It's kind of silly, people moan about their bootup time, meanwhile they have 800,000 apps that all launch at boot and run in the system tray. I've never understood why it's so important to have instantaneous access to Quicktime movies, Word docs, or PDF files that it's worth having something running and sucking up resources all the time. Even OpenOffice is guilty, although their app is easier to get rid of than most. Turn off all that shit except for stuff you genuinely need, make sure you have adequate RAM for the OS you're running, and Windows boots plenty fast.
I hate to rain on your parade, but while John Rhys-Davies is great, he's not nearly enough to offset the giant suckig sound that is Uwe Boll. 100% guaranteed Dungeon Siege is going to be awful.
Who else didn't think that the DS movie was still in progress?
I hoped it had gotten dropped. Is that the same thing?
I really think the record labels should go away along with the RIAA. They were a necessary evil when recording, distribution, marketing had huge upfront costs. Technological advancements have made professional recording orders of magnitude cheaper, and the Internet has done the same for distribution and marketing.
Except for the very top tier, artists make very little from record sales. Why bother? Just give the music away for free and make money the way artists have for a long time: from live performances and merchandising. Consumers will be happy, artists will do as well as or better than they ever have, and all of this foolishness will go away. A bunch of greedy record execs will be looking for work, but will anyone care?
I think Second Life gets a lot of play on Slashdot because the the concept is cool in a geeky sort of way: a virtual world with complete freedom to create and do anything. It's essentially the Metaverse that Neil Stephenson describes in the book Snow Crash.
The reality is that it's a low resolution, reeeeeealy slowly loading version of the Metaverse, heavy on furries and flying penises. But hey, it's a start.
There really is no purpose, that's kind of the point. It's a giant virtual sandbox that you can do pretty much anything in. I personally wouldn't spend any kind of money on it, but it's interesting in small doses just to cruise around, chat with people, and see all of the interesting, cool, weird, and stupid things people build.
Actually, yes. From what I've read and what I recall, there were holiday shortages of the NES for several years running in the mid-to-late 80s. They kept it going for quite a while with well hyped releases (Zelda, SMB2, etc.) that would cause a big spike in demand.
The main problem is that critical files such as boot.ini should be writeable by non-priviledged accounts. On linux, you can't overwrite anything/boot/grub unless you get root first. With Windows' broken design (can't really do anything useful on a computer unless your account is permanently set as "administrator") things like overwriting your boot.ini can happen.
Sad to say, one of the few genuine improvements in Vista is that this is no longer the case by default. Even with an "administrator" account, nothing runs with admin privileges unless you explicitly choose to do so. Of course this assumes that you haven't shut off UAC to use software from a vendor who can't/won't/hasn't gotten around to updating for UAC compatibility.
Nintendo has been doing this since the very first days of the NES. In the beginning, I think the lesson of Atari's "ET parking lot" was fresh in their minds, and they didn't want to get stuck with warehouses full of crap they can't sell. These days, I have to think that they've figured out that the long term benefit of the frenzy that is created far outweighs any short term losses.
Ahahahaha... Now granted I'd hang up on anyone who called me for tech support at 3am, but you're nuts if you think you can just flat out refuse to help a family member with a technical problem. I'd rather install Windows ME on a '386 with a flaky hard drive than deal with the nuclear war that would ensue if I ever did that.
I've been a Comcast customer in two different cities this year. I wouldn't say I'm a heavy downloader, but I grab the occasional, *ahem*, Linux distro from time to time. Any reasonably well seeded torrent seems to scream right along for me, as fast as it ever has. Are they not doing this in all areas, or is it limited to heavy bandwidth users or something?
You have to feel a little bit bad for Hormel. Their 60-odd year old brand name has, through no fault of their own, become inextricably associated with a massive, universally despised, worldwide problem. It's one thing to lose a trademark that has become generic, or to have a negative association created because of something the company did. Having the trademark appropriated because of a Monty Python sketch and a bunch of geeks is a bummer.
Just out of sheer curiosity, which variety of non-human are you? Alien or AI? I assume you're not a dolphin, since you don't have a "So long and thanks for all the fish" sig.
They also move the problem upstream to the power plants.
It seems to me that this is a *huge* problem with plug-in electric vehicles. We already have issues during periods of high demand. If the power companies decide to take the cheaper short-term solution and build a bunch of coal-fired plants to meet the increased demand, we end up with a net loss in terms of the environmental cost. It's a great idea, but if the power producers aren't on board and working on new technologies in parallel, the whole thing could be a trainwreck.
True snake oil is completely useless. Monster Cable is good quality, well manufactured cable. For 1/3 to 1/2 of what they charge for it, it would actually be worth using in some situations.
My next job was Micro Center, they kept a daily percentage on how many people you successfully added to their customer database. Not only that, but if you mistyped the address and it came up as bogus, you get dinged for that as well. This is because Micro Center is too cheap to just mass mail their flyers, they rely on the customer data entered at point of sale.
Totally OT, but I find this hilarious. Before I moved, I used to get no less than four Micro Center fliers: one to my wife's maiden name, one to her married name, one to my name, and one to a mangled version of my last name, all at the exact same address.
Nah, the basic problem is that the bigger the company, the higher the density of PHBs. Once you get to a certain concentration, you hit stupidity critical mass. From the outside it looks like malice, but it's really just highly focused incompetence.
I work for a software company that prides itself on its lack of intrusive copy protection. Almost a month after the latest release of our flagship product, I am still unable to find it on any torrent or warez site. It almost seems like, without the technical challenge of cracking the protection, the warez d00ds don't even bother, or at least give it a very low priority. I've never heard of any software with intrusive protection that wasn't cracked within 24 hours of release.
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It's kind of silly, people moan about their bootup time, meanwhile they have 800,000 apps that all launch at boot and run in the system tray. I've never understood why it's so important to have instantaneous access to Quicktime movies, Word docs, or PDF files that it's worth having something running and sucking up resources all the time. Even OpenOffice is guilty, although their app is easier to get rid of than most. Turn off all that shit except for stuff you genuinely need, make sure you have adequate RAM for the OS you're running, and Windows boots plenty fast.
I hate to rain on your parade, but while John Rhys-Davies is great, he's not nearly enough to offset the giant suckig sound that is Uwe Boll. 100% guaranteed Dungeon Siege is going to be awful.
Who else didn't think that the DS movie was still in progress?
I hoped it had gotten dropped. Is that the same thing?
I've known a few women who thought that way.
Official job title: mousterbator
I really think the record labels should go away along with the RIAA. They were a necessary evil when recording, distribution, marketing had huge upfront costs. Technological advancements have made professional recording orders of magnitude cheaper, and the Internet has done the same for distribution and marketing.
Except for the very top tier, artists make very little from record sales. Why bother? Just give the music away for free and make money the way artists have for a long time: from live performances and merchandising. Consumers will be happy, artists will do as well as or better than they ever have, and all of this foolishness will go away. A bunch of greedy record execs will be looking for work, but will anyone care?
Yeah, Poland is so backwards. In the US, we don't need teenagers to derail our trains.
I think Second Life gets a lot of play on Slashdot because the the concept is cool in a geeky sort of way: a virtual world with complete freedom to create and do anything. It's essentially the Metaverse that Neil Stephenson describes in the book Snow Crash.
The reality is that it's a low resolution, reeeeeealy slowly loading version of the Metaverse, heavy on furries and flying penises. But hey, it's a start.
There really is no purpose, that's kind of the point. It's a giant virtual sandbox that you can do pretty much anything in. I personally wouldn't spend any kind of money on it, but it's interesting in small doses just to cruise around, chat with people, and see all of the interesting, cool, weird, and stupid things people build.
Wouldn't that make Bender close cousins with both the NES and Atari 2600?
Yeah, it's just ten years older than the last time you heard it.
Good lord, is the entire continent stuck in 1993?
Actually, yes. From what I've read and what I recall, there were holiday shortages of the NES for several years running in the mid-to-late 80s. They kept it going for quite a while with well hyped releases (Zelda, SMB2, etc.) that would cause a big spike in demand.
The main problem is that critical files such as boot.ini should be writeable by non-priviledged accounts. On linux, you can't overwrite anything /boot/grub unless you get root first. With Windows' broken design (can't really do anything useful on a computer unless your account is permanently set as "administrator") things like overwriting your boot.ini can happen.
Sad to say, one of the few genuine improvements in Vista is that this is no longer the case by default. Even with an "administrator" account, nothing runs with admin privileges unless you explicitly choose to do so. Of course this assumes that you haven't shut off UAC to use software from a vendor who can't/won't/hasn't gotten around to updating for UAC compatibility.
Nintendo has been doing this since the very first days of the NES. In the beginning, I think the lesson of Atari's "ET parking lot" was fresh in their minds, and they didn't want to get stuck with warehouses full of crap they can't sell. These days, I have to think that they've figured out that the long term benefit of the frenzy that is created far outweighs any short term losses.
Ahahahaha... Now granted I'd hang up on anyone who called me for tech support at 3am, but you're nuts if you think you can just flat out refuse to help a family member with a technical problem. I'd rather install Windows ME on a '386 with a flaky hard drive than deal with the nuclear war that would ensue if I ever did that.
I've been a Comcast customer in two different cities this year. I wouldn't say I'm a heavy downloader, but I grab the occasional, *ahem*, Linux distro from time to time. Any reasonably well seeded torrent seems to scream right along for me, as fast as it ever has. Are they not doing this in all areas, or is it limited to heavy bandwidth users or something?
You have to feel a little bit bad for Hormel. Their 60-odd year old brand name has, through no fault of their own, become inextricably associated with a massive, universally despised, worldwide problem. It's one thing to lose a trademark that has become generic, or to have a negative association created because of something the company did. Having the trademark appropriated because of a Monty Python sketch and a bunch of geeks is a bummer.
Just out of sheer curiosity, which variety of non-human are you? Alien or AI? I assume you're not a dolphin, since you don't have a "So long and thanks for all the fish" sig.
They also move the problem upstream to the power plants.
It seems to me that this is a *huge* problem with plug-in electric vehicles. We already have issues during periods of high demand. If the power companies decide to take the cheaper short-term solution and build a bunch of coal-fired plants to meet the increased demand, we end up with a net loss in terms of the environmental cost. It's a great idea, but if the power producers aren't on board and working on new technologies in parallel, the whole thing could be a trainwreck.
True snake oil is completely useless. Monster Cable is good quality, well manufactured cable. For 1/3 to 1/2 of what they charge for it, it would actually be worth using in some situations.
My next job was Micro Center, they kept a daily percentage on how many people you successfully added to their customer database. Not only that, but if you mistyped the address and it came up as bogus, you get dinged for that as well. This is because Micro Center is too cheap to just mass mail their flyers, they rely on the customer data entered at point of sale.
Totally OT, but I find this hilarious. Before I moved, I used to get no less than four Micro Center fliers: one to my wife's maiden name, one to her married name, one to my name, and one to a mangled version of my last name, all at the exact same address.
Nah, the basic problem is that the bigger the company, the higher the density of PHBs. Once you get to a certain concentration, you hit stupidity critical mass. From the outside it looks like malice, but it's really just highly focused incompetence.
Well, it was robust, now it's robusted.
Bada-bing, I'll be here all week, tip your waitresses, etc. etc.
We're a niche market, to be sure, but there's plenty of demand. All of our previous releases did eventually get posted.
I work for a software company that prides itself on its lack of intrusive copy protection. Almost a month after the latest release of our flagship product, I am still unable to find it on any torrent or warez site. It almost seems like, without the technical challenge of cracking the protection, the warez d00ds don't even bother, or at least give it a very low priority. I've never heard of any software with intrusive protection that wasn't cracked within 24 hours of release.