My first encounter with UNIX was learning it on a dialup system back in the days when CP/M was still the user operating system. It looked to me like a vast rolling trrainwreck that was continually evolved to keep it more or less functional. Teams of wizards surrounded it and made lots of money from its care and feeding. I became one of the wizards. But I still hated it. And do.

On CP/M there was no room for bloat. Not much room for bloat on MSDOS. For a couple years I ran CP/M parallel with MSDOS. Had a couple of "do everything" program disks. Slowly MSDOS came up to speed. Now we live in the age of bloatware. Easier to maintain and modify I guess, but it lacks the elegance and speed that once existed.

I am sad to see him go, one more of the old crew departed. Lisp taught me more about programming than any other language. Yes, he discovered it. The Spartans had the Lambda on their shields. They knew about it, they just had no computers! You had to be a bit of a Spartan to keep up with all the close parens. And Scheme, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson and Sussman. A treasure. I hope Lisp lives on at least in academia. The concepts are inspiring even if implementation may be more efficient in an imperative language.

Liked Chrome when it first came out. But back to Firefox. The fox had one major glitch session for me but fixed within 24 hours. Tabs position easily selectable. Doesn't make me much difference really. There are lots of browser choices. When devs have their heads wedged, just go run an alternative.

The name of the WoW quest for the two pristine horns is "Are We There Yeti?" The original quest was meant to be a grind fest and was. Then you had to be world traveler to frighten all the targets with the mechanical yeti. But with the revision of the quests in the low game in the Cataclysm patch, heck I just stealthed into the depts of the yeti cave with my Druid and quickly had the two horns. I think the only person I had to frighten with the mechanical yeti was right there in WinterSpring. This made me feel pretty stud, so I set out to find the hunter quests and the Boss Dragon, FinkWing or whatever his name is, appeared and blasted me with fire and killed me! I got an achievement for this honor. As for the russians, good luck to them. Maybe they find no yeti but find a lochness monster or a Gobi Death Worm. Or clever Russian peasants are stimulating the tourist trade.

On the surface of a planet around a star that cannot be seen with the naked eye a distance of more than 60 light years or so dwells a group of semi intelligent featherless bipeds less than the size of a dust mote on a galactic scale. They have small brains subject to the henweigh effect; their brains weigh about as much as a hen. They communicate mostly by disturbing the air around them with what they call words. They also have symbol systems for their words. Lost and alone in a vast cosmos they argue about science and religion as if their burblings meant anything. When I was a boy in Jr. High and HS long ago I read Mr. Moffatt's translation of the Bible, all of the Darwin I could find, and a lot of Mark Twain. Sir James Jeans, Arthur Eddington, etc. I then went to a major brand name science institute for my physics degree. Over the years it seems that most of the religious people I knew, Christian and Jewish with an occasional follower of Islam, Buddhism, or the Eternal Dharma; these people I say ended up well off and happy. The followers of "science" by contrast are mostly dead or wish they were. No kidding. So I remain religious because it seems to be the way of common sense and survival all things considered. And yes, I still like Mark Twain. Not that any of it matters on a cosmic scale. Not being divinely inspired, I allow that the followers of scientism might be right after all and we are only meaningless pots of bubbling chemicals. If so, I enjoy my delusions. Or even worse, H. P. Lovecraft; but let's not go there.

Right on the nose. Or they try to raise consciousness level of one or another good cause. Life has many exciting enterprises that do not involve shooting other people, animals, monsters, or demons for whatever purpose. But if someone writes a jungle exploration game you can be sure they will try to teach the principles of ecology and conservation. Suddenly the game feels like work. The End.

The sickness of American companies. Middle management composed mostly of feather merchants. If you do not fit into their feathery kingdom, out you go.

No, just no. My experience with this distro in the past was not good.

Those who cannot have a continuous internet connection lose out big, no doubt of it. Only solution for them is to play older games. More and more games will use the client / server model. This is the model that has been in use in MMO for many years. It works, it has many benefits; it will thus become the standard for many game publishers. Ubisoft's new Conflux model is a compromise example. For instance, it will be possible to play Heroes of Might and Magic VI without and an internet connection. But there are so many advantages to Conflux that everyone will want to use it. I approve of the Diablo III always online model. If you play WoW you already know the drill. Again, sympathy for those who do not have a constant internet connection, but older games will be the solution. Heck, half my gaming time is on older games, Good Old Games (GoG), and being forced to play those can turn out to be a very happy outcome!

This is good! Looking forward to D3 even more. Since I was not looking forward to it much, now I am looking forward to it less but a bigger less that is closer to much. How much closer is yet to be revealed.

All predicted when the switch to solid state and mp3 quality began. Stereo quality went south. Same is true in amateur radio. Rich friend has complete set of tube based Collins S-Line equipment plus most of the current elite solid state gear. So he can A/B. Tube gear always wins both for reception and for online transmission reports. Sadly, most of the engineers who knew how to work with tubes are deceased or retired. Welcome to the solid state slum of modern life.

Not as if this hasn't been known. Diablo 3 will have destructible elements. In GW 2 lots of random stuff to pick up, some of it weaponry that changes your skill bar. Plus maps that change from one play session to the next as far as monsters and events go. Dungeons rearrange themselves; but Diablo had that.

Years ago, played EVE for about 7 months. Still get invites to activate my account for a few days and see all the great changes. Not likely. On the one hand like WoW, on the other hand like a spreadsheet. But overall like a million scam jobs all after you at once. EVE players were always up in arms about something.This sounds a bit more serious though. I think in the end micro transactions will mark the final decline of the MMO. Playing online with "friends" was once a novelty. Now it is more of a pain than anything else. Offline games have a lot more to offer me, I know that. Except for forums filled with outrage ... think I'll nip over and watch the lynch mobs.

ARRRRRGGH! So I upgraded to FF 5 and the Google Personal Home Page now does not display properly. NoSquint seems to work, but that might be the problem. Who knows. This does not look good comrades, no it does not look good. I hate the new Firefox button because we hates changes we does, my precioussss. Give it a week or so, but may be time to change browsers. What you all recommend?