I'd like it better if I could delete entries from it. For instance, say I accidentally type www.slasdot.org and I get some porn site. The next time I start to go to slashdot, I just use the awesome bar shortcut and again accidentally go there (the oldest, most used one seems to be favored, which unfortunately starts from the first day you use FF3).
I just want to get rid of it so I don't keep accidentally choosing it, but there doesn't appear to be an easy way (intuitively, I think it should be a right mouse option or pick it and click the delete key). Also some of my sites listed under there I really don't want listed - specifically ones I used to buy stuff or price check specific items - sometimes these are my most visited for a week, but after I buy whatever I was checking I don't care about them any more and they are at the top of my list rather than a useful site.
There are other reasons not to upgrade to Firefox 3 - in particular, my company has production code that uses something like div_element.offsetParent.offsetTop (variable name changed intentionally to protect the guilty) without checking first to see if offsetTop is null (this is used to get the height in a browser) and Firefox 3 javascript crashes and burns but no other browser has a problem with it (of the four we support).
Our official policy is that Firefox 3 is not supported, meaning every single one of our customers needs to either use Firefox 2 or a different browser until we do certification on it (which I believe isn't even planned for this year due to other scheduling needs). I have notified the people in charge of that javascript, so it potentially could be fixed/patched beforehand, or if it's a FF3 bug, the Mozilla team will get notified - I'm not the author or maintainer and have no power to change that code.
The mac pro? The one that starts at $2700? You're clearly kidding, right? That's just the base starting point price - upgrades for their ECC RAM start at $500 for 2GB and go up to $9100 for 32GB, and that's for standard DDR2/800 with an ECC (all ECC does is add one extra chip to the memory card and does a simple parity check - logically, that would only add 1/8 of the price of the memory max since there are 8 chips on the card [if you ever wondered where DDR6400 comes from, it's 8 banks of 800MHz and 8*800=6400]). Apple GOUGES for their pro line. It doesn't even use the latest specced hardware (no DDR3, but good DDR2 usually is faster, and underwhelming graphics card choices unless you want the Quadro FX 5600 1.5GB for $2,850.00 (which is close to the going rate for those OpenGL cards). I've used a $9100 configuration before (not the RAM - machine was $9100) and dug around in the insides a bit and was completely underwhelmed. I could rebuild the machine easily for 1/2 that, if not more (barring the case, but I could get a similar case and a decent power supply too).
Their laptops aren't bad, a bit of markup, but some people will pay that for the OS and stuff it comes with (and pretty much everything else is a laptop, and I mean that - iMac is laptop hardware and mini is a micro form factor that is similar to laptops).
I wish they had a mid-tower design with upgradable hardware like they used to, or a desktop replacement laptop base (and by that I mean one with upgradable parts like video - nVidia has the MXM and AMD the AXIOM PCIe standards for their cards), so we should be getting upgradable mobile graphics cards soon (but you'll have to stick to your vendor). If users can add memory, they certainly can change graphics cards.
I would agree - usually young hackers and pirates don't really feel that they are doing anything wrong in a moral sense, and I was right there with them when I was a teenager. We thought it was fun and challenging to hack and pirate (and phreak, but that died shortly after I got into it in the early 1980s). Should people that didn't do it maliciously be punished for a crime they didn't think was harming anyone? It's a very subjective issue - are you hurting someone because of what you are doing? Did you know that you were hurting someone? Were you acting maliciously?
Put another way, consider a yourself with a gun. You know guns are dangerous, but somehow you point it at me and shoot me in the face. Pertinent questions like did you know it was loaded? Did you intentionally point it at me? Did you intend to kill me, or were you completely surprised there was a bullet in it at all? Did you trip over a log and accidentally pull the trigger while falling? Some of these conditions will get you thrown in jail (or worse), others you'll walk away scot-free.
You mean Apple ][ - it was ported to C64 and other platforms. Really it was probably popularized most on NES.
I played it first on Apple ][ and solved it first on Macintosh (I also played the NES version, but console controls always were difficult for me). I also beat PoP 2 on mac, but I remember that one being frustratingly difficult. I tried PoP 3D (on PC) at a store and disliked it intensely, so gave up on the series then (I did play the demo for Warrior Within, but didn't care for it).
It's not cel shading, it's illustrative, as stated in the second video from that link. Cel shading creates an outline then uses a single color for the base (usually per-polygon) and the shades it (shadows) with a couple more colors. What you see in this technique is a lot of outlines and highly contrasting lines similar to what you see with cel shading, but if you look at the shadows they are obviously not cel shaded (suggesting traditional art and real lighting). There does appear to detail loss during fast movement (colors reduction - probably some sort of color mapping).
Apple also has a history of marking up components much higher than the identical component could be purchased online (for instance, memory). In fact, I have purchased and installed the same amount of superior memory (based on latency and speed) than their stock memory upgrade cost (so they offered me 256MB of RAM and I was able to purchase 512MB of better memory than the 1 stick of 256 that was included with the machine). This was a while ago - that mac is 8 years old now, but I've noticed they are still doing this when speccing out a replacement machine.
This hasn't changed - looking at a memory for the iMac, Apple wants $300 for 2x2GB 800Mhz DDR2. The most expensive memory with 4-4-4-12 timings (the highest available there) is $120 at NewEgg. Labor is not 3x component cost for adding memory, so this is ridiculous (I can add memory in 5 minutes max). This is my biggest problem with Apple's prices.
I have no idea how they formatted it, but it worked in any cassette player that had a line out (and a counter if you wanted to load any other program on the same tape). The Apple tape drive was no speedster either, although the one I was familiar with came with the 48k Apple ][ (with DOS 3.1 it took about 15 minutes to load - if you were lucky - sometimes it took 2-3 tries). My experience with the tape drive was short lived, however, as my school got Disk ][s that school year and we immediately switched (I remember begging my parents to buy me a single 5 1/4 inch floppy disk - I imagine they were expensive back then). Everyone I knew with Vic 20s and C64 had the abysmally slow tape drives (10-40 minutes to load anything). I didn't even see the C64 disk drive until the early 1990s and I agree, it was pitifully slow in comparison to the older Disk ][.
What really got me hooked on the ][ was the release of Sabotage and Sneakers in 1981. Up until then I had only really played games on the Atari 2600 and Sears Super Video Arcade (a rebranded Intellivision), so it was eye opening that I could actually write the games I loved - by the time I was 12 I was writing Apple ][ assembler, which is kind of frightening to me in retrospect (I dodge assembly like the plague these days).
anything that writes to the Windows API should be backwards compatible, with the possible exception of long deprecated functions that may be removed. 64 bit machines can run 32 bit software in most cases.
#19 is expected, only it is a Vista virtual machine with all the old libs, not XP, if I recall correctly.
#13 WinFS - last I heard, the project was split into ADO.NET and SQL and was unlikely to ever be released.
#12. Home User Licensing - Microsoft has stated licensing will be simpler, but did not get into specifics since they had not finalized anything. My guess is they will have downloadable add-ons for a fee.
#11. Driver Availability - If I recall correctly, Vista and Windows 7 use the same driver model, so in theory Vista and Windows 7 can use the same driver.
#7 OS Restoration via Imaging - don't know what their plans are, but I've wanted this since 3.1.1, but MS is too afraid of piracy to include any functional backup utilities. Maybe now that they're embracing virtualization a bit they'll change this stance.
#6 Barebones Kernel - MS has already stated MinWin won't be included in Windows 7.
5. 64bit only - As much as I agree with the poster, Microsoft has already stated there will be 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows 7.
#3 Diagnostic Tools - Vista already includes a memory test - I believe it's F8 on boot, then ESC, then down arrow down to the tools (there is also an app called memory if you can get to the gui - use the run tool and type in 'memory' - it will reboot and run as if you did the keystroke method). Still, some sort of point-of-failure info would be nice - most end-users don't have a clue what S.M.A.R.T. is, for instance. If a S.M.A.R.T. error is reported, Windows should immediately take action and try to help the end user back up or save the data (macs should, too).
My first computer had 64k of RAM (most of the type had 48k) and a.997kHz processor. The first PC I programmed (in C, even) I think ran 4MHz and had 1MB of RAM. My 'C' code was riddled with stuff like this:
asm ("movl %0, r3;
movl %1, r4;/*... */
");
I think you could do blocks like this in some compilers, too: asm {
movl %0, r3;
movl %1, r4; } but it's been WAY too long since I touched assembler.
I calculated 40 rods per hogshead at 0.00198 miles per gallon (something like 10.5 feet per gallon) at one point - 2 rods per hogshead is a bit worse;)
Um, this merger spans more than just Blizzard, despite the new name - Vivendi Games (a subdivision of French publisher Vivendi) is merging with Activision and being renamed Vivendi-Blizzard. Vivendi itself will maintain a 52% majority stake in the new company. What you missed is just because they are adding the Blizzard brand to their name doesn't mean that is all there is from that side of the merger - Vivendi Games itself owns a number of non-Blizzard companies that did not get added to the name, such as Sierra and Massive.
from Sierra you get franchises like Leisure Suit Larry, Empire Earth, King's Quest, Space Quest, Quest for Glory. from Dynamix (dead Sierra subsidiary, devs mostly moved to GarageGames): Tribes (and many old games - SkyFox, Stellar7, Red Baron anyone?) from Massive: Ground Control, World in Conflict
The reason for adopting the Blizzard name probably has more to do with it being the Pixar in their lineup (like Disney using Disney-Pixar).
Technically, Blizzard has a couple of old platformers, too, one of which could be considered a franchise because it had a sequel - The Lost Vikings I and II; Blackthorne was the other platformer I remember from them, but I don't think they released any sequels for that. Before that they did ports to Amiga like Battle Chess 2 and Castles (and maybe to C64, but I never used them - there was an IGN article about them mostly starting as a porting house a few years ago). See their company profile - it has links to some of that info.
I've not seen Debian there, but the SuSE they were selling was the version with support ($70 or something like that).
I don't see what the big deal is - sure you can get the CDs for free if you want to wait 8-10 weeks, but if you want it now and have dial-up or other slow service, it is much more convenient to just pick it up in a store. Remember a little shareware game called DOOM? The free part of the game was sold in stores (usually for $5-10) for that exact reason.
Are you sure? the TSA's main job (with the wonderful help of congress) appears to make traveling such a hassle that nobody travels anymore. First passports for all foreign countries, then RealID for local travel, now torture devices on passengers. What's next? Mandatory bullets through both kneecaps in pre-boarding? This silliness has to end.
Still, one city mentioned is Montecello, Minnesota, and they state: "Our position has never been that it is unlawful for cities to do this, but you can't use your powers as a city to create an uneven playing field"
That is done already - in Minnesota, many cities have municipal (city owned) liquor stores - including Montecello. This is protected by a post prohibition state law that was meant to control the sale of liquor, however, so I'm not sure if they can use it as precedent, but in most areas there are also non-city owned liquor stores. City owned broadband should be at a price point similar to what telecos offer (or do not - Qwest is notoriously bad for its broadband offerings and is being smothered by Comcast - they still don't have ADSL2, so technically it should be at a price point similar to competition, which means Qwest can go fsck themselves or step up and get out of the dark ages) and profits are used instead of raising taxes.
Software at my work (and several others I know), for instance, is strictly controlled to avoid incompatibilities. When new versions of software are released (including those by windows update), a few people are given it to verify stability for a few weeks and back it out if necessary. Sure I could download FF3 and bypass the check, but I have already proven it broken with our internal tools on a lab machine (which then got a VM wipe). Upgrading would mean I would be unable to do my work.
In addition, ISO9001 certification had us "eat our own dog food" and our older software that is our "dog food" doesn't work at all with IE7 or FF3 and isn't supported on them either. Until some peon upgrades the software to a newer version (not even the latest - someone is working on it, but it hasn't happened yet) I would have no access to our bug database and several tools - that isn't going to happen.
I have the exact same issue - I can't upgrade either IE6 or FF2 since we verify mainly off minimum versions. Heck, we just got off Firefox 1 about a month ago. The biggest problem, however, is that I went to a lab machine with Vista, IE7 and FF3 and it blew up big-time. After working around Vista specific issues, I get multiple javascript errors from both IE7 and FF3 - looks like this will be a fun release (FF3 in particular is bad - it doesn't even bring up the initial splash screen - oh, and it works perfectly in FF2 on Vista, so the bugs are FF3 specific)...
Ignoring its obvious Lovecraft influence, it defined the survival horror genre, was polygonal, which was still in its infancy (the only other game I had seen like it was Out of this World [aka Another World]).
By Gaiman plagiarizing Lovecraft I have to assume you mean in the Sandman comics, which I haven't read, but none of his books borrow from Lovecraft as far as I know, so "all the time" is not really correct. I have read all but one of Gaiman's books and every Lovecraft story published and about the only thing they have in common is they write historical fiction (like Hawthorne and Poe, fiction set in modern times [relative to the author]).
Uh, how about Management types (PHBs) Book Store workers Publishers Librarians
You may even have issues with some file systems.
When it comes to computing, ignorance rules the masses - I'm still amazed at how many people still call / backslash (which I heard on the radio today when a DJ was giving a URL).
MS was very good at three things: BASIC, marketing, and opportune buying of products/companies. They were underhanded at many others, echoing the "not invented here" mentality that also pervaded other companies like Apple and Intel.
From an operating system standpoint, MS stole a lot and got in a lot of legal trouble for it, but also avoided some - MS-DOS: originally Q-DOS (Quick and Dirty DOS) and the purchase actually saved the OS from getting sued into the dirt for copying CP/M (since they didn't write it - they just bought the source - Seattle Computer Products was legally responsible and they didn't have any money because it was bought for a pittance - something like $40000). Later Windows stole the look and feel of the Lisa/Mac (which stole the look and feel of the PARC, but Apple had the sense to file patents on their additions), thus the whole Trash Can vs Recycling Bin debacle (incidentally, Apple also sued NeXT over this). MS and Apple both still steal ideas - the desktop accessories/widgets stuff in its present form was stolen from Linux, but technically the Apple menu widgets are similar and predates Linux (they just weren't managed by a single app).
In the late 1980s a lot of games moved to decoder wheels (e.g. Pool of Radiance, Captain Goodnight). In the beginning, most were fairly simple, single wheels, but as pirates cracked and included the lookup table automatically and later posted the answer on the screen (and sometimes forced a certain answer always) and publishing companies went to much more elaborate ones (making it all the more fun for pirates...). This form of copy protection died entirely with the CD-Rom because few people could copy them (CD burners were rare and so were large hard disks).
The funny thing is, when CD-Roms came out I entirely lost interest in computing because there was nothing to crack, which is what my friends and I did for fun (ok, my first girlfriend at that time is as much to blame, as is my short lived music career). I have never pirated a thing since, but I have downloaded no-CD keys because it is annoying as heck to dig up CDs or DVDs for every game I want to play. Online downloads every time would be just plain annoying because I mostly play single player games when traveling (that's what a laptop and power inverter are for).
I really don't see how this will help - all it will do is stop casual piracy - real pirates will just remove the check, or hack it to always ask for the same key and return the correct answer (which was retrieved once).
I'm curious on how they are going to enforce strict memory standards, both in footprint and in leak tolerance (which is currently 0 according to a developer I know there).
The real problem was when there was competition in the market they destroyed it using legal(ish) yet underhanded methods. MS-DOS on the IBM PC was a tiny part of their profits - BASIC made them much more (Applesoft BASIC, for instance, was written by MS and bundled in Apple ][ sales, even though Apple had their own Integer BASIC).
DR-DOS kinda existed before "8 years" (really 6 or 7, I think - 1981 vs 1988) in CPM/86, but it was MUCH more expensive than competitors MS-DOS and (IBM) PC-DOS and not fully compatible. My uncle had CPM/86 on his PC in those days and I remember it not working with some of my PC games (though I did eventually learn that games that included their own boot worked).
MS killed competition in two ways - exclusive contracts (put only MS-DOS [later Windows] on your machine and get cheaper licensing) and bundling equivalent but often (initially) inferior software for free (see Novell Netware, Lotus Notes, Netscape Navigator, to some extent GEM, etc).
Linux/OSS is the ultimate problem for them - they can't buy it and they can't beat it in a price war, which is why they repeatedly vow to crush it, yet can't.
In this respect I think the industry is changing. 12 years ago I couldn't name a game programmer with a degree. Today I could name about a 1/2 dozen (most through my open source project, and all but one are graduates of programs like DigiPen). I don't work in the game industry myself, but I have several friends and a cousin that do. I do OSS game programming and that reminds me why I do it as a hobby (hours are killer and keeping up with the technology is an uphill battle).
Slashdot Mirror
I'd like it better if I could delete entries from it. For instance, say I accidentally type www.slasdot.org and I get some porn site. The next time I start to go to slashdot, I just use the awesome bar shortcut and again accidentally go there (the oldest, most used one seems to be favored, which unfortunately starts from the first day you use FF3).
I just want to get rid of it so I don't keep accidentally choosing it, but there doesn't appear to be an easy way (intuitively, I think it should be a right mouse option or pick it and click the delete key). Also some of my sites listed under there I really don't want listed - specifically ones I used to buy stuff or price check specific items - sometimes these are my most visited for a week, but after I buy whatever I was checking I don't care about them any more and they are at the top of my list rather than a useful site.
There are other reasons not to upgrade to Firefox 3 - in particular, my company has production code that uses something like div_element.offsetParent.offsetTop (variable name changed intentionally to protect the guilty) without checking first to see if offsetTop is null (this is used to get the height in a browser) and Firefox 3 javascript crashes and burns but no other browser has a problem with it (of the four we support).
Our official policy is that Firefox 3 is not supported, meaning every single one of our customers needs to either use Firefox 2 or a different browser until we do certification on it (which I believe isn't even planned for this year due to other scheduling needs). I have notified the people in charge of that javascript, so it potentially could be fixed/patched beforehand, or if it's a FF3 bug, the Mozilla team will get notified - I'm not the author or maintainer and have no power to change that code.
The mac pro? The one that starts at $2700? You're clearly kidding, right? That's just the base starting point price - upgrades for their ECC RAM start at $500 for 2GB and go up to $9100 for 32GB, and that's for standard DDR2/800 with an ECC (all ECC does is add one extra chip to the memory card and does a simple parity check - logically, that would only add 1/8 of the price of the memory max since there are 8 chips on the card [if you ever wondered where DDR6400 comes from, it's 8 banks of 800MHz and 8*800=6400]). Apple GOUGES for their pro line. It doesn't even use the latest specced hardware (no DDR3, but good DDR2 usually is faster, and underwhelming graphics card choices unless you want the Quadro FX 5600 1.5GB for $2,850.00 (which is close to the going rate for those OpenGL cards). I've used a $9100 configuration before (not the RAM - machine was $9100) and dug around in the insides a bit and was completely underwhelmed. I could rebuild the machine easily for 1/2 that, if not more (barring the case, but I could get a similar case and a decent power supply too).
Their laptops aren't bad, a bit of markup, but some people will pay that for the OS and stuff it comes with (and pretty much everything else is a laptop, and I mean that - iMac is laptop hardware and mini is a micro form factor that is similar to laptops).
I wish they had a mid-tower design with upgradable hardware like they used to, or a desktop replacement laptop base (and by that I mean one with upgradable parts like video - nVidia has the MXM and AMD the AXIOM PCIe standards for their cards), so we should be getting upgradable mobile graphics cards soon (but you'll have to stick to your vendor). If users can add memory, they certainly can change graphics cards.
I would agree - usually young hackers and pirates don't really feel that they are doing anything wrong in a moral sense, and I was right there with them when I was a teenager. We thought it was fun and challenging to hack and pirate (and phreak, but that died shortly after I got into it in the early 1980s). Should people that didn't do it maliciously be punished for a crime they didn't think was harming anyone? It's a very subjective issue - are you hurting someone because of what you are doing? Did you know that you were hurting someone? Were you acting maliciously?
Put another way, consider a yourself with a gun. You know guns are dangerous, but somehow you point it at me and shoot me in the face. Pertinent questions like did you know it was loaded? Did you intentionally point it at me? Did you intend to kill me, or were you completely surprised there was a bullet in it at all? Did you trip over a log and accidentally pull the trigger while falling? Some of these conditions will get you thrown in jail (or worse), others you'll walk away scot-free.
You mean Apple ][ - it was ported to C64 and other platforms. Really it was probably popularized most on NES.
I played it first on Apple ][ and solved it first on Macintosh (I also played the NES version, but console controls always were difficult for me). I also beat PoP 2 on mac, but I remember that one being frustratingly difficult. I tried PoP 3D (on PC) at a store and disliked it intensely, so gave up on the series then (I did play the demo for Warrior Within, but didn't care for it).
It's not cel shading, it's illustrative, as stated in the second video from that link. Cel shading creates an outline then uses a single color for the base (usually per-polygon) and the shades it (shadows) with a couple more colors. What you see in this technique is a lot of outlines and highly contrasting lines similar to what you see with cel shading, but if you look at the shadows they are obviously not cel shaded (suggesting traditional art and real lighting). There does appear to detail loss during fast movement (colors reduction - probably some sort of color mapping).
Apple also has a history of marking up components much higher than the identical component could be purchased online (for instance, memory). In fact, I have purchased and installed the same amount of superior memory (based on latency and speed) than their stock memory upgrade cost (so they offered me 256MB of RAM and I was able to purchase 512MB of better memory than the 1 stick of 256 that was included with the machine). This was a while ago - that mac is 8 years old now, but I've noticed they are still doing this when speccing out a replacement machine.
This hasn't changed - looking at a memory for the iMac, Apple wants $300 for 2x2GB 800Mhz DDR2. The most expensive memory with 4-4-4-12 timings (the highest available there) is $120 at NewEgg. Labor is not 3x component cost for adding memory, so this is ridiculous (I can add memory in 5 minutes max). This is my biggest problem with Apple's prices.
I have no idea how they formatted it, but it worked in any cassette player that had a line out (and a counter if you wanted to load any other program on the same tape). The Apple tape drive was no speedster either, although the one I was familiar with came with the 48k Apple ][ (with DOS 3.1 it took about 15 minutes to load - if you were lucky - sometimes it took 2-3 tries). My experience with the tape drive was short lived, however, as my school got Disk ][s that school year and we immediately switched (I remember begging my parents to buy me a single 5 1/4 inch floppy disk - I imagine they were expensive back then). Everyone I knew with Vic 20s and C64 had the abysmally slow tape drives (10-40 minutes to load anything). I didn't even see the C64 disk drive until the early 1990s and I agree, it was pitifully slow in comparison to the older Disk ][.
What really got me hooked on the ][ was the release of Sabotage and Sneakers in 1981. Up until then I had only really played games on the Atari 2600 and Sears Super Video Arcade (a rebranded Intellivision), so it was eye opening that I could actually write the games I loved - by the time I was 12 I was writing Apple ][ assembler, which is kind of frightening to me in retrospect (I dodge assembly like the plague these days).
anything that writes to the Windows API should be backwards compatible, with the possible exception of long deprecated functions that may be removed. 64 bit machines can run 32 bit software in most cases.
and of course some answers MS has already stated:
#19 is expected, only it is a Vista virtual machine with all the old libs, not XP, if I recall correctly.
#13 WinFS - last I heard, the project was split into ADO.NET and SQL and was unlikely to ever be released.
#12. Home User Licensing - Microsoft has stated licensing will be simpler, but did not get into specifics since they had not finalized anything. My guess is they will have downloadable add-ons for a fee.
#11. Driver Availability - If I recall correctly, Vista and Windows 7 use the same driver model, so in theory Vista and Windows 7 can use the same driver.
#7 OS Restoration via Imaging - don't know what their plans are, but I've wanted this since 3.1.1, but MS is too afraid of piracy to include any functional backup utilities. Maybe now that they're embracing virtualization a bit they'll change this stance.
#6 Barebones Kernel - MS has already stated MinWin won't be included in Windows 7.
5. 64bit only - As much as I agree with the poster, Microsoft has already stated there will be 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Windows 7.
#3 Diagnostic Tools - Vista already includes a memory test - I believe it's F8 on boot, then ESC, then down arrow down to the tools (there is also an app called memory if you can get to the gui - use the run tool and type in 'memory' - it will reboot and run as if you did the keystroke method). Still, some sort of point-of-failure info would be nice - most end-users don't have a clue what S.M.A.R.T. is, for instance. If a S.M.A.R.T. error is reported, Windows should immediately take action and try to help the end user back up or save the data (macs should, too).
My first computer had 64k of RAM (most of the type had 48k) and a .997kHz processor. The first PC I programmed (in C, even) I think ran 4MHz and had 1MB of RAM. My 'C' code was riddled with stuff like this:
asm ("movl %0, r3; /* ... */
movl %1, r4;
");
I think you could do blocks like this in some compilers, too:
asm
{
movl %0, r3;
movl %1, r4;
}
but it's been WAY too long since I touched assembler.
I calculated 40 rods per hogshead at 0.00198 miles per gallon (something like 10.5 feet per gallon) at one point - 2 rods per hogshead is a bit worse ;)
Um, this merger spans more than just Blizzard, despite the new name - Vivendi Games (a subdivision of French publisher Vivendi) is merging with Activision and being renamed Vivendi-Blizzard. Vivendi itself will maintain a 52% majority stake in the new company. What you missed is just because they are adding the Blizzard brand to their name doesn't mean that is all there is from that side of the merger - Vivendi Games itself owns a number of non-Blizzard companies that did not get added to the name, such as Sierra and Massive.
from Sierra you get franchises like Leisure Suit Larry, Empire Earth, King's Quest, Space Quest, Quest for Glory.
from Dynamix (dead Sierra subsidiary, devs mostly moved to GarageGames): Tribes (and many old games - SkyFox, Stellar7, Red Baron anyone?)
from Massive: Ground Control, World in Conflict
The reason for adopting the Blizzard name probably has more to do with it being the Pixar in their lineup (like Disney using Disney-Pixar).
Technically, Blizzard has a couple of old platformers, too, one of which could be considered a franchise because it had a sequel - The Lost Vikings I and II; Blackthorne was the other platformer I remember from them, but I don't think they released any sequels for that. Before that they did ports to Amiga like Battle Chess 2 and Castles (and maybe to C64, but I never used them - there was an IGN article about them mostly starting as a porting house a few years ago). See their company profile - it has links to some of that info.
I've not seen Debian there, but the SuSE they were selling was the version with support ($70 or something like that).
I don't see what the big deal is - sure you can get the CDs for free if you want to wait 8-10 weeks, but if you want it now and have dial-up or other slow service, it is much more convenient to just pick it up in a store. Remember a little shareware game called DOOM? The free part of the game was sold in stores (usually for $5-10) for that exact reason.
Are you sure? the TSA's main job (with the wonderful help of congress) appears to make traveling such a hassle that nobody travels anymore. First passports for all foreign countries, then RealID for local travel, now torture devices on passengers. What's next? Mandatory bullets through both kneecaps in pre-boarding? This silliness has to end.
Still, one city mentioned is Montecello, Minnesota, and they state:
"Our position has never been that it is unlawful for cities to do this, but you can't use your powers as a city to create an uneven playing field"
That is done already - in Minnesota, many cities have municipal (city owned) liquor stores - including Montecello. This is protected by a post prohibition state law that was meant to control the sale of liquor, however, so I'm not sure if they can use it as precedent, but in most areas there are also non-city owned liquor stores. City owned broadband should be at a price point similar to what telecos offer (or do not - Qwest is notoriously bad for its broadband offerings and is being smothered by Comcast - they still don't have ADSL2, so technically it should be at a price point similar to competition, which means Qwest can go fsck themselves or step up and get out of the dark ages) and profits are used instead of raising taxes.
A blanket statement like that is patently wrong.
Software at my work (and several others I know), for instance, is strictly controlled to avoid incompatibilities. When new versions of software are released (including those by windows update), a few people are given it to verify stability for a few weeks and back it out if necessary. Sure I could download FF3 and bypass the check, but I have already proven it broken with our internal tools on a lab machine (which then got a VM wipe). Upgrading would mean I would be unable to do my work.
In addition, ISO9001 certification had us "eat our own dog food" and our older software that is our "dog food" doesn't work at all with IE7 or FF3 and isn't supported on them either. Until some peon upgrades the software to a newer version (not even the latest - someone is working on it, but it hasn't happened yet) I would have no access to our bug database and several tools - that isn't going to happen.
I have the exact same issue - I can't upgrade either IE6 or FF2 since we verify mainly off minimum versions. Heck, we just got off Firefox 1 about a month ago. The biggest problem, however, is that I went to a lab machine with Vista, IE7 and FF3 and it blew up big-time. After working around Vista specific issues, I get multiple javascript errors from both IE7 and FF3 - looks like this will be a fun release (FF3 in particular is bad - it doesn't even bring up the initial splash screen - oh, and it works perfectly in FF2 on Vista, so the bugs are FF3 specific)...
Ignoring its obvious Lovecraft influence, it defined the survival horror genre, was polygonal, which was still in its infancy (the only other game I had seen like it was Out of this World [aka Another World]).
By Gaiman plagiarizing Lovecraft I have to assume you mean in the Sandman comics, which I haven't read, but none of his books borrow from Lovecraft as far as I know, so "all the time" is not really correct. I have read all but one of Gaiman's books and every Lovecraft story published and about the only thing they have in common is they write historical fiction (like Hawthorne and Poe, fiction set in modern times [relative to the author]).
Uh, how about
Management types (PHBs)
Book Store workers
Publishers
Librarians
You may even have issues with some file systems.
When it comes to computing, ignorance rules the masses - I'm still amazed at how many people still call / backslash (which I heard on the radio today when a DJ was giving a URL).
MS was very good at three things: BASIC, marketing, and opportune buying of products/companies. They were underhanded at many others, echoing the "not invented here" mentality that also pervaded other companies like Apple and Intel.
From an operating system standpoint, MS stole a lot and got in a lot of legal trouble for it, but also avoided some - MS-DOS: originally Q-DOS (Quick and Dirty DOS) and the purchase actually saved the OS from getting sued into the dirt for copying CP/M (since they didn't write it - they just bought the source - Seattle Computer Products was legally responsible and they didn't have any money because it was bought for a pittance - something like $40000). Later Windows stole the look and feel of the Lisa/Mac (which stole the look and feel of the PARC, but Apple had the sense to file patents on their additions), thus the whole Trash Can vs Recycling Bin debacle (incidentally, Apple also sued NeXT over this). MS and Apple both still steal ideas - the desktop accessories/widgets stuff in its present form was stolen from Linux, but technically the Apple menu widgets are similar and predates Linux (they just weren't managed by a single app).
In the late 1980s a lot of games moved to decoder wheels (e.g. Pool of Radiance, Captain Goodnight). In the beginning, most were fairly simple, single wheels, but as pirates cracked and included the lookup table automatically and later posted the answer on the screen (and sometimes forced a certain answer always) and publishing companies went to much more elaborate ones (making it all the more fun for pirates...). This form of copy protection died entirely with the CD-Rom because few people could copy them (CD burners were rare and so were large hard disks).
The funny thing is, when CD-Roms came out I entirely lost interest in computing because there was nothing to crack, which is what my friends and I did for fun (ok, my first girlfriend at that time is as much to blame, as is my short lived music career). I have never pirated a thing since, but I have downloaded no-CD keys because it is annoying as heck to dig up CDs or DVDs for every game I want to play. Online downloads every time would be just plain annoying because I mostly play single player games when traveling (that's what a laptop and power inverter are for).
I really don't see how this will help - all it will do is stop casual piracy - real pirates will just remove the check, or hack it to always ask for the same key and return the correct answer (which was retrieved once).
I'm curious on how they are going to enforce strict memory standards, both in footprint and in leak tolerance (which is currently 0 according to a developer I know there).
The real problem was when there was competition in the market they destroyed it using legal(ish) yet underhanded methods. MS-DOS on the IBM PC was a tiny part of their profits - BASIC made them much more (Applesoft BASIC, for instance, was written by MS and bundled in Apple ][ sales, even though Apple had their own Integer BASIC).
DR-DOS kinda existed before "8 years" (really 6 or 7, I think - 1981 vs 1988) in CPM/86, but it was MUCH more expensive than competitors MS-DOS and (IBM) PC-DOS and not fully compatible. My uncle had CPM/86 on his PC in those days and I remember it not working with some of my PC games (though I did eventually learn that games that included their own boot worked).
MS killed competition in two ways - exclusive contracts (put only MS-DOS [later Windows] on your machine and get cheaper licensing) and bundling equivalent but often (initially) inferior software for free (see Novell Netware, Lotus Notes, Netscape Navigator, to some extent GEM, etc).
Linux/OSS is the ultimate problem for them - they can't buy it and they can't beat it in a price war, which is why they repeatedly vow to crush it, yet can't.
In this respect I think the industry is changing. 12 years ago I couldn't name a game programmer with a degree. Today I could name about a 1/2 dozen (most through my open source project, and all but one are graduates of programs like DigiPen). I don't work in the game industry myself, but I have several friends and a cousin that do. I do OSS game programming and that reminds me why I do it as a hobby (hours are killer and keeping up with the technology is an uphill battle).