate my 3rd party Exchange tools, for the love of God, there is nothing special about your software, just tie it into M$'s standard MMC. It doesnt matter whos right, whos prettier, I just need to plug everything into one tree and relax.
Signed, Pissed off Exchange Admin
Paramount Pictures called my ISP. My Cable internet got cut off. I called security department, was told to get off torrent. Happened to a friend of mine too. Whats going on?
Anyone know of a free (OSS Optional) program to record your typing speed and acuracy (how often you hit backspace, etc)? I've always wondered how fast I actually type but never knew. Once I got out of the habbit of looking at the keyboard while typing I got more comfortable and now I can type way faster than I can write, and almost faster than I can think. I checked sourceforge once but came up with nothing.
Oh yeah, and the one thing that kills my speed while writing business emails is not how fast I type, but the amount of time I spend after writing the email reading over it and replacing words like 'but' with 'however' and 'do' with 'implement'. I know, I know, it sucks speaking managementeese but its a fact of business.
Now if only I spent half the time checking my slashdot posts for errors as I do my business emails I wouldnt get 'cat got your tounge' all the time.
PS, apostrophys are only for quoting things, and even then \" words best. I dont bother with apostrophys. nor can I spell without F7
I'm a System Administrator and I failed my middle school typing class. My problem was that I had already been programming in basic on a PC XT (no thats not an ATI video card for you newbies out there) for a few years before the typing class. I had already come up with my own way of typing. I started out hunting and pecking with two fingers, then it gradually became 4, then all 8 fingers (poor thumbs, all they get to do is hit spacebar (which is never long enough now a days)); I know I'm not the only one in this camp. Trying to unlearn something is nearly impossible once you've got your own system in place.
;)
basic computer skills, even if they are just windows skills, are very important. I dont understand why they dont teach things like how to defrag or scandisk your hard drive, or how to uninstall applications. These are the primary skills that most people need help with. Spend half the class on typing, the other half on actually using the computer (and no not just word), and they'll pick up the typing thing as they learn. I'm sure most of them can type pretty well already (prolly dont spell 2 well w/ AIM, Y!, and MSN IM @ home ne-way
Ahem, not to be a spelling nazi, but its
I'd probably phreak out too.
With a 5.25 inch drive. They fit in 5.25 inch bays, right below your CD-ROM. Also, we've got External USB 3.5" drives, I see no reason why the same technology wouldnt work for 5.25" drives.
Or they could just enable hibernation and hit Shift-H when shutting down. What, they dont have a hibernation function, fuck it, get em super-high and hope there arent any psyscho computers controlling the ship.
This is what he would look like if he was in a white suit...
Dont comment about the photoshop skills, this took 3 minutes.
My cat doesnt need a memory card to start attacking. I swear she sees "ghost mice".
Buy Athlon 64 3000+ rather than 3200+. Save $64. Get a socket 939 motherboard thats upgradable as socket 754 will be for AMD budget chips. Overclock the 3000+ and get better performance than the 3200+ not overclocked (duh), or leave it stock and stay within 10% on high resolution in most games.
Interesting,
Far Cry benchmarks at 1024:
Athlon 64 3200+ - 36.26 FPS
Athlon 64 3000+ - 33.21 FPS
Quake 3 benchmarks at 1024 (why do they still bench it?):
Athlon 64 3200+ - 322.7 FPS
Athlon 64 3000+ - 321.8 FPS
a 3 frame lead makes a difference when your only in the 30 FPS ballpark, nothing a few graphics settings cant fix, but when we talk about 322 vs 321 FPS I'm blown away that anyone would care.
From the article:
Although there is no official 64-bit version of Windows, the chip can run 32-bit code natively. For those who are anti-Microsoft, there are some 64-bit versions of Linux, but if you're feeling adventurous, you can always pick up a beta of Windows XP 64-Bit Edition.
Since when was running Linux an anti-Microsoft thing? This is the kind of crap the OSS community needs to stomp out in order to give Linux the reputation it deserves and broaden its adoption, especially on the desktop.
On a more constructive note, since UT2003/4, Quake3, Doom3, and a handfull of other badass games are supported by Linux why isnt there a Linux-Gamers distro. Even if it were just a bootable knoppix CD that could take advantage of the Athlon 64 and play these games off your harddrive it would really help get linux on the desktop in the gamers croud. I can just hear the taunts coming from the LAN dude playing Doom3 on Linux in 64 bit, "You wanna piece of me, you cant handle my BFG! I got 64 bits with your name on it", etc...
Or was it just me?
Now specifically at work, but when my girlfriend calls I launch UT2003 and play a zoom-instagib deathmatch game using one hand (thum button forwards, left click shoot, right click jump, middle click zoom, pinky button backwards). This helps to keep me sane while talking to her.
Whats interesting is that this win-spy program probably does not grab the screen durring full screen opengl games. Maybe his boss should have played neverball or neverputt instead.
I'm also a network admin at my company and I regularly read slashdot, as well as most of you reading this, so I'm preaching to the coir when I say that it doesnt effect the job at hand.
Its truly sad that Windows XP Service Pack 2 sets the messenger service to disabled by default. It was always nice to know that no matter if you friend on a lan was on AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, etc, you could send them a message. Its a shame marketing agencies abused this. I for one leave write on in *nix and messenger on in windows because I'm behind a NAT and dont get these annoyances, and sure every once in a while at a LAN party someone will annoy you with it when your playing a full screen game, but none the less its a shame that this functionality is going away by default, it was truly a cool feature in windows.
Oh, yeah, this is slashdot, um, in Soviet Russis you annoy popups
If Sony (or any other company) releases free development environments then they should be applauded because at least it gives anyone the opportunity of turning a good idea into a tangible game or piece of software.
The problem I have is with the game companies themselves because making money from games and having a constant supply of good quality games are mutually exclusive.
Thats what Sony does. While Nintendo has fewer games their quality meets Nintendo's standards. Sony will let just about anyone create a game for the PSX, and thats what made it wildly popular. Independent labels (ok, not bedroom programmers) were able to get into a market with the big guys and thats where we saw innovation. Then again, among the hundreds of games for the PSX we're going to have a ton of crap. You've got to take the good with the bad.
For starters, I don't understand why there is a necessity to constantly re-invent the wheel and create gaming engines from scratch just about each time a new game is released.
Most PC games license engines. A few years ago there were really only a copule of engines being used for FPS style games at least. I cant count how many games I've played on the Quake3 engine.
Surely it would be better to throw out the source code to current gaming engines to the Internet community to see what enhancements get added as a result
id gives the source away to its older games. If it didnt, the amazing port of Quake to Pocket PC would not be possible. I cant wait for the source to quake 3 to be released!
My point is that we need a return to the good old days of the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum & Amiga when it was possible for "bedroom programmers" to create good quality games.
"Bedroom programmers" are still able to make good games, but not by themselves anymore, and they're not really games, they're called mods, or TC's and they're one of the things that will get your foot in the door in the gaming industry. Take a look at the wildly popular Half-Life mod Counter-Strike. I know tons of people who bought HL just for this mod, which started as a hobby project by a VT student (someone correct me if it was another university).
Incidentally, I don't, for one minute, expect this to happen because there are far too many concerns about making money
If you want to make games, then by all means do so. Nobody is expecting you to code away an awesome engine, draw fantastic graphics and models, and design interesting levels all by yourself. Get the doom3 SDK when it comes out and spend a week RTFMing and experimenting. Get on a project or start your own, maybe it will get popular, maybe it will be mentioned on slashdot, maybe you'll get picked up by a game company, I dont know, but I do know that complaining on slashdot about how its not like the old days isnt going to get you very far.
but I guarantee most game players have spent far more money on disappointing games than good ones.
Thats why theres suprnova and usenet. Its called try before you buy. or just buy the game and if it sucks take it back and say you didnt agree to the EULA. I played Call of Duty, which was awesome. Finished it and wanted more WWII action, so i bought metal of honor, big waste of money, took it back, said i didnt agree, no questions.
Now dont get me wrong, im not encouraging piracy, just dont waste your hard earned cash on crap, its common sense. support the developers and become one if you so wish. I for one will be buying doom3 the day it comes out. I'm not going to bother with a demo, I'm not going to pirate it, I'm going to *proudly* display my box on top of my monitor. I dont need to try before I buy, its id, its going to rock.
I've had great success with hot swapping PCI cards, Hard Drives, and CD Drives with XP. The trick is in device manager:
:)
Remove Device:
In Device Manager right click the device you wish to remove and select disable. Gently remove the device from your computer.
Install Device:
Gently install device. In Device Manager right click $COMPUTERNAME and select Scan for hardware changes.
I was able to install a new sound card this way, except I selected Uninstall Device before removing the old sound card. Once I poped in the new sound card and refreshed device man it was just a matter of installing drivers (which required a reboot of course
The only time I've had problems doing this is with a friends computer with a sensitive PSU. Plugging in a drive would short out the PSU and required you to unplug the power cord to reset. My PSU seems to be friendly when it comes to plugging in molex plugs when the machine is on.
I've heard you can insert more ram by setting your computer to hibernate (start > shutdown > shift-H if you use the XP eyecandy login), plugging in another dimm, and starting up again, but I havent confirmed it.
At least they got the music right, Shirley Basey rocks. Check out the Radio Head remix of History Repeating.
Mods, this is Insightristing, not funny
We just recently replaced our CRTs with 19" LCDs in the office. Our manager sent a thank you to the CFO who authorized the purchase to say thank you, adding that the increased resolution (1280) enhances productivity. She didnt realize that her CRT could go up to 1600. I was CC'd and as soon as I got the email I went to her office to tell her that with 2 19" LCDs I would be TWICE as productive.
:(.
Just Imagine, a screen for slashdot, a screen for work! But no, I'm still using one screen, and every so often I've got to minimize mozilla and get back to the code.
Dan,
:).
I just went to your site to check out what you've been doing since I left the PPC gaming scene in late '02. I might pick it back up when I get a PPC Phone. OMG, you've ported Quake II! Sure this is a pointless post but I dont think you get enough thanks for all that you've done for the community. I hope you at least get free tickets to Quake Con and a T-Shirt
PS: Thanks for dexplor.
gotta start somewhere. I did a demo once of what we could do with a $10 webcam, microphone, and "off the shelf" consumer IM clients. There was a big meeting in our HQ while I'm at a satelite office of 4 people. The CEO is at HQ giving his presentation and I've got an IT guy in the back streaming it to us, audio and video, through Yahoo Messenger no less (works through firewalls). Operations Manager poped in a said, whats that? Oh, a clever hack i whipped up so we could see the meeting. This way we dont have to pay the outragous fees on the conference call line and I can actually hear what is going on (CEO was using lapel mic).
Just because it didnt come in a big blue box from IBM with a pricetag through the roof doesnt mean it wont get the job done.
Granted I wouldnt expect to rely on a solution such as Yahoo IM for our video conferencing needs but to see the big picture in at the HQ on short notice, it was a need concept.
Saving money (unless we're being penny-wise and pound-foolish) is a very important etc...
After reading what you wrote I understand now. As others have pointed out, its not he cost of the software, its the training and support that can rack up to even higher had we just gone with the "trusted solution" in the first place. Sure I want to preach the OSS gospel, sure I would love to see our company save lots of money by using linux + apache + mysql + ph perl ython but if I were in his shooes, directly responsible for the users that cant be bothered with learning alternative software by reading a 3 minute help text, I would have made the same decision.
I guess the old saying goes, nobody ever got fired for buying "________"
Ever wonder why Radio Smack stopped carying its "Optimous" brand of stereo and AV equiptment? It was all made by RCA. Now, they just cary the RCA brand on the shelves.
Isnt this like the whole "Frosted Mini-Wheats" VS. "Frosted Mini-Spooners" (Brand X) debate? I think a Kroger grocery store billboard in Richmond VA put it best. There is a picture of a field of String Peas plants on a farm. In the middle is a LARGE string pea sliced open. On the left is an arrow pointing to the top pea in the pod which says "National Brand" while the pea in the middle has an arrow on the right pointing to it which says "Kroger Brand".
Not too off-topic: I tried to convince my CIO that we could save money by using 7-Zip instead of licensing Winzip (not at the point to recommend Open Office or Linux yet) and he turned it down because "Winzip is the trusted name in ZIP compression", WTF, its actually PK's format! Dont even get me started on his views of PDFCreator vs. Acrobat.
I've got Vision, and I only pay $5/mo for unlimited (they've since jacked up the price a bunch, one of the reasons I'm not getting a new handset any time soon). And no, the speeds are more like 5-10 KILOBYTES / Second. I've seen peaks around 30-40 but thats usually just when initiating a download, then it starts to level off around 5-10KB/s. Just shows you that the bandwidth is there.
The old "Wireless Web" plan was 14.4kb/s (~1.4 KB/s) which sucked but at the time there wasnt anything better
Oh, and if Sprint PCS is reading, um, I got my data cable so I could download my photos to my laptop, not check my email when I'm on business trips. Stupid greedy twits.
In other news, All your base are belong to us is planning a sequal. Net citicens all around the world unite in a single yawn.
Yes, I watched RvsB S1, yes it was funny, but much of it was pointless filler. The only thing I remembered through it all was a conversation that went something like "We're out here in the middle of nowhere defending the blue flag, why, because the red guys are over there with a flag of their own. Its fucking stupid! If we left there would be no blue flag for them to capture and no point in defending their red flag!"... something like that.
Now its kinda cool seeing the Red VS Blue guys at Bestbuy on the X-box displays doing commercials, gives you a warm grass roots feeling inside, but thats a topic for another rambling.
Awesome, a client for both Windows and Linux! That rocks! I cant wait to port this to my Treo 600! I wonder if it will work on Sprint PCS's 2.5G data network? Any J2ME coders out there wanna help with this project, it'll be uber-r33t. I cant wait until I see the look On the Sprint PCS guys face when I show him that I could just use my data minutes to, um, wait. EERG!!
>8(
MP3 player with iTunes support
Browser that supports WAP, HTML, Frames, Flash, Shockwave, Tabbed Browsing, and thumb-guestures
8 MegaPixel camera with 6x optical zoom that takes SLR lenses
Calander and contacts that syncs with microsoft exchange
2.2" display with 65K colors and 480x640 resolution
802.11g and bluetooth (that works) with kismet
12 cell LiIon battery with 14 day standby and 6 hour talk time
media player capable of playing MOV, MPG2,4, AVI (divx and xvid), RM, DVD,
HDTV that syncs with your tivo, direct-tv, XP-MCE, or mythPC (sorry MyHTPC and freevo, not enough room in ROM)
Direct TV connection with 400 channels
Cheap custom ringtones that dont suck (no more paying 99 cents for a 50 cent ringtone)
Vibrate, Pulsate, Ultra-Vibrate, and Orgasmobrate (for her pleasure)
authentic TOS trek sound for when the clam shell flips open
Walkie-Talkie function that be used without speakphone
SDIO card for memory expansion
4G 1MB/s internet connection
RSS feeds on your "desktop"
9 button thats not pre-programmed to 911
full QWERTY thumbboard with touchpad
VNC, TightVNC, and Terminal Services
Vi, Emacs, Notepad, and that thing macs use
Powerpoint support with included VGA dongle for presentations
SMS, MMS, EMS, and PMS
synchronization support for pop3, imap4, and active-sync
drivers for linux (source included)
dual boot mode with windows CE and linux (2.7)
included sample cowboy neal ringtones
j2me, perl, and C# support
graphing calculator
Included USB cable makes phone act as USB flash drive on any PC (w2k+)
GPS with included geocaches
ability to turn reciever into promiscuious mode with ethercap
SSH (1,2) and Telnet clients that work!
1GHz Transmeta processor
Via Eden 600 MHz backup processor
dual blue cold cathodes with case window
Support for CD-R / RW, DVD-R-RW+R+RW-RAM, MMC, SD, CF, PCMCIA, and 5.25" (double density)
Did I miss anything...
Oh yeah, Phone. Maybe next revision, until then you can hook it up to your vonage box.
Ok, so I was only joking on a few of those things, but seriously some of these features need to be considered. I want an open platform phone that allows me to put RSS feeds on my "desktop" and can SSH and VNC into boxen (sp?)