I agree with you 100% - it just sounds cruel and vaguely troll or flambait-esque to suggest that free food worsens the problem of nobody growing food.
The problem is that any egocentric rockstar can throw a few $million of free food at a country and feel good about himself and his hype, but can't do a damn thing to build the economic infrastructure necessary for self-sufficiency. Confronted with looking good or rolling up your sleeves and fixing the problem, people will choose the former.
The other problem is that even without free food wiping out any incentive to grow your own food is that there's nobody to sell food to. In places where farming happens, many people take part in subsistance farming. Who are you going to sell food to and improve your standard of living if everyone in your city is growing their own food? You can cross off America and Europe - subsidies and tariffs make this almost impossible. Even where it's economically feasible to farm, it never develops the surplus required for commerce because there's simply no market for the surplus.
This is why free trade is important - opening markets to third world countries would do more than all the food "aid" in the world.
DirectX 10 is Vista only because of dramatic and breaking changes to the API and the Vista kernel.
They're (at least partially) abandoning the Component Object Model of software programming - the idea that new interfaces are placed on top of old, leaving old code undisturbed by the new interface. For example, DirectX 9 was an additional interface added to the existing DirectX 8 monster, which was grafted onto the DirectX 7 classes, and so on. Since all the old interfaces were left untouched, DirectX 7 code runs just fine with DirectX 9 installed.
In order to make DirectX faster, they're scrapping the Component Object Model, eliminating the old DirectX 9 and previous interfaces. To avoid breaking compatibility with old games, these APIs will be emulated, but will no longer be included in DirectX. The leaner, meaner DirectX built upon the new Vista driver architecture allows revolutionary things like
GPU timeslicing. Think of a miniature, multi-tasking operating system for your GPU that allows multiple drawing instructions to run in "parallel." Currently, if a rendering instruction (in OpenGL or DirectX) blocks the videocard (say, the texture it needs is compressed and has to be decompressed) rendering of the frame halts until it is completed. In a timesliced GPU, the videocard can "alt+tab" to the next drawing instructions and continue rendering the frame until the texture is decompressed and the block passes.
Predicated rendering. This allows an "if" statement (a predicate) to precede normal rendering instructions, drawing them only if the condition is met. This means that sophisticated forms of hardware clipping are now possible - the GPU now knows to draw an enemy only if it's not concealed behind a wall, and draw the wall only if you're facing it, and the programmer doesn't have to write additional software for this behavior.
Wikipedia has a great article on DirectX - you should read it.
Second microsoft maintains a stranglehold on ATI and Nvidia by being in charge of the directX featureset.
DirectX is more popular than OpenGL in part because it's updated more frequently to reflect innovations in videocard hardware, such as fully programmable shaders. When a new tech comes along, DirectX incorporates it into it's next version so developers using DirectX can take advantage of the new tech.
Microsoft demands that a minimal set of features new in DirectX 10 be supported by videocards if those videocards want a DirectX 10 sticker on their display box. How horrible that videocards claiming to support DirectX 10 actually have to if they want the sticker.
Third directX programmers tend to use microsoft editors.
So? And DirectX games tend to run on Microsoft Windows.
You can compile DirectX programs with any modern (read: after Windows 3.11) IDE.
The fact that developers don't and use Visual Studio implies that Visual Studio is a superior product. Go download the free express edition of your favorite compiler. It's a lot nicer, IMHO, than using GCC.
The market for "several consoles" is smaller than the market for Xbox, Xbox 360, and PC games combined. Besides, console manufacturers develop APIs specific to their hardware (with the exception of Microsoft and DirectX).
Because these APIs aren't exactly open - you have to pay thousands in licensing fees to legally develop games using them - they more closely resemble the proprietary DirectX than OpenGL anyways.
A real game. Like Half-Life 2. Oblivion. Fear. Practically every PC game you see on the shelf in a Gamestop / Best Buy / Walmart / Wherever is written for DirectX.
The few exceptions are games that don't need the graphics power (rare; even PopCap games use DirectX with the "Hardware Acceleration" option) or some mostly older ones that use a version of OpenGL (another standard video cards try to support.)
Now, unless you're saying the past 10 years of videogames are all "problems"...
with DX 10 "regulating" what features can go into the cards, MS wins.
Uh, DirectX is free. Writing DirectX problems with the free DirectX SDK is also, you guessed it, free.
Microsoft doesn't profit directly from DirectX. Instead, by making Windows a better platform for game development they, shock, get more game developers on Windows.
Also note that Microsoft doesn't decide what features can and can't go into a DirectX 10 card - it sets a minimum featureset for cards that want the sticker. How horrible that a card being marketed as supporting DirectX 10 has to support DirectX 10 functions. (Remember that DirectX emulates hardware functions your videocards lack, allowing games written for it to transcend specific videocards. If the videocard doesn't support any advanced texture, lighting, and whatever else features, you really have a DirectX 10 complaint CPU.)
Grow them in those, "starving" countries where if they fuck up thier ecosystem it really doesn't matter given thier ecosystem aparently doesn't have the food they need
What a touching way to phrase the suffering of millions. Unless a particular gene bestows an INCREDIBLY advantageous attribute to a crop (like, say, the ability to fly), the gene's ecosystem penetration will remain minimal. If the advantage isn't powerful enough to make all other versions of the crop "obsolete", this "contamination" will increase biodiversity, not lower it.
I have yet to see such a a "doomsday" supermaize-quatrotriticale hybrid. Scientists appear to be focusing efforts on silly things like Vitamin A-enhanced rice to prevent childhood blindness in developing countries instead.
The big draw suposidly for these crops has been to help fend off world hunger, but what country are they being grown in? The grand ol' land of glut.
After you harvest food, you can move it. Notice how the grand ol' land of glut (forgive me for assuming you refer to the USA) was responsible for 61.8% of the world's food aid in 2002 (the most recent statistics I could find / are availble), donating more than the rest of the world combined.
Besides, what would it say if we refused to grow the crops that are supposed to be the salvation of the starving? If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us.
Besides, research like sub1a gene modification that allows rice to survive for weeks underwater addresses a problem the US lacks - namely, that of having the bulk of it's farmland flooded for weeks at a time.
Alergic to fish? Guess what? Damn good chance your alergic to said food contaminated with such genes
Now that's just silly.
Granted, soybeans with Brazil Nut genes have caused allergic reactions in those allergic to Brazil Nuts. Remember that the allergy is not caused by the nut itself, but by a single protein known as methionine. Also remember that DNA is nothing but a template for protein creation - every gene you have operates through protein manufacture. And, of all the genes in the Brazil Nut, only the one that synthesize methionine is responsible for the allergy.
In other words, you're not allergic to fish. You're allergic to parvalbumins, and only the genes directly responsible for creating these proteins have the chance to cause an allergic reaction.
we've been selecting from natural evolution what crop survived better (which would have happened anyways)
We haven't been breeding crops to find the ones that "survive" better. Presumably the ones we've been breeding through the millenia survived just fine before we started breeding the ones that were already surviving.
What we've actually been doing is breeding tobacco varieties that taste better and tomato plants with larger fruit and soybean with better nutritional value as livestock feed. Presumably cows would be unable to effect their own multivitamin-related desires on soybean evolution with direct human interation.
I had a friend stay with me for a while (month or so) as he needed a place to live while switching jobs. I saw him get addicted to WoW. He soon stopped looking for anything to do and spent all his time on my comptuer. I honestly believe I did him a favor when I stopped giving him access to my network/computers. He got his life together after that and moved on.
Your friend was "addicted" to the free food, shelter, and entertainment you gave him. As long as he had all three, he didn't need a job ^.^
We have big companies just like they do: Red Hat, IBM and large parts of Novell.
IBM is a horrible example of profitable free software. They sell hardware, license technology, and do consulting to the tune of millions. Without free software, they would still have their millions - open source's contribution to IBMs bottom line is negligible.
Novell initially profited by gaining a monopoly in the 80s. They created their own proprietary network standards (IPX/SPX) and sold the then-expensive cards that actually used these standards at cost, driving out competitors. This is called "predatory pricing" and allowed them to lock in consumers. (Does monopolistic lock-in sound familiar to anyone?) When the Internet Protocol we all know and love was adopted and the quality of Novell's competing IPX software began to degrade, declining profits forced them to make a mad dash towards interoperability. Granted, their migration to Linux is welcome - but, it's merely an attempt to salvage the closed source that used to make them millions.
Red Hat is actually a good good example of Open Source being profitible, but I think their business model is somewhat underhanded. Perhaps I'm citing out of context or the article is misleading (The latter I doubt, as it originally came from Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution), but the following lines illustrate exactly how they leverage free software into profit:
Drinking water can be had in most industrial countries simply by turning on the nearest tap, so why does Evian sell millions of dollars of French tap water into those markets? It boils down to a largely irrational fear that the water coming from your tap is not to be trusted.
This is the same reason that many people prefer to purchase "Official" Red Hat Linux in a box for $50 when they could download it for free or buy unofficial CD-ROM copies of Red Hat for as little as $2.
It's nice that Red Hat is able to make a living spreading Linux; the fact that they do it by convincing people that "bottled" Linux is better than "tap" Linux is asinine. It's unfair to say that this is their only business model - they also supply support and consulting services like IBM and Novell - it's just the least virtuous.
To pretend that it is not extremely profitable is entirely moronic.
Microsoft is "extremely profitable." Red Hat is merely "profitable." Open Source is a superior software development model; as of yet, it's not a superior economic model.
But, back to the grandparent's original point: Why would I ever become a software developer if there was no money in it? You cited three examples of how there is money in Open Source - just not any for the developer. Code is written by a skilled, volunteer community - emphasis on volunteer. This is Open Source's main advantage: many eyes looking at code. If you actually paid any of these eyes, the "many" part would necessarily go away. In other words, there's little room for the professional software developer in Open Source, which I believe to be the grandparent's point.
Before I get dragged down to the level of a troll, don't misconstrue anything I say as a slander on OSS. My points are simply that
Open Source produces superior software, not superior profits.
Although there's money to be made with OSS, there's little of it for the developer.
You still can't spell. Please listen to the nice man/woman/person/cat who keeps trying to help you argue intelligently.
[I]t's funny that Vista works better on some half hearted "boot" camp than it does on other similar hardware made by M$ Partners and "Designed for Winblows". The obvious conclusion is that Vista is still a train wreck with random performance, if you can get it to run at all.
"Windows" is software, not hardware. All sorts of fantastic hardware will run it; all sorts of crappy hardware will.
Running Windows on crappy hardware doesn't (necessarily) mean Windows is crap. It means the hardware is crap.
According to this article, the plant uses 1/3 of the electricity generated to power itself. So, in all due likelyhood, the trash is going to be used to burn more trash.
The slow downs gets real bad after 24 hours without a reboot
That isn't exactly a stability problem, per se, but a sign of memory leaks.
It means some program you're running doesn't properly return the memory it used. But, if you regularly access MSDN (and are therefoer a devloper) you should know this.
If you use Visual Studio (also expected if you use MSDN) there are a number of helpful tools, such as Spy++ that assist in debugging applications (and finding memory leaks in applications!) that could help your system.
Contrary to posters, the quests do get more varied. Granted, most of the hundreds you'll do on your way to 60 follow the kill/loot pattern, but there are several genuinely interesting quezts out there.
A Warrior's Training - To gain some of your first Warrior talents, you beat up a drunk for his prized mug. Classic.
Messenger to Westfall - Begins to unravel some intrigue as to why the capital city of Stormwind withdrew all it's troops from the outlying provinces. Starts to tie the player in to some world events.
A Dark Threat Looms - You discover a plot to flood the dwarven capital city by detonating a dam. In this quest chain, you get to *save* the largest Alliance city in the game (as much as something in a static MMORPG can be saved).
The Defias Brotherhood - You discover a similar plot against Stormwind by some of the disgruntled architects who originally built the city. Involves a fun instance raid, intrigue between NPCs, and the creepy/funny quest to disguise a gnomish robot as a female politician of sorts using two apples and silk cloth to arrange a false meeting with a nobleman involved in the conspiracy. Kinda original.
Brother Carlin - Has you consorting with a Gnomeish mage of sorts that can mess with time to repair deliberate attacks on historic events to benefit the undead scourge. Towards the end of this chain, you get The Battle of Darrowshire which has you fighting to change the outcome of an epic battle in the past.
And so on. World of Warcraft is known for making questing one of the most efficient (and fun) ways to advance to the level cap than unstructured grinding. In the end-game, raiding is truly fun if you get in with the right guild - which doesn't require being an uberhardcore-life-sacrificing-nerd stereotype. There are lots of casual, friendly guilds that get 40 people together once a week or so to fight some of the more spectacular bosses. Fighting with 40 other people in and of itself (and getting loot for it) is great fun.
Don't give up on the game quite yet. There is a reason millions of people are playing it, after all. If it's not fun, you're only at level 15 - try playing a different character class, or with Alliance instead of Horde, or vice versa. Get involved with professions, too - you're missing out on a huge part of the game if you're a warrior that can't craft a breastplate, or a warlock that can't sew a robe of the void.
When a company goes belly up, the law should stipulate that copy protection mechanisms can be legally circumvented
The DMCA already does this. See page 5 of this summary, the part that talks about reverse engineering for compatibility.
Although not present in the summary, I believe (meaning I lost the original article) the DMCA also makes exceptions for cracking copy protection, such as a hardware dongle, on legitimately purchased software if the dongle no longer works and there's no real way to get another one. That section could also apply to what you're talking about.
It prompts you to delete the other copy, *or* restore the deleted copy. With each changed file, you can select which direction you want it backed up/restored from.
I hate it when people whine about a controller being too big. My hands, although not monstrous, seem to be larger than average - Gamecube controllers hurt. I loved the Dreamcast and Xbox controllers because they felt comfortable, and have to buy mice large enough so that my index and middle fingers don't drag across the mousepad.
What would be nice is what Microsoft did - release the regular Xbox controller and the "mini" version for people with scrawny, insignificant digits.
Windows' "Briefcase" feature is also quite convenient.
Create a "briefcase" folder on the removable drive (right click -> new -> briefcase)
Drag the files you want backed up from your HDD into the briefcase folder.
When you sync the briefcase, it checks for changed files. Using a rather nifty interface, it will ask you want you want to do with a changed file:
If the file on the HDD is newer, copy it to the backup.
If the backup is newer, copy it to the HDD.
If the file was deleted on one volume, delete it on the other.
Do nothing.
It's also handy for commuting work back and forth between school on a flash drive. Not sure that this entirely solves the backup problem, but it is a useful and underrated tool. (Not sure how/if it works on Windows versions other than XP)
This has NOTHING to do with software. Kernel patch protection is a feature enabled in the HARDWARE of 64-bit processors. It's not security through obscurity; you can't modify any kernel segments of memory just like you can't divide by zero or modify another process' data.
I don't think the police should be allowed to use illicitly gained information or that they should be allowed to encourage private citizens to commit felonies.
Forget worrying about a Gestapo-esque police organization using hackers to circumvent the law - this kind of information can't be used in U.S. courts because of the lack of a warrant, amongst other things. (And if they had a warrant for the information anyways, it probably wouldn't be illicit to use the hacker to serve the warrant, would it?)
The information makes it easier to find criminals, as they probably wouldn't have known he was a pedophile without the hacker's snooping. But, they still have to use all the normal legal channels to prosecute him and put him away.
Of course, that doesn't really justify the hacking, but if some good comes from a deed that would be done anyway, that's better than having a Usenet hacker who doesn't help put pedophiles away.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you 100% - it just sounds cruel and vaguely troll or flambait-esque to suggest that free food worsens the problem of nobody growing food.
The problem is that any egocentric rockstar can throw a few $million of free food at a country and feel good about himself and his hype, but can't do a damn thing to build the economic infrastructure necessary for self-sufficiency. Confronted with looking good or rolling up your sleeves and fixing the problem, people will choose the former.
The other problem is that even without free food wiping out any incentive to grow your own food is that there's nobody to sell food to. In places where farming happens, many people take part in subsistance farming. Who are you going to sell food to and improve your standard of living if everyone in your city is growing their own food? You can cross off America and Europe - subsidies and tariffs make this almost impossible. Even where it's economically feasible to farm, it never develops the surplus required for commerce because there's simply no market for the surplus.
This is why free trade is important - opening markets to third world countries would do more than all the food "aid" in the world.
First off DirectX 10 is vista only.
DirectX 10 is Vista only because of dramatic and breaking changes to the API and the Vista kernel.
They're (at least partially) abandoning the Component Object Model of software programming - the idea that new interfaces are placed on top of old, leaving old code undisturbed by the new interface. For example, DirectX 9 was an additional interface added to the existing DirectX 8 monster, which was grafted onto the DirectX 7 classes, and so on. Since all the old interfaces were left untouched, DirectX 7 code runs just fine with DirectX 9 installed.
In order to make DirectX faster, they're scrapping the Component Object Model, eliminating the old DirectX 9 and previous interfaces. To avoid breaking compatibility with old games, these APIs will be emulated, but will no longer be included in DirectX. The leaner, meaner DirectX built upon the new Vista driver architecture allows revolutionary things like
Wikipedia has a great article on DirectX - you should read it.
Second microsoft maintains a stranglehold on ATI and Nvidia by being in charge of the directX featureset.
DirectX is more popular than OpenGL in part because it's updated more frequently to reflect innovations in videocard hardware, such as fully programmable shaders. When a new tech comes along, DirectX incorporates it into it's next version so developers using DirectX can take advantage of the new tech.
Microsoft demands that a minimal set of features new in DirectX 10 be supported by videocards if those videocards want a DirectX 10 sticker on their display box. How horrible that videocards claiming to support DirectX 10 actually have to if they want the sticker.
Third directX programmers tend to use microsoft editors.
So? And DirectX games tend to run on Microsoft Windows.
You can compile DirectX programs with any modern (read: after Windows 3.11) IDE.
The fact that developers don't and use Visual Studio implies that Visual Studio is a superior product. Go download the free express edition of your favorite compiler. It's a lot nicer, IMHO, than using GCC.
The market for "several consoles" is smaller than the market for Xbox, Xbox 360, and PC games combined. Besides, console manufacturers develop APIs specific to their hardware (with the exception of Microsoft and DirectX).
Because these APIs aren't exactly open - you have to pay thousands in licensing fees to legally develop games using them - they more closely resemble the proprietary DirectX than OpenGL anyways.
Typos aside, have you played a game recently?
A real game. Like Half-Life 2. Oblivion. Fear. Practically every PC game you see on the shelf in a Gamestop / Best Buy / Walmart / Wherever is written for DirectX.
The few exceptions are games that don't need the graphics power (rare; even PopCap games use DirectX with the "Hardware Acceleration" option) or some mostly older ones that use a version of OpenGL (another standard video cards try to support.)
Now, unless you're saying the past 10 years of videogames are all "problems" ...
with DX 10 "regulating" what features can go into the cards, MS wins.
Uh, DirectX is free. Writing DirectX problems with the free DirectX SDK is also, you guessed it, free.
Microsoft doesn't profit directly from DirectX. Instead, by making Windows a better platform for game development they, shock, get more game developers on Windows.
Also note that Microsoft doesn't decide what features can and can't go into a DirectX 10 card - it sets a minimum featureset for cards that want the sticker. How horrible that a card being marketed as supporting DirectX 10 has to support DirectX 10 functions. (Remember that DirectX emulates hardware functions your videocards lack, allowing games written for it to transcend specific videocards. If the videocard doesn't support any advanced texture, lighting, and whatever else features, you really have a DirectX 10 complaint CPU.)
Grow them in those, "starving" countries where if they fuck up thier ecosystem it really doesn't matter given thier ecosystem aparently doesn't have the food they need
What a touching way to phrase the suffering of millions. Unless a particular gene bestows an INCREDIBLY advantageous attribute to a crop (like, say, the ability to fly), the gene's ecosystem penetration will remain minimal. If the advantage isn't powerful enough to make all other versions of the crop "obsolete", this "contamination" will increase biodiversity, not lower it.
I have yet to see such a a "doomsday" supermaize-quatrotriticale hybrid. Scientists appear to be focusing efforts on silly things like Vitamin A-enhanced rice to prevent childhood blindness in developing countries instead.
The big draw suposidly for these crops has been to help fend off world hunger, but what country are they being grown in? The grand ol' land of glut.
After you harvest food, you can move it. Notice how the grand ol' land of glut (forgive me for assuming you refer to the USA) was responsible for 61.8% of the world's food aid in 2002 (the most recent statistics I could find / are availble), donating more than the rest of the world combined.
Besides, what would it say if we refused to grow the crops that are supposed to be the salvation of the starving? If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us.
Besides, research like sub1a gene modification that allows rice to survive for weeks underwater addresses a problem the US lacks - namely, that of having the bulk of it's farmland flooded for weeks at a time.
Alergic to fish? Guess what? Damn good chance your alergic to said food contaminated with such genes
Now that's just silly.
Granted, soybeans with Brazil Nut genes have caused allergic reactions in those allergic to Brazil Nuts. Remember that the allergy is not caused by the nut itself, but by a single protein known as methionine. Also remember that DNA is nothing but a template for protein creation - every gene you have operates through protein manufacture. And, of all the genes in the Brazil Nut, only the one that synthesize methionine is responsible for the allergy.
In other words, you're not allergic to fish. You're allergic to parvalbumins, and only the genes directly responsible for creating these proteins have the chance to cause an allergic reaction.
we've been selecting from natural evolution what crop survived better (which would have happened anyways)
We haven't been breeding crops to find the ones that "survive" better. Presumably the ones we've been breeding through the millenia survived just fine before we started breeding the ones that were already surviving.
What we've actually been doing is breeding tobacco varieties that taste better and tomato plants with larger fruit and soybean with better nutritional value as livestock feed. Presumably cows would be unable to effect their own multivitamin-related desires on soybean evolution with direct human interation.
While your argument does have some merit, the whole "focus on the new stuff" idea isn't very helpful to a company's image.
They can create a "new stuff" patch for the old stuff, or people could just use the patch they already have. XP SP2 is free.
I linked to the anonymous coward who keeps posting a rather articulate and well thought-out cotrection on twitter's demagoguery.
But, evidently cats are in on it too ^.^
Your friend was "addicted" to the free food, shelter, and entertainment you gave him. As long as he had all three, he didn't need a job ^.^
We have big companies just like they do: Red Hat, IBM and large parts of Novell.
IBM is a horrible example of profitable free software. They sell hardware, license technology, and do consulting to the tune of millions. Without free software, they would still have their millions - open source's contribution to IBMs bottom line is negligible.
Novell initially profited by gaining a monopoly in the 80s. They created their own proprietary network standards (IPX/SPX) and sold the then-expensive cards that actually used these standards at cost, driving out competitors. This is called "predatory pricing" and allowed them to lock in consumers. (Does monopolistic lock-in sound familiar to anyone?) When the Internet Protocol we all know and love was adopted and the quality of Novell's competing IPX software began to degrade, declining profits forced them to make a mad dash towards interoperability. Granted, their migration to Linux is welcome - but, it's merely an attempt to salvage the closed source that used to make them millions.
Red Hat is actually a good good example of Open Source being profitible, but I think their business model is somewhat underhanded. Perhaps I'm citing out of context or the article is misleading (The latter I doubt, as it originally came from Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution), but the following lines illustrate exactly how they leverage free software into profit:
It's nice that Red Hat is able to make a living spreading Linux; the fact that they do it by convincing people that "bottled" Linux is better than "tap" Linux is asinine. It's unfair to say that this is their only business model - they also supply support and consulting services like IBM and Novell - it's just the least virtuous.
To pretend that it is not extremely profitable is entirely moronic.
Microsoft is "extremely profitable." Red Hat is merely "profitable." Open Source is a superior software development model; as of yet, it's not a superior economic model.
But, back to the grandparent's original point: Why would I ever become a software developer if there was no money in it? You cited three examples of how there is money in Open Source - just not any for the developer. Code is written by a skilled, volunteer community - emphasis on volunteer. This is Open Source's main advantage: many eyes looking at code. If you actually paid any of these eyes, the "many" part would necessarily go away. In other words, there's little room for the professional software developer in Open Source, which I believe to be the grandparent's point.
Before I get dragged down to the level of a troll, don't misconstrue anything I say as a slander on OSS. My points are simply that
You still can't spell. Please listen to the nice man/woman/person/cat who keeps trying to help you argue intelligently.
[I]t's funny that Vista works better on some half hearted "boot" camp than it does on other similar hardware made by M$ Partners and "Designed for Winblows". The obvious conclusion is that Vista is still a train wreck with random performance, if you can get it to run at all.
"Windows" is software, not hardware. All sorts of fantastic hardware will run it; all sorts of crappy hardware will.
Running Windows on crappy hardware doesn't (necessarily) mean Windows is crap. It means the hardware is crap.
I like the pun ^.^
According to this article, the plant uses 1/3 of the electricity generated to power itself. So, in all due likelyhood, the trash is going to be used to burn more trash.
The slow downs gets real bad after 24 hours without a reboot
That isn't exactly a stability problem, per se, but a sign of memory leaks.
It means some program you're running doesn't properly return the memory it used. But, if you regularly access MSDN (and are therefoer a devloper) you should know this.
If you use Visual Studio (also expected if you use MSDN) there are a number of helpful tools, such as Spy++ that assist in debugging applications (and finding memory leaks in applications!) that could help your system.
A cache of recently-visited pages is nice.
Why they can't free up the memory the cache used AFTER THE BROWSER IS CLOSED is beyond me.
Point is, the law does stipulate that the protections can be circumvented, as per parent poster.
Besides, any slashdot poster should at least know where to start with the cracking.
Contrary to posters, the quests do get more varied. Granted, most of the hundreds you'll do on your way to 60 follow the kill/loot pattern, but there are several genuinely interesting quezts out there.
And so on. World of Warcraft is known for making questing one of the most efficient (and fun) ways to advance to the level cap than unstructured grinding. In the end-game, raiding is truly fun if you get in with the right guild - which doesn't require being an uberhardcore-life-sacrificing-nerd stereotype. There are lots of casual, friendly guilds that get 40 people together once a week or so to fight some of the more spectacular bosses. Fighting with 40 other people in and of itself (and getting loot for it) is great fun.
Don't give up on the game quite yet. There is a reason millions of people are playing it, after all. If it's not fun, you're only at level 15 - try playing a different character class, or with Alliance instead of Horde, or vice versa. Get involved with professions, too - you're missing out on a huge part of the game if you're a warrior that can't craft a breastplate, or a warlock that can't sew a robe of the void.
When a company goes belly up, the law should stipulate that copy protection mechanisms can be legally circumvented
The DMCA already does this. See page 5 of this summary, the part that talks about reverse engineering for compatibility.
Although not present in the summary, I believe (meaning I lost the original article) the DMCA also makes exceptions for cracking copy protection, such as a hardware dongle, on legitimately purchased software if the dongle no longer works and there's no real way to get another one. That section could also apply to what you're talking about.
It prompts you to delete the other copy, *or* restore the deleted copy. With each changed file, you can select which direction you want it backed up/restored from.
I hate it when people whine about a controller being too big. My hands, although not monstrous, seem to be larger than average - Gamecube controllers hurt. I loved the Dreamcast and Xbox controllers because they felt comfortable, and have to buy mice large enough so that my index and middle fingers don't drag across the mousepad.
What would be nice is what Microsoft did - release the regular Xbox controller and the "mini" version for people with scrawny, insignificant digits.
Windows' "Briefcase" feature is also quite convenient.
When you sync the briefcase, it checks for changed files. Using a rather nifty interface, it will ask you want you want to do with a changed file:
It's also handy for commuting work back and forth between school on a flash drive. Not sure that this entirely solves the backup problem, but it is a useful and underrated tool. (Not sure how/if it works on Windows versions other than XP)
Alexis de Tocqueville said it best, at the time of Our Great Country's inception:
The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.
This has NOTHING to do with software. Kernel patch protection is a feature enabled in the HARDWARE of 64-bit processors. It's not security through obscurity; you can't modify any kernel segments of memory just like you can't divide by zero or modify another process' data.
'nuff said.
Kinda like this obscure Windows Movie Maker 2 video. I don't think it's supposed to be funny, but it's just so bad...
I don't think the police should be allowed to use illicitly gained information or that they should be allowed to encourage private citizens to commit felonies.
Forget worrying about a Gestapo-esque police organization using hackers to circumvent the law - this kind of information can't be used in U.S. courts because of the lack of a warrant, amongst other things. (And if they had a warrant for the information anyways, it probably wouldn't be illicit to use the hacker to serve the warrant, would it?)
The information makes it easier to find criminals, as they probably wouldn't have known he was a pedophile without the hacker's snooping. But, they still have to use all the normal legal channels to prosecute him and put him away.
Of course, that doesn't really justify the hacking, but if some good comes from a deed that would be done anyway, that's better than having a Usenet hacker who doesn't help put pedophiles away.