Never ran into this either in 4.0, though given the nature of airplane flight it'd be pretty tricky to hit the ground at *exactly* straight down. I was pretty young and definitely tried out all the different ways of crashing things.
X-Plane's biggest problem now is lack of scenery. Everything is in place for it to be premier - Terrain, planes, flight model accuracy, etc. But there's still quite limited "landmark" scenery, and a lot of the best is payware. MSFS has had, for a good couple decades now, readily available scenery for major cities with all sorts of recognizable landmarks and every release has added more. I still fly X-Plane a ton more, but I still fire up MSFS when I want to do some sight-seeing. It's really the last thing holding back X-Plane.
I've also been involved in the X-P community for awhile now, and the lead author, Austin Meyer, can be a bit... eccentric, in a Jobsian sort of way.
Same as tepples, there weren't a lot of those sort of things around when I bought the DS. Especially not at the pricepoint of a DS. The SmartQ is actually pretty neat looking, might look into it.
It is very nice to see some very interesting things coming out of the Chinese manufacturers these days. For so long all you saw were crappy knockoffs (Pop Station) or incredibly cheap crap.
Personally, looking at what homebrew was available and such for a DS was a large portion of the reason I bought it in the first place. I also got good use out of DSLinux for random stuff until I got my ipod touch (jailbroken, of course) which gives me everything dslinux has and more.
It's a shame there's not a better way to separate out the homebrew and piracy. Although I suppose Nintendo probably wouldn't like the homebrew either since it's "competition"
A more accurate saying might be no non-webkit browsers. All the browsers in Apple Store are, to my knowledge, still using the iphone/ipod webkit widgets. Thus Apple still has ultimate control over the browsing experience, and can ensure that anything that is a browser or embeds a web browser has the same visual experience.
One solution would be a Load/Don't Load list that's kept on a per-user basis that determines whether a plugin is loaded or not. This could have security implementations though, in a case where a non-admin user has a enterprise-configured Firefox installation with perhaps a proprietary plugin installed for something important that shouldn't be disabled for whatever reason.
Not to mention sloppy webmasters start depending on it rather than properly implementing their site. I remember one site trumpeting loudly "Now! Firefox support!! Click here for instructions!" and it was simply installing IETab and using it.
I can't speak to the other clones, but I had a Starmax 4000 that ran very, very nicely. In addition, it accepted non-Apple hardware like CD-ROM drives a lot more gracefully. There was even a hackish G3 upgrade made for it. It also had a standard VGA port instead of the Apple 15 pin port, and even PS/2 ports that worked nicely with Mac OS. It's everything a cheap, entry-level to mid-level Mac should have been but Apple missed out on (and, some would argue, are still missing out on since the Starmax had a lot more upgrade and expansion options than a Mac Mini).
I have a Mac Classic on my desk, networked into my network and running telnet and MacWeb. It's a nice little box for IRCing from and for some really, really retro web surfing. Plays Dark Castle nicely too:) Not my favorite of the B&W Compact Macs (would rather have an SE/30, or even an SE) but it's fun.
Windows 3.0 runs just fine in real mode on an 8088/8086 with around 512k RAM as long as it has at least CGA or Hercules graphics. I "ran" it on an IBM PC Convertible with 512k and something approaching CGA graphics. It was pretty slow and looked terrible, but it was good enough to pull up Notepad and Solitaire. Windows 3.1 and later dropped support for real mode and required a 286 or higher (with WFW stropping standard mode and requiring a 386)
There's a nifty little thing called ELKS (Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset) that would run from here. I've run it on an IBM PC Convertible with 512k before, but there's not a whole lot I could do with it. Especially compared to the massive number of DOS programs that would run on it (even Windows 3.0!). It does claim to support networking and TCP/IP though, which might let it do more on a system that actually had such things (The PC Convertible's only networking options were serial and parallel ports, neither of which I felt like messing with).
You may be interested in trying a game called Wurm Online. Its almost completely crafting - based with some very complex setups. Its main weakness is there is essentially no dev content outside the terrain and, on the pvp server, a vague faction war. Absolutely everything else is player driven. The land is completely terraformable. I've enjoyed it as an alternative to Wow type games.
I remember that. And the Stooge Fighter 3 in the later one. I spent probably a month playing and replaying that minigame before finding a walkthrough on a BBS and discovering you were *supposed* to lose the first time you played it (and in fact, it was enforced. If you got the opponent down to almost out of life, it'd cheat). Ticked me off:)
I'd also like to throw in no popup/unders, and no attempt to trick people by mimicking Windows interfaces. I've watched people be confused by the fake Windows-looking boxes, and they've occasionally thrown me off for a moment when they happen to look particularly good.
It's a different level of compatibility hacks. Even XP and 2k (with a manual dll install) have supported those compatibility modes, as well as Vista, but they're somewhat limited. They just force the app to see a particular version string for Windows, and allegedly use some different dlls and such for the app to use. The only time I've had any luck with it was for some old DirectX games that refused to run on Win2k/XP because they were from the Win95/98 era and assumed NT = No Direct3D.
The new thing is actually running a whole copy of XP in a VM.
There's a process for converting cardfile files to various other formats on MS's site here. Of course, once you get them into a comma delimited file, there's no shortage of routes you could take to move it into other apps.
The 32-bit version of Cardfile that came with some early versions of Windows NT ought to run fine on 64 bit OSes, but I haven't tried it myself.
Having spent far too long waiting behind people at self checkouts, ATMs, etc., I think you're overestimating peoples' ability to use touchscreens. People manage to foul up the little PIN Pad things where all you do is swipe your card, type in a PIN, and push "Yes" a couple times.
Not to mention, if they do somehow manage to foul up the calibration process, then you'd still have the same issue.
I'm in the same camp of having several touchscreen/tablet devices, and the only time I've had to calibrate anything was when I pulled a 10+ year old tablet PC out of storage to get some data from it and it was a little off. Only enough to be annoying, not impossible to use.
I guess it depends on your definition of "fully working". If you mean 100%, absolutely-can't-tell-it's-not-real emulation, then maybe not. But there are lots and lots of fully playable titles. The biggest problem is they have manual layer settings, which can make some games a bit funny with backgrounds showing on top of sprites and such. Usually not a big deal to fix by fiddling in the settings, but it can be a pain. I've played through most of LttP, DKC, FF3/6, and some of Chrono Trigger on it. It completely doesn't (and probably never will) support any of the special addon chips, so no go with some of the fancier, later games (Starfox, SMRPG, etc)
Incidentally, there's also a very nice Genesis emulator that runs very well for the other side of the fence. Loves me some Sonics and Starflight now and then.
Re:Remake of an old song...
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This isn't anything particularly new to me. I've been marveling at the way Windows browsers were faster in Wine than the Linux native ones all the back to Netscape 4 in the late 90s or early 2000s. In the earlier days when fonts were more annoying to get going in X, the Windows versions would often look a lot nicer too. I'd always figured it was either common knowledge, or some aberration on my part, so I never thought much of it. I've always wondered why this was, since it didn't really make sense.
Recently had to do this for a friend. From an original gold master XP takes at a minimum of four or five reboots. SP1 has to be installed, then you can usually go straight to SP3. From there, there are 70-ish or 80-ish critical updates that have to be installed. After that are a few updates to the updates that seem to be needed, which is another couple or three reboots.
That's not even counting any reboots that might be needed for drivers, apps, Office updates, etc. etc. Huge pain in every way.
I actually ran into something amusing relating to rental cars. I went to lunch with a coworker of mine who had a rental while some accident damage was fixed. It was starting to rain, and she didn't turn on the wipers. I finally asked and she said something like "Oh, they won't stay on" and demonstrated by pushing down on the wiper bar. Sure enough, the bar popped right back up and they only did one wipe. I reached over, pushed the bar *up*, and they worked like you'd expect. Apparently the bar worked opposite her car, and it didn't even occur to her to try the other way. (Note I called her a coworker, and not a friend. She's actually pretty annoying)
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Never ran into this either in 4.0, though given the nature of airplane flight it'd be pretty tricky to hit the ground at *exactly* straight down. I was pretty young and definitely tried out all the different ways of crashing things.
X-Plane's biggest problem now is lack of scenery. Everything is in place for it to be premier - Terrain, planes, flight model accuracy, etc. But there's still quite limited "landmark" scenery, and a lot of the best is payware. MSFS has had, for a good couple decades now, readily available scenery for major cities with all sorts of recognizable landmarks and every release has added more. I still fly X-Plane a ton more, but I still fire up MSFS when I want to do some sight-seeing. It's really the last thing holding back X-Plane.
I've also been involved in the X-P community for awhile now, and the lead author, Austin Meyer, can be a bit... eccentric, in a Jobsian sort of way.
Same as tepples, there weren't a lot of those sort of things around when I bought the DS. Especially not at the pricepoint of a DS. The SmartQ is actually pretty neat looking, might look into it.
It is very nice to see some very interesting things coming out of the Chinese manufacturers these days. For so long all you saw were crappy knockoffs (Pop Station) or incredibly cheap crap.
Personally, looking at what homebrew was available and such for a DS was a large portion of the reason I bought it in the first place. I also got good use out of DSLinux for random stuff until I got my ipod touch (jailbroken, of course) which gives me everything dslinux has and more.
It's a shame there's not a better way to separate out the homebrew and piracy. Although I suppose Nintendo probably wouldn't like the homebrew either since it's "competition"
A more accurate saying might be no non-webkit browsers. All the browsers in Apple Store are, to my knowledge, still using the iphone/ipod webkit widgets. Thus Apple still has ultimate control over the browsing experience, and can ensure that anything that is a browser or embeds a web browser has the same visual experience.
You'd be amused at how many non-techy people I've run into with Linux netbooks and the like that still refer to them as "DOS Windows"
One solution would be a Load/Don't Load list that's kept on a per-user basis that determines whether a plugin is loaded or not. This could have security implementations though, in a case where a non-admin user has a enterprise-configured Firefox installation with perhaps a proprietary plugin installed for something important that shouldn't be disabled for whatever reason.
Not to mention sloppy webmasters start depending on it rather than properly implementing their site. I remember one site trumpeting loudly "Now! Firefox support!! Click here for instructions!" and it was simply installing IETab and using it.
I can't speak to the other clones, but I had a Starmax 4000 that ran very, very nicely. In addition, it accepted non-Apple hardware like CD-ROM drives a lot more gracefully. There was even a hackish G3 upgrade made for it. It also had a standard VGA port instead of the Apple 15 pin port, and even PS/2 ports that worked nicely with Mac OS. It's everything a cheap, entry-level to mid-level Mac should have been but Apple missed out on (and, some would argue, are still missing out on since the Starmax had a lot more upgrade and expansion options than a Mac Mini).
I have a Mac Classic on my desk, networked into my network and running telnet and MacWeb. It's a nice little box for IRCing from and for some really, really retro web surfing. Plays Dark Castle nicely too :) Not my favorite of the B&W Compact Macs (would rather have an SE/30, or even an SE) but it's fun.
Windows 3.0 runs just fine in real mode on an 8088/8086 with around 512k RAM as long as it has at least CGA or Hercules graphics. I "ran" it on an IBM PC Convertible with 512k and something approaching CGA graphics. It was pretty slow and looked terrible, but it was good enough to pull up Notepad and Solitaire. Windows 3.1 and later dropped support for real mode and required a 286 or higher (with WFW stropping standard mode and requiring a 386)
There's a nifty little thing called ELKS (Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset) that would run from here. I've run it on an IBM PC Convertible with 512k before, but there's not a whole lot I could do with it. Especially compared to the massive number of DOS programs that would run on it (even Windows 3.0!). It does claim to support networking and TCP/IP though, which might let it do more on a system that actually had such things (The PC Convertible's only networking options were serial and parallel ports, neither of which I felt like messing with).
You may be interested in trying a game called Wurm Online. Its almost completely crafting - based with some very complex setups. Its main weakness is there is essentially no dev content outside the terrain and, on the pvp server, a vague faction war. Absolutely everything else is player driven. The land is completely terraformable. I've enjoyed it as an alternative to Wow type games.
Here
I remember that. And the Stooge Fighter 3 in the later one. I spent probably a month playing and replaying that minigame before finding a walkthrough on a BBS and discovering you were *supposed* to lose the first time you played it (and in fact, it was enforced. If you got the opponent down to almost out of life, it'd cheat). Ticked me off :)
I'd also like to throw in no popup/unders, and no attempt to trick people by mimicking Windows interfaces. I've watched people be confused by the fake Windows-looking boxes, and they've occasionally thrown me off for a moment when they happen to look particularly good.
It's a different level of compatibility hacks. Even XP and 2k (with a manual dll install) have supported those compatibility modes, as well as Vista, but they're somewhat limited. They just force the app to see a particular version string for Windows, and allegedly use some different dlls and such for the app to use. The only time I've had any luck with it was for some old DirectX games that refused to run on Win2k/XP because they were from the Win95/98 era and assumed NT = No Direct3D.
The new thing is actually running a whole copy of XP in a VM.
There's a process for converting cardfile files to various other formats on MS's site here. Of course, once you get them into a comma delimited file, there's no shortage of routes you could take to move it into other apps.
The 32-bit version of Cardfile that came with some early versions of Windows NT ought to run fine on 64 bit OSes, but I haven't tried it myself.
Having spent far too long waiting behind people at self checkouts, ATMs, etc., I think you're overestimating peoples' ability to use touchscreens. People manage to foul up the little PIN Pad things where all you do is swipe your card, type in a PIN, and push "Yes" a couple times.
Not to mention, if they do somehow manage to foul up the calibration process, then you'd still have the same issue.
I'm in the same camp of having several touchscreen/tablet devices, and the only time I've had to calibrate anything was when I pulled a 10+ year old tablet PC out of storage to get some data from it and it was a little off. Only enough to be annoying, not impossible to use.
I guess it depends on your definition of "fully working". If you mean 100%, absolutely-can't-tell-it's-not-real emulation, then maybe not. But there are lots and lots of fully playable titles. The biggest problem is they have manual layer settings, which can make some games a bit funny with backgrounds showing on top of sprites and such. Usually not a big deal to fix by fiddling in the settings, but it can be a pain. I've played through most of LttP, DKC, FF3/6, and some of Chrono Trigger on it. It completely doesn't (and probably never will) support any of the special addon chips, so no go with some of the fancier, later games (Starfox, SMRPG, etc)
Incidentally, there's also a very nice Genesis emulator that runs very well for the other side of the fence. Loves me some Sonics and Starflight now and then.
Already done, about 10 years ago now. Here
I'm kind of amused at how well commented it is, all things considered. It's like they actually wanted it to be readable or something.
rename command.com Windows7RC1cracked.zip
Problem solved ;)
This isn't anything particularly new to me. I've been marveling at the way Windows browsers were faster in Wine than the Linux native ones all the back to Netscape 4 in the late 90s or early 2000s. In the earlier days when fonts were more annoying to get going in X, the Windows versions would often look a lot nicer too. I'd always figured it was either common knowledge, or some aberration on my part, so I never thought much of it. I've always wondered why this was, since it didn't really make sense.
Recently had to do this for a friend. From an original gold master XP takes at a minimum of four or five reboots. SP1 has to be installed, then you can usually go straight to SP3. From there, there are 70-ish or 80-ish critical updates that have to be installed. After that are a few updates to the updates that seem to be needed, which is another couple or three reboots.
That's not even counting any reboots that might be needed for drivers, apps, Office updates, etc. etc. Huge pain in every way.
I actually ran into something amusing relating to rental cars. I went to lunch with a coworker of mine who had a rental while some accident damage was fixed. It was starting to rain, and she didn't turn on the wipers. I finally asked and she said something like "Oh, they won't stay on" and demonstrated by pushing down on the wiper bar. Sure enough, the bar popped right back up and they only did one wipe. I reached over, pushed the bar *up*, and they worked like you'd expect. Apparently the bar worked opposite her car, and it didn't even occur to her to try the other way. (Note I called her a coworker, and not a friend. She's actually pretty annoying)