Pangloss

By the way, the above four points apply to computer games. Conversely, the non-computer gaming industry (board games, party games, novelties, etc) seems to be going through a bit of a renaissance over the last couple of decades. There are some interesting new board games, as well as some creative ideas in RPGs. Although in the last couple of years it's gone back to being a bit more humdrum, or so it seems to me.

1) I agree that comupter games have become rather stale and unoriginal. 2) I'm not sure that has anything to do with technology. 3) I think it likely that they're doing the best they can, in an industry that has become the moral equivalent of ambulance-chasing lawyers and used car salesmen in terms of ethical behavior. (Not so much on the part of the game designers, but on the part of the people who run the game companies.) 4) I don't have any better ideas, so I tend not to dwell on it.

So let me get this straight: 1) You believe that there are vicious, mean-spirited, hateful, dangerously insane people in the world. 2) People who sexually molest children are not included in their number. Do I have that right? I just want to be clear, you understand.

http://blamebush.typepad.com/blamebush/2005/08/judge_roberts_k.html For those who don't know, Judge Roberts' children are toddlers, so this is obviously just meant in good fun. The Roberts boy put on a bit of a show for reporters during President Bush's announcement of Roberts as his nominee, and it's amusing because during the announcement you could see Bush and Roberts trying hard to keep a straight face, but you couldn't see why they were trying not to laugh -- that came out in news reports later. (hehe) It was a nice bit of non-partisan humor -- something both liberal and conservative parents could sympathize with. BlameBush is actually a far-right blog that satirizes the left. It's a little crude sometimes, but not all that different from, say, John Stewart's Daily Show. Every now and then even ideologes can be funny, so I just thought I'd pass this one along.

There's no question that the Legosia-deniers have been dealt a serious blow with this significant find. Clearly not only was Legosia an advanced civilization, but they represent unequivocal proof of contact by an advanced extrasolar civilization thousands of years before the rise of western culture. We need to get the history books properly updated ASAP, and labelled with a warning about the "theory of western civilization". http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5604244895&rd=1&sspagename=STRK:MESE:IT&rd=1

Well the i386 folder is well under 500mb, and that's the main thing. Drivers don't usually take up more than a few tens of megabytes.

So long as you hold the far left to that same standard when it criticizes the far right, I have no problem with that.

I agree that there's some validity to the comparison, but it only goes so far. People treat family and nation differently because they are different. The main difference is that children are not capable of acting in their best interest, lacking experience and wisdom that comes with age. There's a reason why you don't feed solid food to a newborn baby. One of the reasons why this difference invalidates many comparisons is that adults can be educated and informed. Children, on the other hand, have to grow up to the point where they can understand. You can't, for example, over the space of a single speech, give a 3-year-old all the salient facts about fascism, human rights violations, geography, and economics, and then expect them to understand why it's a bad thing that the Sudetenland has just been invaded, and why you need to send troops there now. They simply won't understand, or be able to offer advice and consent. So the comparison only works up to a point, and cannot be used, for example, to justify decisions or criticisms made by adults for adult reasons.

In other words: 1) Boot off the Windows CD, proceed to the partition selection screen, and delete all of the the partitions currently avaiable 2) Turn off the computer 3) Turn the computer back on, boot off the Windows CD, and proceed to the partition selection screen, create a new partition, and proceed with installation If you do it that way, it will give you a virgin BOOT.INI file, since it doesn't have the old partition info in RAM. Regarding your other question, you don't need a dual layer DVD or even a DVD at all. You can create a bootable, customized Windows XP installation disc with a normal CD. It's called "slipstreaming", and it's a very complicated process, but in a nutshell it involves pulling the "i386" folder off a normal WinXP disc onto a hard drive along with all the drivers you want to have available, any service packs or other updates you want to include, and any RAID drivers you want (which is typically why this is done, for floppyless builds, since the Windows installer won't read RAID drives off a CD). You run through a complicated series of steps and burn the new CD. I use the Microsoft OEM pre-installation kit and a script I found on the Internet for this years ago, so I don't have any suggestions for you on web sites, but if you google "slipstreaming" you'll find plenty of help. It's not really recommended for one installation, though -- too much work.

I don't think there's any question that Java offers the best combination of free advanced tools, free support, and wide range of application uses. While not free, "Absolute Java" by Walter Savitch is a good book for starters, and is often available off the discount shelf at bookstores.

Nice tip, Radiohead.

Well I'm sorry if it was a little obvious in its bias. Like I kinda implied in the first post, it appealed to my Dok Gonzo side.

Sure, there are lots of problems. But again, where does he suggest that we should ignore the plight of those in Africa? And where does he say that we have to fix "everything"? Oy, we need to have some lessons on debate around here or something.

What the heck? Where does he suggest that anybody should ignore the plight of those in Africa? Yeesh.

You might think that, but I'm afraid it's just not the case. Hard drive life-spans are a bit like the half-life of radioactive particles. Some of them fail right away; others fail only after a long period of time. A guesstimated average, called "Mean Time Between Failure", is typically posted on a label on top of the drive, and usually those numbers are typically something like 100,000 hours. So after four years, more than 35% of the drives (if running 24/7) will have already failed. And somebody has to own those drives, right? So no, it's not unusual at all.

Gotta hand it to the old curmudgeon -- he knows how to point out hypocrisy. It makes me all a-tingly. Full story here: (Non-subscription, yay!) http://www.slate.com/id/2124157/

Oh this was a Windows problem? I gotcha. Are you still having problems or did it just recover on reboot? Windows Explorer can sometimes reset itself, but if not you can just reboot and it generally recovers pretty well.

That's interesting. I don't recall KDE distros typically having a "My Documents" folder. Makes sense, I guess -- might make things easier for people transitioning from Windows to Linux. (Or were you a Gnome guy? I can't remember for sure now.)

Very cool web site that uses Google Maps to show you where the space station, Hubble space telescope, or the space shuttle are at any given moment. http://gmaps.tommangan.us/spacecraft_tracking.html (Hint: Watch what happens when you leave it running for a while.)

(To H2SO4) Last I checked, you could get around that issue (where it remembers your old BOOT.INI contents) by turning off the computer after deleting all the partitions. When you reboot (off the CD, obviously) it will have forgotten the old BOOT.INI contents, and give you a virgin BOOT.INI file. That's why I remember this at all, because I used to have to setup classrooms without Norton Ghost because the school owner was such a tightass, so I'd run around the room booting and rebooting just so the students wouldn't interrupt my lecture to ask me what partition to boot off of so they could surf the Internet instead of listening to me! (grumble) (Which is how I learned about 9/11, by the way, but that's another story.) There's a reason why it does what it does, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is. Which is a little embarassing, because I think I actually wrote the Knowledge Base article on this for support.microsoft.com, but now I can't remember the number of the article and it's not coming up in a search. (So much for sticking that on my resume, huh?) (chuckle) (I believe there's also an obscure switch for this in the setup program, but since the setup program launches automatically and your CD is already burnt, that piece of information is really only useful if you do the slipstreaming trick (i.e. make a customized installation CD), which fun in a geeky sorta way, but definitely not for the casual power user.)

Lol, I'll go along with that. Maybe he just hates kids.

Ok, so like I said, you installed the operating system twice to the same partition. That's a grim situation, for the reasons I described above. If you think the WINNT folder is the correct one, you can delete the Windows folder, remove the line that ends with Windows from the BOOT.INI file, cross your fingers and hope for the best. Best case scenario, nothing happens. Worst case scenario, your programs stop working. Be sure and back up your important data files before you do anything. And good luck!

But again, nobody's being turned out into a storm. They are simply being directed to another facility. In many cases that facility may even be closer than the one they currently would go to. I realize you all are a bit at my mercy when it comes to information on this issue, but I can see how you might be under the impression that these shelters are on every streetcorner. They're actually pretty few. Normally they only open three or four shelters for the entire region (3-4 million people). They're just not very popular. The last time they opened shelters the nearest one to me was over 15 miles from my house. But there's a state-run women's correctional facility less than a mile away. And this is a suburban commuter area, so there are sex offenders all over this area (as I discovered and reported here a few months ago). Where is the hatred, please?

Well that's if he has "My Computer" on his desktop. Most computers don't get that by default anymore, sadly.

I have no idea how it works in Chinese. I've never even seen the Chinese version of Windows. No offense, but I'm actually making it very simple. I think that if you are unable to determine whether you have a C:\WINNT folder and a C:\WINDOWS folder, or even locate Windows Explorer, or find My Computer, then you really should not even THINK about editing the BOOT.INI file. It's an extremely dangerous thing for a novice to do. Please turn your computer over to an expert. Trust me on this -- you've done something REALLY unusual with your installation, it is NOT stable in its current configuration, and one false move and your computer will be rendered completely inoperable.