Just a question, but is this legal? I have no idea what license Ultima VII is available under (is it even still available comercially?), but unless the source has been released, couldn't this be considered illegal under the DMCA? Or are they able to do this without any 'reverse-engineering'?
As the FAQ says... "So there is no chance for the Exult team to have a look at the actual code"
I guess that Origin probably wouldn't feel a strong desire to take Exult to court, but if they did, would they have a case?
The penguin [Feathers McGraw] is EVIL! Is this mere coincidence, or Microsoft propaganda, given that the game will be available on the X-Box? In fact, I'm sure that Aardman Animation is really an off-shoot of MS, attempting to derive some sort of profit on the X-Box while at the same time sending subliminal messages to gamers across the world, convincing them that Penguins, Linux and OperSource is bad. Also, is it just coincidence the Gromit looks kinda like that dog that was one of the ill-fated MS Office Assistants from wayback? Smells kinda fishy to me...
(Disclaimer: I'm heavily drunk and about to go to bed. It makes sense to me NOW, but so do a lot of other things which I won't mention...
BTW, I hope it is Aardman Animation that I'm thinking of, or I'll get modded down for being factually incorrect... woah! Almost had myself fooled there!)
Really, is it a surprise that Apple continues to survive in the MS-dominated world? Look at the "innovations" from Microsoft - Media Center, DRM, Windows Update (damn, you need IE for that),... nothing really to make most users say "geez, that IS useful. cool!"
Now look at Apple - "you mean I can now automatically do basically anything with this PDF I'm about to print? Damn, that sounds really useful. I'll be able to get this done way quicker and have more time for X" (see here)
BTW, MS has VBA, which can be used to do all sorts of shit on your PC, like Outlook viruses, Word viruses, etc, but Apple's AppleScript seems to be relatively secure whilst still providing enough functionality (see the bottom of this). Although perhaps it's because Apple's marketshare isn't seen as big enough for virus-writers to really take notice - I don't know.
Okay, that's not exactly a rock-solid proof, but I think it does illustrate the orthogonal directions Apple and MS seem to be taking - MS wants more and more control of what you do with your computer (eg, WM8 or 9 or whatever they're up to), while Apple introduces features like the aforementioned that are actually somewhat useful. They also make changes when their users whinge (eg, some of the stuff they put in Jaguar to satisfy old-skool Mac fans).
Perhaps this is just part of Apple and Steve Jobs being 'cool', but it sure makes sense in the OS industry. I'm almost at the stage where I'd consider going MacOSX (with X11) when I next upgrade (at least a year from now, though)
I know at the uni I go to, at least one of the residential colleges (which shall remain un-named), they're still suffering from one of the outlook-exploit viruses that's over two years old! It's not Melissa or the I-Love-You, but something of that kind that the unpatched Windows boxes continue to pass around the college network, choking up bandwidth.
I think that having sysadmin's regularly scanning all machines on the network for known exploits, and then sending them an email informing them how to patch their system is a good idea. If they haven't patched it inside, say, three days, then block their PC from accessing everything you can (eg, college email account, internet access,...) until they do patch their PC.
Also, disabling emails with.exe,.pif,.com extensions goes a long, long way. Okay, you need a firewall, but having a network such as yours that accesses the internet basically requires a firewall (at the very least!). You say you can't add one in the near future? Well... you may be up shit creek. Seriously.
I think one of the biggest issues may be that no-one (or very few people) hears of the games these independent producers make. It may well be an issue with marketing budgets, and the fact that the big game companies/publishers can saturate the game market with relative ease.
Perhaps good ol'/. could review/announce some independent games and see if that boosts their sales? Then again,/. crowd = linux lovers = open source = no pay for software!
*ducks* flurry of AOL CDs
Also, the independent games I've seen (I haven't seen many - maybe three) didn't feel nearly as polished. I know they have bugger-all budget and the small touches are really hard to do well, but perhaps that's what it takes to get a lot of people to seperate themselves from their cash. Either that, or invent really addictive games like Civilization or something.
I can only guess that the poor bastards have been living without internet access up till now. But if you really want spam, is posting your email address to/. the best way to go about it? Why not join up to some free pr0n sites? (And if you actually get free pr0n, let us know, godamnit!)
Okay, as a/. editor you cop lotsa crap when you do a repost You even cop crap for posting about every release of Mozilla/Phoenix/other OS darling But did you really have to revert to denying the existence of the posted article by posting the textual equivalent of John Cage's patented 4:33? (Is the title - pertaining to music creation - a reference to the aforementioned composition?) Are you posing the ultimate philosophical yet slashdotical question: "If a post has no text, does it get read?"
Cliff, I give you 11 out of 10 and salute your originality. But don't let CowboyNeal repost it!
Some folks from Israel have created a computer that runs on DNA and enzymes and... can perform 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC... is just a proof-of-concept.
WTF? Has the world gone mad?
I am made from DNA and enzymes!
My brain performs more than 330 trillion ops/sec (stuff like image analysis, speech recognition, "AI",...)
AND YOU DARE CALL ME "just a proof-of-concept"!?!?
Welcome to the miracle of birth (and cloning). This is the 21st century!
Listen, buddy. I'm the result of billions of years in the evolutionary compile-link-debug cycle. So just show some bloody respect. Would you like to see my proof-of-concept gross-human-mutilation firsthand? No? Then keep your childish insults to yourself!
(from Israel... hmmm... do they cut the PS/2 port off the end of the keyboard cable? *just kidding, folks* )
Wine has really come a long way to facilitate running major applications such as Visual C++. Features that "just work" often do not get mentioned because there is nothing to say. Wine has many excellent features like this. However, I have expressed the problems with Wine currently and I expect that in a potential follow up article many of these will be resolved. Wine has been in development for over a decade now. As it is finally nearing a 1.0 release, I see how much better it was than the 1.0 release of MS Windows.
Using Visual C++ on GNU/Wine gives me all the benefits of being able to develop a 100% compatible MS-Windows version of the game, while saving me the time of maintaining another Win2k machine version of the source and moving to that machine to compile. It has been a great time saver for me and I strongly expect this information will be very useful to myself and others in the future.
Okay, so you can use Visual C++ compiler under WINE. Is that terribly surprising when WINE can run MS-Office for the most part? The compiler takes the source files and libraries and produces an executable or library. I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't think that too much of this would involve heavy usage of the Win32API, much less the lesser-used and less-tested-under-WINE parts. For the most part, the compiler would be doing tokenising, parsing, translation and optimisation, which would in all likelihood use no external libraries or anything.
I don't mean to rubbish this article, I'm just saying that I don't see it as being terribly surprising. On the other hand, I think this is a great use of WINE and is definitely more innovative that anythin I would use WINE for. And as he says in the article, there was a lot of fiddling around with command line arguments and environment variables. But if you're compiling from the command-line under Windows, it's just as bad (no, really).
A much greater "victory" for WINE would be to have the whole VisualStudio ensemble running. But I'm not sure if this is feasible, especially in the short-term. By "victory" I don't mean something along the lines of "Linux now allows you to run a quality IDE", because KDevelop and Eclipse are great IDEs. Instead, VisualStudio and Office are probably the most complicated pieces of software written by MS (excluding Windows itself) and for WINE to be able to run them both as if they were running under Windows would be truly a fantastic achievement.
Well, you may want to have representatives from both industry and academia (where applicable). When choosing representatives from the industry, you want people who are technically on-the-ball and you'll also want people who are more politically-minded (nasty but also handy) to warn you of issues such as "company X won't adopt this unless you include one of their proprietary extensions Y" and the like.
You'll also want to make sure that you select people from a range of companies to whom the standard will be relevant - even a government representative might be a good idea if there's potential for the government to get involved later on. Nothing says 'standard' like having a standards team consisting of people entirely from your company (i won't nod to MS here - other posters can do that for me)
When selecting people from academia, choose people who have been researching this topic or something similar (where possible), but also look out for academics who may not have expertise in this exact area, but have worked on standards teams before. Hell, that's probably a good quality to have in your industry representatives as well.
You'll also need at least one technically-competent lawyer (the better they know the technology and the relevant legal issues, the better).
And you may want to have one or two overseas people in on it, too, to let you know whether or not your ideas are perhaps US-centric and may be changed to becomre more acceptable worldwide.
Well, that pretty much covers my ideas on who should be included. As for your other questions, IHNAOASG (I Have Never Actually Organised A Standards Group), so I don't have any relevant experience and I don't have many other ideas. But I would suggest that a majority vote on all features/points/whatevers would probably be the best way to form a standard.
Remember, Credit Cards companies use neural networks to analyse transactions and decide whether or not they may be faulty, and the success-rate of these babies is higher than you may suspect (okay, I don't have a web-link, I read it in a pop-sci book on maths, biology and AI). So you may be short a few dollars, which isn't good (don't get me wrong), but unless you normally spend $hitload$ of money, they won't be able to buy a Ferrari or anything (mind you, if they only took a few cents from each credit card account, they COULD buy a Ferrari...)
Unfortunately, I dislike all three of the above editors in favour of JCreator - a Win32 IDE for Java. I KNOW this article is about editors for Linux, but hear me out on this one.
JCreator is small, fast and has all I want in an IDE. It is written in C++ and behaves very much like VisualStudio, which is great if you're a windows programmer. Personally, I run dual boot CRUX 1.0/WinXP and if I'm gonna write a good amount of Java code, I choose XP and JCreator, because JCreator feels so much faster than any Java-written IDE/Editor. JCreator is freeware (there is a Pro version for as little as US$35) and I'd love to see a Linux version - I have emailed them about it and it's not gonna happen anytime soon. Damn.
But anyway, there is a big difference between JCreator and Java editors for Linux. I'd like to see a JCreator-like project at SourceForge or something, because I'd definitely use it. (I'm not gonna contribute myself - I'm already working 60+ hrs a week). Does anyone else feel the same way?
I'm guessing the installer/updater plays along with the *NIX user system, right? So what about "chmod a-w httpd.conf" for protecting your httpd settings? If you don't want your settings modified by Apple, use the power of *NIX against it!
But on the upside, if you eat vegies, you'll stay regular, what with all that dietary fibre. Don't eat them, die a slow agonizing death from cancer and a backed-up colon... EAT THE GODDAMN VEGGIES
I'm pretty sure that it's got something to do with the name of the account and how likely random name-generators are to generate that name. But I guess that 'testicles@hotmail.com' really was asking for it. Mind you, I also have robm@ihavepms.com and georgew@rednecks.com, purely for entertainment value!
Your hotmail account IS a passport account, so that to close your passport account, you must close your hotmail account. As it says at hotmail:
New to Hotmail?
Sign Up for a Free E-Mail Account!
and get a Microsoft®.NET Passport!
I don't like it, but it does kinda make sense from MS's PoV. I mean, if you've got Passport, why the hell would you have a completely separate user system for Hotmail?
But I find that Yahoo gets WAY less spam - I've only received ONE spam message in the last month, while hotmail gave me 58 in the last week. And you won't be selling your soul to Bill if you use Yahoo:)
Okay, originally I thought Film Gimp might have been a video-editor or something built on top of The Gimp, but here's what it really is (straight from the horse's mouth):
Film Gimp is a free open source painting and image retouching program designed to be more suitable for film work than GIMP or Adobe Photoshop. Film Gimp is the most popular open source tool in the motion picture industry -- used in Scooby-Doo, Harry Potter, Stuart Little and other feature films.
Go Film Gimp! Go!
Seriously, I use a huge, heavy, solidly-built desk that is at least 20 years old. The older desks seem (in general, not in every case) to be built wway more solidly. This is important for me, cos I have a LOT of stuff on my desk (at least 60kgs all up, plus my weight when I'm killing spiders on the ceiling).
Also, the older desks weren't built with PCs in mind, yet they quite often seem to work better than new "workstation" desks and like - especially those desks with a tower holder and monitor cavity, etc. What the hell do you do with your larger-than-15-inch monitor that doesn't fit in that little hole? I find that a large, flat desk just works better for me.
And one inportant bonus is that I find you can obtain these desks rather cheaply and they last forever.
Just imagine sending in all your grunts to "inspect" your enemy's buildings, watch his military might grow unchecked and then sending your hero over to have a chat!
**disclaimer** I'm all for removing Saddam from power, NOT for his chemical weapons and whatnot, but for his human rights record (yes, I know, there are many more countries like him...) and I partially agree with France and Germany that diplomacy should at least be considered before war is declared.
Please DON'T reply with your view on Iraq, I don't want to start a political discussion (anyway, it's OT).
Re:ATTENTION RIAA! NO NEED TO CONTACT MY ISP
on
File-sharing and AOL
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Pity the poor bloke that actually lives on SeeYouInCourt Rd, Whatareyougonnadoaboutit.
"Alright, buddy, get in the van!"
"What? What's this about?"
"We know you've been downloading illegal MP3s. Now move it!"
"But I don't even own a computer! I only moved in last week!"
"Look buddy, we saw your post on slashdot. Now're you're fucked!"
-- slashdot nabs another net-thief
Okay, I missed the first paragraph of the article - I don't see why distance-learning and theological schools shouldn't have been allowed to have.edu domains before. But check out this quote:
"Somebody who goes six months to a beauty school, I would not consider in the same league as somebody who's even been two years at a community college," said Ralph Meyer, a retired administrator at Princeton University. "There's too much dumbing down already."
Wow! I guess this ex-administrator from Princeton believes that a person's academic background is typically ranked by whether the place of education had a.edu domain.
I don't think it should be about "two years at a community college" - it's not for places competing with colleges/universities - it's for places that provide you with an education. I'm not religious, but theological schools shouldn't have been blocked before. Likewise, is distance learning somehow inferior to Princeton? Not necessarily. You can still go to Princeton or some other "four-year institution or community college"
and end up gaining very little.
Just great - the.edu domain had a clear, well-defined and widely-known purpose. And this is no longer the case...
Why couldn't for-profit organisations like "Dawn's Beauty School" use the.biz domain (like Australia) or even the.com. If there isn't a.biz TLD (I don't know, can'tbe bothered googling) then there should be. OR they should be forced to use something like.biz.us instead.
<rant> But WTF (WhyTF) should they use.us? No-one uses it because... fuckit, it's been said so many times. </rant>
But things like "Dawn's Beauty School" aren't global - their services are only open to those in the US, so they shouldn't use a TLD. But that won't stop them anyway.
If they're for-profit, they should be considered a business or commercial entity, NOT an educational entity. For-profit and education aren't entirely disjoint (no philosophical debates, please) but the.edu domain shouldn't be used like this.
BTW, sorry for going OT like that - must be the caffeinated <jitter> M&Ms or something <jitter>. Oh well, mod me OT if you must.
Slashdot Mirror
Just a question, but is this legal? I have no idea what license Ultima VII is available under (is it even still available comercially?), but unless the source has been released, couldn't this be considered illegal under the DMCA? Or are they able to do this without any 'reverse-engineering'?
... "So there is no chance for the Exult team to have a look at the actual code"
As the FAQ says
I guess that Origin probably wouldn't feel a strong desire to take Exult to court, but if they did, would they have a case?
BTW, FP!!
Firenerd and Thundernerd? Seems kinda fitting, don't you think?
And we can call the IRC client ChunderWord, because that's basically the point of IRC chat.
(to "chunder" is to vomit)
To summarise, don't touch CDRs that smell of almonds. They are "not good". In fact, they will probably break your legs and cause you tremendous pain.
Thank God we can learn everything we need to know from the movies.
The penguin [Feathers McGraw] is EVIL! Is this mere coincidence, or Microsoft propaganda, given that the game will be available on the X-Box? In fact, I'm sure that Aardman Animation is really an off-shoot of MS, attempting to derive some sort of profit on the X-Box while at the same time sending subliminal messages to gamers across the world, convincing them that Penguins, Linux and OperSource is bad. Also, is it just coincidence the Gromit looks kinda like that dog that was one of the ill-fated MS Office Assistants from wayback? Smells kinda fishy to me...
(Disclaimer: I'm heavily drunk and about to go to bed. It makes sense to me NOW, but so do a lot of other things which I won't mention...
BTW, I hope it is Aardman Animation that I'm thinking of, or I'll get modded down for being factually incorrect... woah! Almost had myself fooled there!)
Really, is it a surprise that Apple continues to survive in the MS-dominated world? Look at the "innovations" from Microsoft - Media Center, DRM, Windows Update (damn, you need IE for that), ... nothing really to make most users say "geez, that IS useful. cool!"
Now look at Apple - "you mean I can now automatically do basically anything with this PDF I'm about to print? Damn, that sounds really useful. I'll be able to get this done way quicker and have more time for X" (see here)
BTW, MS has VBA, which can be used to do all sorts of shit on your PC, like Outlook viruses, Word viruses, etc, but Apple's AppleScript seems to be relatively secure whilst still providing enough functionality (see the bottom of this). Although perhaps it's because Apple's marketshare isn't seen as big enough for virus-writers to really take notice - I don't know.
Okay, that's not exactly a rock-solid proof, but I think it does illustrate the orthogonal directions Apple and MS seem to be taking - MS wants more and more control of what you do with your computer (eg, WM8 or 9 or whatever they're up to), while Apple introduces features like the aforementioned that are actually somewhat useful. They also make changes when their users whinge (eg, some of the stuff they put in Jaguar to satisfy old-skool Mac fans).
Perhaps this is just part of Apple and Steve Jobs being 'cool', but it sure makes sense in the OS industry. I'm almost at the stage where I'd consider going MacOSX (with X11) when I next upgrade (at least a year from now, though)
I know at the uni I go to, at least one of the residential colleges (which shall remain un-named), they're still suffering from one of the outlook-exploit viruses that's over two years old! It's not Melissa or the I-Love-You, but something of that kind that the unpatched Windows boxes continue to pass around the college network, choking up bandwidth.
...) until they do patch their PC.
.exe, .pif, .com extensions goes a long, long way. Okay, you need a firewall, but having a network such as yours that accesses the internet basically requires a firewall (at the very least!). You say you can't add one in the near future? Well ... you may be up shit creek. Seriously.
I think that having sysadmin's regularly scanning all machines on the network for known exploits, and then sending them an email informing them how to patch their system is a good idea. If they haven't patched it inside, say, three days, then block their PC from accessing everything you can (eg, college email account, internet access,
Also, disabling emails with
I think one of the biggest issues may be that no-one (or very few people) hears of the games these independent producers make. It may well be an issue with marketing budgets, and the fact that the big game companies/publishers can saturate the game market with relative ease.
/. could review/announce some independent games and see if that boosts their sales? Then again, /. crowd = linux lovers = open source = no pay for software!
Perhaps good ol'
*ducks* flurry of AOL CDs
Also, the independent games I've seen (I haven't seen many - maybe three) didn't feel nearly as polished. I know they have bugger-all budget and the small touches are really hard to do well, but perhaps that's what it takes to get a lot of people to seperate themselves from their cash. Either that, or invent really addictive games like Civilization or something.
I can only guess that the poor bastards have been living without internet access up till now. But if you really want spam, is posting your email address to /. the best way to go about it? Why not join up to some free pr0n sites? (And if you actually get free pr0n, let us know, godamnit!)
Okay, as a /. editor you cop lotsa crap when you do a repost
You even cop crap for posting about every release of Mozilla/Phoenix/other OS darling
But did you really have to revert to denying the existence of the posted article by posting the textual equivalent of John Cage's patented 4:33?
(Is the title - pertaining to music creation - a reference to the aforementioned composition?)
Are you posing the ultimate philosophical yet slashdotical question:
"If a post has no text, does it get read?"
Cliff, I give you 11 out of 10 and salute your originality.
But don't let CowboyNeal repost it!
WTF? Has the world gone mad?
I am made from DNA and enzymes!
My brain performs more than 330 trillion ops/sec (stuff like image analysis, speech recognition, "AI",...)
AND YOU DARE CALL ME "just a proof-of-concept"!?!?
Welcome to the miracle of birth (and cloning). This is the 21st century!
Listen, buddy. I'm the result of billions of years in the evolutionary compile-link-debug cycle. So just show some bloody respect. Would you like to see my proof-of-concept gross-human-mutilation firsthand? No? Then keep your childish insults to yourself!
(from Israel ... hmmm ... do they cut the PS/2 port off the end of the keyboard cable? *just kidding, folks* )
Wine has really come a long way to facilitate running major applications such as Visual C++. Features that "just work" often do not get mentioned because there is nothing to say. Wine has many excellent features like this. However, I have expressed the problems with Wine currently and I expect that in a potential follow up article many of these will be resolved. Wine has been in development for over a decade now. As it is finally nearing a 1.0 release, I see how much better it was than the 1.0 release of MS Windows.
Using Visual C++ on GNU/Wine gives me all the benefits of being able to develop a 100% compatible MS-Windows version of the game, while saving me the time of maintaining another Win2k machine version of the source and moving to that machine to compile. It has been a great time saver for me and I strongly expect this information will be very useful to myself and others in the future.
Okay, so you can use Visual C++ compiler under WINE. Is that terribly surprising when WINE can run MS-Office for the most part? The compiler takes the source files and libraries and produces an executable or library. I don't know for sure, but I wouldn't think that too much of this would involve heavy usage of the Win32API, much less the lesser-used and less-tested-under-WINE parts. For the most part, the compiler would be doing tokenising, parsing, translation and optimisation, which would in all likelihood use no external libraries or anything.
I don't mean to rubbish this article, I'm just saying that I don't see it as being terribly surprising. On the other hand, I think this is a great use of WINE and is definitely more innovative that anythin I would use WINE for. And as he says in the article, there was a lot of fiddling around with command line arguments and environment variables. But if you're compiling from the command-line under Windows, it's just as bad (no, really).
A much greater "victory" for WINE would be to have the whole VisualStudio ensemble running. But I'm not sure if this is feasible, especially in the short-term. By "victory" I don't mean something along the lines of "Linux now allows you to run a quality IDE", because KDevelop and Eclipse are great IDEs. Instead, VisualStudio and Office are probably the most complicated pieces of software written by MS (excluding Windows itself) and for WINE to be able to run them both as if they were running under Windows would be truly a fantastic achievement.
Well, you may want to have representatives from both industry and academia (where applicable). When choosing representatives from the industry, you want people who are technically on-the-ball and you'll also want people who are more politically-minded (nasty but also handy) to warn you of issues such as "company X won't adopt this unless you include one of their proprietary extensions Y" and the like.
You'll also want to make sure that you select people from a range of companies to whom the standard will be relevant - even a government representative might be a good idea if there's potential for the government to get involved later on. Nothing says 'standard' like having a standards team consisting of people entirely from your company (i won't nod to MS here - other posters can do that for me)
When selecting people from academia, choose people who have been researching this topic or something similar (where possible), but also look out for academics who may not have expertise in this exact area, but have worked on standards teams before. Hell, that's probably a good quality to have in your industry representatives as well.
You'll also need at least one technically-competent lawyer (the better they know the technology and the relevant legal issues, the better).
And you may want to have one or two overseas people in on it, too, to let you know whether or not your ideas are perhaps US-centric and may be changed to becomre more acceptable worldwide.
Well, that pretty much covers my ideas on who should be included. As for your other questions, IHNAOASG (I Have Never Actually Organised A Standards Group), so I don't have any relevant experience and I don't have many other ideas. But I would suggest that a majority vote on all features/points/whatevers would probably be the best way to form a standard.
Best of luck!
Remember, Credit Cards companies use neural networks to analyse transactions and decide whether or not they may be faulty, and the success-rate of these babies is higher than you may suspect (okay, I don't have a web-link, I read it in a pop-sci book on maths, biology and AI). So you may be short a few dollars, which isn't good (don't get me wrong), but unless you normally spend $hitload$ of money, they won't be able to buy a Ferrari or anything (mind you, if they only took a few cents from each credit card account, they COULD buy a Ferrari ...)
JCreator is small, fast and has all I want in an IDE. It is written in C++ and behaves very much like VisualStudio, which is great if you're a windows programmer. Personally, I run dual boot CRUX 1.0/WinXP and if I'm gonna write a good amount of Java code, I choose XP and JCreator, because JCreator feels so much faster than any Java-written IDE/Editor. JCreator is freeware (there is a Pro version for as little as US$35) and I'd love to see a Linux version - I have emailed them about it and it's not gonna happen anytime soon. Damn.
But anyway, there is a big difference between JCreator and Java editors for Linux. I'd like to see a JCreator-like project at SourceForge or something, because I'd definitely use it. (I'm not gonna contribute myself - I'm already working 60+ hrs a week). Does anyone else feel the same way?
I'm guessing the installer/updater plays along with the *NIX user system, right? So what about "chmod a-w httpd.conf" for protecting your httpd settings? If you don't want your settings modified by Apple, use the power of *NIX against it!
Or does this not work?
Eat cyanide and ... never mind, that was callous
... EAT THE GODDAMN VEGGIES
But on the upside, if you eat vegies, you'll stay regular, what with all that dietary fibre. Don't eat them, die a slow agonizing death from cancer and a backed-up colon
I'm pretty sure that it's got something to do with the name of the account and how likely random name-generators are to generate that name. But I guess that 'testicles@hotmail.com' really was asking for it. Mind you, I also have robm@ihavepms.com and georgew@rednecks.com, purely for entertainment value!
SORRY - I fucked up and misread your article. I think you have to wait 30 days or something, for the re-activation period to expire.
Your hotmail account IS a passport account, so that to close your passport account, you must close your hotmail account. As it says at hotmail:
.NET Passport!
:)
New to Hotmail?
Sign Up for a Free E-Mail Account!
and get a Microsoft®
I don't like it, but it does kinda make sense from MS's PoV. I mean, if you've got Passport, why the hell would you have a completely separate user system for Hotmail?
But I find that Yahoo gets WAY less spam - I've only received ONE spam message in the last month, while hotmail gave me 58 in the last week. And you won't be selling your soul to Bill if you use Yahoo
Okay, originally I thought Film Gimp might have been a video-editor or something built on top of The Gimp, but here's what it really is (straight from the horse's mouth):
Film Gimp is a free open source painting and image retouching program designed to be more suitable for film work than GIMP or Adobe Photoshop. Film Gimp is the most popular open source tool in the motion picture industry -- used in Scooby-Doo, Harry Potter, Stuart Little and other feature films. Go Film Gimp! Go!
OMG, the /. editors now ADMIT to reposting! WTF?
Seriously, I use a huge, heavy, solidly-built desk that is at least 20 years old. The older desks seem (in general, not in every case) to be built wway more solidly. This is important for me, cos I have a LOT of stuff on my desk (at least 60kgs all up, plus my weight when I'm killing spiders on the ceiling).
Also, the older desks weren't built with PCs in mind, yet they quite often seem to work better than new "workstation" desks and like - especially those desks with a tower holder and monitor cavity, etc. What the hell do you do with your larger-than-15-inch monitor that doesn't fit in that little hole? I find that a large, flat desk just works better for me.
And one inportant bonus is that I find you can obtain these desks rather cheaply and they last forever.
Just imagine sending in all your grunts to "inspect" your enemy's buildings, watch his military might grow unchecked and then sending your hero over to have a chat!
**disclaimer**
I'm all for removing Saddam from power, NOT for his chemical weapons and whatnot, but for his human rights record (yes, I know, there are many more countries like him...) and I partially agree with France and Germany that diplomacy should at least be considered before war is declared.
Please DON'T reply with your view on Iraq, I don't want to start a political discussion (anyway, it's OT).
Pity the poor bloke that actually lives on SeeYouInCourt Rd, Whatareyougonnadoaboutit. "Alright, buddy, get in the van!" "What? What's this about?" "We know you've been downloading illegal MP3s. Now move it!" "But I don't even own a computer! I only moved in last week!" "Look buddy, we saw your post on slashdot. Now're you're fucked!" -- slashdot nabs another net-thief
Okay, I missed the first paragraph of the article - I don't see why distance-learning and theological schools shouldn't have been allowed to have .edu domains before. But check out this quote:
"Somebody who goes six months to a beauty school, I would not consider in the same league as somebody who's even been two years at a community college," said Ralph Meyer, a retired administrator at Princeton University. "There's too much dumbing down already."
Wow! I guess this ex-administrator from Princeton believes that a person's academic background is typically ranked by whether the place of education had a .edu domain.
I don't think it should be about "two years at a community college" - it's not for places competing with colleges/universities - it's for places that provide you with an education. I'm not religious, but theological schools shouldn't have been blocked before. Likewise, is distance learning somehow inferior to Princeton? Not necessarily. You can still go to Princeton or some other "four-year institution or community college" and end up gaining very little.
Just great - the .edu domain had a clear, well-defined and widely-known purpose. And this is no longer the case...
.biz domain (like Australia) or even the .com. If there isn't a .biz TLD (I don't know, can'tbe bothered googling) then there should be. OR they should be forced to use something like .biz.us instead.
.us? No-one uses it because ... fuckit, it's been said so many times.
.edu domain shouldn't be used like this.
Why couldn't for-profit organisations like "Dawn's Beauty School" use the
<rant>
But WTF (WhyTF) should they use
</rant>
But things like "Dawn's Beauty School" aren't global - their services are only open to those in the US, so they shouldn't use a TLD. But that won't stop them anyway.
If they're for-profit, they should be considered a business or commercial entity, NOT an educational entity. For-profit and education aren't entirely disjoint (no philosophical debates, please) but the
BTW, sorry for going OT like that - must be the caffeinated <jitter> M&Ms or something <jitter>. Oh well, mod me OT if you must.