Then you must have some pretty mundane hardware, or you don't stress your system very hard. I've had fresh installs of XP die within half an hour of installation, on hardware that ran older versions of Windows, and Slackware Linux, with no problems whatsoever (a kernel compile was a reliable method of detecting bad hardware back in the day). IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL was a common sight on my machine.
I know most of the time it's a poorly written driver, but I'm arguing against your "XP doesn't ever crash unless you have it improperly configured or have malware." claim, which is simply not true.
And as for Vista... I have an IDE-USB hard drive enclosure that worked fine on XP (original through SP3) and unpatched Vista. After updating to Vista SP1, simply plugging it in would cause a bluescreen every time.
XP is certainly the best thing to come from Microsoft in a long long time, and it does have a remarkable track record of stability, but only in comparison to other (consumer/desktop) operating systems from Microsoft.
"you are required to restart for X to work"
... I was trying to think of something witty to throw in here about the X Window System ("X"), but it just isn't working. Bleh.
Star Wars and Star Trek warp drive does NOT pass through matter in my understanding. In Star Trek, space is streched and "actual" movement is minimal, so "ramming" an object with a warp drive would effectively be a "slow" ram. In SG, the ships actually do exit "normal" space-time and travel through objects (shields, planets, whatever). At least... this is MY understanding.
Star Wars didn't feature warp drive, rather hyperdrives. Hyperspace in SW is a bit like subspace in ST, where objects (effectively) move faster than light. Large bodies in realspace extend into hyperspace (something to do with their gravity), so flying through a star in hyperspace is just as fatal as it would be in real space.
In Star Trek, the warp drive creates a bubble around the ship that compresses space in front of the ship, and expands it back out behind. The warp bubble around the ship keeps the vessel in normal space. Ramming a vessel while at warp would instead be a "fast" ram, as the distance between points A and B while at warp speeds is reduced due to the compression. (Warp Drive).
Neither warp drives or hyperdrives provide any sort of protection against flying into large objects. In the former case, the ship is still passing through space with all its bits and bobs floating around, while in the latter the gravity of planets and stars is projected into hyperspace.
Star-Gate hyper drives seem to operate similar to those in Star Wars, but are much more powerful as they can also cross the space between galaxies. I'm not certain if their behaviour is identical to those in SW with regards to gravity, though.
And that's exactly the point. Most people don't need a mobile home to drive to work, go to the store, or even to go on vacation. If Linux is going down the path of being a mobile home, that's going to limit its use. It's much easier to attach a trailer to a Mini when you need extra cargo capacity than to try and cut down a Winnebago to make it suitable for city driving.
Except that people have exactly that choice. Anyone can (in theory) make a tiny Linux install that includes nothing but the minimum number of drivers and additional features to get it up and running on the targeted system. A barren system can still be run on 486 systems (which some distributions, such as Slackware, still claim to support). Yes, it's not going to speed along like today's multicore multigigahertz systems, but that's not necessarily the kernel's fault. The kernel's not the only part of the puzzle that's grown, userspace tools have grown larger as well (look at gcc, for example).
The kernel's vast compatibility is the cause for much bloat. Supporting hardware that hasn't been manufactured in years, maintaining compatibility as newer hardware demands a different interface. I'm no kernel dev, but I can't imagine it's easy or clean.
(And targeting multiple processor architectures is no excuse for bloat anyway.)
It does when talking about code bloat. And having to add layers of abstraction to support generally incompatible hardware types doesn't help.
And why not? OS X doesn't seem to have had its rate of innovation crippled, and it can dynamically install hardware drivers without a reboot when they're written properly.
And does OS X run on 20+ year old hardware? Kernel development is not just forward looking.
The only time I've needed to reboot my system to install or upgrade a driver has been under Windows. I've built and installed drivers that I missed while compiling my kernel (halfway through the list my eyes start to glaze and everything goes hazy while I struggle to remember the drivers I need), and I've never had to reboot after upgrading the nVidia blob. Windows is the only system I know that requires a reboot for almost every system level action. Even uninstalling normal software often offers the suggestion that I restart Windows.
However, I don't want to be mistaken for a rabid fanboy. I was just arguing that the microkernel architecture Tanenbaum claims is the be all end all solution to all kernel woes wouldn't necessarily solve Linux's bloat problems. Whether it's a monolithic or microkernel, all the driver code and whatnot will still be found in the source tree, with all the kludges required to make it all work together happily.
Basically, my thoughts on seeing the headline were "No shit, Sherlock", followed by "I guess Andy Tanenbaum was right, eh Linus?"
Linus's approach has always been "What the hell, throw it in the kernel". The result is that if you try running Linux on something like a Nokia N800 or N810, where there's only 128MB or 256MB of RAM, it crawls and thrashes even with the swap on flash memory.
MINIX 3 is initially targeted at the following areas:
Applications where very high reliability is required
Single-chip, small-RAM, low-power, $100 laptops for Third-World children
Embedded systems (e.g., cameras, DVD recorders, cell phones)
Applications where the GPL is too restrictive (MINIX 3 uses a BSD-type license)
Education (e.g., operating systems courses at universities)
And what does the Linux kernel target? Desktop, server, mobile, embedded, and just about everything else in between those on a wide variety of different processor architectures. You're trying to compare a Vespa to a mobile home.
Incidentally, Tanenbaum believes that microkernels are the only way to write an operating system. Microkernels divide various core operating system tasks into separate and distinct processes that communicate with one another via IPC. Linux has an absolute ton of stuff in it, from support for ancient hardware many users have never heard about to new and experimental stuff that a regular Joe couldn't even afford. This is not a problem that a microkernel could solve.
So no, it doesn't look like Andy was right, at least not in this case.
Firefox became popular back when Windows 98 was still supported. In Windows 98, there was a concept of "System Resources", involving two 65,536-byte heaps called "user" and "gdi". A new window took a lot more out of each heap than a new tab.
From Wikipedia, since the dates are hazy in my mind...
To combat what they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a stand-alone browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On April 3, 2003, the Mozilla Organization announced that they planned to change their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and Thunderbird.[15]
Windows XP was RTM'd in mid-late 2001. Firefox v1.0 was released in November 2004. So while people were still using Windows 98 at that point, I do not believe it was the driving reason behind tabbed browsing. It's simply a better idea. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find that a tab required almost as much system resources as creating a new window, although that's my uninformed conjecture.
Quake is a highly parallel program with dozens or hundreds of threads running at once just to support its physics, AI, and player control operations.
[Citation Needed]
Flipping through the Q1 source right now, I can find no reference to the word "thread" in the entirety of the client source through both cursory examination and a simple grep. Nor are there any calls to either CreateThread or _beginthread, which one would expect find in multithreaded Windows software. The only library included with the source was the Scitech MGL, there's nothing to be found matching your claim of a "compiled in" threading library.
Considering the system requirements at the time (66 MHz Processor, FPU, 8MB RAM, 1MB framebuffer), I find it difficult, if not impossible, to believe your claims of hundreds of threads. Modern games are just now beginning to take advantage of multithreading.
Either you're talking out your ass, or I'm putting my foot in my mouth.
Farscape, 2001, SG-1 and Star Trek all in one article's first few comments. I doubt it's a record for/., but damn. Pity no one could work a Doctor Who reference in there somewhere.
Yes, less fun music and more boring, pointlessly technical bullshit that only people who subscribe to Guitar magazine care about is precisely what the music games are missing! You know, the same assholes who say "why play Guitar Hero when you can just play a real instrument?" Yeah, those are a rich demographic for your music game. Better court those dudes aggressively with a heavy dose of Yngwie Malmsteen and Eric Johnson.
No we need way more Candle in the Wind! Which version? How about all of them! Genius idea! A Guitar Hero game featuring songs with absolutely no guitar playing at all, or the shittiest, most talentless jerk-offs out there able to pound out the same three note chord bar after bar! AWESOME!
Don't know what exactly you have against technically proficient players, and I'm not sure when being able to play an instrument well became something to despise. It's a good thing there's such diversity in music today. Those of us who appreciate talented musicians can listen to them, while those who enjoy the absolute shit put out by people who cannot even call themselves musicians any more (they're "artists") because they have less to do with the actual music than my bowel movements have an abundance to choose from, even if most of it sounds the same.
Seriously, how many people use Usenet anymore? Mostly aging hardcore geeks, I'm guessing. Which isn't market enough to keep it living.
I do. I'm 33, so I'm definitely aging, but I really don't consider myself a "hardcore" geek, more of a softcore geek with over the top moaning but no penetration.
I use GigaNews Platinum. I'm quite happy with them, had my account since my ISP got rid of Usenet access a few years ago. Usenet used to be a great place for finding somewhat rare and obscure things, but lately (a long lately) it's been filled with spam and trolls. BitTorrent seems to be where most of the action is these days.
I'd mod you up, had I the points. How the GP scored an informative, I'm not sure. Oh wait, yes I am. This is Slashdot, where it's expected to spread incorrect information which could have easily been verified before hitting that Submit button.
NAME
6.8 `memcpy'--copy memory regions
SYNOPSIS
#include string.h
void* memcpy(void *OUT, const void *IN, size_t N);
DESCRIPTION
This function copies N bytes from the memory region pointed to by IN to the memory region pointed to by OUT.
If the regions overlap, the behavior is undefined.
RETURNS
`memcpy' returns a pointer to the first byte of the OUT region.
No magic tricks at all, dependencies are the user's responsibility.
A full Slackware install will, however, include just about everything you need. It is quite complete when it comes to libraries.
I'm running 12.2 myself, at least on my notebook. I haven't toyed with any power management stuff (sleep/hibernate), so I don't know how well it handles that.
I usually grab source packages and build 'em myself, and although I've been a long time off and on Slackware user (it's been my favourite distro since 1997'sh) I've never gone through the process of upgrading to a new version. I generally just reinstall when an update is released.
Hm, kinda rambling here. The too long, didn't read is I personally love Slackware, and have for over a decade. I've tried many distributions over the years, most recently Ubuntu. While I like the spit and polish of Ubuntu, I don't really like much else about it. The init system is convoluted, I'm more of a KDE fan than Gnome (although I'm sticking with 3.5 for now), and the Gnome philosophy of dumbing things down really irritates me. I like to get under the hood to learn how stuff works. Slackware gives me that opportunity... a lot. Sometimes to the point of frustration, yes, but at least the hour spent Googling a solution to my problem ends up with me learning something new.
I prefer an operating system to come lean and fast, and to allow me the option to add features I want.
The problem with Microsoft's way of doing things is that you do not get the option to add features you want.
Take, for example, the "Group Policy Editor". If you were running XP Home, this utility was not included, and (unless my memory is failing completely) could not be installed later. It was only available in Professional. While not a show-stopper as it was just a pretty registry editor, it is still a useful tool to have.
Microsoft doesn't just strip out features people don't need, they strip out the *useful* stuff too, stuff that should be available regardless of how what version of Windows you purchase (and thus how much money you spent).
Personally I wish they'd go back to the Windows 9x era regarding install options. Let the user pick and choose what they don't want. No, I don't need accessibility features or HyperTerminal, but being able to configure my local machine's file sharing policies easily is certainly useful.
Ubuntu is a nice starter Linux, and perfect as a low maintenance Linux, as well. It reminds me of my first Mandrake experience. On the opposite end was Slackware and GenToo, but I should note I was an early adopter of Slackware in the early 1990s and haven't used it since, so I'm only going by that experience.
I'm happily using Slack (12.2, but my relationship goes back to 3.0 in the mid/late 90's). It's still pretty much stuck where it was a decade ago. A little easier/less time consuming than Gentoo, but a far cry from Ubuntu.
Most of the post-setup software I've installed has been from source, and although it's really annoying to play the dependency game with regards to the overabundant number of libraries out there, there is also a certain amount of pride in keeping my system relatively up to date "the hard way".
Also, there was no "virtual machine" for DOS in 9x. Windows took a snapshot of the DOS environment before it took over, and was able to present this environment to the user via V86 mode. This was, more or less, the same way Quarterdesk's DesqView software worked, except without the pretty graphics of the Windows GUI. A virtual machine implies much of the hardware is emulated, which it was not.
... I knew I should have actually thought a bit harder before I posted. This is wrong, as Microsoft did refer to it as a virtual machine. I'm going to ahead and blame my bit of idiocy here on the wicked head cold I picked up a few days ago. Yeah, that's it.
Try deleting the hidden system files (.SYS) in the root of your boot drive and see how far Windows 9x gets while booting.
The 9x Windows did ride on top of DOS, but replaced (and I'm using the word very loosely) DOS with its own kernel and drivers. DOS was still there, hiding in the background, but most everything was handled by the 32-bit protected mode code of 9x.
Also, there was no "virtual machine" for DOS in 9x. Windows took a snapshot of the DOS environment before it took over, and was able to present this environment to the user via V86 mode. This was, more or less, the same way Quarterdesk's DesqView software worked, except without the pretty graphics of the Windows GUI. A virtual machine implies much of the hardware is emulated, which it was not.
Renaming autoexec.bat and config.sys would have no bearing on the Windows environment because once Windows took over, it used its own.ini files and the registry to store and retrieve hardware and software configuration information.
Any drivers/TSRs run before Windows started would still be present after Windows loaded. In fact, one simple change to a single file cause Windows to not even load, booting instead to a plain old C:\ prompt. One could then later start Windows by executing WIN.COM.
Even Windows ME had DOS still hiding underneath it all. Windows versions based on the NT kernel are the only ones that did not rely on some version of MS-DOS to bootstrap Windows.
I really don't think you know what you are talking about.
From some of what I've read online, that seems pretty much par for the course with Blizzard.
I've been reading about folks having to fax or snail mail in a copy of their driver's license just to prove they are the person on the account.
The most ridiculous thing about this is that it's by far easier to just buy the game again and start all over. I don't know if they check for dupes during account creation, but considering that "boxing" is so rampant, and apparently just fine by Blizzard (*), I doubt they'd blink twice.
Unfortunately, I've invested several years and countless hours into the game. I don't want to start from scratch, and honestly I wouldn't want to risk Blizzard screwing me over again in another three years (assuming this doesn't end happily for me, the increasingly disgruntled customer).
(*) On a side note, that's something that I find quite hypocritical of Blizz. You cannot use any hardware device that automates actions, but it's quite fine to fire up several instances of the game on the same machine and use a software solution to send one keystroke to those multiple instances of WoW.
Forgive me, that's my rant for the day. I guess it's pretty nerdish to reply to every response to my whining, even the AC's. Oh well, on the bright side it's giving me some time to catch up on my reading and some television series' I've been missing. Who knew Smallville would turn out to be so good?!:)
I don't play the game like some people who take it to the extreme and/spit or whatever on the opposite faction, just because they're the opposite faction. In fact, I've helped out Horde players just as much as Alliance when I can. I'm out to enjoy myself and have fun... if helping someone else out makes something easier for them, then I do it regardless of faction.
Well, I do subscribe to an honesty is best policy. I don't like lying more than I don't like cheating, and slightly less than I like being accused of cheating, which is what I got from their You Are Banned e-mail ("exploitation of the World of Warcraft economy").
But you're right, I did violate their terms, even if it was months ago. Whether I think they're draconian or not is pretty irrelevant. I had permission, even encouragement, from my friend to use his account. I'm just hoping he hasn't been banned as well due to my mistakes. He doesn't play often due to his employment, but I guess he'll be on the phone telling me if anything goes wrong the next time he signs in.
Early this Saturday past, after taking my hourly cigarette break around midnight, I came back to a disconnected from server message. Trying to log back in I was told my account had been banned.
The e-mail I later received claimed I had been exploiting the World of Warcraft economy, which seems to be Blizzard's catch-all excuse for banning.
Now, I know everyone who's ever been banned claims innocence, and I'm no different. But I can honestly say that I've NEVER bought gold from an online reseller, nor have I ever paid for someone else to play my character. I pay my monthly fee so I can play the damned game, and to be accused of cheating and banned without even the opportunity to speak for myself is an huge insult.
I'll readily admit that I've done some things against their EULA in one case, which was firing up my friend's account so I could use his character to run my lowbie through two instances. Oh, and I bought my friend his epic mount while I was on his toon. But this was months ago, and I've not done anything unacceptable either before or since. Hell, I religiously report EVERY gold seller that spams their noise in chat.
I've been a fan of Blizzard games pretty much since the beginning, and I can reach back into the stack of olden disks and pull out my copy of the original Orcs and Humans. I've been a WoW subscriber since February of 05.
Needless to say, I'm really pissed at Blizzard treating a loyal fan of theirs, as well as a paying customer (my WoW account's paid until January, even) like this.
Still waiting for a reply from their account admin department to get this sorted out, although I'm not holding my breath they'll fix this and compensate me for their mistake somehow. I've got tons of screenshots (over a gig), documenting ME playing MY characters covering the last 3 years as proof that I play my own damned account. I'm a single father currently between jobs, I have nothing better to do with my time (aside from finding another job, of course). Needless to say, this is seriously going to impact any future purchases when it comes to Blizzard products. Not that any amount of money I spend on their work matters next to their other 10 million subscribers (or whatever they're up to now).
I guess this is just a buyer beware warning. You can be banned at the drop of a hat by Blizzard, and it takes forever to get things sorted out. The worst part is that I have to prove my innocence instead of Blizzard having to prove my guilt.
It's a memory addressing issue and a 32 bit memory address simply can't access more than 4GB of RAM.
This is not entirely accurate. As has been mentioned earlier, the PAE support that has been available in processors for numerous years allows an operating system to circumvent this limitation.
One does not violate Godwin's Law, one invokes it.
To violate it would mean that the subject of said Law is never mentioned in an infinitely long thread, which as jd mentioned earlier, would be impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
Then you must have some pretty mundane hardware, or you don't stress your system very hard. I've had fresh installs of XP die within half an hour of installation, on hardware that ran older versions of Windows, and Slackware Linux, with no problems whatsoever (a kernel compile was a reliable method of detecting bad hardware back in the day). IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL was a common sight on my machine.
I know most of the time it's a poorly written driver, but I'm arguing against your "XP doesn't ever crash unless you have it improperly configured or have malware." claim, which is simply not true.
And as for Vista... I have an IDE-USB hard drive enclosure that worked fine on XP (original through SP3) and unpatched Vista. After updating to Vista SP1, simply plugging it in would cause a bluescreen every time.
XP is certainly the best thing to come from Microsoft in a long long time, and it does have a remarkable track record of stability, but only in comparison to other (consumer/desktop) operating systems from Microsoft.
"you are required to restart for X to work"
... I was trying to think of something witty to throw in here about the X Window System ("X"), but it just isn't working. Bleh.
Star Wars and Star Trek warp drive does NOT pass through matter in my understanding. In Star Trek, space is streched and "actual" movement is minimal, so "ramming" an object with a warp drive would effectively be a "slow" ram. In SG, the ships actually do exit "normal" space-time and travel through objects (shields, planets, whatever). At least... this is MY understanding.
Star Wars didn't feature warp drive, rather hyperdrives. Hyperspace in SW is a bit like subspace in ST, where objects (effectively) move faster than light. Large bodies in realspace extend into hyperspace (something to do with their gravity), so flying through a star in hyperspace is just as fatal as it would be in real space.
In Star Trek, the warp drive creates a bubble around the ship that compresses space in front of the ship, and expands it back out behind. The warp bubble around the ship keeps the vessel in normal space. Ramming a vessel while at warp would instead be a "fast" ram, as the distance between points A and B while at warp speeds is reduced due to the compression. (Warp Drive).
Neither warp drives or hyperdrives provide any sort of protection against flying into large objects. In the former case, the ship is still passing through space with all its bits and bobs floating around, while in the latter the gravity of planets and stars is projected into hyperspace.
Star-Gate hyper drives seem to operate similar to those in Star Wars, but are much more powerful as they can also cross the space between galaxies. I'm not certain if their behaviour is identical to those in SW with regards to gravity, though.
Note: IANAL, nor am I a merkin.
You're not a pubic wig for women?
There must be some subtle joke in there that I am completely missing...
And that's exactly the point. Most people don't need a mobile home to drive to work, go to the store, or even to go on vacation. If Linux is going down the path of being a mobile home, that's going to limit its use. It's much easier to attach a trailer to a Mini when you need extra cargo capacity than to try and cut down a Winnebago to make it suitable for city driving.
Except that people have exactly that choice. Anyone can (in theory) make a tiny Linux install that includes nothing but the minimum number of drivers and additional features to get it up and running on the targeted system. A barren system can still be run on 486 systems (which some distributions, such as Slackware, still claim to support). Yes, it's not going to speed along like today's multicore multigigahertz systems, but that's not necessarily the kernel's fault. The kernel's not the only part of the puzzle that's grown, userspace tools have grown larger as well (look at gcc, for example).
The kernel's vast compatibility is the cause for much bloat. Supporting hardware that hasn't been manufactured in years, maintaining compatibility as newer hardware demands a different interface. I'm no kernel dev, but I can't imagine it's easy or clean.
(And targeting multiple processor architectures is no excuse for bloat anyway.)
It does when talking about code bloat. And having to add layers of abstraction to support generally incompatible hardware types doesn't help.
And why not? OS X doesn't seem to have had its rate of innovation crippled, and it can dynamically install hardware drivers without a reboot when they're written properly.
And does OS X run on 20+ year old hardware? Kernel development is not just forward looking.
The only time I've needed to reboot my system to install or upgrade a driver has been under Windows. I've built and installed drivers that I missed while compiling my kernel (halfway through the list my eyes start to glaze and everything goes hazy while I struggle to remember the drivers I need), and I've never had to reboot after upgrading the nVidia blob. Windows is the only system I know that requires a reboot for almost every system level action. Even uninstalling normal software often offers the suggestion that I restart Windows.
However, I don't want to be mistaken for a rabid fanboy. I was just arguing that the microkernel architecture Tanenbaum claims is the be all end all solution to all kernel woes wouldn't necessarily solve Linux's bloat problems. Whether it's a monolithic or microkernel, all the driver code and whatnot will still be found in the source tree, with all the kludges required to make it all work together happily.
Basically, my thoughts on seeing the headline were "No shit, Sherlock", followed by "I guess Andy Tanenbaum was right, eh Linus?"
Linus's approach has always been "What the hell, throw it in the kernel". The result is that if you try running Linux on something like a Nokia N800 or N810, where there's only 128MB or 256MB of RAM, it crawls and thrashes even with the swap on flash memory.
Meanwhile, Tanenbaum's MINIX requires 16MB of RAM. Good luck getting any kind of Linux to load in that amount of space.
From parent's linked to site:
MINIX 3 is initially targeted at the following areas:
And what does the Linux kernel target? Desktop, server, mobile, embedded, and just about everything else in between those on a wide variety of different processor architectures. You're trying to compare a Vespa to a mobile home.
Incidentally, Tanenbaum believes that microkernels are the only way to write an operating system. Microkernels divide various core operating system tasks into separate and distinct processes that communicate with one another via IPC. Linux has an absolute ton of stuff in it, from support for ancient hardware many users have never heard about to new and experimental stuff that a regular Joe couldn't even afford. This is not a problem that a microkernel could solve.
So no, it doesn't look like Andy was right, at least not in this case.
Firefox became popular back when Windows 98 was still supported. In Windows 98, there was a concept of "System Resources", involving two 65,536-byte heaps called "user" and "gdi". A new window took a lot more out of each heap than a new tab.
From Wikipedia, since the dates are hazy in my mind...
To combat what they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a stand-alone browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On April 3, 2003, the Mozilla Organization announced that they planned to change their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and Thunderbird.[15]
Windows XP was RTM'd in mid-late 2001. Firefox v1.0 was released in November 2004. So while people were still using Windows 98 at that point, I do not believe it was the driving reason behind tabbed browsing. It's simply a better idea. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find that a tab required almost as much system resources as creating a new window, although that's my uninformed conjecture.
Quake is a highly parallel program with dozens or hundreds of threads running at once just to support its physics, AI, and player control operations.
[Citation Needed]
Flipping through the Q1 source right now, I can find no reference to the word "thread" in the entirety of the client source through both cursory examination and a simple grep. Nor are there any calls to either CreateThread or _beginthread, which one would expect find in multithreaded Windows software. The only library included with the source was the Scitech MGL, there's nothing to be found matching your claim of a "compiled in" threading library.
Considering the system requirements at the time (66 MHz Processor, FPU, 8MB RAM, 1MB framebuffer), I find it difficult, if not impossible, to believe your claims of hundreds of threads. Modern games are just now beginning to take advantage of multithreading.
Either you're talking out your ass, or I'm putting my foot in my mouth.
Farscape, 2001, SG-1 and Star Trek all in one article's first few comments. I doubt it's a record for /., but damn. Pity no one could work a Doctor Who reference in there somewhere.
Yeah I'm off-topic, so sue... erm, mod me.
Yes, less fun music and more boring, pointlessly technical bullshit that only people who subscribe to Guitar magazine care about is precisely what the music games are missing! You know, the same assholes who say "why play Guitar Hero when you can just play a real instrument?" Yeah, those are a rich demographic for your music game. Better court those dudes aggressively with a heavy dose of Yngwie Malmsteen and Eric Johnson.
No we need way more Candle in the Wind! Which version? How about all of them! Genius idea! A Guitar Hero game featuring songs with absolutely no guitar playing at all, or the shittiest, most talentless jerk-offs out there able to pound out the same three note chord bar after bar! AWESOME!
Don't know what exactly you have against technically proficient players, and I'm not sure when being able to play an instrument well became something to despise. It's a good thing there's such diversity in music today. Those of us who appreciate talented musicians can listen to them, while those who enjoy the absolute shit put out by people who cannot even call themselves musicians any more (they're "artists") because they have less to do with the actual music than my bowel movements have an abundance to choose from, even if most of it sounds the same.
Seriously, how many people use Usenet anymore? Mostly aging hardcore geeks, I'm guessing. Which isn't market enough to keep it living.
I do. I'm 33, so I'm definitely aging, but I really don't consider myself a "hardcore" geek, more of a softcore geek with over the top moaning but no penetration.
I use GigaNews Platinum. I'm quite happy with them, had my account since my ISP got rid of Usenet access a few years ago. Usenet used to be a great place for finding somewhat rare and obscure things, but lately (a long lately) it's been filled with spam and trolls. BitTorrent seems to be where most of the action is these days.
I'd mod you up, had I the points. How the GP scored an informative, I'm not sure. Oh wait, yes I am. This is Slashdot, where it's expected to spread incorrect information which could have easily been verified before hitting that Submit button.
NAME
6.8 `memcpy'--copy memory regions
SYNOPSIS
#include string.h
void* memcpy(void *OUT, const void *IN, size_t N);
DESCRIPTION
This function copies N bytes from the memory region pointed to by IN to the memory region pointed to by OUT.
If the regions overlap, the behavior is undefined.
RETURNS
`memcpy' returns a pointer to the first byte of the OUT region.
... It wasn't about phasers, proton torpedoes, and teleporters. Those were just a veneer or a vehicle for people to think.
Photon torpedos. Proton torpedoes are from another galaxy, and a long time ago.
Blah blah, hand in your geek card.
No magic tricks at all, dependencies are the user's responsibility.
A full Slackware install will, however, include just about everything you need. It is quite complete when it comes to libraries.
I'm running 12.2 myself, at least on my notebook. I haven't toyed with any power management stuff (sleep/hibernate), so I don't know how well it handles that.
I usually grab source packages and build 'em myself, and although I've been a long time off and on Slackware user (it's been my favourite distro since 1997'sh) I've never gone through the process of upgrading to a new version. I generally just reinstall when an update is released.
Hm, kinda rambling here. The too long, didn't read is I personally love Slackware, and have for over a decade. I've tried many distributions over the years, most recently Ubuntu. While I like the spit and polish of Ubuntu, I don't really like much else about it. The init system is convoluted, I'm more of a KDE fan than Gnome (although I'm sticking with 3.5 for now), and the Gnome philosophy of dumbing things down really irritates me. I like to get under the hood to learn how stuff works. Slackware gives me that opportunity... a lot. Sometimes to the point of frustration, yes, but at least the hour spent Googling a solution to my problem ends up with me learning something new.
I prefer an operating system to come lean and fast, and to allow me the option to add features I want.
The problem with Microsoft's way of doing things is that you do not get the option to add features you want.
Take, for example, the "Group Policy Editor". If you were running XP Home, this utility was not included, and (unless my memory is failing completely) could not be installed later. It was only available in Professional. While not a show-stopper as it was just a pretty registry editor, it is still a useful tool to have.
Microsoft doesn't just strip out features people don't need, they strip out the *useful* stuff too, stuff that should be available regardless of how what version of Windows you purchase (and thus how much money you spent).
Personally I wish they'd go back to the Windows 9x era regarding install options. Let the user pick and choose what they don't want. No, I don't need accessibility features or HyperTerminal, but being able to configure my local machine's file sharing policies easily is certainly useful.
I remember before Linux my first hint at this was Volvalk|sp?| Commander,
Volkov Commander? (Warning: The URL given links to a page that may cause uncontrollable flashbacks to the Web circa 1995. Proceed with caution.)
Ubuntu is a nice starter Linux, and perfect as a low maintenance Linux, as well. It reminds me of my first Mandrake experience. On the opposite end was Slackware and GenToo, but I should note I was an early adopter of Slackware in the early 1990s and haven't used it since, so I'm only going by that experience.
I'm happily using Slack (12.2, but my relationship goes back to 3.0 in the mid/late 90's). It's still pretty much stuck where it was a decade ago. A little easier/less time consuming than Gentoo, but a far cry from Ubuntu.
Most of the post-setup software I've installed has been from source, and although it's really annoying to play the dependency game with regards to the overabundant number of libraries out there, there is also a certain amount of pride in keeping my system relatively up to date "the hard way".
Kinda off topic, but I'm a proud Slackware user.
Also, there was no "virtual machine" for DOS in 9x. Windows took a snapshot of the DOS environment before it took over, and was able to present this environment to the user via V86 mode. This was, more or less, the same way Quarterdesk's DesqView software worked, except without the pretty graphics of the Windows GUI. A virtual machine implies much of the hardware is emulated, which it was not.
... I knew I should have actually thought a bit harder before I posted. This is wrong, as Microsoft did refer to it as a virtual machine. I'm going to ahead and blame my bit of idiocy here on the wicked head cold I picked up a few days ago. Yeah, that's it.
Try deleting the hidden system files (.SYS) in the root of your boot drive and see how far Windows 9x gets while booting.
The 9x Windows did ride on top of DOS, but replaced (and I'm using the word very loosely) DOS with its own kernel and drivers. DOS was still there, hiding in the background, but most everything was handled by the 32-bit protected mode code of 9x.
Also, there was no "virtual machine" for DOS in 9x. Windows took a snapshot of the DOS environment before it took over, and was able to present this environment to the user via V86 mode. This was, more or less, the same way Quarterdesk's DesqView software worked, except without the pretty graphics of the Windows GUI. A virtual machine implies much of the hardware is emulated, which it was not.
Renaming autoexec.bat and config.sys would have no bearing on the Windows environment because once Windows took over, it used its own .ini files and the registry to store and retrieve hardware and software configuration information.
Any drivers/TSRs run before Windows started would still be present after Windows loaded. In fact, one simple change to a single file cause Windows to not even load, booting instead to a plain old C:\ prompt. One could then later start Windows by executing WIN.COM.
Even Windows ME had DOS still hiding underneath it all. Windows versions based on the NT kernel are the only ones that did not rely on some version of MS-DOS to bootstrap Windows.
I really don't think you know what you are talking about.
From some of what I've read online, that seems pretty much par for the course with Blizzard.
I've been reading about folks having to fax or snail mail in a copy of their driver's license just to prove they are the person on the account.
The most ridiculous thing about this is that it's by far easier to just buy the game again and start all over. I don't know if they check for dupes during account creation, but considering that "boxing" is so rampant, and apparently just fine by Blizzard (*), I doubt they'd blink twice.
Unfortunately, I've invested several years and countless hours into the game. I don't want to start from scratch, and honestly I wouldn't want to risk Blizzard screwing me over again in another three years (assuming this doesn't end happily for me, the increasingly disgruntled customer).
(*) On a side note, that's something that I find quite hypocritical of Blizz. You cannot use any hardware device that automates actions, but it's quite fine to fire up several instances of the game on the same machine and use a software solution to send one keystroke to those multiple instances of WoW.
Forgive me, that's my rant for the day. I guess it's pretty nerdish to reply to every response to my whining, even the AC's. Oh well, on the bright side it's giving me some time to catch up on my reading and some television series' I've been missing. Who knew Smallville would turn out to be so good?! :)
Alliance mostly, but I do have a few Horde toons.
I don't play the game like some people who take it to the extreme and /spit or whatever on the opposite faction, just because they're the opposite faction. In fact, I've helped out Horde players just as much as Alliance when I can. I'm out to enjoy myself and have fun... if helping someone else out makes something easier for them, then I do it regardless of faction.
Well, I do subscribe to an honesty is best policy. I don't like lying more than I don't like cheating, and slightly less than I like being accused of cheating, which is what I got from their You Are Banned e-mail ("exploitation of the World of Warcraft economy").
But you're right, I did violate their terms, even if it was months ago. Whether I think they're draconian or not is pretty irrelevant. I had permission, even encouragement, from my friend to use his account. I'm just hoping he hasn't been banned as well due to my mistakes. He doesn't play often due to his employment, but I guess he'll be on the phone telling me if anything goes wrong the next time he signs in.
Early this Saturday past, after taking my hourly cigarette break around midnight, I came back to a disconnected from server message. Trying to log back in I was told my account had been banned.
The e-mail I later received claimed I had been exploiting the World of Warcraft economy, which seems to be Blizzard's catch-all excuse for banning.
Now, I know everyone who's ever been banned claims innocence, and I'm no different. But I can honestly say that I've NEVER bought gold from an online reseller, nor have I ever paid for someone else to play my character. I pay my monthly fee so I can play the damned game, and to be accused of cheating and banned without even the opportunity to speak for myself is an huge insult.
I'll readily admit that I've done some things against their EULA in one case, which was firing up my friend's account so I could use his character to run my lowbie through two instances. Oh, and I bought my friend his epic mount while I was on his toon. But this was months ago, and I've not done anything unacceptable either before or since. Hell, I religiously report EVERY gold seller that spams their noise in chat.
I've been a fan of Blizzard games pretty much since the beginning, and I can reach back into the stack of olden disks and pull out my copy of the original Orcs and Humans. I've been a WoW subscriber since February of 05.
Needless to say, I'm really pissed at Blizzard treating a loyal fan of theirs, as well as a paying customer (my WoW account's paid until January, even) like this.
Still waiting for a reply from their account admin department to get this sorted out, although I'm not holding my breath they'll fix this and compensate me for their mistake somehow. I've got tons of screenshots (over a gig), documenting ME playing MY characters covering the last 3 years as proof that I play my own damned account. I'm a single father currently between jobs, I have nothing better to do with my time (aside from finding another job, of course). Needless to say, this is seriously going to impact any future purchases when it comes to Blizzard products. Not that any amount of money I spend on their work matters next to their other 10 million subscribers (or whatever they're up to now).
I guess this is just a buyer beware warning. You can be banned at the drop of a hat by Blizzard, and it takes forever to get things sorted out. The worst part is that I have to prove my innocence instead of Blizzard having to prove my guilt.
Or for that matter, any 32 bit linux flavor.
It's a memory addressing issue and a 32 bit memory address simply can't access more than 4GB of RAM.
This is not entirely accurate. As has been mentioned earlier, the PAE support that has been available in processors for numerous years allows an operating system to circumvent this limitation.
Physical Address Extension
So while technically the system is still limited to 32 bits of addressable memory, it can map memory of up to 64 GB within the 4 GB address space.
I'm not your guy, buddy!
(Do I get off-topic, troll, redundant or just ignored?)
with a Godwin Law violation...
One does not violate Godwin's Law, one invokes it.
To violate it would mean that the subject of said Law is never mentioned in an infinitely long thread, which as jd mentioned earlier, would be impossible.