madcrow

Meh, it's still m$ shite. The PS3 will prolly be way better. And so will Nintendo's as-yet-unnamed system. What's more this isn't even going to be backwards compatable with the old Xbox, so all the old games will be useless.

I heard that apparently, the Hollywood studios have said that they will not release movies in this format unless all companies involved in making blueray drives agree to never realease a blueray burner to consumers.

Meh. I'd much rather go with GNU stuff, even when I'm stuck on windoze. Nothing from Microsoft is really free, anything free from them is really just an ad...

Life without a computer is quite possible. Numerous people in third world countries have no access to computers. But for anyone who has ever been able to use a computer, I think it would be impossible for them to live without a computer.

I love BeOS even though I don't have room to keep it installed. It reminds me a lot of the old Amiga OS, especially with the Translators system. I'm shocked that it failed so badly, but I guess there was only room in the PC world for 2 OSes (Windoze and Linux)I'm waiting for Haiku (the Open-source version of BeOS) to mature, though. Maybe then, some of the people who are trending towards Linux, because of their microsoft hatred, but scared of Linux because of it's (undeserved) user-unfriendly reputation will pick it up.

While the SCSI vs IDE thing is sort of a moot point for modern ultra-fast computers, SCSI is good for PCs with less powerful processors because it takes the work of dealing with disk and CD stuff off the main CPU and gives it over to a dedicated controller. IDE just uses the main CPU, so you can't do as much with it on an older computer. I especially notice the difference in CD speed. On my old P3-800, I get MUCH better transfer rates using SCSI than I do with IDE, even though the drives are theoretically the same speed. I don't notice as much of a difference with hard drives, but I can see it a bit on my P2-300. If the system you got is a P3 or older, definantley stick with SCSI. Just remember that NEW SCSI drives cost twices as much as their IDE counterparts. Try to get used SCSI drives off of E-bay. It's what I do and it works fine.

Thanks for the guide. I'm more of a xine fan myself, but I like to keep an up-to-date copy of mplayer around too...

It wouldn't necissarily work well in all that many mmorpgs. Many mmorpgs have sort of a community aspect to them that wouldn't really be possible if you simply had infinite space.BTW, I'm convinced that nethack has some kind of infinite space algorithm: it's been out for like 15 years and nobody's ever won it...

The xbox controller is just a normal USB joypad with a funny connector. The pin outs and everything are the same as USB though and if you were to replace to plug on the end with a normal USB plug, your PC would see it as a gamepad. Similarly, adapters exist that will let you convert USB into X-box usb.

Ruby is a full language, but I guess it gets put in the scripting ghetto because it's not pre-compiled (Ruby proggies are run from plain text code, not a binary). In some ways, it's the same problem as Python: there's a whole complete language there, but people blow it off because you don't have to compile a program to run it.

The whole "anti-piracy" thing is kind of dumb. It's kind of dumb to compare people who download/provide copies of items with people who would sink ships and steal actualy physical stuff... Especially, if the anti-piracy folks use tactics like viruses and launching attacks like that. Who seems to be the bloodthirsty bucaneer here, anywayz.So yeah, the anti-p2p people have gone WAY too far. Of course p2p sucks anyway. Just use IRC f-serves, private servers and yousendit. It's faster anyway. If you MUST use p2p transfers, set up a private Direct Connect network that you and your friends are the only people who know about it. If the ISDA/RIAA/MPAA don't know about your servers, that can't hack your PC from them, now can they?

I looked this thing up and frankly it doesn't look too special. Certainly it doesn't do anything that can't be done as well or better with FREE tools.

Try qemu. It's a system emulator that has run just about every operating system I threw at it. I actually use it to test various "alternative" openating systems without having to partition my hdd and stuff. It's open source, so there aren't the cost issues that come along with either vpc or vmware. also, they're working on adding a core that will allow it to also emulate a PPC-based system like a Mac. get it here: http://www.nongnu.org/qemu/

I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I know that you can assign servers to pools that all respond to the same domain name depending on things like how busy any given server is and the like. It's really hardcore netwroking stuff, that in general, only huge sites need to worry about. It WOULD be pretty cool to rig up in one's basement tho.

I use SuSE 9.3 Pro and I must say that I love it. The fact that it can't play DivX/XviD/DVD out-of-the-box is a bummer, but neither can any other distro. Patent laws suck while they cripple products like that...

Ruby is a bit more than a simple scripting language, though. Unlike Perl, or bash shell scripts, it's well-suited to writing REAL proggies. Along with Python, it sort of bends the boundaries of scripting languages and real languages.Also, it is VERY good for those looking to learn the basic concepts of OOP. It has a MUCH cleaner object model than Java... In a lot of ways, it's actually the "ideal" programming language that I had been cooking up in my head. I was able to start using MUCH faster than any other language I had previously tried my hand at, because it so closely matched my ideas of how a language SHOULD work.

These aren't the oldest websites, these are just the oldest domains that were publically registered. These aren't even the oldest domains, as government agencies and universities had domain names going back to the late 70s/early 80s. In short, this is just a list of the first 100 companies to go online, which is still pretty cool, but not what the title promised...

Yeah, I love OpenOffice. I've been using it since it was a closed-source freeware program called StarOffice.The only issue I have is that the Draw component seems to be a bit flaky. It keeps crashing... All the other parts work fine tho. Also, the database function were present in 1.0, they were just kind of hidden...

Sweet free games: The Marathon Trilogy from Bungie. These were originally Mac games but there's an open source advanced port of the engine and Bungie (now busy with Halo and stuff) and bucked the traditions of their corporate parent Micro$soft and released the game data more or less for free (if only iD would do the same thing for Doom 1/2, Quake 1/2...) The games themselves are the precursors to Halo, and take place in roughly the same world. If you're looking for good, fun FPS action to keep you occupied on Mac, Windows or Linux, this is it... https://alephone.lhowon.org/

"Mothballed" Systems- 486DX2 66 MHz from 1993 with 16 MB RAM, VLB SCSI card, 500 MB SCSI HDD, 12x SCSI CD-ROM drive- Pentium 90 (ex-server) from 1994 with 64 MB RAM, SCSI card, no HDD installed ATM, 24X SCSI CD-ROM driveActive Systems- P2 300 MHz hand-built with 196 MB RAM, SCSI Card, 3 SCSI HDDs (16 GB total), SCSI CD-ROM, Matrox Millenium G200 8MB, Dualboots MS-DOS and Linux.In The Mail- Commodore 64 with a 1541 FDD

My ideal OS would be something like AmigaOS but for PC. The people developing AROS are essentially doing this, though, so it's only a matter of time before my wish is a full reality. Heck, AROS already boots and has a working GUI... Just needs USB and sound support...

Batch programming? I don't quite see what the point of that is, especially since the batch/scripting services in windoze are as good if not better than the stuff in DOS. As for ASM, that can be done under modern systems too. The only reason I maintain a DOS box is for the games...

That may be the case, but that's not the kind of game I'm looking to put up. I looking to put up games that are like the ones you could have/can find on BBS systems. If you've ever visited a telnet BBS with a games section, you'll know the kind of thing I'm looking for. That said I'm maybe 50% done installing a PHP version of DopeWars, a classic BBS game.

Computer 1:-2 GHz P4 Celeron CPU (Actually 1.9 GHz...)-512 MB RAM-30 GB internal HDD-80 GB USB 2.0 External Drive-Built-in CD-RW/DVD-R-External DVD+/-RW-Intel "Extreme" Graphics 2 (I know it sucks, even for a laptop, but I'm stuck)-Dualbooting WinXP Home SP1 and SuSE Linux Pro 9.3System 2 :- 1.023 MHz MOS 6510 CPU- 64 KB mainram- 1541 Floppy Disk Drive- VIC-II Graphics Chip- SID Sound Chip- GEOS 2.0 GUI OSI may use system 1 more, but I love system 2 1000x more...

Probably not the kind I'm planning on putting up... No pictures, just text and menus...