Is that ISPs still have the same mindset they had during peak dial-up days...
Everyone only went on for short amounts of time, etc, so when broadband came along they still think that everyone is only going to stay at dial-up usage levels when the exact opposite is true.
I have no pity for 'professionals' who should have known better.
I say, let it all run dry... then we can run around posting jokes on/. about the bending over of Big Oil Executives and giving it to them without any Vaseline (literally!).
I submit to you, that since I was in Walmart the other day, and saw a Logitech brand USB Keyboard, USB Mouse, Webcam and Headphone/Microphone set all for the PS3, and since the PS3 will run Linux, that it -IS- a PC...that happens to also be a Blu-Ray player and a gaming console:)
IT Pros aren't a big chunk at all. Corporations, however, are a rather huge chunk:)
Remember kids - The real customers of Microsoft are as follows and in this order of importance:
Government (Include all of the fun acronyms here) Entertainment Industry Corporations (Under which the next seven sometimes fall) Hardware Manufacturers Software Manufacturers Educational Institutions Financial Institutions (.Edus are above this, because they are both governmentally via tax $$$ and locally funded, $KA-CHING$!) IT Pros Professional Cubicle Monkeys (sometimes this ties in with the following) You, the Home User that plays Games, and may know a thing or two about swapping hardware and tweaking drivers Grandma and her friends down in Florida Everybody else, excluding those Free Software/OSS 'parasites' - they don't count for anything
While issues such as SP3 causing Office XP and 2k7 service packs appearing as updates in Microsoft Update on a machine that has never had any version of Office installed gets no mention... Automatic Updates keeps on trying to force them down:)
Also, anyone using USB 1.1/2.0 devices under SP3 have any issues? On my laptop, I have USB 2.0 devices and USB 1.1 devices running on a USB 1.1 connection (yes, the laptop is that old). When I reboot the machine, XP refuses to boot to the desktop (just hangs after the Windows loading screen) unless I unplug all USB devices from the laptop. Then it continues booting. This behavior did not occur under SP2. I wonder what changed. I've read of similar things happening with some file named Verclsid.exe hanging while trying to authenticate something, but the solution of renaming it with the.old extension didn't seem to work.
Erm, actually, OSX has been found to be vulnerable to TONS of things, why else the 30 and 40 patch packs released all at once:)
Remote vulnerabilities such as this: http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/29514 would say well, maybe MacOSX IS vulnerable to such types of malware (they only need to cause buffer overflows or exploit remote code vulnerabilities and you can get nailed just like any other OS that is coded by humans).
The question is: Are Macs with their puny marketshare, worth the bother of hacking?
Answer: Some people/groups are starting to show interest in this, yes. But on the whole, no, they aren't worth the bother. Mainly this interest has grown since Apple swapped over to x86 architecture. I find that interesting.
I think the bigger thing to sit and think about is this: No software written, and no hardware designed by humans will ever be perfect. There will always be a weakness somewhere in the system. Deal with it the best you can, like everyone else, and stop spouting stupid nonsense about an invulnerable OS.
Ahhh, but they CAN serve the same or similar purposes. To whit, you have crypto programs or Folding@Home, etc running on the FPGA segments of the card, and you are at the same time using that nice Intel proc and high capacity RAM to compile a custom Gentoo build while re-encoding the Blu-Ray release of your favorite flick to watch on your iPod. Therefore I would suggest: Take out a small loan from the bank and get both just because you CAN. Besides, what nerd of any repute wouldn't want to brag to all of their friends that they totally own this card and were the first to post an un-boxing video to YouTube:P
For IM use under KDE, you might want to try Kopete instead of Pidgin. Here is their website: http://kopete.kde.org/. It will probably entail less hoop-jumping to theme, etc than a Gnome app running under KDE.
Soon there will also be Linux and OSX ports of Digsby if you are into the social networking aspect of the internet. It also supports the MSN protocol.
There are worse things to learn than Svenska. You could be learning Magyar or heaven forbid, Esperanto!
But as far as Fairlight goes, I still find releases from their group all over the place. I used to collect cracktunes/chiptunes by Fairlight, Razor1911 and other groups because often those were far more interesting than the software that they accompanied:)
Talk about making your browser crawl like a turtle, the scripts on that site time out constantly. It's even worse than Yahoo, because at least on Yahoo, the scripts never time out. I have the same issue with Reddit and other such sites. Not everyone has 10+ mbit connections running on Quad-Core machines with 4 GB of RAM. Web devs seem to forget this more than any other programmer class. Just because it runs fine on your 100+ mbit connection and Intel Mac at work, doesn't mean it runs that way anywhere else.
Funny thing: If I totally disable JS, then the sites load up REALLY fast, I just can't do anything like reply to comments:)
Quite a few products take up only a USB slot, or alternatively, you can find MacOSX drivers for several Hauppauge cards and the like if you want an internal card. I've even found Linux drivers and cards for crying out loud:)
For a good start on the subprime mess: "No loan or other financial incentive packages shall be created or put into use, based upon the premise and speculation that property values will never decline."
As for drilling in ANWR: Drill it. And offshore. Why is it that China can drill within 20 miles from our own coastline, but we can't? That's effing retarded. Protect the environment? Sure. It can be done. They drill in the Allegheny National Forest pretty responsibly, I think they can manage ANWR. And there are far more people and animals living in the ANF.
As for commuter railways: We need Maglevs. It's the only feasible long-haul alternative to planes. Those old coal/electric/diesel trains just don't cut the mustard.
Nuke power? Sure. We need more nuke plants, built with new tech, instead of still operating stuff built pre-1980. Not only that, but bury that waste in Yucca Mountain and other similar locations. I'm sorry, but I just can't get all environmentally protectionist over a chunk of rock in the middle of the desert. Hell, why isn't it that we don't just launch that shit into space somewhere? I mean really. Launch it into the sun or something already and quit the whining. It's too expensive? Mandate the fact that it has to be disposed of this way, and you'll quickly find the associated costs for disposal dropping like a rock.
If you see one company/group name with a larger allocation block, and then see a smaller company/group with an allocation in the exact same block, that generally means that the smaller group/company is "renting" that allocation from the larger company/group.
For instance: Atlantic Broadband (AtlanticBB, my ISP), has an allocation of it's own, and also an allocation contained within AT&T's larger allocation from IANA. AT&T is the AtlanticBB upstream provider for my region (meaning they provide access to the communications backbone to my ISP in this area). It's actually more common than people think. That's where quite a large number of dynamic pool addresses for regional ISPs are located - in the smaller allocated block. Larger national ISPs/telecoms like Comcast, AT&T (special case, Ma Bell, backbone provider), Covad (don't like these guys, get funding from the CIA), Level3 (special case, backbone provider), Verizon, etc will have large allocation blocks of their own as well.
From my experience, Atlantic Broadband assigns static IPs from their personal block that isn't sublet from AT&T, Level3, Verizon, etc.
That's the easiest way I can explain it for sure.
A good company to check on this is Savvis Communications, they have one of the largest block allocations out there, but they aren't a backbone provider per se. They do all kinds of other things though, mainly to do with providing communications links for banks, hospitals, the RIAA/MPAA, etc.
The reason they did this, was to emphasize the fact that as a Kwisatz Haderach, Paul could kill with a word, and that his name was the strongest killing word in the universe. It gives a heightened sense of the "godhood" that Paul had ascended to.
Ergo, Weirding Modules that focused sound waves into energy blasts and the final scene where he kills Feyd and then totally crushes his corpse into the floor using only his voice.
Count Fenring was a product of the Bene Gesserit breeding program. He was one of the attempts at creating a Kwisatz Haderach, and came out a eunuch due to a failure of genetics. A very interesting character indeed.
What got me about the movie and television versions of Gurney Halleck, was that he was missing the inkvine whip scar across his face. That was an important and overlooked "feature". It was given to him by the Beast Rabban in the Harkonnen slave pits on Geidi Prime, and explains why Gurney has such hatred for the Harkonnen.
I wish in the movie version, they had shown more of the espionage that destroyed the spice factories, etc that led to the Padishah Emperor being able to betray House Atreides. It would have helped tie in things a little more neatly.
That being said, I loved the books, but I also loved the long version of David Lynch's movie, as well as the Sci-Fi Channel remakes. I could quite easily follow along with the stories portrayed on screen even if they did take some license to get the story moving and try to cram it all into about 2-4 hours.
Also, during both the movie and television versions, it probably would have helped to explain Alia a bit better than they did - and how she knew the Baron Harkonnen was her grandfather. On a side note: it would have also been an interesting tidbit to point out how it was discovered that Reverend Mother Gaius Mohaim was Alia and Paul's grandmother..the Lady Jessica's mother via the Baron (and how he got his diseased boils - Mohaim gave him the plague intentionally).
Also, I missed the lasguns, no-globes, etc. At least in the tv version they mentioned the stone burner taking Paul's eyesight.
And...little to no mention of the Bene Tleilax or Ix. And of only two Mentats. Disappointing.
AT&T uses Sandvine just like Comcast. AT&T happens to be the upstream provider for my ISP, so sometimes if I do a whois on my ip address (that changes maybe once or twice per year), I get the surprise of seeing it resolve to AT&T instead of Atlantic Broadband.
Part of the problem, is that Microsoft fully intends to move itself to be a Software as a Service provider. They want you to rent your OS. Rent Office. Rent Media Player. Rent their developer tools. Rent MSN Messenger. Total nickel and dime stuff.
You don't pay one month? Whoops, there goes your pictures and email!
THIS, more than any argument over "standards" should be right on the front-burner of the EU and US anti-trust courts.
This is also why I don't trust anyone pushing SaaS, and that includes Google.
Note: You can see the beginning stages at MS quite easily, with XBox Live! Marketplace, mandatory reactivating of Vista every few months, Zune's wifi-transfer drm scheme, WGA/OGA (what, you thought that was just to combat piracy?), Reduced Functionality Mode, Windows Live (MSN was just a precursor really, they are really ramping it up with Live), etc.
I too, met my wife while playing on an EOSII (heavily modified) mud. My homepage link takes you to the site for the aforementioned game.
We first met as players, then she became an immortal, then we started dating, I became an immortal, she became an admin with shell access, and the rest is history, shall we say.
I was quite pleasantly surprised when I moved in with her, to find a larger collection of AD&D/D&D/White Wolf, etc stuff than even I had. I remember playing the Gold Box games when I was younger (I still have them all and fire them up now and again via DOSBox), and have several first print D&D manuals and modules that were released before I was even born.
I was also a band geek, and I don't know about other schools, but in the school I attended, just about everyone in band played some form of AD&D or Vampire the Masquerade, or Palladium (Elf Quest and the like).
I never really got into LARPing though. The idea of dressing up like a wizard and throwing pretend fireballs in some cemetary someplace was just not my cup of tea.
So indirectly, and even directly, I have met most of my friends, and my wife, thanks to people like Tolkien and Gygax. I do really believe life would have been a vastly more boring and intellectually poorer place without them and what they did.
RIP Gary - We all fail our saving throws at some point or another, and please ask Reorx to hold a keg of his dwarven spirits for me:)
I'd rather keep my support for accelerated audio and EAX affects and run the risk of BSODs than lose the kind of sound I am used to in my games. I'm sticking with XP until XP is no longer supported in games, and then, I guess I'll stop gaming. Honestly, I'd rather go without than use something that is going to be arbitrarily crippled because MS wants to be the sole gatekeeper to all digital entertainment in the home.
That being said, Vista is a stinking turd-pile of code that will never sully any computer in my possession.
I would think if they thought about it, in the long term, it would benefit the FOSS community greatly to do so. Sure, they aren't responsible for the vulnerabilities in a particular OS (for the most part - always leave room for user error or they could be the coder on a project in question), but it just might behoove them to want to improve a Windows-only tool that could easily cut down on tons of malware infections in general if the scope of the program was wider than DSO Exploit Y or Spyware Toolbar Z. This is especially true if it is as easy to use for the general end-user as Spybot. It could do with some UI polish, and a more extensive help system for instance (It doesn't need anything major in the UI department either really, just a brushup on the look and feel).
Even Javacool's Spywareblaster, which attempts to take a preventative approach to infection by ActiveX vulnerabilities rather than removing something already present (via CLSID key, and other methods), could I am sure, do with suggestions/examples etc from knowledgeable people, like vetted custom CLSID key value lists for various malware not already in their database.
I personally use Spywareblaster because it is a run once per boot operation and then you can close the program. It also allows you to set the kill bit for Flash (that web scourge I detest the most).
It offers most of its protection towards IE - ActiveX control blocking, cookie protection and restricted sites management, but still offers at least cookie blocking for Firefox which is kind of nice, since in combination with Cookie Culler and Adblock Plus, I now see virtually 0 ads or stupid ad tracking cookies except for the sites I enable them for. Don't need much else for Firefox other than maybe NoScript.
Because Adobe products are arguably worse and more annoying overall than dealing with html. Honest to god, I want to shoot the asshole who invented Flash. If there has been anything that has brought any of my web browsers to their knees outside of shitty JavaScript, it's been Flash. The Firefox 2 series in particular chokes to death on either one (I've had little issue with Flash in IE7, considering I don't have it installed for IE).
I for one, happened to enjoy my easily read, fast to load text/html pages with static images, kthnx.
People stuff all of these stupid "improvements" to plain html/txt like Flash and other assorted crap onto their websites, without considering if they actually should.
Disclaimer: There have been some websites (read this as fewer than ten) that I've visited where the Flash/Web developer obviously didn't code the site like a retarded monkey, and saved Flash and JS for something useful: Menu selections.
Slashdot Mirror
Is that ISPs still have the same mindset they had during peak dial-up days...
Everyone only went on for short amounts of time, etc, so when broadband came along they still think that everyone is only going to stay at dial-up usage levels when the exact opposite is true.
I have no pity for 'professionals' who should have known better.
You are quite forgetting that most of that mess was caused by Enron.
I say, let it all run dry... then we can run around posting jokes on /. about the bending over of Big Oil Executives and giving it to them without any Vaseline (literally!).
I submit to you, that since I was in Walmart the other day, and saw a Logitech brand USB Keyboard, USB Mouse, Webcam and Headphone/Microphone set all for the PS3, and since the PS3 will run Linux, that it -IS- a PC...that happens to also be a Blu-Ray player and a gaming console :)
To answer your question simply:
PHBs in Middle Management
Bean Counters in Accounting
It's the IT Pros who then have to scramble and fix whatever mess the above two tend to create :)
IT Pros aren't a big chunk at all. Corporations, however, are a rather huge chunk :)
Remember kids - The real customers of Microsoft are as follows and in this order of importance:
Government (Include all of the fun acronyms here)
Entertainment Industry
Corporations (Under which the next seven sometimes fall)
Hardware Manufacturers
Software Manufacturers
Educational Institutions
Financial Institutions (.Edus are above this, because they are both governmentally via tax $$$ and locally funded, $KA-CHING$!)
IT Pros
Professional Cubicle Monkeys (sometimes this ties in with the following)
You, the Home User that plays Games, and may know a thing or two about swapping hardware and tweaking drivers
Grandma and her friends down in Florida
Everybody else, excluding those Free Software/OSS 'parasites' - they don't count for anything
While issues such as SP3 causing Office XP and 2k7 service packs appearing as updates in Microsoft Update on a machine that has never had any version of Office installed gets no mention... Automatic Updates keeps on trying to force them down :)
.old extension didn't seem to work.
:P
Also, anyone using USB 1.1/2.0 devices under SP3 have any issues? On my laptop, I have USB 2.0 devices and USB 1.1 devices running on a USB 1.1 connection (yes, the laptop is that old). When I reboot the machine, XP refuses to boot to the desktop (just hangs after the Windows loading screen) unless I unplug all USB devices from the laptop. Then it continues booting. This behavior did not occur under SP2. I wonder what changed. I've read of similar things happening with some file named Verclsid.exe hanging while trying to authenticate something, but the solution of renaming it with the
I would give up and go back to SP2, but meh
Erm, actually, OSX has been found to be vulnerable to TONS of things, why else the 30 and 40 patch packs released all at once :)
Remote vulnerabilities such as this: http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/29514 would say well, maybe MacOSX IS vulnerable to such types of malware (they only need to cause buffer overflows or exploit remote code vulnerabilities and you can get nailed just like any other OS that is coded by humans).
The question is: Are Macs with their puny marketshare, worth the bother of hacking?
Answer: Some people/groups are starting to show interest in this, yes. But on the whole, no, they aren't worth the bother. Mainly this interest has grown since Apple swapped over to x86 architecture. I find that interesting.
I think the bigger thing to sit and think about is this: No software written, and no hardware designed by humans will ever be perfect. There will always be a weakness somewhere in the system. Deal with it the best you can, like everyone else, and stop spouting stupid nonsense about an invulnerable OS.
And then you get the jerk-offs who like to pass laws just for the control factor...
The mind-set seems to be, "We'll keep passing laws until everyone is a criminal."
What we need are fewer laws and better enforcement of, and sane language/construction of any laws that might be passed.
But that's the kicker, isn't it. They can't control your every waking minute with fewer laws.
Ahhh, but they CAN serve the same or similar purposes. To whit, you have crypto programs or Folding@Home, etc running on the FPGA segments of the card, and you are at the same time using that nice Intel proc and high capacity RAM to compile a custom Gentoo build while re-encoding the Blu-Ray release of your favorite flick to watch on your iPod. Therefore I would suggest: Take out a small loan from the bank and get both just because you CAN. Besides, what nerd of any repute wouldn't want to brag to all of their friends that they totally own this card and were the first to post an un-boxing video to YouTube :P
I use the GTK Theme Selector and themes from http://art.gnome.org/themes/gtk2/ to theme Pidgin.
For IM use under KDE, you might want to try Kopete instead of Pidgin. Here is their website: http://kopete.kde.org/. It will probably entail less hoop-jumping to theme, etc than a Gnome app running under KDE.
Soon there will also be Linux and OSX ports of Digsby if you are into the social networking aspect of the internet. It also supports the MSN protocol.
For the really adventurous, I am sure you can port MirandaIM over to Linux. The client and source are GPL and are freely available. I think someone from Russia has already done this: http://forums.miranda-im.org/showthread.php?t=4624&highlight=Miranda+IM+Linux
There are worse things to learn than Svenska. You could be learning Magyar or heaven forbid, Esperanto!
:)
But as far as Fairlight goes, I still find releases from their group all over the place. I used to collect cracktunes/chiptunes by Fairlight, Razor1911 and other groups because often those were far more interesting than the software that they accompanied
Talk about making your browser crawl like a turtle, the scripts on that site time out constantly. It's even worse than Yahoo, because at least on Yahoo, the scripts never time out. I have the same issue with Reddit and other such sites. Not everyone has 10+ mbit connections running on Quad-Core machines with 4 GB of RAM. Web devs seem to forget this more than any other programmer class. Just because it runs fine on your 100+ mbit connection and Intel Mac at work, doesn't mean it runs that way anywhere else.
:)
Funny thing: If I totally disable JS, then the sites load up REALLY fast, I just can't do anything like reply to comments
Or...you could try actually performing a product search:
:)
http://www.nextag.com/mac-tv-tuner/search-html
There is also this:
http://ati.amd.com/products/tvwonder650/usbmac/index.html
Quite a few products take up only a USB slot, or alternatively, you can find MacOSX drivers for several Hauppauge cards and the like if you want an internal card. I've even found Linux drivers and cards for crying out loud
For a good start on the subprime mess: "No loan or other financial incentive packages shall be created or put into use, based upon the premise and speculation that property values will never decline."
As for drilling in ANWR: Drill it. And offshore. Why is it that China can drill within 20 miles from our own coastline, but we can't? That's effing retarded. Protect the environment? Sure. It can be done. They drill in the Allegheny National Forest pretty responsibly, I think they can manage ANWR. And there are far more people and animals living in the ANF.
As for commuter railways: We need Maglevs. It's the only feasible long-haul alternative to planes. Those old coal/electric/diesel trains just don't cut the mustard.
Nuke power? Sure. We need more nuke plants, built with new tech, instead of still operating stuff built pre-1980. Not only that, but bury that waste in Yucca Mountain and other similar locations. I'm sorry, but I just can't get all environmentally protectionist over a chunk of rock in the middle of the desert. Hell, why isn't it that we don't just launch that shit into space somewhere? I mean really. Launch it into the sun or something already and quit the whining. It's too expensive? Mandate the fact that it has to be disposed of this way, and you'll quickly find the associated costs for disposal dropping like a rock.
If you see one company/group name with a larger allocation block, and then see a smaller company/group with an allocation in the exact same block, that generally means that the smaller group/company is "renting" that allocation from the larger company/group.
For instance: Atlantic Broadband (AtlanticBB, my ISP), has an allocation of it's own, and also an allocation contained within AT&T's larger allocation from IANA. AT&T is the AtlanticBB upstream provider for my region (meaning they provide access to the communications backbone to my ISP in this area). It's actually more common than people think. That's where quite a large number of dynamic pool addresses for regional ISPs are located - in the smaller allocated block. Larger national ISPs/telecoms like Comcast, AT&T (special case, Ma Bell, backbone provider), Covad (don't like these guys, get funding from the CIA), Level3 (special case, backbone provider), Verizon, etc will have large allocation blocks of their own as well.
From my experience, Atlantic Broadband assigns static IPs from their personal block that isn't sublet from AT&T, Level3, Verizon, etc.
That's the easiest way I can explain it for sure.
A good company to check on this is Savvis Communications, they have one of the largest block allocations out there, but they aren't a backbone provider per se. They do all kinds of other things though, mainly to do with providing communications links for banks, hospitals, the RIAA/MPAA, etc.
The reason they did this, was to emphasize the fact that as a Kwisatz Haderach, Paul could kill with a word, and that his name was the strongest killing word in the universe. It gives a heightened sense of the "godhood" that Paul had ascended to.
Ergo, Weirding Modules that focused sound waves into energy blasts and the final scene where he kills Feyd and then totally crushes his corpse into the floor using only his voice.
Count Fenring was a product of the Bene Gesserit breeding program. He was one of the attempts at creating a Kwisatz Haderach, and came out a eunuch due to a failure of genetics. A very interesting character indeed.
What got me about the movie and television versions of Gurney Halleck, was that he was missing the inkvine whip scar across his face. That was an important and overlooked "feature". It was given to him by the Beast Rabban in the Harkonnen slave pits on Geidi Prime, and explains why Gurney has such hatred for the Harkonnen.
I wish in the movie version, they had shown more of the espionage that destroyed the spice factories, etc that led to the Padishah Emperor being able to betray House Atreides. It would have helped tie in things a little more neatly.
That being said, I loved the books, but I also loved the long version of David Lynch's movie, as well as the Sci-Fi Channel remakes. I could quite easily follow along with the stories portrayed on screen even if they did take some license to get the story moving and try to cram it all into about 2-4 hours.
Also, during both the movie and television versions, it probably would have helped to explain Alia a bit better than they did - and how she knew the Baron Harkonnen was her grandfather. On a side note: it would have also been an interesting tidbit to point out how it was discovered that Reverend Mother Gaius Mohaim was Alia and Paul's grandmother..the Lady Jessica's mother via the Baron (and how he got his diseased boils - Mohaim gave him the plague intentionally).
Also, I missed the lasguns, no-globes, etc. At least in the tv version they mentioned the stone burner taking Paul's eyesight.
And...little to no mention of the Bene Tleilax or Ix. And of only two Mentats. Disappointing.
AT&T uses Sandvine just like Comcast. AT&T happens to be the upstream provider for my ISP, so sometimes if I do a whois on my ip address (that changes maybe once or twice per year), I get the surprise of seeing it resolve to AT&T instead of Atlantic Broadband.
It's to be argued if most of the writing attributed to Shakespeare was actually even written by him.
Part of the problem, is that Microsoft fully intends to move itself to be a Software as a Service provider. They want you to rent your OS. Rent Office. Rent Media Player. Rent their developer tools. Rent MSN Messenger. Total nickel and dime stuff.
You don't pay one month? Whoops, there goes your pictures and email!
THIS, more than any argument over "standards" should be right on the front-burner of the EU and US anti-trust courts.
This is also why I don't trust anyone pushing SaaS, and that includes Google.
Note: You can see the beginning stages at MS quite easily, with XBox Live! Marketplace, mandatory reactivating of Vista every few months, Zune's wifi-transfer drm scheme, WGA/OGA (what, you thought that was just to combat piracy?), Reduced Functionality Mode, Windows Live (MSN was just a precursor really, they are really ramping it up with Live), etc.
I too, met my wife while playing on an EOSII (heavily modified) mud. My homepage link takes you to the site for the aforementioned game.
:)
We first met as players, then she became an immortal, then we started dating, I became an immortal, she became an admin with shell access, and the rest is history, shall we say.
I was quite pleasantly surprised when I moved in with her, to find a larger collection of AD&D/D&D/White Wolf, etc stuff than even I had. I remember playing the Gold Box games when I was younger (I still have them all and fire them up now and again via DOSBox), and have several first print D&D manuals and modules that were released before I was even born.
I was also a band geek, and I don't know about other schools, but in the school I attended, just about everyone in band played some form of AD&D or Vampire the Masquerade, or Palladium (Elf Quest and the like).
I never really got into LARPing though. The idea of dressing up like a wizard and throwing pretend fireballs in some cemetary someplace was just not my cup of tea.
So indirectly, and even directly, I have met most of my friends, and my wife, thanks to people like Tolkien and Gygax. I do really believe life would have been a vastly more boring and intellectually poorer place without them and what they did.
RIP Gary - We all fail our saving throws at some point or another, and please ask Reorx to hold a keg of his dwarven spirits for me
I'd rather keep my support for accelerated audio and EAX affects and run the risk of BSODs than lose the kind of sound I am used to in my games. I'm sticking with XP until XP is no longer supported in games, and then, I guess I'll stop gaming. Honestly, I'd rather go without than use something that is going to be arbitrarily crippled because MS wants to be the sole gatekeeper to all digital entertainment in the home.
That being said, Vista is a stinking turd-pile of code that will never sully any computer in my possession.
I would think if they thought about it, in the long term, it would benefit the FOSS community greatly to do so. Sure, they aren't responsible for the vulnerabilities in a particular OS (for the most part - always leave room for user error or they could be the coder on a project in question), but it just might behoove them to want to improve a Windows-only tool that could easily cut down on tons of malware infections in general if the scope of the program was wider than DSO Exploit Y or Spyware Toolbar Z. This is especially true if it is as easy to use for the general end-user as Spybot. It could do with some UI polish, and a more extensive help system for instance (It doesn't need anything major in the UI department either really, just a brushup on the look and feel).
Even Javacool's Spywareblaster, which attempts to take a preventative approach to infection by ActiveX vulnerabilities rather than removing something already present (via CLSID key, and other methods), could I am sure, do with suggestions/examples etc from knowledgeable people, like vetted custom CLSID key value lists for various malware not already in their database.
I personally use Spywareblaster because it is a run once per boot operation and then you can close the program. It also allows you to set the kill bit for Flash (that web scourge I detest the most).
It offers most of its protection towards IE - ActiveX control blocking, cookie protection and restricted sites management, but still offers at least cookie blocking for Firefox which is kind of nice, since in combination with Cookie Culler and Adblock Plus, I now see virtually 0 ads or stupid ad tracking cookies except for the sites I enable them for. Don't need much else for Firefox other than maybe NoScript.
Because Adobe products are arguably worse and more annoying overall than dealing with html. Honest to god, I want to shoot the asshole who invented Flash. If there has been anything that has brought any of my web browsers to their knees outside of shitty JavaScript, it's been Flash. The Firefox 2 series in particular chokes to death on either one (I've had little issue with Flash in IE7, considering I don't have it installed for IE).
I for one, happened to enjoy my easily read, fast to load text/html pages with static images, kthnx.
People stuff all of these stupid "improvements" to plain html/txt like Flash and other assorted crap onto their websites, without considering if they actually should.
Disclaimer: There have been some websites (read this as fewer than ten) that I've visited where the Flash/Web developer obviously didn't code the site like a retarded monkey, and saved Flash and JS for something useful: Menu selections.