How people will move from Win98 to XP

Let's eavesdrop on a conversation between a head of IT and a head of accounting at a typical mid-cap company.

A: I hear MS is no longer supporting Windows 98.
IT: Marks and Spencer never did.

A: Marks and Spencer is M&S.
IT: Aah Microsoft, they never supported Windows 98 either. (I digress with non-funny jokes ......back to the issue)

A: We will have to upgrade to XP.
IT: On 2000 machines that will cost a fortune. Not only on the OS, but the man hours configuring the machines, training the staff how to use XP.............. these are all costs. What's worse is 90% of our machines aren't powerful enough to run XP.

A: We will have to buy new machines.
IT: ....... but what about the recession ....... our margins are being squeezed and we are in our 3rd year of losses.

A: It is the duty of all patriotic companies to turn the IT industry round so that our country can stand and face the world and proudly say "we are at the head of the pack".
IT: You want to bankrupt us?

A: No, that's what I am telling PR to say. I think we should install that freebie operating system Linux. It will run fine on all our clapped out hardware.

IT: But what about compatibility? Modern business uses Microsoft Office.

A: For the past two years we have sent all our files in plain text at the request of security conscious companies who don't want to run the risk of getting viruses.
IT: Yes, but putting in Linux will still be costly with installation and training.

A: Good point, let's continue as we are and replace our hardware piecemeal when individual units die. We'll get new Linux boxes. Any staff resistance to the new operating system will be countered by a "Keep up with the Jones, I've got a big processor in my machine that only takes 20 seconds to boot up look at this cool LCD flatscreen" culture. >
I think MS called this situation bodging or was that shimmying, I can never remember.

IT: MS did such nice prawn sandwiches too.

Senior chip analyst says Apple lying about PowerMac G5

While it is true that there were NT workstations available with 64-bit cpus, it's worth noting that the chips (alphas) were used entirely in 32-bit mode, so they were in no sense 64-bit workstations (unless you ran a real 64-bit OS, like linux, instead of NT). But then, the same is true (AFAIK) of the current Mac OS on 64-bit PPC.

David Brown
Norway

Washington Post claims Wi-Fi dangerous security risk

It's true. I was at a congressional briefing last Monday, July 21st, where a computer intelligence analyst said that Wi-Fi was "one of the greatest things to happen to me in years." People just don't practice good security or use encryption.

This was reiterated at a hearing on Thursday by the director of the Information Technology team at the General Accounting Office and researchers from Bell Labs, UC Berkeley and the NSA.

It's a huge problem that there may not be an easy solution to. I don't want it, but the government may have to step in to push toward more secure standards. We can rave all we want about how amazing and convenient Wi-Fi and other wireless protocols are, but until they are secured, you can be sure it will not be widely adopted by government and others who have big privacy or security concerns.

Name supplied
Washington, D.C.

Logitech Elite Keyboard requires brain the size of a planet

Hello,

I just read Charlie Demerjian's amusing review of the Logitech keyboard. I was hoping that the writer would mention something about the fact that Logitech installs a bit of spyware called backweb during the install process (that is not picked up by AdAware, BTW). I find it offensive that you would pay for a product that spies on you.

Keep up the excellent work!

John Castorino

Hello Mike,

Time for a good old fashioned RANT, with expletives replaced by symbols!!

Why, 4 years after Descent3/Quake 3, are so many games still looking like this??? Blocky, low-poly models, no option to raise the polygon counts of models, no curved surfaces, no eye-popping levels? No effects that take your breath away??

I'm constantly amazed that load-screens for games are still in blurry 640x480 mode, and that models are so freaking ugly!

UT2K3 seems to break the mold, and in spectacular style too! And yes, the game has high system requirements, but nothing that's out of this world!

Hell, we've had DX9 for ages now, and most games still don't even take advantage of DX8 - let alone 9!

While I'm at it - what the hell is with GAME MENUS???

For goodness sake, it's 2003 - and game menu systems look like they came from "Quest for Zorga 1985"!

What is it with game developers? They don't enable mouse-scroll wheels to work in their menus, they don't move the cursor to a default option automatically, place the quit button 3 miles from the other buttons - and then they ALWAYS pop up a god damn message saying "Are you sure you want to quit?"

Well, think about it M!"$ERF%^*ERS! If I didn't want to %#$&^ing quit - I wouldn't have moved my mouse 3 ^%&$ing miles to hit the @#$%ing QUIT button now would I???

While I'm whingeing and moaning.... Why they hell not use a WINDOWS BASED GUI for game options??? Holy Moly, it's not like it's difficult to achieve! A single window with tabs, Windows functionality and the ability to display 3D components within the window. Good Lord, it aint Rocket Surgery people!

And, WTF is up with developers who think no one has anything more complex than a 2 button ball-mouse??? You want to assign a function to button 6 or 7 on a mouse, go to the config, click on it, click your mouse button - and NADA. No way to map that function to a mouse button!! AAARGH!

$%#^ING MORONS!

SPLASH SCREENS!

Seeing as I'm on a roll here - I want to complain BITTERLY about the advertising in game start-up routines! Look, I paid $79.95 (or whatever - some are $119.99 here!) for this game. OK? You sold it to me al-freaking-ready! You DON'T have to sell it to me again, and again, and again, and again!

I don't care that I can push the ESC key four times to avoid seeing them. I just want the game to START! At the VERY least, give me an option to avoid these splash screens! Better yet, let me DELETE THE BLOODY THINGS FROM MY INSTALL!

CONFIGURATION

WTF?? Look, my GFx card has everything that opens and shuts. It's got MegaThis, Gigathat, DirectX-Eleventy-Twelve, AnisoPoop Filtering, Full-Screen Anti-Aliening, 32 Bit Z-Bugger, Tri-Penal Filtering and god knows what else!

WHY CAN'T I ENABLE THESE THINGS IN THE GAME INTERFACE? OR SELECT WHAT LEVEL I WANT???

NOOOOOOOO. Instead, I have to delve into the game's folder, find some esoteric file with some bizarre extension, Go into FILE properties and associate the file with something like HOMESITE that won't put blocks where CR+LF should be, then open it up, and scroll through 88 thousand lines of weirdly named options with switches that vary in complexity from "0 = OFF, 1 = ON" to "+33.12457 = you can jump *this* high"

So, I make a backup of the original file, and start hacking it to try and enable Full-Screen Anti-Aliening, and Anisopoop filtering, and have to discover by trial and error, what works and what doesn't!!!

WHO TF do these people think they are?? I mean, if you're too lazy to create a GUI that controls advanced GFx capabilities, then the VERY LEAST you could do is put %^$&ING COMMENTS IN YOUR CONFIG FILES TO TELL US WHAT TO CHANGE, AND WHAT THE OPTIONS ARE AND WHAT THEY @#$%ING WELL MEAN!!!

I mean, this aint Brain Science! We're talking about being able force GAME A to do FSAA and AF while leaving GAME B without it! (OR with differing levels).

Peeps are sitting in development houses feeling PROUD about the disgusting pile of stinking dog-poop that is his game GUI!

What's the point of having powerful graphics cards, if you can't select which capabilities to use, and in what amounts—Easily?

1. Why doesn't EACH ACTION have a "DEFAULT" key???
I don't want to set ALL the settings back to default. I want to know what the default is for THIS button!!!

2. Where is my V-SYNC control?
I just want to see if it makes any difference! 3. Where is my Z-Buffer option?
Can I force a higher level to improve quality?

4. Where is my Anti-Aliasing control?
It's simple, I want to see the effect it has at various settings.

5. Where in Bi-Linear and Tri-Linear switch?
I want my eye-candy.

6. Where is my Anisotropic Filtering level control?
This information is easily available, why can't I change it???

7. Where are my Recommeded Settings?
I want the game to examine my hardware and make some recommedations. I also want those shown in a third column of data next to the control/option.i.e.

8. Where is my Minimum FPS control?
OK, I want my game to look great! I want it to play at High Resolution with all the switches on max-eyecandy! But I don't want to be looking at a slideshow when things get hot and heavy. I want eye-candy features successively toggled off when the framerate reaches a predefined level.

I swear, (loud and often) nVidia and ATI must be tearing their hair out! Here they are, making GPUs and reference designs that absolutely kick A, but the games makers won't permit easy control over how their game appears. That last item, I believe, is something that is sorely lacking! You could even INVERT it. And select a MAXIMUM FPS specification, where you selected your settings, and the card only applies those settings when a certain FPS is reached. That way the game will fly when it needs to and heap on eye-candy when it can!

The hardware is fast but dumb, and the software is just outright dumb. Smarter software is the key. So, why aren't AtinVidia working together to ensure games present the best possible picture to their clients? It's a common goal, so why not chase it?

With game benchmarks becoming less and less meaningful over time, and the power of GFX cards ramping rapidly, it seems logical to move away from a quantitative approach to game-visuals to a qualitative viewpoint.

DHDHDHDHDH LIKE I REALLY WANT TO CHANGE MY GFX CARD PROPERTIES FOR EVERY SINGLE $%^*ING GAME I PLAY—EACH AND EVERY *&^%ING TIME I PLAY A GAME!!! THANKS FOR NOTHING SH!T-FOR-BRAINS! [/rant] Phew!

Kind regards,

Chris "Mobius" Davies