Big retailers only sell Vista - I suspect but don't have proof that they get steep discounts on Vista if they agree not to sell XP.
Small Independants (that's me) will sell whatever the customer wants, and at the moment most of my customers want XP, so I'm buying OEM XP and pre-installing it for people.
Hell, even Dell offer laptops with XP as an option - the demand is there for it, after all - but the average customer will take what he's given to some extent, and that's what PC Hurled etc etc are banking on, that that's why all these "You can't return it unless it's physically faulty" vista policies are coming from (Go to curry's and ask about returning Vista and you'll be surprised!)
Always had a problem with my media server RAID and sound - it seems XP MCE doesn't understand that sending audio to the soundcard semi-regularly matters more than deciding to index my music again in case it's changed...
Thinking on normal PCI, a sound stream is, what, somewhere between 1 mb/sec and 10mb/sec depending on channels and quality, whereas even a mindless raid card can send data at 100mb/sec (4-channel 4-disk ide raid, 60mb/sec per disk, theoretically 180mb/sec from raid in raid-5... software raid doing the parity would be 240mb/sec... pci limited to 133mb/sec so RAID always maxes it when loading a large file such as a iso or movie)
Roll on PCI-Express soundcards with lots of bandwidth rather than one weeny channel shared between everything...
Now, why is there no PCI-Express soundcards? I've heard there's a packet size issue (in that large packet sizes would make the soundcard somewhat unresponsive) but it might just be lack of demand... I mean, who replaces their onboard sound nowadays?
Has anyone noticed the number of ID3 tags containing random serial numbers in the comments?
I tend to tag things with easytag, and notice, but I'm willing to bet most users never see them as normal players show only album/artist/title...
Re:The better have one HELL of an excuse!
on
Steam Users Steamed
·
· Score: 1
Yes, If i didnt enjoy counter-strike so much I'd install the pirate edition. I bought the full retail version, and have only a 56k modem (broadband on exc. in march) - It took about 6 hours to crawl through an install, takes about 20 mins to launch a game if theres an update, refuses to tell me what it's transferring and just hangs steam while doing short downloads (presumably assuming i've got broadband and won't notice?).
In short, this feels like alpha-level code, and I would not try installing it again. If it died/corrupted I'd try getting the pirate edition simply for the non-pathetic launch time.
Can i get the cs updates (bots!) with the pirate edition though? If i could, i'd do it, if i couldnt i'd probably abandon half-life 2 altogether.
sounds reasonable. now all we need is someone with the drive (and skill) to make it work. Media players'd need to be modified to understand tcp/ip codecs, and codecs would have to be re-written. Possibly someone could write a wrapper that'd grab a codec and put it on a local port.
an advantage (other than safety) would be the ability to run the codec on a different machine - say, your desktop while the player is a thin client (set top box?)
and a disadvantage would be that the codec could still eat all your ram. Cpu time isn't really a problem as it is under windows, as even if something wants all your cpu time it can't upgrade it's priority - and will therefore not really achieve anything by using 100% as everything else on the system will still work fine.
Methinks the king/queen mismatch might get annoying...
and yes, this is not news... why does this stuff push importnat news (like ballmers linux sued threats) off the main page. a curiosities secion would be the ideal place IMHO!
windows-update.com also appears to be owned by some dodgy business.
By the looks of it he's waiting for MS to make an offer.
bloody annoying, as I typo that from time to time at work, when building PCs. We don't build them often enough to justify mucking about with an internal mirror.
I like that idea. Now, do i reply in support or mod you? I was thinking of allowing edits if the post is less than 10 minutes old or something, kind of like a second chance at the preview button.
But it's got until 2010 (or 2007 for longhorn?) to get there, with almost no modern competition.
How many windows users will switch when Windows 98 goes unsupported, and microsoft wants $150 per desktop?
How many windows users will switch after 3 more years of regular blaster/sasser style worms?
This is our best opportunity for pushing Linux on the desktop. Try to reduce the numbers of sasser machines I have to clean (I'm a engineer doing support of the general public, or at least that part of it with $$$)
What happens if you take it back and clain it won't work, say, in your car cd-player? AFAIK, car cd-players sometimes use cdrom players (as opposed to cd-audio) as they can play mp3s and cd-rom players are supposedly more resistant to skipping.
Claiming it won't work in your computer is possibly not as good as claiming it won't work in a comsumer cd-playing device.
Yes, antialiasing on some of the textures would have looked slightly better.
The problem with the flash rollovers is that when you rollover then rollout they sometimes miss the mouseout event, and remain 'stuck' on. Plus they take ages to load, and the site is not really aimed at the kind of people who'd have broadband anyway.
The main benefits of the new design are speed and flexibility, in that i can change it (well, my successor can, as I'm now part-time in Uni)
I couldn't persuade one of our clients to let me remove their splash page.
They mainly wanted my to redesign the
old site
(the web designer before me was obsessed with flash) and change the colours. Since i didnt have the original, i decided to redesign it in a sensible design, without changing the look and feel.
The
new site
is an order of mangitude smaller, and scales, and is easy to change.
Took a while though.
My sites usually have a fixed width links or navigation panel, and the content panel(s) scale. I usually test them down to 640x480, but if the client wants a large logo or other hard-to-scale item, I will often sacrifice 640x480 non-scrolling for it. 800x600 my sites almost always will work at.
I can't remember a site offhand which does fixed width, as this looks antiquated and/or primitive on the larger resolutions. For example, http://www.misco.co.uk/ uses a fixed-width, and looks crap on my 1280x1024 half-desktop-width browser, as i use dual monitors.
Most sites are using css, and this makes for trivial scaling.
My Fuji S602Zoom has a threaded ring and a 55mm ring on the outer edge of its lens adapter.
I can put the Fuji zoom or wide angle lens on, and I've got a Cokin adapter for filters. I'm going to find out if it'll focus through a 'generic' zoom lens if i can adapt it on. probably.
The camera is a 'fake' slr (0.3mp digital viewfinder in addition to screen) but I can't see any benefits to it being a real slr (harder to superimpose shutter information for a start).
While they've just been superseded by IIRC the 6900 they're about GBP 450.
I've got a Fuji A201 2 mp camera. The images are crappy, mainly due to a tiny lens and cheap components.
My main camera is a 3^H6 mp Fuji S602Zoom with a big lens, a threaded ring, manual control of everything, a 1cm macro mode, and raw (well, tiff) image output.
I think that while the average point-and-shoot person will not need more than 2 mp, they probably will want a smallish optical zoom and reasonable lens quality.
I would benefit from my camera taking true 6mp shots (Fuji's hexagonal multi-sensor-per-pixel idea. actually 3 mp images in a diagonal hex layout interpolated to 6. I normally run it on 3. I'd say its equivalent to about 4.5 up to about 6 for straight edges (buildings))
I'm a hobbist photographer, and I often print images on A4 if they're good. A4 really needs about 4 mp so as to not see pixels (5760x1440 dpi printer)
I expect them to build an OS that means if you run something it can't write to the OS or other programs without saying something along the lines of "Sorry, but I'm trying to do $CHANGE_OS_FILES. Please type admin password", rather than a normal user being able to change everything. Installs are easier with what amounts (in the *nix world) as constant root access, but typing a password to install and trojans not running would be better IMHO. Which is why I use Gentoo.
Linux boxes have the inherent security in that you have to deliberately give a program permission (by typing root password) to overwrite/change operating system files. Yes, you will always have ways to get Admin/Root access without the password (as exploits) BUT these get fixed - theres not any way to stop a program emailed to $DUMB_USER from destroying the filesystem when run from windows, whereas there is under linux.
This is the gist of my main frustration with windows. Maybe Longhorn will fix it. Maybe. Microsoft seems to regard this as a feature, not a bug however.
a ford will (usually) get you where you intend to go, but you don't have much say in how you get there.
A Ferrari will also get you where you intend to go, but you can have more fun going there, fiddle with the suspension, and opt to drive sideways at every corner...or not and so forth.
Once you've built your ferrari (or bought... the money aspect of the analogy does not fit the scenario) you could go anywhere. You dont NEED to know how to change the rear shock damping, but you can do more if you do. With a ford, once youve built your ford you can merely drive places. You don't have the option of powerslides or fiddling the car setup to how you like it. The tradeoff is configuability versus simplicity.
I'm stashing mine on a fileserver (soon to be backed up/raided Real Soon Now)
they appear on any computer in my house under/pics and either have read-only access (as guest) or read-write access when logged in.
the sorting system is something like category/sub-cat/item such as, say/pics/Events/NotCon 2004 or/pics/Holidays/Pembrokeshire Summer 2003
Theres 6.8 Gig, 6989 photos. Most of these photos only have sentimental value. Who else is interested in my (sister/parents/Friend) (standing near some item/falling off surfboard/on top on hill/in house)?
I would estimate others would be interested in about 100 of these photos. These are photos of such things as rare plants under 2cm macro focus and other "odd" photos.
I keep meaning to add a photo section to my website, but the web server's down at the moment (sitting next to be patiently waiting for me to have time to configure bind actually)
Windows: Installed whenever it breaks, or a new machine at work (excepting games) OS drivers blaster (when net connection starts working) fixes (leave chugging all day) blasterfixer norton 2003 (2004 ive had problems with, seems to have far more bugs) zonealarm vice city (why else have windows?) half-life steam
Linux (Gentoo) - installed whenever i get a new machine. OS firesomething (firefox at the moment) thunderbird (mozilla mail) samba xmms (mp3s of share on linux file server) openoffice (the following installed over a longer time) neverwinter nights UT 2004 KDE (i use Kate a lot) The Gimp
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, yes you can. I sell them!
Big retailers only sell Vista - I suspect but don't have proof that they get steep discounts on Vista if they agree not to sell XP.
Small Independants (that's me) will sell whatever the customer wants, and at the moment most of my customers want XP, so I'm buying OEM XP and pre-installing it for people.
Hell, even Dell offer laptops with XP as an option - the demand is there for it, after all - but the average customer will take what he's given to some extent, and that's what PC Hurled etc etc are banking on, that that's why all these "You can't return it unless it's physically faulty" vista policies are coming from (Go to curry's and ask about returning Vista and you'll be surprised!)
Always had a problem with my media server RAID and sound - it seems XP MCE doesn't understand that sending audio to the soundcard semi-regularly matters more than deciding to index my music again in case it's changed...
Thinking on normal PCI, a sound stream is, what, somewhere between 1 mb/sec and 10mb/sec depending on channels and quality, whereas even a mindless raid card can send data at 100mb/sec (4-channel 4-disk ide raid, 60mb/sec per disk, theoretically 180mb/sec from raid in raid-5... software raid doing the parity would be 240mb/sec... pci limited to 133mb/sec so RAID always maxes it when loading a large file such as a iso or movie)
Roll on PCI-Express soundcards with lots of bandwidth rather than one weeny channel shared between everything...
Now, why is there no PCI-Express soundcards? I've heard there's a packet size issue (in that large packet sizes would make the soundcard somewhat unresponsive) but it might just be lack of demand... I mean, who replaces their onboard sound nowadays?
Has anyone noticed the number of ID3 tags containing random serial numbers in the comments?
I tend to tag things with easytag, and notice, but I'm willing to bet most users never see them as normal players show only album/artist/title...
Yes, If i didnt enjoy counter-strike so much I'd install the pirate edition. I bought the full retail version, and have only a 56k modem (broadband on exc. in march) - It took about 6 hours to crawl through an install, takes about 20 mins to launch a game if theres an update, refuses to tell me what it's transferring and just hangs steam while doing short downloads (presumably assuming i've got broadband and won't notice?).
In short, this feels like alpha-level code, and I would not try installing it again. If it died/corrupted I'd try getting the pirate edition simply for the non-pathetic launch time.
Can i get the cs updates (bots!) with the pirate edition though? If i could, i'd do it, if i couldnt i'd probably abandon half-life 2 altogether.
sounds reasonable. now all we need is someone with the drive (and skill) to make it work.
Media players'd need to be modified to understand tcp/ip codecs, and codecs would have to be re-written. Possibly someone could write a wrapper that'd grab a codec and put it on a local port.
an advantage (other than safety) would be the ability to run the codec on a different machine - say, your desktop while the player is a thin client (set top box?)
and a disadvantage would be that the codec could still eat all your ram. Cpu time isn't really a problem as it is under windows, as even if something wants all your cpu time it can't upgrade it's priority - and will therefore not really achieve anything by using 100% as everything else on the system will still work fine.
beat me to it!
"Potentially unwanted software"
seems fair enough.
Well, if your wife had the geek nature she might appreciate it. offer it to a non-geek and it'd flop though.
Methinks the king/queen mismatch might get annoying...
and yes, this is not news... why does this stuff push importnat news (like ballmers linux sued threats) off the main page. a curiosities secion would be the ideal place IMHO!
early post?
would make a damn fine geek christmas present!
*looks through box of old bits*
tristan.scott@at@uea.ac.uk
come on, every other bugger's already got one....
windows-update.com also appears to be owned by some dodgy business.
By the looks of it he's waiting for MS to make an offer.
bloody annoying, as I typo that from time to time at work, when building PCs. We don't build them often enough to justify mucking about with an internal mirror.
I like that idea. Now, do i reply in support or mod you?
I was thinking of allowing edits if the post is less than 10 minutes old or something, kind of like a second chance at the preview button.
Personally I always ask for a "Toilet"
However, I'm British.
Colloquially, "bog" is a popular name.
Never heard the term restroom spoken before - obviously there's no american pollution of english here yet. *ducks flames*
But it's got until 2010 (or 2007 for longhorn?) to get there, with almost no modern competition.
How many windows users will switch when Windows 98 goes unsupported, and microsoft wants $150 per desktop?
How many windows users will switch after 3 more years of regular blaster/sasser style worms?
This is our best opportunity for pushing Linux on the desktop. Try to reduce the numbers of sasser machines I have to clean (I'm a engineer doing support of the general public, or at least that part of it with $$$)
What happens if you take it back and clain it won't work, say, in your car cd-player?
AFAIK, car cd-players sometimes use cdrom players (as opposed to cd-audio) as they can play mp3s and cd-rom players are supposedly more resistant to skipping.
Claiming it won't work in your computer is possibly not as good as claiming it won't work in a comsumer cd-playing device.
Yes, antialiasing on some of the textures would have looked slightly better.
The problem with the flash rollovers is that when you rollover then rollout they sometimes miss the mouseout event, and remain 'stuck' on. Plus they take ages to load, and the site is not really aimed at the kind of people who'd have broadband anyway.
The main benefits of the new design are speed and flexibility, in that i can change it (well, my successor can, as I'm now part-time in Uni)
I couldn't persuade one of our clients to let me remove their splash page.
They mainly wanted my to redesign the old site (the web designer before me was obsessed with flash) and change the colours. Since i didnt have the original, i decided to redesign it in a sensible design, without changing the look and feel.
The new site is an order of mangitude smaller, and scales, and is easy to change.
Took a while though.
My sites usually have a fixed width links or navigation panel, and the content panel(s) scale.
I usually test them down to 640x480, but if the client wants a large logo or other hard-to-scale item, I will often sacrifice 640x480 non-scrolling for it. 800x600 my sites almost always will work at.
I can't remember a site offhand which does fixed width, as this looks antiquated and/or primitive on the larger resolutions. For example, http://www.misco.co.uk/ uses a fixed-width, and looks crap on my 1280x1024 half-desktop-width browser, as i use dual monitors.
Most sites are using css, and this makes for trivial scaling.
My Fuji S602Zoom has a threaded ring and a 55mm ring on the outer edge of its lens adapter.
I can put the Fuji zoom or wide angle lens on, and I've got a Cokin adapter for filters. I'm going to find out if it'll focus through a 'generic' zoom lens if i can adapt it on. probably.
The camera is a 'fake' slr (0.3mp digital viewfinder in addition to screen) but I can't see any benefits to it being a real slr (harder to superimpose shutter information for a start).
While they've just been superseded by IIRC the 6900 they're about GBP 450.
I've got a Fuji A201 2 mp camera. The images are crappy, mainly due to a tiny lens and cheap components.
My main camera is a 3^H6 mp Fuji S602Zoom with a big lens, a threaded ring, manual control of everything, a 1cm macro mode, and raw (well, tiff) image output.
I think that while the average point-and-shoot person will not need more than 2 mp, they probably will want a smallish optical zoom and reasonable lens quality.
I would benefit from my camera taking true 6mp shots (Fuji's hexagonal multi-sensor-per-pixel idea. actually 3 mp images in a diagonal hex layout interpolated to 6. I normally run it on 3. I'd say its equivalent to about 4.5 up to about 6 for straight edges (buildings))
I'm a hobbist photographer, and I often print images on A4 if they're good. A4 really needs about 4 mp so as to not see pixels (5760x1440 dpi printer)
So, yes, i want more megapixels.
I expect them to build an OS that means if you run something it can't write to the OS or other programs without saying something along the lines of "Sorry, but I'm trying to do $CHANGE_OS_FILES. Please type admin password", rather than a normal user being able to change everything.
Installs are easier with what amounts (in the *nix world) as constant root access, but typing a password to install and trojans not running would be better IMHO. Which is why I use Gentoo.
Linux boxes have the inherent security in that you have to deliberately give a program permission (by typing root password) to overwrite/change operating system files. Yes, you will always have ways to get Admin/Root access without the password (as exploits) BUT these get fixed - theres not any way to stop a program emailed to $DUMB_USER from destroying the filesystem when run from windows, whereas there is under linux.
This is the gist of my main frustration with windows. Maybe Longhorn will fix it. Maybe.
Microsoft seems to regard this as a feature, not a bug however.
*ducks windows zealot's flames*
Not a bad analogy that.
;)
a ford will (usually) get you where you intend to go, but you don't have much say in how you get there.
A Ferrari will also get you where you intend to go, but you can have more fun going there, fiddle with the suspension, and opt to drive sideways at every corner...or not and so forth.
Once you've built your ferrari (or bought... the money aspect of the analogy does not fit the scenario) you could go anywhere. You dont NEED to know how to change the rear shock damping, but you can do more if you do. With a ford, once youve built your ford you can merely drive places. You don't have the option of powerslides or fiddling the car setup to how you like it. The tradeoff is configuability versus simplicity.
BTW, I use Gentoo, and drive a BMW
I'm stashing mine on a fileserver (soon to be backed up/raided Real Soon Now)
/pics and either have read-only access (as guest) or read-write access when logged in.
/pics/Events/NotCon 2004 /pics/Holidays/Pembrokeshire Summer 2003
they appear on any computer in my house under
the sorting system is something like category/sub-cat/item such as, say
or
Theres 6.8 Gig, 6989 photos.
Most of these photos only have sentimental value. Who else is interested in my (sister/parents/Friend) (standing near some item/falling off surfboard/on top on hill/in house)?
I would estimate others would be interested in about 100 of these photos. These are photos of such things as rare plants under 2cm macro focus and other "odd" photos.
I keep meaning to add a photo section to my website, but the web server's down at the moment (sitting next to be patiently waiting for me to have time to configure bind actually)
Windows: Installed whenever it breaks, or a new machine at work (excepting games)
OS
drivers
blaster (when net connection starts working)
fixes (leave chugging all day)
blasterfixer
norton 2003 (2004 ive had problems with, seems to have far more bugs)
zonealarm
vice city (why else have windows?)
half-life
steam
Linux (Gentoo) - installed whenever i get a new machine.
OS
firesomething (firefox at the moment)
thunderbird (mozilla mail)
samba
xmms (mp3s of share on linux file server)
openoffice (the following installed over a longer time)
neverwinter nights
UT 2004
KDE (i use Kate a lot)
The Gimp