I borrowed a friend's xbox360 when they first came out and rented Project Gotham Racing. While playing the controller caused the console to move a bit (maybe 1/2 inch) and we heard a nasty noise and the game crashed. Upon removing the disc, we found it to be scratched beyond usefulness.
Since then I have dropped my ps2 from the case it sits in with no ill effects to the disk within. I have purchased a ps3 as well and have had no such problems with it. Needless to say, I did not purchase an xbox360 because of this, although i did have to buy the Project Gotham Game due to damage.
Combine this with the fact that EVERY one of my friends 360s die about once a year, how could MS be making money on this thing?
That's why I use dd-wrt and have my home router set up as a vpn. So when I'm on an unsecured public wireless, I just connect to my vpn and route all traffic through it. Yes it is a "tiny" bit slower, but i never have to worry about someone sniffing anything except encrypted packets.
Dumb Easy to use-If the system requires any learning curve, forget it. People who've been here forever don't want to learn anything new and will resent it and not use it.
I recently implemented DekiWiki for process and code documentation and everyone loves it.
Autocad does not "need" admin rights to run, but that surely is the easiest way to make it run. Or you could just correct the permissions on the system hive and import that at login.
There are a couple of folders that need write access as well. All in all, autocad is not nearly as bad as soem custom apps out there. (shudder)
Programs that need administrative rights out the box have become more scarce recently (good thing).
I know and have used lots of creative products from many of its purchased subsidiaries, but their mp3 arm is hemorrhaging money.
Last year they made the comment that they could no longer sell their players at a loss, and would be raising their prices and start competing on features.
Six months ago Sansa announced they were the #2 producer of mp3 players.
Today creative simply isn't a competitor in this field.
They went from producing cheap and passable, but not really usable players, to trying to force Apple out of the market (or at least gain enough market-share to be competitive) by selling their players at a loss, to suing to try to get their failed mp3 arm into the black.
I like my Gen5 wife's ipod, and am generally a fan of apple products (have owned a half-dozen or so macs), but I am also a fan of the sansa products. I think they're relatively easy to use and are of a higher quality than most others.
Unlike most people, I have owned early (very early) diamond and creative mp3 offerings. They were trash. My old shuffle has put up with more abuse than any other single piece of electronics I own and it still performs perfectly and is brain-dead simple to use.
Forget about the obvious Apple patents on the same interface ideas.
Forget about the fact that the creative interface has been in a state of flux for over five years.
Forget about the fact that the iPod's interface has remained constant (and nothing like the patent in question) since inception.
Just sit and laugh at the marketing retardation that is Creative. Right now they manufacture and sell TWENTY-FOUR mp3 player models. Each model has multiple sizes as well. Haven't they heard of brand dilution?
It's a business's duty to thrive by any means necessary, but i think they may have bit off more than they can chew with the Apple fight and with their overcrowded mp3 lineup.
Sorry for the spelling and grammar, been at work for 21 hours. Only 13 more to go:)
We are so dazzled and distracted by the shiny things these corporations put out that we seem to have abandoned our suspicion of them.
We sit and complain about things we have no control over and fail to raise any stink whatsoever about the things we can control. We are in control over what company is successful. We are in control over who gets elected. As a collective we have abandoned that control, and seem to think of it as an esoteric relic of the past.
Stand up, don't buy sony's shit, complain everywhere and to everyone. If enough people complain, the sheeple will notice.
With the latest "Hot Coffee" example, we had government intervention. And these rating systems are not being treated as guidelines by stores/theaters, but as more powerful, almost law-like rules which must be adhered to.
Like MPAA ratings, ESRB ratings can be the kiss of death for a title.
Not because people care one way or the other about purchasing/watching something rated for adults, but because stores and movie theaters simply refuse to carry the "offending" material.
I'm all for protecting the young, but shouldn't that be a parent's job?
I could be wrong, but the last time I checked, it wasn't the government's job to raise my kids.
Parents have certain responsibilities to uphold-and censoring content, like it or not, is their job, not the government's.
A local shop here in Baton Rouge, Louisiana sells $99.00 Pentium III systems (Computer, Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse) with linux (Ubuntu) on them for first time buyers looking to get broadband. They also recommend them as a second computer alternative for people's kids.
I think if more shops started doing this, people wouldn't be as afraid of linux and would embrace the elegance of such a solution.
Actually, it's quite easy to set up Autocad, and I'd guess all of your "Trouble" apps to run as a non privileged user.
The following assumes you in a lab or professional environment with multiple users.
On a pristine machine create a backup of the hklm as a big ass.reg file.
Install Autocad (or whatever app you want)
Create another backup of the hklm (different filename this time).
Run Autocad (VERY IMPORTANT)
While it is running create another backup of hklm (yet another different filename)
Compare the files. the comparison of 1-2 is just for baselines to make future installations easier for LESS privileged installers (say student workers)
Compare files 2 and 3. this is where the magic happens. find where Auto-crap (sorry had to) is writing to and use regedt32 to change the permissions on those keys to let regular shmoes write to them.
You're only 1/3 the way there as auto-crap needs to write to the program files directory when it runs.
Next login as an unprivileged shmoe and try to run Acad. It should run.
Try to print. Oopsie.
re-login as Admin and make whatever directory AND ALL SUBFILES writable to the unwashed masses.
You should be golden. If I missed anything, please excuse me as I don't use windows and haven't had to do this for YEARS.
If you are using roaming profiles in a lab environment and having problems with new users being unable to use the apps, then load the main user hive (forget what it's called) and add the appropriate keys, then unload the hive. This way, when a new user is created, they have all the necessary keys to run as if it were installed by them.
Photoshop has similar problems, as do MANY other apps. I had to set up a couple of hundred machines to let roaming unprivileged users access acad, pshop, corel, freehand, illustrator, and many other crazy apps. Also came up with a scheme to give them a gig or so of storage that wasn't copying over the network in their profile by mapping the desktop and my docs folders to the storage server, but that's a different story.
All-in-all took me a couple of minutes to figure out the problem. Computers are dumb, but software engineers for these companies are dumber, you just need to figure out what one idiot expects the other to do.
My first try is available at Macbidouille and I wanted to say how these things are TRULY done, not some wild guessing/oversimplification/cheesy head-on way out.
Get a tripod and mount your camera to it.
Set up the scene. It works best if you have things exiting from behind the display.
Shoot 2 shots, one with the display down (or removed depending on your notebook ownership), and one with it up.
Take both shots into Phothsop/Gimp/Whatever.
Copy the screen up (present) shot and paste it into the image with the screen down (missing).
Perspective crop the image to the edges of the visible screen.
Delete the layer with the display.
Resize resulting image to display resolution on laptop (display).
Set resulting image as background. without moving your display.
Shoot scene again and enjoy the magic.
Depending on your patience level, this technique works for as many levels of transparency as you'd like to fake.
I am also posting this from a Mac, but as I recall, Be had a posix compliant layer and could have eventually had full unix support added-in via some sort of virtualization software.
The technique Microsoft used to emulate 16 bit windows comes to mind as a seamless way to integrate such capabilities.
I know, giving credit to Microsoft is frowned upon at/., but hey, give credit where it's due.
I have a friend who left his on his car only to have it fly off making a lazy right turn at 30mph.
He still uses it every day with no damage other than cosmetic.
right now i'm in louisiana running 10 boxes in my apartment.
i have 7 generic winnt/98/2k boxes, 2 linux servers, and one mac on an airport.
the apartment got nuts as soon as i moved in. I wired the place up (temp) and brought in the roomies. we connect to the web via dsl and have several file/print/web servers for our enjoyment.
most of the network exists for file and print sharing, but having webservers is nice too. i'm trying to get slashcode up and running on an old ppro linux box, but hey, i don't have time to sleep as it is;)
"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
Slashdot Mirror
A few seconds is totally ignorable, but weâ(TM)re talking about 4 minutes to encode a video VS 40 seconds. Thatâ(TM)s a HUGE difference.
I updated to 9.3 on day one. The bug hit me yesterday (28th) at around noon.
I borrowed a friend's xbox360 when they first came out and rented Project Gotham Racing. While playing the controller caused the console to move a bit (maybe 1/2 inch) and we heard a nasty noise and the game crashed. Upon removing the disc, we found it to be scratched beyond usefulness.
Since then I have dropped my ps2 from the case it sits in with no ill effects to the disk within. I have purchased a ps3 as well and have had no such problems with it. Needless to say, I did not purchase an xbox360 because of this, although i did have to buy the Project Gotham Game due to damage.
Combine this with the fact that EVERY one of my friends 360s die about once a year, how could MS be making money on this thing?
That's why I use dd-wrt and have my home router set up as a vpn. So when I'm on an unsecured public wireless, I just connect to my vpn and route all traffic through it. Yes it is a "tiny" bit slower, but i never have to worry about someone sniffing anything except encrypted packets.
SURBL is a URL blacklist.
Employing it enables your spam software to block emails that have matching blocked urls in the message body.
I have not gotten any false positives with it and it blocks a ton of nasty phishing stuff in addition to the usual SpermaMAXX crap.
Brilliantly put, but I'd like to add one thing.
Dumb Easy to use-If the system requires any learning curve, forget it. People who've been here forever don't want to learn anything new and will resent it and not use it.
I recently implemented DekiWiki for process and code documentation and everyone loves it.
I just use a real stripped down centos 4.3 and it's rock and roll.
I would love it if such a distro existed.
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Autocad does not "need" admin rights to run, but that surely is the easiest way to make it run. Or you could just correct the permissions on the system hive and import that at login.
There are a couple of folders that need write access as well. All in all, autocad is not nearly as bad as soem custom apps out there. (shudder)
Programs that need administrative rights out the box have become more scarce recently (good thing).
I know and have used lots of creative products from many of its purchased subsidiaries, but their mp3 arm is hemorrhaging money.
Last year they made the comment that they could no longer sell their players at a loss, and would be raising their prices and start competing on features.
Six months ago Sansa announced they were the #2 producer of mp3 players.
Today creative simply isn't a competitor in this field.
They went from producing cheap and passable, but not really usable players, to trying to force Apple out of the market (or at least gain enough market-share to be competitive) by selling their players at a loss, to suing to try to get their failed mp3 arm into the black.
I like my Gen5 wife's ipod, and am generally a fan of apple products (have owned a half-dozen or so macs), but I am also a fan of the sansa products. I think they're relatively easy to use and are of a higher quality than most others.
Unlike most people, I have owned early (very early) diamond and creative mp3 offerings. They were trash. My old shuffle has put up with more abuse than any other single piece of electronics I own and it still performs perfectly and is brain-dead simple to use.
Forget about the fact that the iPod's interface has remained constant (and nothing like the patent in question) since inception.
Just sit and laugh at the marketing retardation that is Creative. Right now they manufacture and sell TWENTY-FOUR mp3 player models. Each model has multiple sizes as well. Haven't they heard of brand dilution?
It's a business's duty to thrive by any means necessary, but i think they may have bit off more than they can chew with the Apple fight and with their overcrowded mp3 lineup.
Sorry for the spelling and grammar, been at work for 21 hours. Only 13 more to go :)
Amen, my brother.
We are so dazzled and distracted by the shiny things these corporations put out that we seem to have abandoned our suspicion of them.
We sit and complain about things we have no control over and fail to raise any stink whatsoever about the things we can control. We are in control over what company is successful. We are in control over who gets elected. As a collective we have abandoned that control, and seem to think of it as an esoteric relic of the past.
Stand up, don't buy sony's shit, complain everywhere and to everyone. If enough people complain, the sheeple will notice.
With the latest "Hot Coffee" example, we had government intervention. And these rating systems are not being treated as guidelines by stores/theaters, but as more powerful, almost law-like rules which must be adhered to.
Like MPAA ratings, ESRB ratings can be the kiss of death for a title.
Not because people care one way or the other about purchasing/watching something rated for adults, but because stores and movie theaters simply refuse to carry the "offending" material.
I'm all for protecting the young, but shouldn't that be a parent's job?
I could be wrong, but the last time I checked, it wasn't the government's job to raise my kids.
Parents have certain responsibilities to uphold-and censoring content, like it or not, is their job, not the government's.
I cannot tell you how many times I've had to deal with this for friends, family, acquaintances, etc.
I've probably spent 30 hours on the phone with that automated b#&ch repeating the cd key.
All in all, I only use an windows machine to get my shows off tivo. I use OSX for design work and all my servers are liunx.A local shop here in Baton Rouge, Louisiana sells $99.00 Pentium III systems (Computer, Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse) with linux (Ubuntu) on them for first time buyers looking to get broadband. They also recommend them as a second computer alternative for people's kids.
I think if more shops started doing this, people wouldn't be as afraid of linux and would embrace the elegance of such a solution.
There's a script for getting your sprint card working on a mac in osx, forgot the name, google it.
The catch is, you have to activate the card on a pc.
I've used this dozens of times on my boss's powerbook. nice and easy.
Actually, it's quite easy to set up Autocad, and I'd guess all of your "Trouble" apps to run as a non privileged user.
.reg file.
The following assumes you in a lab or professional environment with multiple users.
On a pristine machine create a backup of the hklm as a big ass
Install Autocad (or whatever app you want)
Create another backup of the hklm (different filename this time).
Run Autocad (VERY IMPORTANT)
While it is running create another backup of hklm (yet another different filename)
Compare the files. the comparison of 1-2 is just for baselines to make future installations easier for LESS privileged installers (say student workers)
Compare files 2 and 3. this is where the magic happens. find where Auto-crap (sorry had to) is writing to and use regedt32 to change the permissions on those keys to let regular shmoes write to them.
You're only 1/3 the way there as auto-crap needs to write to the program files directory when it runs.
Next login as an unprivileged shmoe and try to run Acad. It should run.
Try to print. Oopsie.
re-login as Admin and make whatever directory AND ALL SUBFILES writable to the unwashed masses.
You should be golden. If I missed anything, please excuse me as I don't use windows and haven't had to do this for YEARS.
If you are using roaming profiles in a lab environment and having problems with new users being unable to use the apps, then load the main user hive (forget what it's called) and add the appropriate keys, then unload the hive. This way, when a new user is created, they have all the necessary keys to run as if it were installed by them.
Photoshop has similar problems, as do MANY other apps. I had to set up a couple of hundred machines to let roaming unprivileged users access acad, pshop, corel, freehand, illustrator, and many other crazy apps. Also came up with a scheme to give them a gig or so of storage that wasn't copying over the network in their profile by mapping the desktop and my docs folders to the storage server, but that's a different story.
All-in-all took me a couple of minutes to figure out the problem. Computers are dumb, but software engineers for these companies are dumber, you just need to figure out what one idiot expects the other to do.
Enjoy!
My post has a link to one I did with extreme angle.
Here is the image with the illusion broken. Enjoy.
--
Great Designers, Great Design.
My first try is available at Macbidouille and I wanted to say how these things are TRULY done, not some wild guessing/oversimplification/cheesy head-on way out.
Depending on your patience level, this technique works for as many levels of transparency as you'd like to fake.
--Great Designers, Great Design.
I am also posting this from a Mac, but as I recall, Be had a posix compliant layer and could have eventually had full unix support added-in via some sort of virtualization software.
/., but hey, give credit where it's due.
The technique Microsoft used to emulate 16 bit windows comes to mind as a seamless way to integrate such capabilities.
I know, giving credit to Microsoft is frowned upon at
While I am a huge fan of MacOS X, I wonder what would have happened if they bought Be and used their cash to evolve it instead of ressurecting NeXT?
.02
It's true that Apple currently employs several key Be developers, but I think the Mac platform would eb even further ahead if they went with Be.
Just my
I have a friend who left his on his car only to have it fly off making a lazy right turn at 30mph. He still uses it every day with no damage other than cosmetic.
"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
What would be the cost of implementing such a unique battery design into current laptops?
"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
i have 7 generic winnt/98/2k boxes, 2 linux servers, and one mac on an airport.
the apartment got nuts as soon as i moved in. I wired the place up (temp) and brought in the roomies. we connect to the web via dsl and have several file/print/web servers for our enjoyment.
most of the network exists for file and print sharing, but having webservers is nice too. i'm trying to get slashcode up and running on an old ppro linux box, but hey, i don't have time to sleep as it is ;)
"This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."