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Comment Re:SWOTL (Score 1) 582

>Hmm, does SWOTL run OK and find the joystick in DOSbox or some other VM?

DOSBOX does a bang-up job of running SWOTL with sound and music, and it lets me use my old CH flight yoke and stick with a 15-pin to USB adapter (every USB game controller works, no configuration necessary).

For the record, I never cheated in SWOTL, I didn't even back up my pilot files...so losing a pilot who'd been promoted to Oberst was a heart-stopping event.

Comment Re:SWOTL (Score 1) 582

SWOTL was top shelf, the last and best 2.5D flight simulator by Totally Games/Lucasfilm Games. The manual alone was worth the price of the box.

It's true, you only had 60 rounds of 30mm ammo, but with the Mk.103 cannon and careful aim you could easily knock every opponent out of the sky before running out. The P-51s usually only took two or three rounds to destroy utterly. Always fun to fly a tour of duty in the 229, although to tell the truth, the Do.335 from an expansion pack was my most favourite. It was a little slower and less maneuverable, but still faster than any Allied fighter (well, except the P-80, another expansion pack fighter) and probably the most durable plane in the entire game.

Comment Re:Like the phonograph.... The what? (Score 1) 743

You're breaking my heart here, and although I'm sure you mean well and it's nice that you are a fan of music from earlier periods, you're way off-base.

I've performed many of the works of Bach, Mozart, and their contemporaries and successors and hardly anything tops Bach in any of those categories. High harmonic tempo, rhythmic complexity in and between parts (Classical-era music is largely homophonic), extended chords via appoggiatura and other passing tones, four, five, and eight-part fugues with multiple subjects and counter-subjects.

Off the top of my head, here are a few Bach works that I think best exemplify his genius:

Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor (BWV 582)
Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied (BWV 225)
Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue (BWV 903)

Mozart, however, is elegant but very straightforward, even simple. Perhaps it's a personal experience bias as I've mostly only performed his liturgical works (Masses etc.) and arias from his operas, but there is hardly a comparison to be made between the two.

Windows

Microsoft Admits Vista Has "High Impact Issues" 520

EggsAndSausage writes "Microsoft has granted, in a roundabout way, that Vista has 'high impact issues.' It has put out an email call for technical users to participate in testing Service Pack 1, due out later this year, which will address 'regressions from Windows Vista and Windows XP, security, deployment blockers and other high impact issues.' It's hard to know whether to be reassured that Service Pack 1 is coming in the second half of 2007, and thus that there is a timeframe for considering deployment of Vista within businesses, or to be alarmed that Microsoft is unleashing an OS on the world with 'high impact issues' still remaining." In other news, one blogger believes that Vista is the first Microsoft OS since Windows 3.1 to have regressed in usability from its predecessor (he kindly forgives and dismisses Windows ME). And there's a battle raging over the top 10 reasons to get Vista or not to get Vista.
Spam

Submission + - Fight spam with Nolisting

An anonymous reader writes: "Nolisting fights spam by specifying a primary MX that is always unavailable.

"It has been observed that when a domain has both a primary (high priority, low number) and a secondary (low priority, high number) MX record configured in DNS, overall SMTP connections will decrease when the primary MX is unavailable. This decrease is unexpected because RFC 2821 (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) specifies that a client MUST try and retry each MX address in order, and SHOULD try at least two addresses. It turns out that nearly all violators of this specification exist for the purpose of sending spam or viruses. Nolisting takes advantage of this behaviour by configuring a domain's primary MX record to use an IP address that does not have an active service listening on SMTP port 25. RFC-compliant clients will retry delivery to the secondary MX, which is configured to serve the role normally performed by the primary MX (final delivery, transport rerouting, etc.)."
United States

FCC Nixes Satellite Radio Merger 277

a_nonamiss writes "Doesn't look like Sirius and XM are going to merge any time soon. I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Logically, I know that competition is a good thing for consumers, and monopolies are generally only good for companies. Still, I don't like having to choose a car based on which satellite radio service comes pre-installed, or considering whether I'd rather have Howard Stern or Oprah, because there is no practical way to get both. Frankly, it's probably all this exclusivity that has caused me not to purchase either system." From the article: "Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters after an FCC meeting that the Commission would not approve a merger between satellite radio rivals Sirius and XM Radio... When the FCC initially licensed the two satellite radio companies in 1997, there was language in the licensing barring one from acquiring control of the other... Even if the FCC were to have a change of heart..., it would still have to pass antitrust scrutiny by the Department of Justice."
Hardware

Pentium 4 631 Overclocked to 8 GHz 271

Andreas writes "There are always those who are willing to take things one step further than others. A group of guys known as OC Team Italy is one of them. They recently pushed an Intel Pentium 4 631 to over 8000MHz using an ASUS P5B with modified voltage regulation and liquid nitrogen. Overclocking is cool and all, but this extends beyond what some would perhaps call useful. Still a milestone though."
Microsoft

Microsoft PR Paying to "Correct" Wikipedia 355

Unpaid Schill writes "Over on the O'Reilly Network, there's an interesting piece about how Microsoft tried to hire people to contribute to Wikipedia. Not wanting to do the edits directly, they were looking for an intermediary to make edits and corrections favorable to them. Why? According to the article, it was apparently both to let people know that Microsoft will not 'enable death squads with their UUIDs' and also to fight the growing consensus that OOXML contains a useless pile of legacy crap which is unfit for standardization."
Microsoft

Submission + - Vista has "high impact issues" - Microsoft

EggsAndSausage writes: "Microsoft has admitted — in a roundabout way — that Vista has "high impact issues". It has put out a call for technical testers to participate in testing of Service Pack 1, due out later this year, which will address "regressions from Windows Vista and Windows XP, security, deployment blockers and other high impact issues."

It's hard to know whether to be reassured that Service Pack 1 is coming, and thus that there's now a sensible timeframe for considering deployment of Vista within businesses, OR to be alarmed that Microsoft is unleashing an OS on the world with "high impact issues" remaining in it.

In other news there's a battle raging over the top 10 reasons to get / not to get Vista. (And a rebuttal.)"

Feed Killer Radio Contest: The Tape (wired.com)

Sacramento morning hosts running a "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest didn't stop a woman from apparently drinking herself to death. YouTube has the audio. In Bodyhack.


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