Options like balls with long sharp spikes (Ooh, I got him in the other eye that time), explosive balls, and acid-filled balls.
Or how about the opponent options: sexy hooker, national politician of your choice, or -- my favorite -- CEO of your favorite computer company!
No "love" lost there, Bill!
The Unofficial Back Doors into Vista
on
No Backdoor in Vista
·
· Score: 0, Troll
We all know there will be buffer overruns, and the occasional hacker access through IE7. I'd even be willing to bet that the new RSS feed being built into the OS at a low level will provide lots of ways into the Bitlocker.
No worries, then! The cops won't be able to get into your files, but the criminals will!
As the Who might have said: "Meet the new Windows, same as the old Windows".
OK, Firsta disclaimer: When I went to a University, the only "laptop" that existed was a tray table you used when you were sick, and a "calculator" was also called a "slide rule". Anyway...
In my opinion, there would only be one way a laptop would be useful, and that's if every one of your text books could be loaded on it electronically, thereby avoiding the need to lug books around all day to class. Of course, in the real world, this would create a problem, because publishers would put DRM on their ebooks, and make sure you couldn't buy and sell second hand texts. You have that problem to some extent now, of course. I remember a teacher who made sure to check each student's text book on the first day of class, to make sure it was the latest one. It turned out he was getting a cut from the publisher of everything sold by the campus book store in an under-the-table deal. A second teacher did the same thing, but he co-authored the book. I think he taught the Business Ethics class:)
Anyway, I question the need for forcing students to spend even more of their hard-earned money on a specific hardware/OS combination on something that really serves no purpose. Of course, I'd say the same thing about a college education in general, but I digress. If they want to use a computer for their term papers, fine. If they want to live in the previous century and use a typewriter (they still make them, right?), then more power to them.
I can see only very limited benefits to doing this, none of them for the student.
And for crying' out loud, don't enable wifi or cell phone reception in the classroom, either! Students don't need it, and the teachers don't (or shouldn't) want it. Teachers have enough to worry about as is.
The problem is there are too many "Average Joes" *now* who either think they can write programs, or who think they can manage programmers. Many of these people are so totally clueless it's pathetic. Part of the problem is Microsoft who leads the way by its terrible example: * Ship a program with known bugs, and act surprised when the customer finds it. Gives them more time to figure out a fix, you see. * Deadlines and ship dates are made by the Marketing Department, or Customer Service, not Engineering. * The first thing to be eliminated when facing an impossible deadline is testing. * No functional or technical specs: tell new programmers to "just read the source code: everything you need to know is in there". Also known as "I'm sorry, EU, but we can't share any documentation for our protocols, because all we've got is the source code"
The worst Average Joe programmer problem I've seen (and it's common): * Bad Visual Basic programmers who think they can write good, working OO code ("What do you mean I'm not supposed to use GOTO?")
Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta take a core dump...er...I mean I gotta take *care* of a core dump...
As I have said in other forums, dealing with DRM is beyond the scope of a software license such as the GPL. To my mind, it would be the same as saying "No program may be written under the GPL that operates a nuclear power plant". Whether you are for or against nuclear power is irrelevant. The point is: what is the purpose of the GPL? The GPL is intended to guarantee the four freedoms, as those freedoms apply to the specific software being licensed.
DRM is a hotbutton issue, and it does relate to freedom, but the freedom of a particular piece of content, not the freedom of a particular piece of software capable of displaying that content.
I believe the anti-DRM battle should be fought in the correct arena. That arena is not GPL software.
When a new game is released, all the fanboys rush out and spend the $50-$60 , whatever. The rest of the planet waits until the prices start going down. I hate to use the "W" word in mixed company, but if you wait a bit, you can often buy a brand new game at Wall*Mart for only a few bucks more than the same title used at a place like EB.
Have you noticed that half-life 2 remains at the same ridiculously high price in stores?
The reason you'll see more stuff like Valve's Steam is that the publishers want to prevent customers for buying a new title for anything less than the suggested retail price. How does this affect Wall*Mart and other retailers? The direct downloading that Steam makes possible puts more money in Valve's pocket than a Wall*Mart sale does. So, Valve really doesn't care if Wall*Mart doesn't sell many copies. It keeps the price artificially high. Now, with the activation that Valve requires through Steam, it gets the bonus of preventing the sale of used games.
For their next trick, they'll sell you games in little bits and pieces for what seems a reasonable price, until you add it all up, and find out you paid...drumroll please...$80 - $100 for the game.
And, due to their marvelous distribution plan, those prices will never, ever fall.
Of course, what's the alternitive? Buying a game cheap only to find it has that crummy Starcrap DRM that messes with your CD/DVD burner? Hell with it, I'm going back to playing Frozen Bubble and Armagetron.
This may well be in response to GPL 3, which, among other things, is intended to tighten the rules involving the mix of GPL and proprietary software as well as forbidding DRM. With the telcos interested in selling ring tones and music downloads posessing DRM, as well as combining Linux with the other proprietary stuff that makes up a mobile phone, they may be planning to create a GPL-2 fork of Linx in an effort to continue to use it in their products.
The creation of an open source allience would make perfect sense in that case.
...Like that I want to listen to any of their new music in the first place. or that I'm interested in listening to digital radio (I'm happy that Howard the Duck no longer pollutes FM radio). As long as they produce nothing I want to listen to, their restrictions are meaningless. The only thing they're doing is shooting themselves in the bottom line.
Personally, I believe they're candidates for some future Darwin Award!
See this pen thing in my hand? Just look into the pretty light. You didn't see anything. In fact, neither one of us was ever here!
(/obligatory movie reference)
Besides, everyone knows they moved the UFO wreckage to Area 52. What's really scary, though, is not the wreckage itself, but all the alien pr0n they found on board.
I'll wait until DVD Jon has had time to work on the "next generation" of copy protected movies before I move away from the DVD.
Besides, if these MPAA bozos think I'm going to devote a 24/7 internet connection to my home theater system, they have another think coming. The next thing you know, they'll want us to use some version of Windows in our media centers,too.
Vista is designed to plug as many of the existing security holes in Windows XP as possible, and then open as many new vulnerabilities as it possibly can.
At this rate, with all the DRM they want to add to Windows, the only ones who will be able to use your computer will be the hackers, and not you.
I have an Acer Aspire 1712 laptop that weighs in at 15 pounds without the power brick (and it is about the size and weight of a real brick), and I can tell you that, while you won't want to carry it with you everywhere you go, it's manageable. You get your exercise, at least. You want to make sure you have a strong bag to carry it in, of course (no place to shave pennies). I opted to buy a second power supply, so I can keep one in my home office, and carry the other in the back of the car when I have to travel.
As a software contractor, I need the power of a full-blown desktop combined with portability.
The battery life on these things is about an hour, but you're only going to use one of these monsters sitting at a desk, near a wall outlet. The battery serves as a battery backup in case the power fluctuates (valuable when traveling to an older building.
Why have a parallel port? Well, I have a good bit of hardware around the house (printers and scanners mostly, even an old Zip drive) that I still use on occasion that only works with a parallel port. It's not dead yet, Jim.
Finally, most of these monsters use desktop parts, which makes upgrading things like memory, CPU and harddrive very nice. For example, my laptop has a 250 Gig drive in it, and I'd like to try one of those 400 Gig drives. There's no such thing as too much disk space.
You have to live with noise with a machine like this. Turn it on, and it sounds like a jet taking off (mine certainly does). The plus side of this is the sort of white-noise effect it supplies if you're working in a noisy environment. You actually get used to the sound after a while, and miss it working on a quieter machine.
Just because a machine like this is big, heavy, and has a short battery life doesn't mean it's worthless or a waste of money. I mean, which would you rather haul back and forth to the office: a desktop machine, keyboard and 17-inch monitor, or one of these things? Oh, they're also great for LAN parties.
Of course, after about a year and a half carrying this thing around, my right arm is twice the size of my left. Wanna arm wrestle?
I'll probably get flamed for suggesting this, but here goes. (Taking my tinfoil hat off for a moment)
It is entirely possible that we could end up with a practical series of guidelines for what constitutes a properly secured computer, enforced by the ISP doing some sort of automated hacking of the connection (what to do if a problem was found is an issue for further discussion). If we end up with a minimum feature set for things like firewall, anti-spyware, anti-virus, etc. then Windows would still be less secure than OSX or Linux, because of its basic design philosophy, but at least it would be forced to have some sort of Internet Condum between its disease-prone OS and the rest of the world (Hey, that'd be a cool product name, say "Norton Internet Condum").
If the goal is really a secure internet, then you merely have to look where the rubber meets the road and test for vulnerabilities. A white list is totally unworkable, and doomed to failure. I worked at a company that tried just such a white list back in the early 90's for its intranet, and changes to the internally developed software alone drove the administrator crazy.
Why is Microsoft against it? Because they don't want someone saying "You can't add that feature to Windows or IE because it puts the whole Internet at risk". Microsoft loves adding features to their OS and applications that sound good on paper, but end up being a security nightmare. And that's without taking stuff like buffer overruns into consideration.
So, this could be a good thing for anyone using the Internet, and bad for companies like Microsoft, but not for the reasons people are writing.
I don't know if it's still the case, but back in the prehistoric OS 6.0.4 days, in order to eject a floppy disk, you dropped its icon into the trash can. Lots of fun training n00bs on that little wrinkle! The floppy drive, you see, didn't have an eject button, in order to prevent the user from ejecting a disk that was in use by the computer.
haven't you *always* been able to use VS as "a Visual Basic type of dev platform", with Visual C++ even ignoring Visual Basic itself?
As far as I know, you have never been able to do "Visual Basic" type of developing (i.e., "drag and drop programming") using Visual C++. In VS-6, the C++ instructions were to use Visual Basic to design your screens, then import the resources into C++ for coding. WTF? This is nearly as bad as the old Amiga OS, where you had to create the GUI entirely in code, using hex to encode any bitmaps you wanted. Arrgh. Unless there's a configuration setting I don't know about, Visual C++.Net (at least 2003) works the same way as Visual C++ 6. At least you now have the C# language (which appears to be Microsoft's attempt to combine Borland's Delphi and Sun's Java using a C++ syntax), which can be developed visually.
But it would be nice if "Visual C++" was really "Visual", as the name implies. If MS can't figure out how to make their C++ truely visual, they can always steal some of Borland's C++ Builder developers to help, just as they did the Delphi developers to help with C#.
Sorry if I'm a bit grumpy. I wanted coal in my stocking to keep warm this Christmas, but the EPA told me I couldn't have any due to Global Warming. Ay Caramba!
1. User carefully adds a metadata tag to each important file on their computer 2. User stores that important (possibly vital) file in a random location on their hard drive. Who needs to carefully organize files when you have a local search engine? 3. User searches for everything because they have no idea where anything is 4. User cries when the metadata tags on their files lead to the disclosure of sensitive information. 5. Users blame Microsoft. 6. Hackers profit.
Repeat after me: "Paranoia is good because everyone *is* out to get me"
Microsoft may load the gun with real bullets, but you're the one who pointed it at your big toe and pulled the trigger! You're using Windows, moron, stop acting like it's Linux and plan for disaster!
That's just unfair! Someone ought to pass a law against these so-called rights.
Oh, they are? That's better. We can't have states like Texas threaten our God-given right to Raping and Pillaging (TM and Patent Pending) our customers, can we? Next thing you know they'll be claiming people have a right to privacy and Freedom of Speach.
I made the mistake on my laptop of listening to drivel like this, that the Windows' Wireless configuration stuff was so great. I tried to use it on a daily basis. Then I got sick and tired of loosing my wireless connection three or four times a day, and went back to the wireless config program that came with my laptop. I've had a rock-solid connection ever since.
There's nothing like constantly loosing your connection in the middle of important work. Thanks, Microsoft!
Imagine what would happen if somebody really did produce a modern-day equivalent to the commodore 64.
1. The C64 had all of its OS in ROM, which meant :
a) No patching could be done after manufacture, so it had to be right the first time
b) No unnecessary features could be added to the OS -- an add-on was required
c) Virus and Root kits were possible, by copying ROM to RAM first and modifying the copied code, but could not survive a cold boot.
d) Instant on 2. The C64 didn't use a native GUI, or DOS or a Unix shell, but the BASIC computer language (also in ROM). Anyone who learned to use the computer at all, was actually using a real computer language. Someone wrote a version of DOS for the 64, and people laughed at him. Who needs DOS when you have full BASIC as the command line?
3. A small tweak to the C64's screen editor converted it into a full screen editor that scrolled BASIC programs in both direction.
4. It used a standard TV for video output.
Now, I know this Dutch company is just using the Commodore name, but if you didn't have to worry about backward compatibility, what would a 21st Century version of the Commodore look like?
1. The OS written in 100% optimized machine language (not C++ or any other high-level language) and stored in ROM, so it could not be changed by malware (not even Sony's). The computer would, therefore, be instant-on. 2. The computer would power-up with a command-line window using some sort of easy-to-use language (any suggestions for something your Mom would be able to handle?) 3. The command-line would appear on a GUI screen of some sort (perhaps something like the XBox-360's?), and be a full-blown GUI text editor with syntax highlighting. 4. Connect natively to an HDTV, with settings for multiple resolutions including 1080p 5. Native output for 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound as well as stereo. 6. Dual-format HD DVD player/recorder 7. Native wireless networking 8. Native wireless keyboard, pointer (mouse, pad, whatever), and game controllers 9. Optional SATA hard drive 10. Optional model with built-in integrated HDTV receiver and PVR software
Anything I missed in this fantasy machine? Use a 64 bit CPU, and you can even call it a C-64! Now, not having played with one, I can't say how close this is to a real-life Xbox360, or a PS3, but I don't think either one is intended to be a computer, and I know Microsoft would have a fit trying to write optimized assembly code that worked right the first time, without patches or bloat. As for Sony, we know that they'll probably build their malware right into the PS3 from the beginning to save us all the trouble of installing it for them
Sometime in the 60's, record album sales began to increase, as people realised that most of the songs on a popular group's albums were being released as singles (on the smaller 45 RPM records). I remember quite a bit of discussion in the industry about this, and the record companies began pushing the sales of whole albums on pop recordings. I believe previously, only a few types of music sold whole albums in any number. Classical music comes to mind.
Groups like the Beatles were particularly consistent in their output, and their albums sold a lot of copies, even without a lot of hits on them (many of the hits were only put on albums later on). The question I and my friends had back then was should we buy just the singles we liked, or the whole album. After a while, we learned that many of those albums were well worth the added cost.
I believe those days are now over. The CD's that are currently available just don't have enough good music on them. The available of singles through services like iTunes and others will erode what little popularity the CD has left.
The current music industry is based on a short-lived phenomenon (people buying whole albums/CD's) that peaked years ago. In a way, the industry realises this, and wants to make more money on each single, knowing the whole album will probably not sell enough copies to maintain profits. The market is going back to normal behavior, and this means the industry will be forced back into a 1950's model, when singles ruled, and radio (including now Internet) broadcasts the key tool to selling those singles. The artist as well as the customer have both changed too much in the last decade or so to maintain the old business model.
It's not about piracy, it's about the product and the customer, just like it's always been.
Slashdot Mirror
"Hey, Earl, it's my turn. You shot down the last probe those Earth slickers sent."
"I still say the Revenue man sends 'em to find our stills."
Options like balls with long sharp spikes (Ooh, I got him in the other eye that time), explosive balls, and acid-filled balls.
Or how about the opponent options: sexy hooker, national politician of your choice, or -- my favorite -- CEO of your favorite computer company!
No "love" lost there, Bill!
We all know there will be buffer overruns, and the occasional hacker access through IE7. I'd even be willing to bet that the new RSS feed being built into the OS at a low level will provide lots of ways into the Bitlocker.
No worries, then! The cops won't be able to get into your files, but the criminals will!
As the Who might have said: "Meet the new Windows, same as the old Windows".
OK, Firsta disclaimer: When I went to a University, the only "laptop" that existed was a tray table you used when you were sick, and a "calculator" was also called a "slide rule". Anyway...
:)
In my opinion, there would only be one way a laptop would be useful, and that's if every one of your text books could be loaded on it electronically, thereby avoiding the need to lug books around all day to class. Of course, in the real world, this would create a problem, because publishers would put DRM on their ebooks, and make sure you couldn't buy and sell second hand texts. You have that problem to some extent now, of course. I remember a teacher who made sure to check each student's text book on the first day of class, to make sure it was the latest one. It turned out he was getting a cut from the publisher of everything sold by the campus book store in an under-the-table deal. A second teacher did the same thing, but he co-authored the book. I think he taught the Business Ethics class
Anyway, I question the need for forcing students to spend even more of their hard-earned money on a specific hardware/OS combination on something that really serves no purpose. Of course, I'd say the same thing about a college education in general, but I digress. If they want to use a computer for their term papers, fine. If they want to live in the previous century and use a typewriter (they still make them, right?), then more power to them.
I can see only very limited benefits to doing this, none of them for the student.
And for crying' out loud, don't enable wifi or cell phone reception in the classroom, either! Students don't need it, and the teachers don't (or shouldn't) want it. Teachers have enough to worry about as is.
The problem is there are too many "Average Joes" *now* who either think they can write programs, or who think they can manage programmers. Many of these people are so totally clueless it's pathetic. Part of the problem is Microsoft who leads the way by its terrible example:
* Ship a program with known bugs, and act surprised when the customer finds it. Gives them more time to figure out a fix, you see.
* Deadlines and ship dates are made by the Marketing Department, or Customer Service, not Engineering.
* The first thing to be eliminated when facing an impossible deadline is testing.
* No functional or technical specs: tell new programmers to "just read the source code: everything you need to know is in there". Also known as "I'm sorry, EU, but we can't share any documentation for our protocols, because all we've got is the source code"
The worst Average Joe programmer problem I've seen (and it's common):
* Bad Visual Basic programmers who think they can write good, working OO code ("What do you mean I'm not supposed to use GOTO?")
Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta take a core dump...er...I mean I gotta take *care* of a core dump...
As I have said in other forums, dealing with DRM is beyond the scope of a software license such as the GPL. To my mind, it would be the same as saying "No program may be written under the GPL that operates a nuclear power plant". Whether you are for or against nuclear power is irrelevant. The point is: what is the purpose of the GPL? The GPL is intended to guarantee the four freedoms, as those freedoms apply to the specific software being licensed.
DRM is a hotbutton issue, and it does relate to freedom, but the freedom of a particular piece of content, not the freedom of a particular piece of software capable of displaying that content.
I believe the anti-DRM battle should be fought in the correct arena. That arena is not GPL software.
When a new game is released, all the fanboys rush out and spend the $50-$60 , whatever. The rest of the planet waits until the prices start going down. I hate to use the "W" word in mixed company, but if you wait a bit, you can often buy a brand new game at Wall*Mart for only a few bucks more than the same title used at a place like EB.
Have you noticed that half-life 2 remains at the same ridiculously high price in stores?
The reason you'll see more stuff like Valve's Steam is that the publishers want to prevent customers for buying a new title for anything less than the suggested retail price. How does this affect Wall*Mart and other retailers? The direct downloading that Steam makes possible puts more money in Valve's pocket than a Wall*Mart sale does. So, Valve really doesn't care if Wall*Mart doesn't sell many copies. It keeps the price artificially high. Now, with the activation that Valve requires through Steam, it gets the bonus of preventing the sale of used games.
For their next trick, they'll sell you games in little bits and pieces for what seems a reasonable price, until you add it all up, and find out you paid...drumroll please...$80 - $100 for the game.
And, due to their marvelous distribution plan, those prices will never, ever fall.
Of course, what's the alternitive? Buying a game cheap only to find it has that crummy Starcrap DRM that messes with your CD/DVD burner? Hell with it, I'm going back to playing Frozen Bubble and Armagetron.
Well, gang, looks like it's time to go back to the dial-up BBS and email via Fidonet.
Party like it's 1989!
Just like Apple's little video player, except Microsoft's has a Blue Screen
This may well be in response to GPL 3, which, among other things, is intended to tighten the rules involving the mix of GPL and proprietary software as well as forbidding DRM. With the telcos interested in selling ring tones and music downloads posessing DRM, as well as combining Linux with the other proprietary stuff that makes up a mobile phone, they may be planning to create a GPL-2 fork of Linx in an effort to continue to use it in their products.
The creation of an open source allience would make perfect sense in that case.
...Like that I want to listen to any of their new music in the first place. or that I'm interested in listening to digital radio (I'm happy that Howard the Duck no longer pollutes FM radio). As long as they produce nothing I want to listen to, their restrictions are meaningless. The only thing they're doing is shooting themselves in the bottom line.
Personally, I believe they're candidates for some future Darwin Award!
See this pen thing in my hand? Just look into the pretty light. You didn't see anything. In fact, neither one of us was ever here!
(/obligatory movie reference)
Besides, everyone knows they moved the UFO wreckage to Area 52. What's really scary, though, is not the wreckage itself, but all the alien pr0n they found on board.
I'll wait until DVD Jon has had time to work on the "next generation" of copy protected movies before I move away from the DVD.
Besides, if these MPAA bozos think I'm going to devote a 24/7 internet connection to my home theater system, they have another think coming. The next thing you know, they'll want us to use some version of Windows in our media centers,too.
Oh, wait...
Vista is designed to plug as many of the existing security holes in Windows XP as possible, and then open as many new vulnerabilities as it possibly can.
At this rate, with all the DRM they want to add to Windows, the only ones who will be able to use your computer will be the hackers, and not you.
Makes you feel warm and fuzzy all over, don't it?
...and stop all this high-level language folderall. Real Men program in raw machine language, not some namby-pamby crutch like C++.
Remember: counting in binary is just like counting in decimal...if you're missing nine fingers!
Won't the MPAA object to using their Intelectual Property like that? Besides, where would all those cute and cuddly 'toons live?
I have an Acer Aspire 1712 laptop that weighs in at 15 pounds without the power brick (and it is about the size and weight of a real brick), and I can tell you that, while you won't want to carry it with you everywhere you go, it's manageable. You get your exercise, at least. You want to make sure you have a strong bag to carry it in, of course (no place to shave pennies). I opted to buy a second power supply, so I can keep one in my home office, and carry the other in the back of the car when I have to travel.
As a software contractor, I need the power of a full-blown desktop combined with portability.
The battery life on these things is about an hour, but you're only going to use one of these monsters sitting at a desk, near a wall outlet. The battery serves as a battery backup in case the power fluctuates (valuable when traveling to an older building.
Why have a parallel port? Well, I have a good bit of hardware around the house (printers and scanners mostly, even an old Zip drive) that I still use on occasion that only works with a parallel port. It's not dead yet, Jim.
Finally, most of these monsters use desktop parts, which makes upgrading things like memory, CPU and harddrive very nice. For example, my laptop has a 250 Gig drive in it, and I'd like to try one of those 400 Gig drives. There's no such thing as too much disk space.
You have to live with noise with a machine like this. Turn it on, and it sounds like a jet taking off (mine certainly does). The plus side of this is the sort of white-noise effect it supplies if you're working in a noisy environment. You actually get used to the sound after a while, and miss it working on a quieter machine.
Just because a machine like this is big, heavy, and has a short battery life doesn't mean it's worthless or a waste of money. I mean, which would you rather haul back and forth to the office: a desktop machine, keyboard and 17-inch monitor, or one of these things? Oh, they're also great for LAN parties.
Of course, after about a year and a half carrying this thing around, my right arm is twice the size of my left. Wanna arm wrestle?
I'll probably get flamed for suggesting this, but here goes. (Taking my tinfoil hat off for a moment)
It is entirely possible that we could end up with a practical series of guidelines for what constitutes a properly secured computer, enforced by the ISP doing some sort of automated hacking of the connection (what to do if a problem was found is an issue for further discussion). If we end up with a minimum feature set for things like firewall, anti-spyware, anti-virus, etc. then Windows would still be less secure than OSX or Linux, because of its basic design philosophy, but at least it would be forced to have some sort of Internet Condum between its disease-prone OS and the rest of the world (Hey, that'd be a cool product name, say "Norton Internet Condum").
If the goal is really a secure internet, then you merely have to look where the rubber meets the road and test for vulnerabilities. A white list is totally unworkable, and doomed to failure. I worked at a company that tried just such a white list back in the early 90's for its intranet, and changes to the internally developed software alone drove the administrator crazy.
Why is Microsoft against it? Because they don't want someone saying "You can't add that feature to Windows or IE because it puts the whole Internet at risk". Microsoft loves adding features to their OS and applications that sound good on paper, but end up being a security nightmare. And that's without taking stuff like buffer overruns into consideration.
So, this could be a good thing for anyone using the Internet, and bad for companies like Microsoft, but not for the reasons people are writing.
I don't know if it's still the case, but back in the prehistoric OS 6.0.4 days, in order to eject a floppy disk, you dropped its icon into the trash can. Lots of fun training n00bs on that little wrinkle! The floppy drive, you see, didn't have an eject button, in order to prevent the user from ejecting a disk that was in use by the computer.
haven't you *always* been able to use VS as "a Visual Basic type of dev platform", with Visual C++ even ignoring Visual Basic itself?
.Net (at least 2003) works the same way as Visual C++ 6. At least you now have the C# language (which appears to be Microsoft's attempt to combine Borland's Delphi and Sun's Java using a C++ syntax), which can be developed visually.
As far as I know, you have never been able to do "Visual Basic" type of developing (i.e., "drag and drop programming") using Visual C++. In VS-6, the C++ instructions were to use Visual Basic to design your screens, then import the resources into C++ for coding. WTF? This is nearly as bad as the old Amiga OS, where you had to create the GUI entirely in code, using hex to encode any bitmaps you wanted. Arrgh. Unless there's a configuration setting I don't know about, Visual C++
But it would be nice if "Visual C++" was really "Visual", as the name implies. If MS can't figure out how to make their C++ truely visual, they can always steal some of Borland's C++ Builder developers to help, just as they did the Delphi developers to help with C#.
Sorry if I'm a bit grumpy. I wanted coal in my stocking to keep warm this Christmas, but the EPA told me I couldn't have any due to Global Warming. Ay Caramba!
1. User carefully adds a metadata tag to each important file on their computer
2. User stores that important (possibly vital) file in a random location on their hard drive. Who needs to carefully organize files when you have a local search engine?
3. User searches for everything because they have no idea where anything is
4. User cries when the metadata tags on their files lead to the disclosure of sensitive information.
5. Users blame Microsoft.
6. Hackers profit.
Repeat after me: "Paranoia is good because everyone *is* out to get me"
Microsoft may load the gun with real bullets, but you're the one who pointed it at your big toe and pulled the trigger! You're using Windows, moron, stop acting like it's Linux and plan for disaster!
Why....why....
That's just unfair! Someone ought to pass a law against these so-called rights.
Oh, they are? That's better. We can't have states like Texas threaten our God-given right to Raping and Pillaging (TM and Patent Pending) our customers, can we? Next thing you know they'll be claiming people have a right to privacy and Freedom of Speach.
I made the mistake on my laptop of listening to drivel like this, that the Windows' Wireless configuration stuff was so great. I tried to use it on a daily basis. Then I got sick and tired of loosing my wireless connection three or four times a day, and went back to the wireless config program that came with my laptop. I've had a rock-solid connection ever since.
There's nothing like constantly loosing your connection in the middle of important work. Thanks, Microsoft!
Imagine what would happen if somebody really did produce a modern-day equivalent to the commodore 64.
1. The C64 had all of its OS in ROM, which meant :
a) No patching could be done after manufacture, so it had to be right the first time
b) No unnecessary features could be added to the OS -- an add-on was required
c) Virus and Root kits were possible, by copying ROM to RAM first and modifying the copied code, but could not survive a cold boot.
d) Instant on
2. The C64 didn't use a native GUI, or DOS or a Unix shell, but the BASIC computer language (also in ROM). Anyone who learned to use the computer at all, was actually using a real computer language. Someone wrote a version of DOS for the 64, and people laughed at him. Who needs DOS when you have full BASIC as the command line?
3. A small tweak to the C64's screen editor converted it into a full screen editor that scrolled BASIC programs in both direction.
4. It used a standard TV for video output.
Now, I know this Dutch company is just using the Commodore name, but if you didn't have to worry about backward compatibility, what would a 21st Century version of the Commodore look like?
1. The OS written in 100% optimized machine language (not C++ or any other high-level language) and stored in ROM, so it could not be changed by malware (not even Sony's). The computer would, therefore, be instant-on.
2. The computer would power-up with a command-line window using some sort of easy-to-use language (any suggestions for something your Mom would be able to handle?)
3. The command-line would appear on a GUI screen of some sort (perhaps something like the XBox-360's?), and be a full-blown GUI text editor with syntax highlighting.
4. Connect natively to an HDTV, with settings for multiple resolutions including 1080p
5. Native output for 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound as well as stereo.
6. Dual-format HD DVD player/recorder
7. Native wireless networking
8. Native wireless keyboard, pointer (mouse, pad, whatever), and game controllers
9. Optional SATA hard drive
10. Optional model with built-in integrated HDTV receiver and PVR software
Anything I missed in this fantasy machine? Use a 64 bit CPU, and you can even call it a C-64! Now, not having played with one, I can't say how close this is to a real-life Xbox360, or a PS3, but I don't think either one is intended to be a computer, and I know Microsoft would have a fit trying to write optimized assembly code that worked right the first time, without patches or bloat. As for Sony, we know that they'll probably build their malware right into the PS3 from the beginning to save us all the trouble of installing it for them
Sometime in the 60's, record album sales began to increase, as people realised that most of the songs on a popular group's albums were being released as singles (on the smaller 45 RPM records). I remember quite a bit of discussion in the industry about this, and the record companies began pushing the sales of whole albums on pop recordings. I believe previously, only a few types of music sold whole albums in any number. Classical music comes to mind.
Groups like the Beatles were particularly consistent in their output, and their albums sold a lot of copies, even without a lot of hits on them (many of the hits were only put on albums later on). The question I and my friends had back then was should we buy just the singles we liked, or the whole album. After a while, we learned that many of those albums were well worth the added cost.
I believe those days are now over. The CD's that are currently available just don't have enough good music on them. The available of singles through services like iTunes and others will erode what little popularity the CD has left.
The current music industry is based on a short-lived phenomenon (people buying whole albums/CD's) that peaked years ago. In a way, the industry realises this, and wants to make more money on each single, knowing the whole album will probably not sell enough copies to maintain profits. The market is going back to normal behavior, and this means the industry will be forced back into a 1950's model, when singles ruled, and radio (including now Internet) broadcasts the key tool to selling those singles. The artist as well as the customer have both changed too much in the last decade or so to maintain the old business model.
It's not about piracy, it's about the product and the customer, just like it's always been.