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Posted in women type on September 8th, 2008
HARD-DISK Woman:
She remembers everything, FOREVER.RAM Woman:
She forgets about you, the moment you turn her off.WINDOWS Woman:
Everyone knows that she can’t do a thing right, but no one can live without her.EXCEL Woman:
They say she can do a lot of things but you mostly use her for your four basic needs.SCREENSAVER Woman:
She is good for nothing but at least she is fun!INTERNET Woman:
Difficult to access.
SERVER Woman:
Always busy when you need her.
MULTIMEDIA Woman:
She makes horrible things look beautiful.
CD-ROM Woman:
She is always faster and faster.
E-MAIL Woman:
Every ten things she says, eight are nonsense.
VIRUS Woman:
Also known as “WIFE”; when you are not expecting her, she comes, installs herself and uses all your resources. If you try to uninstall her you will lose something, if you don’t try to uninstall her you will lose everything.
Snatched from Funtoosh.
To good wives .. jaz joking..you are NOT in any way a trojan, worm, or a BankAccount PWS..ha ha
Posted in CIA-The World Factbook, world reference on September 8th, 2008
Snatched from WARSHOCK’s Blogspot
If you are looking for an online World Factbook that is comphrehensive, periopdically updated, complete with reference maps, flags of the world, appendixes, and each country underheadings topic include governmnent, military, transportation and other related aspects of each country. Visit the CIA-The World Factbook
. What is a better reference source than the greatest intelligence agency in the world.
Posted in georgian refugees, news, refugees on September 3rd, 2008
Georgian women refugees sit on a straw-laden farm transporter as they rest before continuing their flight from Russian troops.
GULFNEWS.COM
By Tom Clifford, Deputy Managing Editor
Published: August 15, 2008, 09:21
Gori: One town, two countries. The contradictions of war were clearly apparent in Sarp, a town shared by Turkey and Georgia.
On one side were streams of refugees fleeing the fighting and on the other side of the town in Georgia itself people were sunning themselves on the beach, as if oblivious to the suffering of their own countrymen.
Sarp is where the Turkish Red Crescent are based to deal with the refugee influx.
More than 3,600 Georgians dash to Sarp each day, mostly from Western Georgia. They bring tales of atrocities and heavy fighting.
Meanwhile, the Black Sea port of Poti, about 100 kilometres north, has been shelled by Russian warships and - according to refugees - resembles a ghost town.
“I brought my wife and nine-year-old son from Poti today,” said Qabakh.
“It is not safe there. The Russians may have withdrawn their heavy armour but irregulars crowd around the town, robbing and looting,” he said.
On the Turkish side of Sarp stands a convoy of 104 articulated trucks caught in the no man’s land of war during a ceasefire.
Among them are Turkish Red Crescent trucks with huge banners down the side stating that their contents are a gift from the Turkish people to Georgia.
For the people of Georgia, the French president’s announcement of a ceasefire just does not ring true.
The refugees’ tales are a harrowing testament that Nicolas Sarkozy’s announcement was a triumph of spin over substance.
The front line in this campaign is not in Tbilisi but in Western Georgia where the remnants of the routed Georgian army have taken to the hills and where Georgians blame Chechen irregulars for atrocities which are too well documented to be just propaganda.
Georgia is being slowly strangled and a vicious Bosnian style conflict is emerging.
The area between Poti and Gori is becoming a no man’s land where the gun carries the day and undisciplined bands of young men, many from Chechnya, roam.
Posted in Gamers Have Rights, gamers, games on September 1st, 2008
In the boldest, wisest, and frankly coolest collection of axioms I’ve ever seen a developer lobby in three decades of PC gaming, Galactic Civilizations designer Stardock today released a ‘Gamer’s Bill of Rights’ describing what gamers should expect from developers, publishers, and retailers going forward.
In just 10 succinct points, Stardock simultaneously identifies a lot of what’s wrong with the PC games industry while courageously suggesting that:
-Gamers shall have the right to return games that don’t work with their computers for a full refund.
Me: You know, we used to have this right a decade ago. Remember the era when stores like Babbages and Software Etc. gave you 30 days on opened software with a valid receipt?
-Gamers shall have the right to demand that games be released in a finished state.
Me: I’d add an important corollary: Game developers have a right to demand that publishers never, ever force them to release a game in an unfinished state.
-Gamers shall have the right to expect meaningful updates after a game’s release.
Me: I’m assuming Stardock means updates = expansions, and not the sort of optional free content a developer should never feel obliged to offer if the game adheres to point number two. But yeah, if we’re going to pay from one-half to two-thirds the cost of the original game for an add-on, it needs to deliver at least commensurately.
-Gamers shall have the right to demand that download managers and updaters not force themselves to run or be forced to load in order to play a game.
Me: I religiously uninstall third-party download managers the second I’ve finished pulling down a file or game (exceptions being Stardock’s and Valve’s).
-Gamers shall have the right to expect that the minimum requirements for a game will mean that the game will play adequately on that computer.
Me: This one’s a toughie, because “adequately” is still so vague. Adequately for me is Crysis with everything set to “max.” Adequately for someone else might be Crysis in a tiny window with everything set to “low.” This gets even trickier when you consider how completely anarchic benchmarks are in terms of morphing drivers and elusive one-off optimizations. Unless hardware vendors counterintuitively agreed to develop to an independent performance index, getting a good definition of “adequately” will probably remain the purview of one-size-fits-all consoles.
-Gamers shall have the right to expect that games won’t install hidden drivers or other potentially harmful software without their consent.
Me: ‘Nuff said. Well, and maybe something in there about serious legal threats against anyone who violates this point.
-Gamers shall have the right to re-download the latest versions of the games they own at any time.
Me: Another tricky one, because bandwidth costs publishers money, and games aren’t getting smaller. If you could convince me that publishers are paying less than pennies on the dollar to maintain download servers, I might bite, but with PC gaming vectoring toward total digital-distribution, I’m conflicted.
-Gamers shall have the right to not be treated as potential criminals by developers or publishers.
Me: Hear hear. Begone, StarForce and all your misbegotten hasn’t-stopped-a-single-pirate-to-date progeny.
-Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.
Me: I’ve been an advocate of this since Valve launched Steam and made this mandatory. Valve eventually wised up and made it optional. So bravo (again) Valve, thank you as well Stardock, and the rest of you need to follow suit, because going online should always and forever remain an option and not a requirement.
-Gamers shall have the right that games which are installed to the hard drive shall not require a CD/DVD to remain in the drive to play.
Me: Color me ambivalent on this one. But speaking as a laptop gamer, games that don’t require discs tend to play (a) much more quietly and (b) generate far less heat. The latter can be crucial if you’re utilizing a high-end mobile GPU.
One last “right” I’d like to add…
-Gamers shall have the right to expect members of the gaming press to challenge game companies when they violate any of the above principles.
Me: The press is an engine of inquiry, not a press-release patsy. There’s supposed to be an element of bias in expert reporting. You wouldn’t accept on its face what a politician tells you, and you shouldn’t uncritically accept what a game company does as in everyone’s best interest. As history shows us, time and again, that’s not always the case.
-by Matt Peckham
