Daaaamn, I was just about to write about "Macross Plus", too. It's funny how great minds think alike, isn't it?:-)
Actually, I do not like the series THAT much (I am not too big a fan of big robots and main characters with strange facial colour), but the idea of a computer-generated pop idol IS interesting.
For those who do not know what we're talking about, there's a review here: http://animeworld.com/reviews/macrossplus.html
How long until we see a computer-generated pop idol in the real world, complete with computer-controlled "feeling" manipulation ("put in more happiness, and some more 'I want to own this CD, too' feeling...")?
If it's just a case of cloning one IDE or SCSI drive, we have had no problems so far with Ghost. One point we always pay attention to is NEVER to clone a drive while Windows is running. We ALWAYS start Ghost from a DOS boot disk. During NT4 times, we had several base install images for the various machine types. Then all we did was boot from the Ghost boot disk, load the image which was kept on a server and then we ran Ghostwalker to change the SID of the installation. Worked fine. These days, we do not use images for new machines, all PCs are installed via RIS (servers are still installed manually). We only use Ghost when somebody needs e.g. a larger hard disk, but wants to keep his installation. Works fine with XP and W2K, no problems so far.
One tip for those who want to use an imaging software on a server with a RAID system and cannot get it running due to missing DOS/Linux drivers for the RAID controller (e.g. if you want to reconfigure the array, but want to keep the installed OS): use NTBACKUP! Yep, the backup software which comes for free with e.g. W2K. In our disaster recovery tests, it was pretty much the only backup software which could reliably back up and restore all the registry data. We have a cron job running which does a full backup of C: including systemstate each day, and that file is then itself backed up on tape via the standard incremental backup each night. So if the system drive somehow gets corrupt, or if we need to mess around with the hard disks in any other way which usually would involve either a disaster recovery or doing a disk image and then restoring that image on a new hard disk, we instead put the backup file created via ntbackup on a different machine, make the new drive bootable (e.g. start an OS install on the blank machine until the point when Windows setup wants to do the first reboot), then we fire up ERD (by Winternals - basically a "windows xp on a CD" which allows you to do all kinds of nifty stuff and it of course allows you to use the Windows drivers for your controller), quickformat drive C: (it still is bootable due to the setup started from CD), map the drive with the backup file on it, start ntbackup and restore the old system to the hard disk. This is WAY faster than doing a complete initial OS install and then restoring the OS from the latest full/incremental tape backups and it WORKS (we had all kinds of problems with e.g. Omniback disaster recovery, since we NEVER got the system back into the state it was), and you can do it even in situations where you cannot do normal disk imaging (e.g. because there are no DOS or Linux drivers for the controller). Total time for a recovery of a ca. 5GB W2K install from the point of "plug in fresh&virgin hard disk" to "log on again": about half an hour, if you already have the ntbackup file available on a network drive.
As others said, it's sad that the "video card history" on that page only starts in '96. There were several other important 3D cards before the Voodoo1. Of course the Voodoo1 really DID revolutionize the way games were played. As soon as the first serious 3D cards came out, you basically selected the card based on which one had working "3D patches" for the games you wanted to play. I remember back then buying a Matrox Mystique because they offered a working 3D patch for Tomb Raider. I already had the game and it played halfway decent on my S3 card (in 2D mode). Then I plugged in the Mystique, applied the 3D patch and whoa - smooooooooooooth graphics:-)
The only problem was that not enough games HAD 3D patches. A standard was missing. No game company wanted to write 3D patches for ALL the cards out there. Then the Voodoo1 came along, and it was WAY faster than anything else, and they had Glide (which apparently was pretty easy to program for). Suddenly, almost all new games came out with 3dfx support - and you had games you NEVER could have played on the old 2D hardware. The funny thing was, once you had a 3dfx card in your machine, the processor power was not that important anymore. The only thing which mattered was that you HAD a Voodoo card in there. No voodoo - no serious gaming. Voodoo in there - happiness:)
Well, then Quake and Quake2 came along, and you all know the rest.
The only thing to remember is that the Voodoo1 DID revolutionize gaming. It was a quantum leap. Either you had one, then you could game. Or you did not have one, then you wanted one.
Just browse to the "benchmarks" section of that review, and you can compare all the cards (not the latest, though - the review is from July, so the e.g. the Nvidia 5950 and the 9800XT is not in there).
Of course it is good for the users sitting in front of their computers to be able to avoid annoying ad banners, and of course it is their "right" to decide what they want to watch and what they do not want to see on their screen - just like everybody has the right to go fetch a beer when the sports broadcast on TV is interrupted due to an ad break.
But users of an ad blocking software should be aware of what their decision to remove ads from their screens can result in.
Let's face it: hosting a web site, if it's not a private homepage but instead a popular one with loads of traffic, costs money. I don't want to do a calculation here, but from what I have heard from various gaming- and hardware-related web site owners, monthly costs are big enough that nobody who is not lucky enough to be the son of a millionaire wants to pay that money every month. So these web sites NEED money from sponsors. Of course these sponsors are not altruistic, they want something in return: they want to place ads, just like newspapers have ads and free TV has ad breaks. The only way to place ads on a web site is of course to somehow place the graphics there. If somebody now decides to use a software which removes the ads from the page shown on his computer, this does not hurt that much. But if EVERYBODY was to use such a software, the sponsors would soon realize that the ads placed on the web site are useless and would no longer sponsor it. Result: no more web site - since, as we figured out earlier, nobody wants to pay the full cost of hosting the web site if it's only a "hobby" one.
It's the same as with every standard newspaper. If somebody was to invent a $30 machine you throw a newspaper you just bought into and which then cut out all ads and pasted together the rest to give you a five page ad-free newspaper to read, nobody would place an ad in a newspaper anymore. A magazine I subscribed to recently mentioned (as a reply to a reader's letter complaining about the amount of advertising) that without the ads, the magazine would not cost $3.50, but instead $15 per issue. Nobody would buy it anymore.
Some say "find a different way of getting money to host your site". But what ARE these alternatives?
Finding a sponsor who does not want to place ads? Good luck finding one. ALL free web hosters want you to place ads on your page or do pop-up advertising. Subscription-based service? This might work, but it destroys diversity. Right now, I regularly read about ten hardware review pages. When some cool new hardware comes out, I read the reviews on all of these to get as many opinions as I can. If all these sites suddenly would go subscription based, do you honestly think I would subscribe to ALL of them? No, I would probably subscribe to one, or maybe even none at all (there ARE paper magazines, after all). If a user subscribes to one page with covers the things he is interested in, there is no reason for him to subscribe to another one. If one or two big subscription based web sites already exist for a subject, new sites would not really have a chance - to exist, they would need subscribers, but who would subscribe to a site which is a.) smaller than the existing, big, one, b.) not as well known and c.) probably bound to close its doors in half a year, anyway?
So this is what i think will happen if ad banner removal software becomes standard on most of the new machines sold:
- after a while, advertising companies will figure out that 70-80% of the home users do not see their ads
- ad-banner based free web hosting will disappear. Commercial web sites will switch to other forms of advertising, e.g. base everything on flash, with obvious results (web sites will no longer be viewable with web browsers not capable of flash)
- private web sites will either be forced to include flash advertising, too (e.g. enforced ad viewing before being forwarded to the "real" web site) or they would have to pay more money for hosting. Most high-traffic private web sites will have to close down,
I have figured out so far is that most posters complain about the design of the GUI even though "Aero", the new 3D-powered GUI which is supposed to be part of Longhorn, is not even included in this Alpha. What you're seeing in the screenshots is just a hacked-together theme for Luna, the XP GUI.
So if you have a look at Longhorn, just remember that this is NOT the GUI you'll see when the final version of the OS is available.
a.) they do it for domains which do not exist. Those are FAR, FAR more than the few deliberate typo-domains.
b.) their "solution" breaks applications which rely on certain error messages.
c.) they earn money by doing something they should not do in the first place. "search help"? Ha! I can already see the advertising...
"Could not find your site "www.toyoota.com". Maybe you wanted to type "www.bmw.com" or "www.volkswagen.com" or "www.tenincheslonger.com" or "www.easymoney.com" ?
It's the same here in Germany. The caller pays (unless the recipient is not in Germany - then the caller pays the cost for a standard intra-Germany call, and the recipient pays the rest, since the caller cannot know that he'll do an international call). Usually, you either pay a monthly base amount and in addition some Eurocents/min of going calls, or you can use prepaid cards. SMS are extra - some providers offer a certain amount of free SMS per month, but usually you have to pay for each and every SMS you send (coming SMS are always free). So, usually it's "coming calls are free, unless you're outside Germany".
Which has led to quite an amount of telemarketing calls and Spam SMS to cell phones. Starting earlier this year, I started receiving Spam SMS (something like "Important! Call back right now!" and then a barely disguised 0190 phone number - 0190 is a "service" phone numbers with rates of up to several Euros per minute, a huge part of which the holder of the number receives), and I have also received standard telemarketing calls on my cell phone. I really do not know where they have my number from, since it's not listed and I usually do not give the number away - they probably simply try random phone numbers. It's quite annoying, because since I know that only a few select persons know my cell phone number, I expect any call to be something important.
Bard's Tale I and II
Ultima I to IV
Racing Destruction Set
Summer Games / Winter Games
Alter Ego
Paradroid
Realms of Impossibility
Karateka
International Karate
Aw man, I could go on and on. I had a C64 back in '82 or '83 (can't remember), as my second machine after a Texas Instruments Ti99/4a. The years I had my C64 were definitely GREAT - I had lots of friends who had one, too, so we "shared" lots of games. I bought a color monitor ("Phoenix" something or other) to go with it and of course a 1541, and later on first a Seikosha GP100VC followed, soon to be replaced by a Star NL10. I later sold the C64 to buy an Amiga2000, but I somewhat regretted it (the selling of the C64, not the Amiga), because some of the (still) best games were C64 ones. I recently bought an SX64 from ebay, as well as a C128D with Dolphin DOS. Both were dirt cheap. Amazingly, most of the C64 disks I stored since the mid-80s are still readable:)
I do not think the company is that annoyed about the world being told that the shift key disables autoplay ('cause that's something mentioned even in the most trivial computer dummy magazine). The real problem, I guess, is that the student wrote that this particular copy protection can be defeated by disabling autoplay. From what I've read, the copy protection works by "stealth installing" a driver via autoplay - something a standard user does not notice, and thus something he probably would not think of preventing, even if he knew that autoplay could be disabled.
But, even considering that, I think it's silly to drag somebody to court for pointint out that a "new and better" copy protection is simply crap.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but ASUS use not ONLY Award Bios. I have a brand new P4C800E Deluxe board here (Pentium 4), and it uses an AMI bios.
Daaaamn, I was just about to write about "Macross Plus", too. It's funny how great minds think alike, isn't it? :-)
Actually, I do not like the series THAT much (I am not too big a fan of big robots and main characters with strange facial colour), but the idea of a computer-generated pop idol IS interesting.
For those who do not know what we're talking about, there's a review here: http://animeworld.com/reviews/macrossplus.html
How long until we see a computer-generated pop idol in the real world, complete with computer-controlled "feeling" manipulation ("put in more happiness, and some more 'I want to own this CD, too' feeling...")?
If it's just a case of cloning one IDE or SCSI drive, we have had no problems so far with Ghost. One point we always pay attention to is NEVER to clone a drive while Windows is running. We ALWAYS start Ghost from a DOS boot disk. During NT4 times, we had several base install images for the various machine types. Then all we did was boot from the Ghost boot disk, load the image which was kept on a server and then we ran Ghostwalker to change the SID of the installation. Worked fine. These days, we do not use images for new machines, all PCs are installed via RIS (servers are still installed manually). We only use Ghost when somebody needs e.g. a larger hard disk, but wants to keep his installation. Works fine with XP and W2K, no problems so far.
One tip for those who want to use an imaging software on a server with a RAID system and cannot get it running due to missing DOS/Linux drivers for the RAID controller (e.g. if you want to reconfigure the array, but want to keep the installed OS): use NTBACKUP! Yep, the backup software which comes for free with e.g. W2K. In our disaster recovery tests, it was pretty much the only backup software which could reliably back up and restore all the registry data. We have a cron job running which does a full backup of C: including systemstate each day, and that file is then itself backed up on tape via the standard incremental backup each night. So if the system drive somehow gets corrupt, or if we need to mess around with the hard disks in any other way which usually would involve either a disaster recovery or doing a disk image and then restoring that image on a new hard disk, we instead put the backup file created via ntbackup on a different machine, make the new drive bootable (e.g. start an OS install on the blank machine until the point when Windows setup wants to do the first reboot), then we fire up ERD (by Winternals - basically a "windows xp on a CD" which allows you to do all kinds of nifty stuff and it of course allows you to use the Windows drivers for your controller), quickformat drive C: (it still is bootable due to the setup started from CD), map the drive with the backup file on it, start ntbackup and restore the old system to the hard disk. This is WAY faster than doing a complete initial OS install and then restoring the OS from the latest full/incremental tape backups and it WORKS (we had all kinds of problems with e.g. Omniback disaster recovery, since we NEVER got the system back into the state it was), and you can do it even in situations where you cannot do normal disk imaging (e.g. because there are no DOS or Linux drivers for the controller). Total time for a recovery of a ca. 5GB W2K install from the point of "plug in fresh&virgin hard disk" to "log on again": about half an hour, if you already have the ntbackup file available on a network drive.
As others said, it's sad that the "video card history" on that page only starts in '96. There were several other important 3D cards before the Voodoo1. Of course the Voodoo1 really DID revolutionize the way games were played. As soon as the first serious 3D cards came out, you basically selected the card based on which one had working "3D patches" for the games you wanted to play. I remember back then buying a Matrox Mystique because they offered a working 3D patch for Tomb Raider. I already had the game and it played halfway decent on my S3 card (in 2D mode). Then I plugged in the Mystique, applied the 3D patch and whoa - smooooooooooooth graphics :-)
:)
The only problem was that not enough games HAD 3D patches. A standard was missing. No game company wanted to write 3D patches for ALL the cards out there. Then the Voodoo1 came along, and it was WAY faster than anything else, and they had Glide (which apparently was pretty easy to program for). Suddenly, almost all new games came out with 3dfx support - and you had games you NEVER could have played on the old 2D hardware. The funny thing was, once you had a 3dfx card in your machine, the processor power was not that important anymore. The only thing which mattered was that you HAD a Voodoo card in there. No voodoo - no serious gaming. Voodoo in there - happiness
Well, then Quake and Quake2 came along, and you all know the rest.
The only thing to remember is that the Voodoo1 DID revolutionize gaming. It was a quantum leap. Either you had one, then you could game. Or you did not have one, then you wanted one.
Tom's Hardware (and other sites, of course) regularly do a "all-in-one" review with benchmarks, e.g.:
d ex.html
http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030714/in
Just browse to the "benchmarks" section of that review, and you can compare all the cards (not the latest, though - the review is from July, so the e.g. the Nvidia 5950 and the 9800XT is not in there).
Of course it is good for the users sitting in front of their computers to be able to avoid annoying ad banners, and of course it is their "right" to decide what they want to watch and what they do not want to see on their screen - just like everybody has the right to go fetch a beer when the sports broadcast on TV is interrupted due to an ad break.
But users of an ad blocking software should be aware of what their decision to remove ads from their screens can result in.
Let's face it: hosting a web site, if it's not a private homepage but instead a popular one with loads of traffic, costs money. I don't want to do a calculation here, but from what I have heard from various gaming- and hardware-related web site owners, monthly costs are big enough that nobody who is not lucky enough to be the son of a millionaire wants to pay that money every month. So these web sites NEED money from sponsors. Of course these sponsors are not altruistic, they want something in return: they want to place ads, just like newspapers have ads and free TV has ad breaks. The only way to place ads on a web site is of course to somehow place the graphics there. If somebody now decides to use a software which removes the ads from the page shown on his computer, this does not hurt that much. But if EVERYBODY was to use such a software, the sponsors would soon realize that the ads placed on the web site are useless and would no longer sponsor it. Result: no more web site - since, as we figured out earlier, nobody wants to pay the full cost of hosting the web site if it's only a "hobby" one.
It's the same as with every standard newspaper. If somebody was to invent a $30 machine you throw a newspaper you just bought into and which then cut out all ads and pasted together the rest to give you a five page ad-free newspaper to read, nobody would place an ad in a newspaper anymore. A magazine I subscribed to recently mentioned (as a reply to a reader's letter complaining about the amount of advertising) that without the ads, the magazine would not cost $3.50, but instead $15 per issue. Nobody would buy it anymore.
Some say "find a different way of getting money to host your site". But what ARE these alternatives?
Finding a sponsor who does not want to place ads? Good luck finding one. ALL free web hosters want you to place ads on your page or do pop-up advertising. Subscription-based service? This might work, but it destroys diversity. Right now, I regularly read about ten hardware review pages. When some cool new hardware comes out, I read the reviews on all of these to get as many opinions as I can. If all these sites suddenly would go subscription based, do you honestly think I would subscribe to ALL of them? No, I would probably subscribe to one, or maybe even none at all (there ARE paper magazines, after all). If a user subscribes to one page with covers the things he is interested in, there is no reason for him to subscribe to another one. If one or two big subscription based web sites already exist for a subject, new sites would not really have a chance - to exist, they would need subscribers, but who would subscribe to a site which is a.) smaller than the existing, big, one, b.) not as well known and c.) probably bound to close its doors in half a year, anyway?
So this is what i think will happen if ad banner removal software becomes standard on most of the new machines sold:
- after a while, advertising companies will figure out that 70-80% of the home users do not see their ads
- ad-banner based free web hosting will disappear. Commercial web sites will switch to other forms of advertising, e.g. base everything on flash, with obvious results (web sites will no longer be viewable with web browsers not capable of flash)
- private web sites will either be forced to include flash advertising, too (e.g. enforced ad viewing before being forwarded to the "real" web site) or they would have to pay more money for hosting. Most high-traffic private web sites will have to close down,
I suggest that, as a punishment, the spammer is forced to apply all those inches to himself. ALL of them.
[ ] You know that this is not the GUI used in the final version of Longhorn and instead only a temporary solution.
I have figured out so far is that most posters complain about the design of the GUI even though "Aero", the new 3D-powered GUI which is supposed to be part of Longhorn, is not even included in this Alpha. What you're seeing in the screenshots is just a hacked-together theme for Luna, the XP GUI.
So if you have a look at Longhorn, just remember that this is NOT the GUI you'll see when the final version of the OS is available.
a.) they do it for domains which do not exist. Those are FAR, FAR more than the few deliberate typo-domains.
b.) their "solution" breaks applications which rely on certain error messages.
c.) they earn money by doing something they should not do in the first place. "search help"? Ha! I can already see the advertising...
"Could not find your site "www.toyoota.com". Maybe you wanted to type "www.bmw.com" or "www.volkswagen.com" or "www.tenincheslonger.com" or "www.easymoney.com" ?
It's the same here in Germany. The caller pays (unless the recipient is not in Germany - then the caller pays the cost for a standard intra-Germany call, and the recipient pays the rest, since the caller cannot know that he'll do an international call). Usually, you either pay a monthly base amount and in addition some Eurocents/min of going calls, or you can use prepaid cards. SMS are extra - some providers offer a certain amount of free SMS per month, but usually you have to pay for each and every SMS you send (coming SMS are always free). So, usually it's "coming calls are free, unless you're outside Germany".
Which has led to quite an amount of telemarketing calls and Spam SMS to cell phones. Starting earlier this year, I started receiving Spam SMS (something like "Important! Call back right now!" and then a barely disguised 0190 phone number - 0190 is a "service" phone numbers with rates of up to several Euros per minute, a huge part of which the holder of the number receives), and I have also received standard telemarketing calls on my cell phone. I really do not know where they have my number from, since it's not listed and I usually do not give the number away - they probably simply try random phone numbers.
It's quite annoying, because since I know that only a few select persons know my cell phone number, I expect any call to be something important.
Bard's Tale I and II :)
Ultima I to IV
Racing Destruction Set
Summer Games / Winter Games
Alter Ego
Paradroid
Realms of Impossibility
Karateka
International Karate
Aw man, I could go on and on. I had a C64 back in '82 or '83 (can't remember), as my second machine after a Texas Instruments Ti99/4a. The years I had my C64 were definitely GREAT - I had lots of friends who had one, too, so we "shared" lots of games. I bought a color monitor ("Phoenix" something or other) to go with it and of course a 1541, and later on first a Seikosha GP100VC followed, soon to be replaced by a Star NL10. I later sold the C64 to buy an Amiga2000, but I somewhat regretted it (the selling of the C64, not the Amiga), because some of the (still) best games were C64 ones. I recently bought an SX64 from ebay, as well as a C128D with Dolphin DOS. Both were dirt cheap. Amazingly, most of the C64 disks I stored since the mid-80s are still readable
I do not think the company is that annoyed about the world being told that the shift key disables autoplay ('cause that's something mentioned even in the most trivial computer dummy magazine). The real problem, I guess, is that the student wrote that this particular copy protection can be defeated by disabling autoplay. From what I've read, the copy protection works by "stealth installing" a driver via autoplay - something a standard user does not notice, and thus something he probably would not think of preventing, even if he knew that autoplay could be disabled. But, even considering that, I think it's silly to drag somebody to court for pointint out that a "new and better" copy protection is simply crap.