Where do you source the headphones from? Finding a decent pair of headphones in this neck of the woods (I.e. Suffolk, the UK) is a task in itself - I very nearly bought a _very_ nice pair of Bayer DT-109's for "only" £139.99. They would outlive me, but.....I don't want to spend £139.99 on a pair of fsckin' headphones!
Would the next logical progression of this would be to find a random bluetooth headset; wire it into a decent headset; and then have a converter that would plug nicely over the iPod to send out the signal. That _would_ own!
I believe this is usually called teraforming - and it's been discussed about mars previously (and not just by a certain Jean Luke Picard).
In the words of someone who commented previously on this issue- "We're not halfway through screwing up one planet, and we're already talking about screwing up another"
But at least I have choice now- Download from gnutella 2 and give to friends, pay and download from ITMS, break DRM, give to friends, or pay and download from MP3tunes.com, then give to friends (30 seconds faster).*
Seriously though, whist I probably shall buy something from the store (if I can get there before the lawyers do), simply so as to protest about DRM. I don't really want to do what I've described above (see below disclaimer), but if anyone did, they could. Breaking iTunes's DRM is not difficult- see previous slashdot stories - and I am legally allowed to break it, under fair use law.
DRM does nothing to stop dedicated music sharers, other than hinder them; in just the same way that when I try and make a back-up copy of a game I've bought, and discover it's "protected", it only takes me about 30 seconds longer.
I'm very glad that this new service will come into existence, but I'd really rather the RIAA realised that DRM does nothing other than to hamper those with knowledge, and make those without re-download a DRM free version, as I know happening once or twice.
Disclaimer: The above post was for humour and/or illustration purposes only. I don't do any of the above. I'm 15. I'm British. Sue me:P.
I wonder if they'll impose "Download limits" that are hidden into contracts, and also artificially cap up limits (I know, I should really RTF!)
In this country- Britain - unless you want your ass capped, your ports blocked, and you very-much reminded of the a part of ADSL, you have to pay for it. £24.99 a month is what I'm paying for a 512kbs service with no blocked ports or limits and a lower contention ratio, as opposed to "consumer" grotty things like BT Broadband for £15.99/month.
I'm not sure how infrastructure could cope with tens of thousands of 20 mbit users- I wouldn't think very well though. Also, at that speed, most of your wait would be for the server you're trying to connect to...
Who thinks that MSN search looks *just* like google, except blue-er, and doesn't work as well?
MSN Search results for "Microsoft is evil" : 2.66m
Google: 2.84m.
Not quite as obvious as other places, but the colour scheme....Google has blue text, with the link in green...MSN search has a slightly lighter shade of blue, with the links in the same colour of green. Also, most of the results on MSN search seem to be mainly selling things- Ebay is somehow listed on the front page - whereas google's are almost entirely relevant.
The wheel. Invented by Microsoft (Except now it's square).
Microsoft is. Heck, he's not even the head of it any more! Don't get my wrong; I still hate Microsoft- but am I the only one here who sees "Microsoft won't appeal EU Ruling" one day, and then gates donating $750m the next?
Is it me, or did the mass media not have *time* to pick up on the whole we're-an-evil-company thing before gates created a publicity storm?
If they refuse to endorse violence in any way, shape, or form; then bye bye Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy (?), Nursery Rhymes; etc, as well as almost all forms of organised sport; modern art, some forms of modern music, etc; etc.
It's a video game. Just as Romeo and Juliet is a book. Where one has you not-so-elegantly killing your opponents; the other has a very elegant description of someone killing his opponents. Where you conspire with your friends to best your enemies in Halo; the two houses "teams" conspire to best each other in Romeo and Juliet.
Humanity is violent; its' roots are violence, and if you cannot control your own desire for violence then *you* probably *will* do something stupid at some point in your life- which has nothing to do whatsoever with Halo 2; Half-life 2; Doom 3.....
I think I'd better re-rip everything, in light of this new, exciting technology to take full advantage of it. I'll re rip it all.....
To vinyl.....
Seriously though, what's to stop me pressing "play" on the new DRM'd piece a crud, using two gold RCAs and plugging it into my mixer, and then pressing "record" on my 8 track, then doing some random FX effect to get past any audio keys, and re-ripping it to a ) 256 kbs vbr AAC b ) Vinyl?
Is pixel size. As your price goes up, the size of each individual pixel decreases, on average. However, I have yet to see an LCD where the dot pitch (pixel size) is less than.24 mm.
My Samsung SyncMaster's dot pitch is 0.18 mil. While this may not sound like a huge difference, it really is. Running at 1600 by 1200, detail is very, *very* crisp, with no smearing at all, and the low pixel size is a major contributor to this.
As a rule, imo, CRD >>> LCD at a comparable price. Sure, the Apple 30 inch LCD monster may be better than this thing, but this was £200 from a local shop about 6 years ago. I also don't have to worry about dead pixels, and all that jazz.
The only reason I'd get an LCD is if I needed the small footprint, or the lack of electrical noise. But I don't.
Next then I know, I'll be arrested for "Conspiracy to download porn"
Seriously though, I can understand that turning a blind eye to something is not good, but if you're running a hub, then surely you're just negligent, not malicious?
Heh. Referring to the original reply to my post, I am, believe it or not, a child. Well, until my 16th on the 6th of Feb.
I just do not like horizon at all due to the way that it seems to stretch as little content as is needed to provide the illusion of a balanced argument, and then pad it out to an hour and a bit?
This idea was from a BBC program called Horizon, last night. In the 50's, and 60's, Horizon was a serious TV Sci program, in which scientific peers reviewed each others' hypothesises, and discussed their proofs.
It has now brought us the likes of this, "Killer Atkins" "The Bible Code" and "Mega Waves".
I for one don't watch Horizon, or any Science program on terrestrial TV, at least not since Tomorrow's World was canned. The only "Pop-Sci" I get, is New Scientist, which is sufficiently buried enough in newsagents to make me believe it isn't quite "pop" enough:-).
If you think that the world is going to end tomorrow because of theory x; submit theory x to a journal, get funding from the Met Office; NASA, whatever is relevant, write a bliddy good model, go to your friendly local mac store, ask to borrow 1100 Xserve G5's for a few hours, and work out if your hypothesis is correct.
Four different ways:
First of all, friendly people outside of that country download this free perl proxy and put it in/cgi-executeables, and mods it to be free of the word "Proxy" (My copy here is free of the "P" word- my school blocks anything with the word "Proxy" in the address bar)
Secondly, some nice person compiles a list of working HTTP / Socks / etc proxies
Thirdly, they put this on a big P2P client
Finally, some other nice person works out the Iranian government's IPs, and adds those to a peer guardian like blocklist that's distributed with the p2p client.
If they block most non-80 ports, then just use desproxy to get around it.
Finally: PROFIT! (Well, liberty, which is just as good)
My first memory of computing was a long, long time ago- relatively speaking. I am 15. 16 on the sixth of February. My earliest memories are that of learning how to play shuffle puck café on a macintosh LC (1!) when I was about 2 and a half. Then monkeying about with push-push and diamonds on an old - but then wonderful - Centris 610. My first expereience with "Programming" was Applescript, when I was about 6- I wrote a constantly-running-background-script to change the desktop picture every 30 minutes- and then later, when I was about 8, an "Hello, World!" in OS 8, badly written. I remember writing an advanced linux cron script to do something as well around then, but at the time I didn't have any x86 architecture, only an ageing Performa 475 that was my fathers'. I then fully discovered the joy of gaming. C had to wait.
Unfortunatly, It did. I got besotted by the G3 processor, and worked out a way to "Enhance" UT Tex packs to look like close family members. I saved up all my christmas and birthday money for three years. I bought an N64. I loved it. I still think that OOT OWNS.
When OS X came out, I nearly had a heart attack. All of that lovely linux stuff. In a pretty operating system. I saved up again, for almost three years, and bought a Beige G3 300 (With Full Audio personality card). 10.2 "Jaguar" was like living in ecstasy. I delved deeply into C, Obj-C, Creating pretty guis for things with project builder, and just using gcc to compile basic stuff. About a year ago, I got a 450 Dual G4. I haven't looked back.
Where others may have memories of learning to ride a bike, or swim, I only remember finally beating Myst Two Exile on hard mode; or writing a nice applescript or evil macro. Ironically, swimming came naturally to me! Where people might remember breaking their arm, or falling off the slide, I remember my first hard-drive crash, first dead PRAM battery, first f0rked resource forks. And I loved it.
I don't mind not having any childhood memories. Infact, I think that it's rather a good thing to have grown up with computers in such a way that they are as much a part of me as I am of them. I could touch type at 65 wpm when I was 9. I'm now up to 81. And I still can't use the Apple-Pro Keyboard!
I think that just playing about with stuff is the way to go with computing in general, although programming requires help. Code hints are j00r g0d. Really, they are. Why not just put the kid infront of code view in dreamweaver, and show him how the/. code is constructed, and then let him play? Or, just show him the basic C functions, and then open vim, and tell him to type gcc ~/foo.c ~/ when he wants to see how it works?
For legit purposes, of course, I recommend you read "Build your own Phaser, Laser, Ion-Ray gun and other working space-age projects" by Robert Ianni. Link here.
I know it may appear insane at first- it was written in the 80's- and phaser refers to an ultrasonic device, but some of the things in there are really, really, bonkers. A 1gW ruby laser sound good? CO2 welding lasers?
Enjoy.
And please don't sue me. Please. I don't condone making a 1 gigawatt laser and obliterating things, I haven't made any of them- but I did make my local library reserve me a copy. It's a good read.
But no mac version that I know of:(.
I know, I know, don't troll, I know. It's just more convenient for me at this moment to play games on my main mac (and server) than it is on anything else- I doubt EQ2 would run on a P2 450 - and I'm ever-so-slightly broke at the moment, what with being 15 and all _. After Christmas I might have a sane X86 box. Does EQ2 run well under wine, or better yet, is there a *nix version?
While WoW does look a very, very, nice game, I will not be able to play it when it hit the stores over here in England, as I quite simply can't afford it. I don't like the pay-to-play idea; I don't like pure MMORPGs without the option to play them single player; and I certainly don't like the way that MMORPGs monthly fees have gone up in a fashion directly proportional to the number of polygons and textures the game uses.
I don't like pay-to-play as I kind of think it's equivalent to haliburton overcharging the Iraqi's for their own oil- you've already bought a box for £60 (Or $60, but I'm willing to bet the numbers will be the same when it comes out over here); and while I perfectly understand that bandwidth is not cheap, if Google can make some insane profit out of text-based advertising, would it really be to hard for Blizard to put a text based add - or full banner possibly - in the lobby/lounge/insert name here. The £60 could cover production of the game and infrastructure, the ads could pay their server's ISP fees, and replace the switches that blow out under the strain.
I don't like MMORPGs personally because I have an addictive personality, and spend all my waking hours infront of my boxes of radiation anyway; and I also don't like the fact that they greatly discriminate against those with higher pings or no bandwidth. What happens if a 56k user (Not by choice, like I've been up till recently) gets disconnected when saving, or moving somewhere on a server? What happens if you end up killing your character via lag? And what happens in 3 years time when WoW is £5.99 in a bargin bin somewhere, and you're the only character online in the whole of fâerun/insert fantasy world here?
Would it really be so hard for blizzard to have written a single player mode for WoW; have a modular ad-on system, or at the very least give the option of playing offline, with the same stock NPCs present that we all know are in the online game?
I just installed all the recommended windows updates on an old P2 450 box of mine, running Win 2k pro. No sooner had the system rebooted, and WMP 9 start default than I got a joyous IE popup - "REFINANCE NOW!", followed shortly by "Do you want to meet lots of singles in your area now?", and their joyous kind. Considering that I only use that box to a ) Play random ancient RPGs, and b ) Use DC ++ on it, as the mac and *nix versions, uh, suck, I was quite amused....
If so then, aside from location my hard drives there, I really don't think that M$ has a chance. I mean, Win XP is dire enough, SE even more, and, as the above poster rightly said, who's going to want to use XP SE when they can get the full version from suprnova in a matter of....hours?
That is, of course, presuming that they even WANT to use windows.....*insert picture of a penguin here*
Load Avg: 1.30, 1.98, 0.71
Uptime: 168 d 5 hr 33 min 7 s
I'm running Mac OS 10.3 Server, on my G4 450 dual processor machine (Waaaay below spec) with half a gig of ram, and a few hundred gigs of hard drives. Load averages so high because i'm doing some work in photoshop at the moment.
I think we had a powercut 168 days ago....
(Windows 2k bluescreened on me ten minutes ago while playing morrowind)
They tend to be looking at the wrong things in my opinion. I'm 15, and I recently just set up my first bank account with Lloyds TSB- and nearly got arrested.
The *really* competent manager filled out the forms by hand, then typed them onto a program on win 2k, then printed them out, checked them by hand (as in, pencil), then typed them in again, and finally printed them out and filed them. This involved going out of the room a lot.
When she was typing them up on screen, she turned the screen my way so that I could see what was going on. At one point she turned the screen away, and said "Sorry, I have to turn the screen away now, incase any other users' details come up".
I said "That's okay- I don't want to see anyone else's bank details- if I did, I would have put a keylogger on the computer when you were out of the room, as there aren't any CCTV cameras in here, only a motion detecter and pressure plates under the windows." She looked at me.
"I locked the computer when I went out of the room"
"I know. A key logger is a physical device- the cable run for the computer setup is in front of me. The keyboard cable goes in the left end. The computer is situated by your right foot, around a 90 bend. I know the average lengths of PS/2 cables- the extension joint should be around my elbow. It would take about 15 seconds to pop the cable run cover off, plug one end of the key logger into the extension, the other into the cable from the keyboard, and put the cable run cover back on. I could come back a week later to this room, and while you were out of the room take the keylogger out, and go home with it. I would then have you username and password, and all the details you'd- or any one else - had typed into this computer, and could wreak fun in your name."
She looked at me, very strangely
"Uh....Please excuse me...I'm just going to get another form..."
She came back about 30 minuets later, holding a tax form, and seemed to be sweating...
So, yar, banks. 5 security cameras in the lobby room where all the tellers were- it was about as big as our bathroom- covering every square inch of it, at the same time as having the 2 cm thick glass that makes up the tellers window' held on by 4 small wood screws that went through into a wooden frame (i.e. you hit that with a shotgun, and the plate glass falls backwards). Complex burglar alarm system- with the box inside a set of double doors that make up the entrance. Very thick internal wooden doors complete with steel front- and with simple warded locks that had 3 pins.
I wonder if they'll have the most obscurely paranoid system of transfer- 4096 bit cypher, etc, etc- and the super user account would be "admin" - and have a password of "admin"....
Off topic: A friend of mine somehow managed to enter his password badly 6 times while drunk. He now thinks he's IP banned, as slashdot.org dosen't respond to anything- pings, nowt. He's emailed banned@slashdot.org, but no response as yet. I don't think he has a network connection problem, and he's *really* annoyed at not being the only geek in Suffolk to not have access to./. Has anyone had any similar problems? His email is basically anything you like @sdonag.plus.com (like, say, slashdot@sdonag.plus.com). Help?
Why is $299 good anyway?
on
You've Got PC
·
· Score: 1
I might just have read up till the end of page one on this- but I think that $299 for a monitor and PC of that spec is quite a lot to say the least. Buying from shops, both online, and locally, I could build a PC of moderately good spec (512 megs ram/Athlon 2.7/40 gig HDD) without a monitor for under £100. Monitors- I can get a 19" one for £50....
While I know the exchange rate is quirky at the moment, the actual relative *value* of the currencies in each country appear to be the same- you don't pay $4 for a cup of coffee over there!
Oh, and I was with AOHELL for a while. Then I got banned for excessive useage. It was like being banned from prison.
With the system requirements thing, that machine would have trouble running AOL 9- almost- it needs a 1 ghz p3 and 256 megs of ram......*cough* good coding *cough*....
Slashdot Mirror
Where do you source the headphones from? Finding a decent pair of headphones in this neck of the woods (I.e. Suffolk, the UK) is a task in itself - I very nearly bought a _very_ nice pair of Bayer DT-109's for "only" £139.99. They would outlive me, but.....I don't want to spend £139.99 on a pair of fsckin' headphones!
Would the next logical progression of this would be to find a random bluetooth headset; wire it into a decent headset; and then have a converter that would plug nicely over the iPod to send out the signal. That _would_ own!
I believe this is usually called teraforming - and it's been discussed about mars previously (and not just by a certain Jean Luke Picard).
In the words of someone who commented previously on this issue- "We're not halfway through screwing up one planet, and we're already talking about screwing up another"
But at least I have choice now- Download from gnutella 2 and give to friends, pay and download from ITMS, break DRM, give to friends, or pay and download from MP3tunes.com, then give to friends (30 seconds faster).*
:P.
Seriously though, whist I probably shall buy something from the store (if I can get there before the lawyers do), simply so as to protest about DRM. I don't really want to do what I've described above (see below disclaimer), but if anyone did, they could. Breaking iTunes's DRM is not difficult- see previous slashdot stories - and I am legally allowed to break it, under fair use law.
DRM does nothing to stop dedicated music sharers, other than hinder them; in just the same way that when I try and make a back-up copy of a game I've bought, and discover it's "protected", it only takes me about 30 seconds longer.
I'm very glad that this new service will come into existence, but I'd really rather the RIAA realised that DRM does nothing other than to hamper those with knowledge, and make those without re-download a DRM free version, as I know happening once or twice.
Disclaimer: The above post was for humour and/or illustration purposes only. I don't do any of the above. I'm 15. I'm British. Sue me
I wonder if they'll impose "Download limits" that are hidden into contracts, and also artificially cap up limits (I know, I should really RTF!)
/month.
In this country- Britain - unless you want your ass capped, your ports blocked, and you very-much reminded of the a part of ADSL, you have to pay for it. £24.99 a month is what I'm paying for a 512kbs service with no blocked ports or limits and a lower contention ratio, as opposed to "consumer" grotty things like BT Broadband for £15.99
I'm not sure how infrastructure could cope with tens of thousands of 20 mbit users- I wouldn't think very well though. Also, at that speed, most of your wait would be for the server you're trying to connect to...
Who thinks that MSN search looks *just* like google, except blue-er, and doesn't work as well?
MSN Search results for "Microsoft is evil" : 2.66m
Google: 2.84m.
Not quite as obvious as other places, but the colour scheme....Google has blue text, with the link in green...MSN search has a slightly lighter shade of blue, with the links in the same colour of green. Also, most of the results on MSN search seem to be mainly selling things- Ebay is somehow listed on the front page - whereas google's are almost entirely relevant.
The wheel. Invented by Microsoft (Except now it's square).
Microsoft is. Heck, he's not even the head of it any more! Don't get my wrong; I still hate Microsoft- but am I the only one here who sees "Microsoft won't appeal EU Ruling" one day, and then gates donating $750m the next?
Is it me, or did the mass media not have *time* to pick up on the whole we're-an-evil-company thing before gates created a publicity storm?
If they refuse to endorse violence in any way, shape, or form; then bye bye Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy (?), Nursery Rhymes; etc, as well as almost all forms of organised sport; modern art, some forms of modern music, etc; etc.
It's a video game. Just as Romeo and Juliet is a book. Where one has you not-so-elegantly killing your opponents; the other has a very elegant description of someone killing his opponents. Where you conspire with your friends to best your enemies in Halo; the two houses "teams" conspire to best each other in Romeo and Juliet.
Humanity is violent; its' roots are violence, and if you cannot control your own desire for violence then *you* probably *will* do something stupid at some point in your life- which has nothing to do whatsoever with Halo 2; Half-life 2; Doom 3.....
I think I'd better re-rip everything, in light of this new, exciting technology to take full advantage of it. I'll re rip it all.....
To vinyl.....
Seriously though, what's to stop me pressing "play" on the new DRM'd piece a crud, using two gold RCAs and plugging it into my mixer, and then pressing "record" on my 8 track, then doing some random FX effect to get past any audio keys, and re-ripping it to a ) 256 kbs vbr AAC b ) Vinyl?
Is pixel size. As your price goes up, the size of each individual pixel decreases, on average. However, I have yet to see an LCD where the dot pitch (pixel size) is less than .24 mm.
:) (And yes, I am 15...)
My Samsung SyncMaster's dot pitch is 0.18 mil. While this may not sound like a huge difference, it really is. Running at 1600 by 1200, detail is very, *very* crisp, with no smearing at all, and the low pixel size is a major contributor to this.
As a rule, imo, CRD >>> LCD at a comparable price. Sure, the Apple 30 inch LCD monster may be better than this thing, but this was £200 from a local shop about 6 years ago. I also don't have to worry about dead pixels, and all that jazz.
The only reason I'd get an LCD is if I needed the small footprint, or the lack of electrical noise. But I don't.
So CRTs for me
Next then I know, I'll be arrested for "Conspiracy to download porn"
Seriously though, I can understand that turning a blind eye to something is not good, but if you're running a hub, then surely you're just negligent, not malicious?
Heh. Referring to the original reply to my post, I am, believe it or not, a child. Well, until my 16th on the 6th of Feb.
I just do not like horizon at all due to the way that it seems to stretch as little content as is needed to provide the illusion of a balanced argument, and then pad it out to an hour and a bit?
This idea was from a BBC program called Horizon, last night. In the 50's, and 60's, Horizon was a serious TV Sci program, in which scientific peers reviewed each others' hypothesises, and discussed their proofs.
:-).
:-)
It has now brought us the likes of this, "Killer Atkins" "The Bible Code" and "Mega Waves".
I for one don't watch Horizon, or any Science program on terrestrial TV, at least not since Tomorrow's World was canned. The only "Pop-Sci" I get, is New Scientist, which is sufficiently buried enough in newsagents to make me believe it isn't quite "pop" enough
If you think that the world is going to end tomorrow because of theory x; submit theory x to a journal, get funding from the Met Office; NASA, whatever is relevant, write a bliddy good model, go to your friendly local mac store, ask to borrow 1100 Xserve G5's for a few hours, and work out if your hypothesis is correct.
THEN call the National Press
Four different ways: /cgi-executeables, and mods it to be free of the word "Proxy" (My copy here is free of the "P" word- my school blocks anything with the word "Proxy" in the address bar)
First of all, friendly people outside of that country download this free perl proxy and put it in
Secondly, some nice person compiles a list of working HTTP / Socks / etc proxies
Thirdly, they put this on a big P2P client
Finally, some other nice person works out the Iranian government's IPs, and adds those to a peer guardian like blocklist that's distributed with the p2p client.
If they block most non-80 ports, then just use desproxy to get around it.
Finally: PROFIT! (Well, liberty, which is just as good)
Do'h! Note to self: When trying to type code, use tags
I'll try again
Mr Programmer. Meet Mr < "BR" >
While your story is great, and interesting....
Mr programmer. Meet Mr "
".
My first memory of computing was a long, long time ago- relatively speaking. I am 15. 16 on the sixth of February. My earliest memories are that of learning how to play shuffle puck café on a macintosh LC (1!) when I was about 2 and a half. Then monkeying about with push-push and diamonds on an old - but then wonderful - Centris 610. My first expereience with "Programming" was Applescript, when I was about 6- I wrote a constantly-running-background-script to change the desktop picture every 30 minutes- and then later, when I was about 8, an "Hello, World!" in OS 8, badly written. I remember writing an advanced linux cron script to do something as well around then, but at the time I didn't have any x86 architecture, only an ageing Performa 475 that was my fathers'. I then fully discovered the joy of gaming. C had to wait.
/. code is constructed, and then let him play? Or, just show him the basic C functions, and then open vim, and tell him to type gcc ~/foo.c ~/ when he wants to see how it works?
Unfortunatly, It did. I got besotted by the G3 processor, and worked out a way to "Enhance" UT Tex packs to look like close family members. I saved up all my christmas and birthday money for three years. I bought an N64. I loved it. I still think that OOT OWNS.
When OS X came out, I nearly had a heart attack. All of that lovely linux stuff. In a pretty operating system. I saved up again, for almost three years, and bought a Beige G3 300 (With Full Audio personality card). 10.2 "Jaguar" was like living in ecstasy. I delved deeply into C, Obj-C, Creating pretty guis for things with project builder, and just using gcc to compile basic stuff. About a year ago, I got a 450 Dual G4. I haven't looked back.
Where others may have memories of learning to ride a bike, or swim, I only remember finally beating Myst Two Exile on hard mode; or writing a nice applescript or evil macro. Ironically, swimming came naturally to me! Where people might remember breaking their arm, or falling off the slide, I remember my first hard-drive crash, first dead PRAM battery, first f0rked resource forks. And I loved it.
I don't mind not having any childhood memories. Infact, I think that it's rather a good thing to have grown up with computers in such a way that they are as much a part of me as I am of them. I could touch type at 65 wpm when I was 9. I'm now up to 81. And I still can't use the Apple-Pro Keyboard!
I think that just playing about with stuff is the way to go with computing in general, although programming requires help. Code hints are j00r g0d. Really, they are. Why not just put the kid infront of code view in dreamweaver, and show him how the
Lol. Its only 1GW in the tube, for about a nanosecond, but...yeah. You are probably not inaccurate!
For legit purposes, of course, I recommend you read "Build your own Phaser, Laser, Ion-Ray gun and other working space-age projects" by Robert Ianni. Link here.
I know it may appear insane at first- it was written in the 80's- and phaser refers to an ultrasonic device, but some of the things in there are really, really, bonkers. A 1gW ruby laser sound good? CO2 welding lasers?
Enjoy.
And please don't sue me. Please. I don't condone making a 1 gigawatt laser and obliterating things, I haven't made any of them- but I did make my local library reserve me a copy. It's a good read.
But no mac version that I know of :(.
I know, I know, don't troll, I know. It's just more convenient for me at this moment to play games on my main mac (and server) than it is on anything else- I doubt EQ2 would run on a P2 450 - and I'm ever-so-slightly broke at the moment, what with being 15 and all _. After Christmas I might have a sane X86 box. Does EQ2 run well under wine, or better yet, is there a *nix version?
While WoW does look a very, very, nice game, I will not be able to play it when it hit the stores over here in England, as I quite simply can't afford it. I don't like the pay-to-play idea; I don't like pure MMORPGs without the option to play them single player; and I certainly don't like the way that MMORPGs monthly fees have gone up in a fashion directly proportional to the number of polygons and textures the game uses.
I don't like pay-to-play as I kind of think it's equivalent to haliburton overcharging the Iraqi's for their own oil- you've already bought a box for £60 (Or $60, but I'm willing to bet the numbers will be the same when it comes out over here); and while I perfectly understand that bandwidth is not cheap, if Google can make some insane profit out of text-based advertising, would it really be to hard for Blizard to put a text based add - or full banner possibly - in the lobby/lounge/insert name here. The £60 could cover production of the game and infrastructure, the ads could pay their server's ISP fees, and replace the switches that blow out under the strain.
I don't like MMORPGs personally because I have an addictive personality, and spend all my waking hours infront of my boxes of radiation anyway; and I also don't like the fact that they greatly discriminate against those with higher pings or no bandwidth. What happens if a 56k user (Not by choice, like I've been up till recently) gets disconnected when saving, or moving somewhere on a server? What happens if you end up killing your character via lag? And what happens in 3 years time when WoW is £5.99 in a bargin bin somewhere, and you're the only character online in the whole of fâerun/insert fantasy world here?
I much prefer the NWN system of multiplayer; free, and a great and well thought-out addition to a great game. It has the flexibility of WoW (Okay, not in-game and you have to write modules on the Evil OS (©), but hey) as well as a cracking, long single player.
Would it really be so hard for blizzard to have written a single player mode for WoW; have a modular ad-on system, or at the very least give the option of playing offline, with the same stock NPCs present that we all know are in the online game?
I just installed all the recommended windows updates on an old P2 450 box of mine, running Win 2k pro. No sooner had the system rebooted, and WMP 9 start default than I got a joyous IE popup - "REFINANCE NOW!", followed shortly by "Do you want to meet lots of singles in your area now?", and their joyous kind. Considering that I only use that box to a ) Play random ancient RPGs, and b ) Use DC ++ on it, as the mac and *nix versions, uh, suck, I was quite amused....
If so then, aside from location my hard drives there, I really don't think that M$ has a chance. I mean, Win XP is dire enough, SE even more, and, as the above poster rightly said, who's going to want to use XP SE when they can get the full version from suprnova in a matter of....hours?
That is, of course, presuming that they even WANT to use windows.....*insert picture of a penguin here*
Load Avg: 1.30, 1.98, 0.71 Uptime: 168 d 5 hr 33 min 7 s I'm running Mac OS 10.3 Server, on my G4 450 dual processor machine (Waaaay below spec) with half a gig of ram, and a few hundred gigs of hard drives. Load averages so high because i'm doing some work in photoshop at the moment. I think we had a powercut 168 days ago.... (Windows 2k bluescreened on me ten minutes ago while playing morrowind)
They tend to be looking at the wrong things in my opinion. I'm 15, and I recently just set up my first bank account with Lloyds TSB- and nearly got arrested. The *really* competent manager filled out the forms by hand, then typed them onto a program on win 2k, then printed them out, checked them by hand (as in, pencil), then typed them in again, and finally printed them out and filed them. This involved going out of the room a lot. When she was typing them up on screen, she turned the screen my way so that I could see what was going on. At one point she turned the screen away, and said "Sorry, I have to turn the screen away now, incase any other users' details come up". I said "That's okay- I don't want to see anyone else's bank details- if I did, I would have put a keylogger on the computer when you were out of the room, as there aren't any CCTV cameras in here, only a motion detecter and pressure plates under the windows." She looked at me. "I locked the computer when I went out of the room" "I know. A key logger is a physical device- the cable run for the computer setup is in front of me. The keyboard cable goes in the left end. The computer is situated by your right foot, around a 90 bend. I know the average lengths of PS/2 cables- the extension joint should be around my elbow. It would take about 15 seconds to pop the cable run cover off, plug one end of the key logger into the extension, the other into the cable from the keyboard, and put the cable run cover back on. I could come back a week later to this room, and while you were out of the room take the keylogger out, and go home with it. I would then have you username and password, and all the details you'd- or any one else - had typed into this computer, and could wreak fun in your name." She looked at me, very strangely "Uh....Please excuse me...I'm just going to get another form..." She came back about 30 minuets later, holding a tax form, and seemed to be sweating... So, yar, banks. 5 security cameras in the lobby room where all the tellers were- it was about as big as our bathroom- covering every square inch of it, at the same time as having the 2 cm thick glass that makes up the tellers window' held on by 4 small wood screws that went through into a wooden frame (i.e. you hit that with a shotgun, and the plate glass falls backwards). Complex burglar alarm system- with the box inside a set of double doors that make up the entrance. Very thick internal wooden doors complete with steel front- and with simple warded locks that had 3 pins. I wonder if they'll have the most obscurely paranoid system of transfer- 4096 bit cypher, etc, etc- and the super user account would be "admin" - and have a password of "admin".... Off topic: A friend of mine somehow managed to enter his password badly 6 times while drunk. He now thinks he's IP banned, as slashdot.org dosen't respond to anything- pings, nowt. He's emailed banned@slashdot.org, but no response as yet. I don't think he has a network connection problem, and he's *really* annoyed at not being the only geek in Suffolk to not have access to ./. Has anyone had any similar problems? His email is basically anything you like @sdonag.plus.com (like, say, slashdot@sdonag.plus.com). Help?
I might just have read up till the end of page one on this- but I think that $299 for a monitor and PC of that spec is quite a lot to say the least. Buying from shops, both online, and locally, I could build a PC of moderately good spec (512 megs ram/Athlon 2.7/40 gig HDD) without a monitor for under £100. Monitors- I can get a 19" one for £50.... While I know the exchange rate is quirky at the moment, the actual relative *value* of the currencies in each country appear to be the same- you don't pay $4 for a cup of coffee over there! Oh, and I was with AOHELL for a while. Then I got banned for excessive useage. It was like being banned from prison. With the system requirements thing, that machine would have trouble running AOL 9- almost- it needs a 1 ghz p3 and 256 megs of ram......*cough* good coding *cough*....