Sounds like Theme Park, where not only will little kids keep trying to ride the SnakeSlideOfDeath™ or BouncyCastleOfDoom™ while they're smoking and preparing to explode, but the repair guy you told to fix them will be eating his lunch about four pixels away.
Posts made by Parody
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RE: Operating normally.
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RE: Why desktop operating systems have completely failed at their job for the last 20 years
@loopback0 said in Why desktop operating systems have completely failed at their job for the last 20 years:
Yes. Most of @anonymous234's post described OSX/macOS too.
Yup. It helped that the Mac didn't have the problem of being backwards compatible with DOS programs.
While not what Microsoft recommended back in the day, it wasn't impossible to make a program relatively self-contained even when it depended on things like proper registry entries. Back in the Visual C++ 6 days I worked on a program that had scripting support via COM, so it had a type library and other fun things to put into the registry. I ended up having it check at startup to see if it had moved and reregister itself if needed. I think it failed silently if the writes failed (likely because you were a limited user), but it may have given a warning dialog. Either way the program would still work, just without scripting support.
You could also reregister or clean out everything it wrote to the registry and user profile folders from the command line.
I think the only people who used these features were the developers, but it was something the higher-ups wanted.
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RE: Email confirmation?
@remi FWIW, I got it this morning and had not accessed the site with any other devices between last night and now. I was still logged in, though I closed the browser between then and now.
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RE: Would you recommend the product you're working on to your clients?
The desktop publishing application I worked on forever ago I would have recommended, but they killed it off a year or two ago.
You're welcome to visit my little collection of websites, I guess. Not really a product there, just some stuff I've made over the years.
Everything else has been embedded or internal development tools, so there's nothing to recommend.
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RE: Sadly no mention of potatoes
@LB_ The nickname for gelatin is jelly in a lot of places. Jello is what folks in my neck of the woods say, though. (Jelly is the generic for "fruity stuff you put on toast or peanut butter sandwiches".)
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RE: Sadly no mention of potatoes
I made Jell-O® and potatoes yesterday. Thankfully I didn't mix them.
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RE: WTF is happening with Windows 10? And nothing else
@marczellm said in WTF is happening with Windows 10? And nothing else:
Also, did anyone notice this? If I right-click the taskbar and click "Show windows stacked" or "Show windows side-by-side", my two windows are arranged so that they fill 1/3rd of the screen each, and the 3rd 3rd of the screen is left empty. What might be causing this invisible third window?
It does that on my system but I have some always open, position locked windows that Explorer doesn't know to ignore.
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RE: Watershed SHA1 collision just broke the WebKit repository, others may follow
@anonymous234 said in Watershed SHA1 collision just broke the WebKit repository, others may follow:
Can I just say that I don't understand this diagram at all?
It's pretty simple. PDFs contain "stuff". The amount and contents of the "stuff" is arbitrary, resulting in "regular stuff", "double stuff", "mega stuff", and even "inverted stuff" PDFs that look the same....
::munch, munch::
What were we talking about again?
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RE: I gave Firefox for Android another chance
@anonymous234 said in I gave Firefox for Android another chance:
@cartman82 said in I gave Firefox for Android another chance:
Mobile Opera FTW.
Text wrapping does come in handy sometimes. But there should be a one-touch button on the menu to turn it on or off because sometimes it's just annoying.
Text wrapping is what keeps bringing me back to Opera Mobile; I've yet to find a good alternative on the other browsers. :(
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RE: Project NEON
@PleegWat said in Project NEON:
@Parody I think they dropped that starting with vista.
If you're running 32-bit Windows you could steal a copy from somewhere. Alternatively, 3.1(1) runs in DOSBox. Make that fullscreen and watch the fun! ;)
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RE: Project NEON
@PleegWat said in Project NEON:
They should add a windows 3.1 retro theme.
If your install still has PROGMAN.EXE you're most of the way there. :)
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RE: Project NEON
@RaceProUK said in Project NEON:
@AlexMedia said in Project NEON:
So basically, Microsoft is adding to Windows what Apple added to OS X with the Yosemite release? The translucency effect has been in OS X for years...
Is Yosemite before or after Windows 7? :P
I think you meant Vista. ;)
There were transparent and translucent window borders and menus before then (Windows 9x shell replacements, AmigaOS, who knows what in the UNIXy world) but who did what when is more than I feel like researching at the moment.
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RE: Lorne has the misfortune of being an idiot by circumstance: my experience with windows 10 so far
@Lorne-Kates It's F8 to get to the recovery menu, but if your computer boots past it fast enough (== boot drive is an SSD) you probably won't be able to catch it.
My Fast Ring Insider VM bluescreens after installing the last version to which it updated. No clue yet what's going on there. ::sigh::
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RE: BAs are harder than BScs (:giggity:)
@Yamikuronue said in BAs are harder than BScs ():
@Zemm In a lot of universities, there's BA for soft degrees (not a lot of math) and BS or BSc for hard degrees (lots of math). In lots others, the distinction is fuzzy and/or non existent, but the stereotypes persist.
Exactly. At the school where I finally got my degree, I could have done a BA or BS in Computer Science. The main difference was the BA required two years of college-level foreign language, while the BS didn't. (The BS required slightly more math and CS classes instead.) Most of the science and technology degrees were available in either flavor with similar minor differences.
Judging from the classes I took, students make plenty of friends and blow off schoolwork just as much no matter the subject.
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RE: Is my bits enough to do gamez?
@Yamikuronue said in Is my bits enough to do gamez?:
I game on my laptop all the time, and it's not even a gaming laptop. ... Games don't have to be graphics-intensive to be fun anymore.
Ditto, and my laptop is a netbook-level Windows convertible tablet. Sure, it won't play Arkham Knight, but it's fine with various older RPGs, Civ-likes, emulators, and such.
For desktop graphics cards, I generally aim for spending ~$350 and buy after a new set of cards comes out; the outgoing set's capabilities and quirks will be pretty well known by then. Typically that's a -70 model chip (as mentioned earlier) but some generations it shifts around. (Ex: right now nVidia 1060s are supposed to be good price/performance, I believe.) For quick comparisons I like these lists of numbers, though like all benchmarks you'll want an entire container of salt.
Sadly, I haven't had a modern dual graphics laptop; many years ago I had a desktop replacement laptop with a mobile chip, and since then my personal portables have been low-end (== Intel only).
Time to work on that backlog of games, I guess. :)
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RE: Choose a headphone for me
I have HD 555s and they're very nice. Music sounds great, they sit well on my head, and the cord reaches to the back of my tower. I have not done the modification to make them 595s, but I might one of these days. It's the same sort of thing: take off the pads, remove some foam, put it back together, and afterwards the only difference is labeling.
Other concerns: the 55x/59x series are open, so your audio will bleed out. There's no microphone.
While I don't know what all they've changed (other than coloring), if you don't need the microphone, I'd expect the HD 558s to be very good for you.
Aside: Are 558s on the way out? I ask because the MSRP is $180. Which price do you use to auto-sort your products? :)
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RE: One for those of you who work in QA..
@dcon said in One for those of you who work in QA..:
@Parody said in One for those of you who work in QA..:
When I was doing QA it was very helpful to be able to read the source code
I'm pretty sure our QA would have no idea what they were reading if they saw our source code. It's hard enough finding qualified programmers that can. (Yes, we're looking.)
That sounds like when I was doing testing for a desktop publishing application. There we didn't have access to the source code; testing builds were made about once a week and bugs were filed against a specific build number. Most of the folks we had as testers were not coders, though everyone learned a little bit of AppleScript. (It helped that the application was recordable. One of Microsoft's big failures with the Scripting Host and VBA.)
Being an interested hobbyist, I wrote a ton of scripts and spent time answering questions on the mailing list. Eventually I was able to move up to development when they went cross-platform.
Projects like the one I mentioned earlier in this thread were for an aerospace company. There all of the testing we did involved writing test scripts and running them against a simulated or actual device; the setup allowed you to rerun multiple tests, all tests for a specific module, and so forth. Many of the folks doing testing had written code for that device or similar ones in the past; you couldn't test code you wrote, but you could work in other parts of the overall system. There were a few non-coders attached to the QA team, but in that phase they were mostly concerned with the (virtual) paper trail. (They may have been further involved after I'd moved to other projects.)
So it definitely depends on what role you expect (the various parts of) your QA team to play.
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RE: The Official First World Problems Thread™
@anonymous234 At least it shows it to you. The Google Play store likes to hide programs that it decides aren't compatible with the current device.
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RE: One for those of you who work in QA..
When I was doing QA it was very helpful to be able to read the source code. For example, when I would see strange behavior in edge cases or when coverage testing didn't come up 100%, being able to see what they wrote and compare it to the requirements let me determine if there's a lowest-level requirement missing, a software bug that needed to be fixed, or if I wasn't sure and had to kick it back for someone more knowledgeable to determine.
Your QA team members have to know when to use that power, of course, but unless there's a pressing need for separation I'd let folks have read access.
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RE: Lorne has the misfortune of being an idiot by circumstance: my experience with windows 10 so far
@anonymous234 said in Lorne has the misfortune of being an idiot by circumstance: my experience with windows 10 so far:
Well, storing data ("internal" data, as opposed to files which are meant to be copied around by users) is something that 99.9% of applications do. ...
My main complaint is application developers' decisions to consider user data "internal" rather than "user" and thus not provide it in a user-facing file. Instead they write everything to a hidden folder in your profile folder. I have a couple of these now, and I wonder why they even bothered to write a Windows application. If you want to lock up all of our data, you might as well make a crappy web version.
The other situation is where common data files (or the entire application!) that, ideally, would be shared between all users on the same computer are dumped into the profile folders. Generally the developers do that just so they know they can write to the install folder and so now we're back to where we were when Program Files had no "protection" at all.
I agree that moving the profile folders should be easier, but I think application developers should be less lazy too. :(
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RE: Lorne has the misfortune of being an idiot by circumstance: my experience with windows 10 so far
@anonymous234 said in Lorne has the misfortune of being an idiot by circumstance: my experience with windows 10 so far:
@cheong said in Lorne has the misfortune of being an idiot by circumstance: my experience with windows 10 so far:
Given not only OS files are stored there but also the MSOffice update files, you shouldn't set the system partition to this low in size.
Most cheap Win10 tablets have 32GB and they work fine with Office.
Heck, my HTPC only has 40 and it works well enough. More is better, though.
@anonymous234 said in Lorne has the misfortune of being an idiot by circumstance: my experience with windows 10 so far:
But yes, Windows is designed to store everything in a single partition. Pretty annoying that they still don't let you move your %UserProfile% folder.
Also annoying are applications that shove all of their data into the profile folder without giving you a way to tell them to put it somewhere else. :(
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RE: Nvidia Geforce Experience
@cheong said in Nvidia Geforce Experience:
Their hardware used to be good (and I think still is), but the software (driver) is not after their driver writer left somewhere between 2008 to 2010. There are multiple BSOD caused by their drivers, and then I decided when buying new display card I won't choose this brand again.
I've had the opposite experience: ATI's drivers still cause problems after all these years while nVidia's don't, on what should be good hardware. I wish these things weren't so hard. :(
As far as GeForce Experience goes, I stopped using it when it wanted a login. It was nice to be told when there was a driver update, but it's not like I haven't been checking websites for driver updates since the 90s or anything. I don't do any streaming or need their auto-optimization (which loved to pick options that don't work well on my machine) so whatever.
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RE: Regular Keyboard that isn't crap
@Lorne-Kates said in Regular Keyboard that isn't crap:
@Parody said in Regular Keyboard that isn't crap:
Maybe, but as I don't know to what you're objecting it's hard to say.
It's CLICK also CLICK hard CLICK to CLICK hear.
As I only use a Model M on my home office/gaming computer, I don't see how I'm being a jerk about it. In the office I use the same generic Dell keyboards as everyone else. (Well, I stuck with an older one with full-size keys rather than the newer laptop-style, but there's a pile of them in the place where computer parts go to die so anyone who wanted could have one.)
The noise annoyance in that office is the lady who still fills out forms with a typewriter.
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RE: Regular Keyboard that isn't crap
@Tsaukpaetra said in Regular Keyboard that isn't crap:
@Parody Ooh! Another emoji!
Use it in good health. :)
@Lorne-Kates said in Regular Keyboard that isn't crap:
@Parody said in Regular Keyboard that isn't crap:
Model M
oh so you're one of those assholes.
Maybe, but as I don't know to what you're objecting it's hard to say.
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RE: Regular Keyboard that isn't crap
@Lorne-Kates said in Regular Keyboard that isn't crap:
I'm using a Microsoft Wireless Comfort Keyboard 4000 at work....
I'm glad you like it; I personally can't stand using bendy keyboards. I've been using a Model M since the early 90s, which isn't completely non-ergonomic but is probably not on the National Carpal Tunnel Association's Top Ten list of keyboard choices. :)
@lucas1, I'd second the recommendation to look at a keyboard with mechanical switches. If you've got a halfway decent computer store nearby it'd be worth stopping in to bash on some keyboards for a while to try out the different types of switches available.
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RE: Git for noobs. Or something else?
@Dreikin said in Git for noobs. Or something else?:
I've seen perforce mentioned for this type of workload (esp. in regard to game assets during development), but I've never looked into further than that.
FWIW: Back with the DTP company we used Perforce and it worked very well for source and binaries. I ended up setting up a Perforce server at home for my own use and it worked great for my own needs, which included a lot of binary files. (I make lots of game help documents.)
Unfortunately, again, this was years ago. I switched away from it when I retired my Windows 2000 Server because I wanted to try a distributed VCS setup. Hopefully when Perforce moved to their new engine they didn't hurt their binary advantage.
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RE: Git for noobs. Or something else?
Once upon a time we called these image or content management systems. Then the Web folks co-opted the term for website builder things, though it appears that "digital asset management" is the more generic term now.
Unfortunately, my knowledge of them is some 15 years out of date; when I worked for a desktop publishing company the one we made was designed for Mac OS 7. Poking around the Net I see Canto Cumulus is still around, so there's a name for you to look into in case the file sync solution doesn't work out.
Feels great to be helpful. :)
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RE: Argentina wants to register everyone's DNA. Seriously.
@masonwheeler said in Argentina wants to register everyone's DNA. Seriously.:
It would be like Minnesotans losing their "don'tcha know?" :P
I know there's folks out there who speak in Scandahoovian, but as a life-long Minnesotan I have yet to meet anyone who does. Gotta love stereotypes. :)
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RE: I know the Win10 Anniversary Update has been shipped
@powerlord said in I know the Win10 Anniversary Update has been shipped:
Actually, other than the annoying notification, how can you tell if it's installed.
If you have the Action Center icon showing and it's closer to the corner of the screen than the clock, then you have the Anniversary Update. Otherwise, there's always
winver
.On a side note, I've heard that the Anniversary Update borked XInput, at least if you're using an Xbox One (or Xbox 360?) gamepad.
I had to install a driver for my knockoff XBox 360 Wireless receiver; after the Anniversary Update Windows had it marked as an Unknown Device. Once I enabled that Windows picked up my gamepad with no problems.
The new XBox app's overlay has a setting that takes over the Guide button, even if you had the Game DVR functionality disabled. I had to enable it temporarily so I could get the overlay open and disable the setting to return the Guide button to its normal functions, like showing the battery charge.
I've heard that XBox One gamepads may need a firmware update via the XBox Accessories app from the Store to work post-Anniversary Update, but I don't own one so I don't know if that's true.
My main computer still has one Unknown Device that is apparently part of my multifunction printer's scanner driver, but it's not blocking me from printing. Otherwise 1607 seems to be working fine here and on my tablet.
@Tsaukpaetra said in I know the Win10 Anniversary Update has been shipped:
My Windows 8.0 machine never even got Windows 10. Not sure why. Then again, Updates rarely work on it (apparently):
I believe you had to be on 8.1 before Windows Update would offer 10. (Not that it matters if updates weren't working in general.)
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RE: Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.
@Lorne-Kates said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
And yes, Windows installer can technically be done without a mouse.
Keyboard navigation while installing Windows 10 on my living room PC worked pretty well. I didn't have much of a choice once it got to the part where you turn off all of the stuff Microsoft wants to do automatically; our TV doesn't sync properly to whatever resolution the installer uses, so I was without reliable mouse usage until I could log into Windows and get the output fixed.
I agree with you about the store drones not doing much beyond clicking "Next". Brings back memories of working at an OfficeMax when Windows 95 was released: people would call the computer department to ask about installation problems, but all we could do is refer them to Windows tech support as we didn't know anything about it either.
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RE: TDWTF Plays The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I still have my "Don't Panic!" button that came with this game :)
Oddly enough, the cheese sandwich/dog bit is one of the few things you can fix later.
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RE: TDWTF Plays The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
(I think those are all the ones seen in this playthrough so far.)
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RE: TDWTF Plays The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
@error_bot footnote 6
footnote 2
footnote 14 -
RE: TDWTF Plays The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
At the very least, you lost Arthur's towel and gown back in the Vogon ship.
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RE: PBP Paranoia?
Housing has been good to us; we've been in the Downtown Marriott the last few years (the hotel directly connected to a food court outside what's now the board/card/miniatures hall).
Gen Con's gotten really big in the last five years or so, which is straining the close-in hotels. From what I can tell there's no real answer for that; the alternative locations aren't any better and there's only so many hotels that the downtown Indianapolis area can support. I wouldn't mind if attendance shrunk a bit, but that has other drawbacks. :/
Regardless, event registration will continue to be a disaster. You'd think even a small company in Seattle could get a halfway decent IT person or two to design and build their registration system, but apparently not. Instead of working on the registration system, let's write our own forums!
At least they didn't use Discourse.
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RE: PBP Paranoia?
@e4tmyl33t said in PBP Paranoia?:
I'm going to do my damnedest to try to go again next year, funds and personal paranoias be damned.
Hopefully you'll get there; good luck in the housing lottery! I've been going for way too long (18 years?) but it's still a good time every year.
@Weng said in PBP Paranoia?:
@Parody Any open slots? If so, PM me the event code, we are WOEFULLY short on Paranoia (actually, we're woefully short on events in general - the one year we're all on deck for event reg we get basically nothing)
And are you the guy I stole the damned unsharpened-pencils bit from?
It's been full since opening day, sorry. If it's any consolation, I also got hosed in event registration this year. (Their server was handing out 504 errors like candy; by the time I got in the queue I was in the 5000s.)
I don't think I've ever done an unsharpened-pencils bit. Sounds like a Paranoia thing, though. :)
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RE: PBP Paranoia?
@Gurth said in PBP Paranoia?:
@Parody said in PBP Paranoia?:
Gotta love Paranoia! It's much better than those not-fun RPGs!
For the better part of twenty years I’ve been wanting to run a game of HōL but have never actually gotten to doing that yet :(
Sounds like me and Tales from the Floating Vagabond. Also some more serious RPGs, but who cares about those? :)
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RE: Raymond Chen disses StackOverflow
@error said in Raymond Chen disses StackOverflow:
I used to work for an agency where the main sales guy would promise the client anything to close a sale. Before consulting with developers to find out if what he was promising was feasible or even possible, let alone to get an estimate. ...
At one of the places I worked once upon a time our project head insisted on sending one of us to industry shows (often our testing lead) along with the sales folks to rein them in from promising the moon to all and sundry. You can't stop everything, but every bit helps.
This was one of the reasons why it was the best place I ever worked, which is (of course) why they decided to close our office, lay everyone off, and shut down development.
Good times.
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RE: PBP Paranoia?
Gotta love Paranoia! It's much better than those not-fun RPGs!
Paranoia has been my favorite RPG/world for a long time, despite only really being suited for one-offs. I've been running events off and on at conventions for years now and will be running one at Gen Con next week.
You might find something useful at the Paranoia portion of my website: MAN Sector. Notably there's one adventure I finally wrote up, a PDF character sheet, and some graphics. Feel free to laugh at its out-of-dateness. :/
Stay alert! Trust no one! Keep your laser handy!
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RE: Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.
@flabdablet said in Pressure to upgrade to Windows 10 ratchets up. AGAIN.:
@LB_ Windows Update has several failure modes that involve it achieving nothing apart from consuming 100% CPU for hours on end.
Those are neat, but my favorite failure is the reboot loop after it decides to fill your entire boot drive with error logs. That was "fun" to undo. :(
PS: you didn't really need those restore points, did you? I need more room for logs.
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RE: More than five members talking about Twitter
@aliceif said in More than five members talking about Twitter:
Real gamers have that shrink-wrapped copy of whatever game they preordered but hadn't had a chance to play yet on lying on some table, a bunch of games just lying around near their primary console, some loose portable carts on their nightstand and their main games shelf is maybe ordered by console, if even.
Let's see:
- Shrink-wrapped copy of Skyward Sword just lying around, check.
- Games lying around near my primary console...hmm...well, I have piles near the PC and the TV, so that should work. Check.
- Portable carts on the nightstand? I've got them scattered around other places.... My phone charges on the nightstand at night, though. Close enough.
- Main games shelf is still ordered by console since nobody's touched it in a while. Check!
I'm not sure what this proves as most of my video gaming the last few years has been on Windows machines, but yay! Real Gamer! Or at least really close! :/
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RE: More than five members talking about Twitter
@Gurth said in More than five members talking about Twitter:
I used to have a Spectrum with a DISCiPLE back in the day. I remember one time, one of my school friends who had a C64 wanted to walk away to do something else while it loaded a game we wanted to play, but was amazed that the game was up and running before he had even gotten out of the room.
Cool stuff. It's really too bad that Commodore messed up the disk performance on the 64+1541 by wanting to keep backwards compatibility (and failing at that too). Also too bad I didn't even have a Fast Load cart in the early 80s. Once I had things like a RAMLink it was much better, but by then we also had a Tandy with a hardcard. (30 MB hard drive on an expansion card! So cool!) :)
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RE: More than five members talking about Twitter
@Tsaukpaetra said in Twitter:
Hey, if you replaced it with an SSD it would be instantaneous!
Most of us use SD card adapters, actually. Not quite instantaneous, but very fast!
Back in the day JiffyDOS was a big help on my machine, along with RAM drives and the 1581.
Before I had those, though, I would check books out from the library to read while waiting for games to load. :-)
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RE: Pants
@blakeyrat Eh, I like Tribute to Pants more. (Hercules Against The Moon Men is one of my favorite episodes. DEEP HURTING!)
Thankfully, there's more than enough pants to go around. :)
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RE: In which I accidentally Windows 10
@Magus Windows 7, actually.
Aero Snap is nice to have even without a Windows key.
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RE: In which I accidentally Windows 10
My roommate's computer decided to
self-destructupdate itself to Windows 10 yesterday. Not surprisingly, he wasn't happy that it did so without an explicit confirmation. And he's not even a computer geek! He just wants to read his email, surf the Web, and play Civ.Well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.