Having played many a MMORPG myself, I have seen how addicted people get to, well, just numbers. The goal is to have higher numbers than other people. That makes you special/better. Doesn't matter if the numbers mean anything or not.
www.tacticsarena.com The son of a bitch game got me for more than one year... (a girl friend introduced me to it so it was cool). The more stupid thing is that each month your account gets wiped and all your points are completely removed unles you *pay* (however when you pay they give you other "characters" and change your status to "gold" which pretty much removes the fun from the game).
Any kind of multiplayer game where you can show anyone you are the best (or better than a lot of people) is going to be addictive. I used to do it with Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2 and King of Fighters on arcades... but now that Arcades are dead Live and the other online games (I HOPE the Wii has an acceptable online service... I bought it and it is very cool so far).
At least KDE (and Windows) put the options where you can find them using just the normal flow of the GUI.
Yeah you bet, every advanced option you can imagine is on plain view for you to change your GUI based REGISTRY EDITOR KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curren tVersion\Explorer\Advanced in the registry and add the following DWord value CascadeFolderBands and set it to 1.
Please, Gnome is a slim pick up and go desktop for new users, KDE is a customisable and flexible desktop for power, business or techie users.
Just a clarification here. While i agree that Gnome is a good desktop for new users I need to make clear that not everyone who preffer Gnome are new users. I am not a new user and I preffer Gnome against KDE any day of the week.
This reminds me of the time when someone on slashdot told me that I should not be using XUBUNTU because it is for people that is supposed to know "what they are doing"... Xubuntu's objective is to have a slim desktop or from the xubuntu.org page: "It is lighter on system requirements and tends to be more efficient than Ubuntu with GNOME or KDE, since it uses the Xfce Desktop environment, which makes it ideal for old or low-end machines, thin-client networks, or for those who would like to get more performance out of their hardware.".
Similarly, Gnome follows some specific guidelines. There are some newbies and some hardcore geeks that will like or dislike the guidelines but it does not make you a noob (or a 1337) use one or another.
..he means it takes someone smarter than a carrot about 20 minutes to figure out, then yeah, it has a steep learning curve.
Uh I smell Linux Zealot in the air... that is the typical Linux zealot answer when someone says X-distro Linux interface is more difficult than Windows... You must understand that for the non-saavy computer user (the majority of them anyways) there is no "menu bar" and "tool bar" but there are specific icons in specific place in the screen that they need to press in order to do things. For example, to save a file they must click on the "File" button and then click on the "save" button that appears and then type the name of their document and click on the "accept" button. That is the task, that is how it is done. If you modify at least a bit the steps of the task they will not know how to save their documents. There is no "File menu which contains all the options relevant to the computer file management" reasoning as there is on you or me. That is why they look on the
If limit it to people who be willing to spend $20 on a game without agonizing over the decision, you're already significantly smaller than the console market.
You do not know what you are talking about.
You just have to take a look at tacticsarena.com or runescape.com or neopets.com (my girlfriend used to play that) or any one of the thousands of online games in which you can subscribe or get some "extras" for some cash. Those are the games for the "non hardcore" gamer. People that just wont buy a console but would gladely spend 5 bucks 10 buck or as you said even 20 bucks in *trying* some game (which, if is adictively enough they will continue to play).
UK is very similar to Japan. But nothing like this in place. Why?
Well, I used to live in a place in Liverpool where there was no cable access although I was pretty close to the city centre, I asked some folks in my LUG about it and they explained me that in the UK the cable companies run a "shared monopoly" on each area and that, on Liverpool Telewest was the only available cable provider (I did not want to contract a telephone *just* to use the internet as I dont do any kind of local calls and the only ones I do I make them on my mobile and I wont pay £10 extra for the phone service.... and all the DSL providers require you to have a BT line).
So it seems it is one of the lousy economic practices that the government lets companies do in the UK (the other being IMHO the overpricing of items... see Tesco vs Levi Jeans for a clear example).
Hi, a bit late but you might find this info useful.
If you want a similar functionality on Windows as SSH + X (run any linux app on a Windows client) you can use Xming Putty Xming is a small X-window server and Putty is an SSH client app. Both are open source and work really nice (I used to use it when working from home on my XP machine).
I know you are trolling but one of your was interesting to me:
3) I hate to say it, but virtual desktops and fluxbox leave my desktop a lot less cluttered and much easier to work with than windows does out of the box, and my computer is under load from its graphics a lot less often
I use XFCE for my XUBUNTu desktop but I have not found a way to "tile windows" and "cascade windows" or anything equivalent, I found the ION window manager which pretty much an overkill solution for what I want to do (just automatically tile more than one file browser and terminal window...).
4)Things like configuring wireless interfaces were endlessly confusing. Theres about 4 different places to enter a wireless key - but only one of them accepts my home key, as the rest claim it is too long! With linux I just typed it in and it worked.
Can you name the FOUR places where you had to enter your wep key? you just need to run the network wizzard and it is done, in contrast with Linux where, well, it depends the distribution you are using the program you will have to use but only *if* your wireless network card is supported (my notebook network card just keeps turning on and off but does not works... oh and I have the "supported drivers" and the firmware... go figure).
he final thing which did it was when I wanted to play a video - WMP has gone through many funcitonality decrements over the years, and when I finally switched to mplayer it coped a lot better with partially missing files, keyboard shortcuts and general niceness than the MS equivilant.
hmmmm... I use VLC in Linux to play movies etc, I had to install it (as the applications that come with Xubuntu are terrible to watch video, and ubuntu and on any other distro you MUST download all the "restricted", "no open source" "devil" "god forbid them" whatever codecs). Oh! and the installation was a time consuming... even to make it play the same types of video I *used* to play with the same program on WINDOWS. So yeah, nice troll there.
1) I got sick to death of having to install different programs to burn CDs correctly, with the drag and drop interface terribly annoying and confusing.
Why? just intall Nero the NERO Burning ROM CD that came with your CD-RW (or DVD) recorder. If you bought your computer chances are they are already installed. if you pirated windows just pirate it from the same site. Not that I did not need to install a program to burn in Xubuntu... oh! and it was a PAIN in the ass to burn with more than the lousy 8.3 format and more than 7 nested directories... I had finally to sucumb and download KDE's K3B program which I dont like because each time I have to start it it takes ages while it loads all the KDE crap (talk about memory hog) like kdesyscoca and whatever else.
2) A lot of software I like as a programming hobbiest is not easily available with a simple command like apt-get install Name 1 (ONE) programming language or software that you can run on Linux that can NOT be run on Windows XP.... hello?... Thank you.
As long as they make available the Next-next generation PS4 available soon enough...
That is what had happened after the SNES-Genesis-etc days (From the N64 onwards), the "next gen" iteration life span has became shorter and shorter so developers just start to get familiar with the system when the Next-gen system gets out.
I will sound like the old-grandpa but I liked more when the game generations lasted longer, you could see really nice things done with the technology and the hardware had more "value" (see for example all the NES peripherals) as you *knew* the system will remain active for a long time and more games would likely come.
I won't buy the "eye toy" or the "maracas" or the "bongos" today for any system because I know that only 1 or two games would ever be available.
Nah, people go to Starbucks because the number of choices available make them feel they have the power of "the choice" when they ask for a Caramel Macchiato with chocolate sprinkles soya milk and two shots of expresso. They feel powerful =o).
Personally I find that the only coffee you get in starbucks is the one you add after they serve your drink (when you add the sugar and other niceties). I preffer Costa or Nero.
And about the McBurnt lady I think it is one of the dozens of examples of how fucked up the USA legal system is. It is talked in Mexico with other examples like if a thief gets into your home and your dog bites him he can sue you for some stupid damage and also that if they do clean the floor on a super market and you happen to slide and fall because they do not put a sign, then you can also sue the supermarket...
That is (in my opinion) the culture of the whining citizens... Just learn to take care of yourself and learn some common sense (uh coffee is hot oh noes I think I should be careful but why dont I just put the cup between my legs! oh noes I got burn ohn noes lets sue and get a million dollars...).
Because then they will have to put a processor good enough to run Konqueror crap libs and they would have to include 512MB of memory in order to make it usable...
Yeah, that is why Opera is so cool, I used to use it in the Navigator vs Explorer days, then I moved to firefox and just recently I moved again to Opera. I use Linux and I have used Konqueror and all the resource hungry KDE things but I decided not to touch any Krelated software as they are very unstable and resource hungry (from debian, fedora, mandriva and ubuntu experience over here).
I think you are talking about the Autorefractor. I believe it is not really needed as long as you have space to put your glasses like with the IMAX 3D glasses which give you space to put them.
Oh, and there is some people like me whose prescription can not be measured with those things. I remember the first time I tried to get my shortsightedness measured by one of these things the optometrist got really angry because the machine could not "focus" before I blinked (only with my right eye, my left eye passed the test fine). The problem is that after more than 40 seconds the stupid machine could not find a proper focus point becuase of the problem in my right eye.
So, although the technology is fine, it is 1. Not mature enough for common use and 2. Quite very expensive.Even tough, I want to believe that there is going to be some kind of 3D device for the Wii, I bought mine some days ago and I cant think of a more appropiate INPUT device for 3D gaming (A year ago or so I saw a presentation by an ex- VR researcher stating that the reason VR development came to a halt was the input, as someone else stated the DISPLAY technology is great but aside of that, there is not enough technology to emulate the other aspects of "Reality" [smell, touch, space, etc] to make them Virtual).
One nice idea would be playing with dreams manipulation with something like dream signal injection (of course we are decades away from the possibility of having that kind of understaing of the human brain).
I agree, I just bought a SAMSUNG YP-Z5 4 GB digital player and I think this is THE ONE I would recommend to everyone. It has the ability to be used with Windoze Media Player but the music is copied in comprehensable folders in the flash memory.
I can also copy the music folders directly using any Linux file manager (or plain old cp). It can handle some kind of DRM thing (which I dont use as I dont like leasing crippled products) and the best thing is that it plays MP3, WMV and OGG. It is the size of an Ipod nano and has a color screen, the battery lasts more han 30 hours (continuous playing, I usually just use the shuffle all function and never stop the thing, just put down the headphones).
I would love if, instead of trying to fix RPM people started to use the excellent Autopackage package manager. It has been the only package manager so far, to allow me to install some program/without/ root privileges. Also, it is the only REAL click & play installing program.
For you, that are a software developer, I would really recommend autopackage. The only problem I have (for now) is the need to open the terminal to run the.package script (although that should be fixed by the gnome and kde people).
Long before scientists stated (and proved) that the heavens are expanding, the Bible has stated this fact (Job 9:8, Isaiah 40:22, 42:5, as well as many others). I could go on and on about many pieces of evidence, however this evidence is not really hidden
That is one of the things that "bothers" me about science. You see, science is very "confortable" as it only tells what people already know giving a different explaniation. Not that it is bad or anything but, as for your specific example, long ago people "knew" that the heavens were expanding but because they did not have too much knowledge as we have now, they thought it was a God who did it. The same thing happened with thunder and storms and all that natural stuff, before aqcuiring the scientific knowledge people believed it was done by the "god of thunder" and the god of storms and whatever.
Nowadays for example, some people believe that the planets have some effect on hour lives, but science is not to advanced to know *why* and *how* are these effects hence the Zodiac signs and astrology. I am sure in 50 years or more scientists will find the reasons (magnetic fields, quantum fields or whatever) that produce those effects.
Personally I am a atheist and scientist, although during the first 15 years of my life I grew up on a catholic school (although both my parents are atheists and scientists). This made me know and understand religion, and at the end of my secondary school my parents told me that, if I decided to be catholic they would have no problem, however I decided to be atheist.
In summary, I think religion is needed. As someone said, God has been the best invention of men. People need it to explain all the things we can not explain and I am fine with that. On the other side you have science which tries to explain everything we dont know, but at the end, we [humanity] would need an infinity to understand *everything* therefore there will always be some things that MUST be attributed to a deitity.
Ha, civils have more access to automatic and heavy weaponary than you can think of. Just as an example read look in any serach engine about "Loz Zetas" and other drug cartel "security" services... Also, you should read some newspapers in Mexico where every people is attacking police departments and other buildings with bazookas and granades.
If they can get those weapons imagine what USA people could do (think for example, how many countries would be willing to provide weapons in order to fight the USA government).
An old P100 with 64MB RAM running shorewall is practically invulnerable. No ports need to be open, excepting for SSH from the internal network, or not even that. You can run it from CompactFlash and have it with no moving parts at all. It'll quietly sit there for years shoveling packets back and forth with zero problems. It doesn't accept connections, it has no open ports of public services -- it's impossible to break into barring a kernel bug in the TCP stack.
That is quite interesting. I have been thinking in creating a PC with flash memory (I preffer SD memory). I would love if it was possible to install Linux in a SD flash disk or even better to create a RAID array of SD disks in order to have as you say a machine without moving parts. However, I do not know what to use in order to replace the power source, I would love to have a power source without a fan, I believe it is possible, or at least not to have a huge power source. Maybe using a laptop charger or something like that...
I believe a P3 800 MHZ with 512 MB ram and 4GB of SD flash would run really smoothly with something like Xubuntu installed.
And just to emphasize my point, we are not talking about an obscure hyper closed source driver here, it is a driver that is already *supported* in the kernel. WHY the FUCK is it SOOOOOO cumbersome to connect and use a dance mat in Linux while in Windows XP [which does NOT support the hardware and you have to download a THIRD PARTY DRIVER] is as easy as [lots of things] double click, next next next, finish.
Soo? any comments? Linux zealots please display your fury ahaha.
p.s. As I said I work and develop software [Mainly Java but I do some C++/wxWidgets/OpenGL code which I always try to make 100%] portable in Linux. My everyday platform is Linux, I recently bought Lemmings Revolution game and plan to spend a weekend making it work with wine, but for the love of god, IT IS NOT AS EASY TO USE AS WINDOWS.
"easier to use" means "requires less knowledge", then Linux might not be "easier to use". But if "easier to use" means "consistently behaves the way a knowledgable person expects", then Linux is much "easier to use".
Just read at what you just wrote, "consistently behaves the way a knowledgable person expects", WTF is a "knowedgable person"? one that knows how to use the system? if that is, then both systems are "easier to use" to the people that already know how to use it DOH!!
On the other side, just to backup what the other poster said, and as a proof of the "easiesterst" of use of Linux, see the difference in "easiability of use" between Linux (Ubunut 6.10) and Windows (XP SP2) when wanting to connect a PSX Dance Mat using a PSX 2 Parallel port adapter [I *tried* to do this some weeks ago and gave up and installed it in my girlfriends Windows XP machine):
Windows XP: - Download PSXPAD program - Run program - Click NEXT button until it changes to "Finish" button - Click Finish button. - Go into the Control Panel/Joysticks/PSXPAD/Properties window and select the option to treat axis as buttons
Ubuntu Linux[via http://www.raphnet.net/electronique/psx_adaptor/ps x_adaptor_en.php>googled web page]: - Open console (woah! 80% of the users would have installed Windows by then) If the gamecon driver is compliled in your kernel (head explodes):
# modprobe gamecon gc=0,7,0,0,0,0 [ Note that, after several head explosions and hours of google search you realize that you should write 8 instead of 7 to enable "dance mat" compatilibity there]
If you have a rescent kernel, try this instead: # modprobe gamecon map=0,7,0,0,0,0
If the module does not exist, you will have to compile it yourself. When you configure your kernel, select the... [Yeah, good luck downloading./config./make./make install, by now my girlfriend was asking me when were we going to play the darn thing ]
Then of course you connect the dance mat [wireless] and it does not work, it just sits there, i tried mod probing enabling disabling and what not without sucess.
In summary, I use Linux for everything [I use Fedora Core at work, and Ubuntu at home and ssh -Y quite often to a RHEL server) but for the love of god leave those blatant lies to comp.linux.advocacy fanbois
I preordered my Wii from PC World a month before release, and so far, no Wii. I was operating under the assumption that they might be one of the less well-frequented retails, and was encouraged to see them closing off preorders after I ordered, expecting that this was a sign of honest pre-allocation rules. To be fair, Nintendo have been shipping short orders to the UK.
Ha! I preordered mine at COMET, yesterday the motherfuckers called me to tell me that Nintendo had moved the release date to the 11th. Inside me I said "Oh yeah sure wtf", I asked the girl calling if she was shure that was completely true and she told me that it was... So I will get mine if I am lucky on sunday... of course I went to the cosest GAME and they were getting ready for today's launch.
On the other hand, I preordered Zelda and Red Steel at amazon and they already sent them... they expect them to arrive on monday.
You can't just pass a law that says that any intellectual property that happens to come within your borders (no matter how it got there) is fair game to be bought, sold, and copied by anyone who likes without any compensation to the owners of the rights to those properties.
You certainly are from the USA aren't you? always thinking you are alone in the universe...Of course any country can make any law they want. It is called sovereignty (the exclusive right to exercise supreme political e.g. legislative, judicial, and/or executive authority over a geographic region, group of people, or oneself.). It is what countries can do. It is possible for a country not to havy any "copyright" or "patent" laws hence all the "intellectual property" would be property of the people (public domain). Of course, that will not make happy to countries like USA but that does not mean it is illegal or whatever.
Remember, legality is a concept defined at every country, what is legal in USA might not be legal in Durkadurkastan and viceversa. Morality is similar as, what is moral in usa (like women showing their hair to everyone or brazilian women showing their breasts to everyone) might no be moral in other places.
First off, at the end of the day AllofMP3 was not giving artists and production / media companies their required due, so what they were doing was immoral, if technically legal at the time. Allof MP3 offered to pay royalties. All anyone had to do was fill out a form. The **AAs refused to deal with them,
It is as simple as selling mariguana in the Netherlands. It is legal and moral to do it there, and in contrast it is illegal and immoral to sell it on the USA. It is legal to publish DIY methods for mariguana production while in other countries might not be the case.
Now, I do not know if *after* the amendment (see the link) the allofmp3 current practices became illegal, that would need to be tested in A RUSSIAN COURT. I hope it is tried there, and I hope Allofmp3 win. However, we will have to see that int he following months.
I loved allofmp3 too, I always got credit from xrost (via debit card when it was possible) however the last time I wanted to buy the Xrost service did not accept CC so I could not buy (I did not want to give my CC details to whatever other company they where using.. even if the Debit card I used is one I have specifically to buy things on the interent [thus I only add funds accordingly]).
I always downloaded in ogg 0.7 and I found the quality pretty fine. I loved the fact that just 2 mintues after I remembered a specific song I could have it in my desktop without any problem. And of course the price in my opinion was fair.
Now, I hope that, the fact that the government signed an agreement wont mean it will be able to shut it down so easly. I really wish Allofmp3 people fight for their rights (in Russia). I also remember getting into other mp3 sites from russia sometime I was searching in google... so allofmp3 is not the only one (and there are other sites that have a lot of anime mp3s).
I like buying CDs, but I have not bought one in the last 2 years or so, since I arrived to UK because I refuse to pay £15 (thats US$29.2274 according to xe.com) for a CD which real value is USD$15 (Kamelot Hlack Halo amazon.com vs amazon.co.uk prices). And I would never "lease" music with the iTunes, Napster or any other "legal" online services available (ignoring the fact that the quality, at 128kpbs is terrible).
So yeah, I really hope Allofmp3 can stand. Also, does anyone know of a country where the ALLOFMP3 buisness model could be used? maybe Iceland or any other of those countries.
How much does an Island cost? we could buy one to make our own country and screw all copyright laws... then create a service ala allofmp3 =oP. Viva la revolución!!
Slashdot Mirror
Having played many a MMORPG myself, I have seen how addicted people get to, well, just numbers. The goal is to have higher numbers than other people. That makes you special/better. Doesn't matter if the numbers mean anything or not.
www.tacticsarena.com The son of a bitch game got me for more than one year... (a girl friend introduced me to it so it was cool). The more stupid thing is that each month your account gets wiped and all your points are completely removed unles you *pay* (however when you pay they give you other "characters" and change your status to "gold" which pretty much removes the fun from the game).
Any kind of multiplayer game where you can show anyone you are the best (or better than a lot of people) is going to be addictive. I used to do it with Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2 and King of Fighters on arcades... but now that Arcades are dead Live and the other online games (I HOPE the Wii has an acceptable online service... I bought it and it is very cool so far).
At least KDE (and Windows) put the options where you can find them using just the normal flow of the GUI.
n tVersion\Explorer\Advanced
Yeah you bet, every advanced option you can imagine is on plain view for you to change your GUI based
REGISTRY EDITOR
KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre
in the registry and add the following DWord value
CascadeFolderBands and set it to 1.
Please, Gnome is a slim pick up and go desktop for new users, KDE is a customisable and flexible desktop for power, business or techie users.
Just a clarification here. While i agree that Gnome is a good desktop for new users I need to make clear that not everyone who preffer Gnome are new users. I am not a new user and I preffer Gnome against KDE any day of the week.
This reminds me of the time when someone on slashdot told me that I should not be using XUBUNTU because it is for people that is supposed to know "what they are doing"... Xubuntu's objective is to have a slim desktop or from the xubuntu.org page: "It is lighter on system requirements and tends to be more efficient than Ubuntu with GNOME or KDE, since it uses the Xfce Desktop environment, which makes it ideal for old or low-end machines, thin-client networks, or for those who would like to get more performance out of their hardware.".
Similarly, Gnome follows some specific guidelines. There are some newbies and some hardcore geeks that will like or dislike the guidelines but it does not make you a noob (or a 1337) use one or another.
..he means it takes someone smarter than a carrot about 20 minutes to figure out, then yeah, it has a steep learning curve.
Uh I smell Linux Zealot in the air... that is the typical Linux zealot answer when someone says X-distro Linux interface is more difficult than Windows... You must understand that for the non-saavy computer user (the majority of them anyways) there is no "menu bar" and "tool bar" but there are specific icons in specific place in the screen that they need to press in order to do things. For example, to save a file they must click on the "File" button and then click on the "save" button that appears and then type the name of their document and click on the "accept" button. That is the task, that is how it is done. If you modify at least a bit the steps of the task they will not know how to save their documents. There is no "File menu which contains all the options relevant to the computer file management" reasoning as there is on you or me. That is why they look on the
If limit it to people who be willing to spend $20 on a game without agonizing over the decision, you're already significantly smaller than the console market.
You do not know what you are talking about.
You just have to take a look at tacticsarena.com or runescape.com or neopets.com (my girlfriend used to play that) or any one of the thousands of online games in which you can subscribe or get some "extras" for some cash. Those are the games for the "non hardcore" gamer. People that just wont buy a console but would gladely spend 5 bucks 10 buck or as you said even 20 bucks in *trying* some game (which, if is adictively enough they will continue to play).
UK is very similar to Japan. But nothing like this in place. Why?
Well, I used to live in a place in Liverpool where there was no cable access although I was pretty close to the city centre, I asked some folks in my LUG about it and they explained me that in the UK the cable companies run a "shared monopoly" on each area and that, on Liverpool Telewest was the only available cable provider (I did not want to contract a telephone *just* to use the internet as I dont do any kind of local calls and the only ones I do I make them on my mobile and I wont pay £10 extra for the phone service.... and all the DSL providers require you to have a BT line).
So it seems it is one of the lousy economic practices that the government lets companies do in the UK (the other being IMHO the overpricing of items... see Tesco vs Levi Jeans for a clear example).
Hi, a bit late but you might find this info useful.
If you want a similar functionality on Windows as SSH + X (run any linux app on a Windows client) you can use Xming Putty Xming is a small X-window server and Putty is an SSH client app. Both are open source and work really nice (I used to use it when working from home on my XP machine).
HTH
You know, every day, the world seems more and more like Heinlein's novel "Friday"
:)
I am still waiting for polygamy to be accepted as it was in the novel...
I know you are trolling but one of your was interesting to me:
... ...
3) I hate to say it, but virtual desktops and fluxbox leave my desktop a lot less cluttered and much easier to work with than windows does out of the box, and my computer is under load from its graphics a lot less often
I use XFCE for my XUBUNTu desktop but I have not found a way to "tile windows" and "cascade windows" or anything equivalent, I found the ION window manager which pretty much an overkill solution for what I want to do (just automatically tile more than one file browser and terminal window...).
4)Things like configuring wireless interfaces were endlessly confusing. Theres about 4 different places to enter a wireless key - but only one of them accepts my home key, as the rest claim it is too long! With linux I just typed it in and it worked.
Can you name the FOUR places where you had to enter your wep key? you just need to run the network wizzard and it is done, in contrast with Linux where, well, it depends the distribution you are using the program you will have to use but only *if* your wireless network card is supported (my notebook network card just keeps turning on and off but does not works... oh and I have the "supported drivers" and the firmware... go figure).
he final thing which did it was when I wanted to play a video - WMP has gone through many funcitonality decrements over the years, and when I finally switched to mplayer it coped a lot better with partially missing files, keyboard shortcuts and general niceness than the MS equivilant.
hmmmm... I use VLC in Linux to play movies etc, I had to install it (as the applications that come with Xubuntu are terrible to watch video, and ubuntu and on any other distro you MUST download all the "restricted", "no open source" "devil" "god forbid them" whatever codecs). Oh! and the installation was a time consuming... even to make it play the same types of video I *used* to play with the same program on WINDOWS. So yeah, nice troll there.
1) I got sick to death of having to install different programs to burn CDs correctly, with the drag and drop interface terribly annoying and confusing.
Why? just intall Nero the NERO Burning ROM CD that came with your CD-RW (or DVD) recorder. If you bought your computer chances are they are already installed. if you pirated windows just pirate it from the same site. Not that I did not need to install a program to burn in Xubuntu... oh! and it was a PAIN in the ass to burn with more than the lousy 8.3 format and more than 7 nested directories... I had finally to sucumb and download KDE's K3B program which I dont like because each time I have to start it it takes ages while it loads all the KDE crap (talk about memory hog) like kdesyscoca and whatever else.
2) A lot of software I like as a programming hobbiest is not easily available with a simple command like apt-get install
Name 1 (ONE) programming language or software that you can run on Linux that can NOT be run on Windows XP.
hello?
Thank you.
As long as they make available the Next-next generation PS4 available soon enough...
That is what had happened after the SNES-Genesis-etc days (From the N64 onwards), the "next gen" iteration life span has became shorter and shorter so developers just start to get familiar with the system when the Next-gen system gets out.
I will sound like the old-grandpa but I liked more when the game generations lasted longer, you could see really nice things done with the technology and the hardware had more "value" (see for example all the NES peripherals) as you *knew* the system will remain active for a long time and more games would likely come.
I won't buy the "eye toy" or the "maracas" or the "bongos" today for any system because I know that only 1 or two games would ever be available.
Nah, people go to Starbucks because the number of choices available make them feel they have the power of "the choice" when they ask for a Caramel Macchiato with chocolate sprinkles soya milk and two shots of expresso. They feel powerful =o).
Personally I find that the only coffee you get in starbucks is the one you add after they serve your drink (when you add the sugar and other niceties). I preffer Costa or Nero.
And about the McBurnt lady I think it is one of the dozens of examples of how fucked up the USA legal system is. It is talked in Mexico with other examples like if a thief gets into your home and your dog bites him he can sue you for some stupid damage and also that if they do clean the floor on a super market and you happen to slide and fall because they do not put a sign, then you can also sue the supermarket...
That is (in my opinion) the culture of the whining citizens... Just learn to take care of yourself and learn some common sense (uh coffee is hot oh noes I think I should be careful but why dont I just put the cup between my legs! oh noes I got burn ohn noes lets sue and get a million dollars...).
Because then they will have to put a processor good enough to run Konqueror crap libs and they would have to include 512MB of memory in order to make it usable...
Yeah, that is why Opera is so cool, I used to use it in the Navigator vs Explorer days, then I moved to firefox and just recently I moved again to Opera. I use Linux and I have used Konqueror and all the resource hungry KDE things but I decided not to touch any Krelated software as they are very unstable and resource hungry (from debian, fedora, mandriva and ubuntu experience over here).
I think you are talking about the Autorefractor. I believe it is not really needed as long as you have space to put your glasses like with the IMAX 3D glasses which give you space to put them.
Oh, and there is some people like me whose prescription can not be measured with those things. I remember the first time I tried to get my shortsightedness measured by one of these things the optometrist got really angry because the machine could not "focus" before I blinked (only with my right eye, my left eye passed the test fine). The problem is that after more than 40 seconds the stupid machine could not find a proper focus point becuase of the problem in my right eye.
So, although the technology is fine, it is 1. Not mature enough for common use and 2. Quite very expensive.Even tough, I want to believe that there is going to be some kind of 3D device for the Wii, I bought mine some days ago and I cant think of a more appropiate INPUT device for 3D gaming (A year ago or so I saw a presentation by an ex- VR researcher stating that the reason VR development came to a halt was the input, as someone else stated the DISPLAY technology is great but aside of that, there is not enough technology to emulate the other aspects of "Reality" [smell, touch, space, etc] to make them Virtual).
One nice idea would be playing with dreams manipulation with something like dream signal injection (of course we are decades away from the possibility of having that kind of understaing of the human brain).
If you think that is nasty, Try this
Sharon is going to get really pissed off I guess...
I agree, I just bought a SAMSUNG YP-Z5 4 GB digital player and I think this is THE ONE I would recommend to everyone. It has the ability to be used with Windoze Media Player but the music is copied in comprehensable folders in the flash memory.
I can also copy the music folders directly using any Linux file manager (or plain old cp). It can handle some kind of DRM thing (which I dont use as I dont like leasing crippled products) and the best thing is that it plays MP3, WMV and OGG. It is the size of an Ipod nano and has a color screen, the battery lasts more han 30 hours (continuous playing, I usually just use the shuffle all function and never stop the thing, just put down the headphones).
I would love if, instead of trying to fix RPM people started to use the excellent Autopackage package manager. It has been the only package manager so far, to allow me to install some program /without/ root privileges. Also, it is the only REAL click & play installing program.
.package script (although that should be fixed by the gnome and kde people).
For you, that are a software developer, I would really recommend autopackage. The only problem I have (for now) is the need to open the terminal to run the
Long before scientists stated (and proved) that the heavens are expanding, the Bible has stated this fact (Job 9:8, Isaiah 40:22, 42:5, as well as many others). I could go on and on about many pieces of evidence, however this evidence is not really hidden
That is one of the things that "bothers" me about science. You see, science is very "confortable" as it only tells what people already know giving a different explaniation. Not that it is bad or anything but, as for your specific example, long ago people "knew" that the heavens were expanding but because they did not have too much knowledge as we have now, they thought it was a God who did it. The same thing happened with thunder and storms and all that natural stuff, before aqcuiring the scientific knowledge people believed it was done by the "god of thunder" and the god of storms and whatever.
Nowadays for example, some people believe that the planets have some effect on hour lives, but science is not to advanced to know *why* and *how* are these effects hence the Zodiac signs and astrology. I am sure in 50 years or more scientists will find the reasons (magnetic fields, quantum fields or whatever) that produce those effects.
Personally I am a atheist and scientist, although during the first 15 years of my life I grew up on a catholic school (although both my parents are atheists and scientists). This made me know and understand religion, and at the end of my secondary school my parents told me that, if I decided to be catholic they would have no problem, however I decided to be atheist.
In summary, I think religion is needed. As someone said, God has been the best invention of men. People need it to explain all the things we can not explain and I am fine with that. On the other side you have science which tries to explain everything we dont know, but at the end, we [humanity] would need an infinity to understand *everything* therefore there will always be some things that MUST be attributed to a deitity.
Ha, civils have more access to automatic and heavy weaponary than you can think of. Just as an example read look in any serach engine about "Loz Zetas" and other drug cartel "security" services... Also, you should read some newspapers in Mexico where every people is attacking police departments and other buildings with bazookas and granades.
If they can get those weapons imagine what USA people could do (think for example, how many countries would be willing to provide weapons in order to fight the USA government).
An old P100 with 64MB RAM running shorewall is practically invulnerable. No ports need to be open, excepting for SSH from the internal network, or not even that. You can run it from CompactFlash and have it with no moving parts at all. It'll quietly sit there for years shoveling packets back and forth with zero problems. It doesn't accept connections, it has no open ports of public services -- it's impossible to break into barring a kernel bug in the TCP stack.
That is quite interesting. I have been thinking in creating a PC with flash memory (I preffer SD memory). I would love if it was possible to install Linux in a SD flash disk or even better to create a RAID array of SD disks in order to have as you say a machine without moving parts. However, I do not know what to use in order to replace the power source, I would love to have a power source without a fan, I believe it is possible, or at least not to have a huge power source. Maybe using a laptop charger or something like that...
I believe a P3 800 MHZ with 512 MB ram and 4GB of SD flash would run really smoothly with something like Xubuntu installed.
And just to emphasize my point, we are not talking about an obscure hyper closed source driver here, it is a driver that is already *supported* in the kernel. WHY the FUCK is it SOOOOOO cumbersome to connect and use a dance mat in Linux while in Windows XP [which does NOT support the hardware and you have to download a THIRD PARTY DRIVER] is as easy as [lots of things] double click, next next next, finish.
Soo? any comments? Linux zealots please display your fury ahaha.
p.s. As I said I work and develop software [Mainly Java but I do some C++/wxWidgets/OpenGL code which I always try to make 100%] portable in Linux. My everyday platform is Linux, I recently bought Lemmings Revolution game and plan to spend a weekend making it work with wine, but for the love of god, IT IS NOT AS EASY TO USE AS WINDOWS.
"easier to use" means "requires less knowledge", then Linux might not be "easier to use". But if "easier to use" means "consistently behaves the way a knowledgable person expects", then Linux is much "easier to use".
s x_adaptor_en.php>googled web page]:
... [Yeah, good luck downloading ./config ./make ./make install, by now my girlfriend was asking me when were we going to play the darn thing ]
Just read at what you just wrote, "consistently behaves the way a knowledgable person expects", WTF is a "knowedgable person"? one that knows how to use the system? if that is, then both systems are "easier to use" to the people that already know how to use it DOH!!
On the other side, just to backup what the other poster said, and as a proof of the "easiesterst" of use of Linux, see the difference in "easiability of use" between Linux (Ubunut 6.10) and Windows (XP SP2) when wanting to connect a PSX Dance Mat using a PSX 2 Parallel port adapter [I *tried* to do this some weeks ago and gave up and installed it in my girlfriends Windows XP machine):
Windows XP:
- Download PSXPAD program
- Run program
- Click NEXT button until it changes to "Finish" button
- Click Finish button.
- Go into the Control Panel/Joysticks/PSXPAD/Properties window and select the option to treat axis as buttons
Ubuntu Linux[via http://www.raphnet.net/electronique/psx_adaptor/p
- Open console (woah! 80% of the users would have installed Windows by then)
If the gamecon driver is compliled in your kernel (head explodes):
# modprobe gamecon gc=0,7,0,0,0,0 [ Note that, after several head explosions and hours of google search you realize that you should write 8 instead of 7 to enable "dance mat" compatilibity there]
If you have a rescent kernel, try this instead:
# modprobe gamecon map=0,7,0,0,0,0
If the module does not exist, you will have to compile it yourself. When you configure your kernel, select the
Then of course you connect the dance mat [wireless] and it does not work, it just sits there, i tried mod probing enabling disabling and what not without sucess.
In summary, I use Linux for everything [I use Fedora Core at work, and Ubuntu at home and ssh -Y quite often to a RHEL server) but for the love of god leave those blatant lies to comp.linux.advocacy fanbois
I preordered my Wii from PC World a month before release, and so far, no Wii. I was operating under the assumption that they might be one of the less well-frequented retails, and was encouraged to see them closing off preorders after I ordered, expecting that this was a sign of honest pre-allocation rules. To be fair, Nintendo have been shipping short orders to the UK.
Ha! I preordered mine at COMET, yesterday the motherfuckers called me to tell me that Nintendo had moved the release date to the 11th. Inside me I said "Oh yeah sure wtf", I asked the girl calling if she was shure that was completely true and she told me that it was... So I will get mine if I am lucky on sunday... of course I went to the cosest GAME and they were getting ready for today's launch.
On the other hand, I preordered Zelda and Red Steel at amazon and they already sent them... they expect them to arrive on monday.
You can't just pass a law that says that any intellectual property that happens to come within your borders (no matter how it got there) is fair game to be bought, sold, and copied by anyone who likes without any compensation to the owners of the rights to those properties.
You certainly are from the USA aren't you? always thinking you are alone in the universe...Of course any country can make any law they want. It is called sovereignty (the exclusive right to exercise supreme political e.g. legislative, judicial, and/or executive authority over a geographic region, group of people, or oneself.). It is what countries can do. It is possible for a country not to havy any "copyright" or "patent" laws hence all the "intellectual property" would be property of the people (public domain). Of course, that will not make happy to countries like USA but that does not mean it is illegal or whatever.
Remember, legality is a concept defined at every country, what is legal in USA might not be legal in Durkadurkastan and viceversa. Morality is similar as, what is moral in usa (like women showing their hair to everyone or brazilian women showing their breasts to everyone) might no be moral in other places.
First off, at the end of the day AllofMP3 was not giving artists and production / media companies their required due, so what they were doing was immoral, if technically legal at the time.
Allof MP3 offered to pay royalties. All anyone had to do was fill out a form. The **AAs refused to deal with them,
The Russian Organization on Collective Management of Rights of Authors and Other Rightholders in Multimedia, Digital Networks & Visual Arts (ROMS) is the Russian equivalent to RIAA. Until September 1st 2006 the fact that Allofmp3 site payed the requird fees for the distribution of the intellectual property to this organization made the AllOfMp3 distribution legal. It did not made the "reception" of such intellectual property legal on your country but what they were doing was completely legal and moral in their country.
It is as simple as selling mariguana in the Netherlands. It is legal and moral to do it there, and in contrast it is illegal and immoral to sell it on the USA. It is legal to publish DIY methods for mariguana production while in other countries might not be the case.
Now, I do not know if *after* the amendment (see the link) the allofmp3 current practices became illegal, that would need to be tested in A RUSSIAN COURT. I hope it is tried there, and I hope Allofmp3 win. However, we will have to see that int he following months.
Hope this helps.
I loved allofmp3 too, I always got credit from xrost (via debit card when it was possible) however the last time I wanted to buy the Xrost service did not accept CC so I could not buy (I did not want to give my CC details to whatever other company they where using.. even if the Debit card I used is one I have specifically to buy things on the interent [thus I only add funds accordingly]).
I always downloaded in ogg 0.7 and I found the quality pretty fine. I loved the fact that just 2 mintues after I remembered a specific song I could have it in my desktop without any problem. And of course the price in my opinion was fair.
Now, I hope that, the fact that the government signed an agreement wont mean it will be able to shut it down so easly. I really wish Allofmp3 people fight for their rights (in Russia). I also remember getting into other mp3 sites from russia sometime I was searching in google... so allofmp3 is not the only one (and there are other sites that have a lot of anime mp3s).
I like buying CDs, but I have not bought one in the last 2 years or so, since I arrived to UK because I refuse to pay £15 (thats US$29.2274 according to xe.com) for a CD which real value is USD$15 (Kamelot Hlack Halo amazon.com vs amazon.co.uk prices). And I would never "lease" music with the iTunes, Napster or any other "legal" online services available (ignoring the fact that the quality, at 128kpbs is terrible).
So yeah, I really hope Allofmp3 can stand. Also, does anyone know of a country where the ALLOFMP3 buisness model could be used? maybe Iceland or any other of those countries.
How much does an Island cost? we could buy one to make our own country and screw all copyright laws... then create a service ala allofmp3 =oP. Viva la revolución!!