Channel 9 - Discussions by XaeroVincent

Coffeehouse - What prevents me from installing Linux on a XBox 360?

XaeroVincent — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:01:56 GMT

Actually, I remember reading about how hackers discovered a loophole in the PS3's "other OS" hypervisor. Xorg developers were able to directly access the RSX graphics hardware and proceed to develop a driver with DRI support.. However, Sony later patched the loophole in a firmware update.

As W3bbo points out... the latest slim-line PS3 doesn't have the hypervisor any longer. Not only that but so much functionality is stripped from the latest generation PS3--backwards compatability is the big one.

I have the original 60GB PS3 and its plays my PS2 games like a charm with the integrated emotion engine and other hardware. I could just upgrade the HDD in my original model and it would triumph the latest generation PS3.

Coffeehouse - Linux question

XaeroVincent — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:53:10 GMT

Like Erisan here, I use Fedora. I use it because its at the forefront of Linux security innovations.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Security/Features

However, I stick to using the the previous release for stability reasons and for support for the proprietary ATI cataylist drivers. For instance: when Fedora 13 is released I'll be upgrading to Fedora 12.

If you have an Nvidia card, I'd check out PC-BSD 8 too. The PBI system is much like Windows MSI packages and all the dependencies are self-contained inside the that program's subdirectory within the main "Program" directory, thus there aren't any dependency hassles. It also supports the FreeBSD ports tree in a way that won't mess your installation up.

Coffeehouse - 2009 is the year of th Linux desktop ...

XaeroVincent — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:32:55 GMT

GoddersUK said:

CannotResolveSymbol said:

*snip*

Wobbly Windows!

I really love those. (That's something that after using Linux make coming back to Windows feel like coming back to the past).

Linux is a fun toy but it has no chance at overtaking Windows for both reasons Linux and FOSS has no control over.

I'm creating my own distribution based on a distribution thats been dead since 2002 but I wont be releasing it nor buy servers to host repositories.

Coffeehouse - Most Inexperienced President Yet?

XaeroVincent — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:17:19 GMT

littleguru said:

@jonathan: I always have the sensation that you behave like a priest; a priest who believes to know the only thruth and that nothing else than that thruth is allowed. Behaviour like that kills discussions and is not very productive.

@xaero: Yeah. I was only pointing out that experience doesn't guarantee anything.

Well experience means that a leader can "potentially" make informed decisions but doesn't necessarily mean they will.

Sarah Palin is well liked in Alaska and her high approval rating there can be attributed by that. She relates well to her people and understands their issues.

President-elect Obama has little experience and his vice president has had experience at being wrong on important issues and "fabricating facts".

Coffeehouse - Most Inexperienced President Yet?

XaeroVincent — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:57:21 GMT

littleguru said:

XaeroVincent said:

*snip*

It doesn't seem that the "experience" of the former president did help a lot

Bush was just a poor president. There are bad leaders in history on both parties.

Jimmy Carter for example.

Joe Biden has experience but has been wrong many times on foriegn policy, among other things.

Coffeehouse - Most Inexperienced President Yet?

XaeroVincent — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:49:15 GMT

jonathansampson said:

XaeroVincent said:

*snip*

Xaero, you're right - but like I said, speaking DIRECTLY to a supporter of Obama is pointless. It's like arguing with a brick.

Obama supporters need to be informed and they mostly aren't by obtaining their news from bias sources like Huffington Post.

Anyway, what I said is just part of it.

As you stated... he also has little to no experience.

I can argue that Governor Palin has more experience for the job as she is a governor for Alaska. The only experience Obama really has is "running for president". Heh.

Coffeehouse - Most Inexperienced President Yet?

XaeroVincent — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:35:54 GMT

jonathansampson said:

Ion Todirel said:

*snip*

I don't dispute that - my only problem is that argument is illogical, and potentially dangerous. "Something new" does not mean "Something better." As a matter of fact, when you vote to elect somebody as unqualified as Obama, it has a higher probability of being "something worse." Especially when you've got a decorated military hero, with decades of experience, on the same ballot.

From my perspective, it appears Obama rallied the ignorant vote of America by getting them to gamble with their freedom. Not a single person has demonstrated why he's the best option. Only the "popular" one, which means absolutely nothing.

[Bumped for importance]

Yes... Obama has won but will he have our nations best interest?

1) He is clearly a socialist by the means of increasing the tax for the rich and spreading their wealth to the poor and middle class via a check.
2) For years he listened to his anti-American and anti-White religious leader (Jeremaiah Wright) spew hateful messages to his followers.
3) Increasing taxes on big companies doesn't help the economy but makes goods more expensive or worse, encourages them to outsource or leave our borders entirely.
4) Obama wants to change the presidential seal graphic that has been in use for over 200 years.
5) Obama had affiliations with past-terrorist Bill Ayers. Ayers claims responsibility for bombing at the US Capitol and his group, Weather Underground, were responsible for other bombings of government buildings, including New York City Police Headquarters in 1970 and the Pentagon in 1972.
6) Obama's father was a muslim and raised him as one. Obama no longer claims to be a muslim but there is creditable speculation that he still might be in private, or at least can recite excerpts from the Koran. While muslim faith isn't necessary a bad thing (the religion is mostly pieceful), having a muslim president and covering it up is huge when our nation's founding fathers developed our nation around Christian principles.

Obama scares the * out of me, period.

Now, just imagine for a second what the liberal media would of done to McCain had he been accused of ANY of Obama's accusations...

Coffeehouse - Most Inexperienced President Yet?

XaeroVincent — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:31:13 GMT

Yes... Obama has won but will he have our nations best interest?

1) He is clearly a socialist by the means of increasing the tax for the rich and spreading their wealth to the poor and middle class via a check.
2) For years he listened to his anti-American and anti-White religious leader (Jeremaiah Wright) spew hateful messages to his followers.
3) Increasing taxes on big companies doesn't help the economy but makes goods more expensive or worse, encourages them to outsource or leave our borders entirely.
4) Obama wants to change the presidential seal graphic that has been in use for over 200 years.
5) Obama had affiliations with past-terrorist Bill Ayers. Ayers claims responsibility for bombing at the US Capitol and his group, Weather Underground, were responsible for other bombings of government buildings, including New York City Police Headquarters in 1970 and the Pentagon in 1972.
6) Obama's father was a muslim and raised him as one. Obama no longer claims to be a muslim but there is creditable speculation that he still might be in private, or at least can recite excerpts from the Koran. While muslim faith isn't necessary a bad thing (the religion is mostly pieceful), having a muslim president and covering it up is huge when our nation's founding fathers developed our nation around Christian principles.

Obama scares the * out of me, period.

Now, just imagine for a second what the liberal media would of done to McCain had he been accused of ANY of Obama's accusations...

Coffeehouse - Old Windows 95 Shooter

XaeroVincent — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:18:45 GMT

spivonious said:
Sounds like Fury3 to me.

I have the Fury 3 demo that came on a Windows 95 Game Sampler CD.

It still worked in XP last I tried.

Tech Off - [Linux] Mono 2.0

XaeroVincent — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:12:02 GMT

Yeah... Mono 2.0 is a major milestone.

http://www.mono-project.com/Release_Notes_Mono_2.0

I might try learning C# 3.0 or VB 8 and the Mono 2.0 platform once 2.0 reaches the FreeBSD ports tree. PureBasic doesn't have a native BSD port and I've found it to be kind of buggy for development on Linux.

Coffeehouse - High Priority Free Software Projects

XaeroVincent — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:50:23 GMT

I read that gNewSense removed GLX and Mesa from their distro due to being "unfree". This means that 3D OpenGL acceleration is impossible; therefore any 3D games and applications that target OpenGL are impossible as well.

http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Main/Broken3dApps

Unbelievable.

Coffeehouse - Another Linux store opens...

XaeroVincent — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 21:02:06 GMT

I've downloaded PC-BSD 7 today.

I'm about to install with a dual-boot with Vista.

Compiz Fusion works on the BSDs too.

I figured it was about time to try FreeBSD again on my desktop.

Coffeehouse - Command prompts

XaeroVincent — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 16:32:02 GMT

I think you've mentioned that you dabbed with Linux before and you didn't like it then either. Not sure why you went back...

Linux on the desktop is more like a fun toy that tests your cleverness when an attempt to make it useful is made--see below.

I have Fedora 9 on my laptop and my father has it on his desktop. It works just fine for us but there would have been no way I would have remained a Linux user if Rdesktop with fancy seamless application remoting patches, Wine, Mono, and Samba did not exist. Windows applications are important to me because many FOSS apps are garbage.

BTW, seamless terminal services isn't cheating its just another way of accessing Windows apps without having Windows installed locally. Just need access to a Windows machine somewhere in a LAN or WAN (Interweb).

Of course it would be easier just to use Windows and download FOSS applications but thats boring.

Coffeehouse - Command prompts

XaeroVincent — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 04:19:35 GMT

The best way to make *nix successful as a day-to-day OS is to have a spare dust-gathering Windows box that you can connect remotely to via terminal services. Having the latest version of Wine and Mono installed is useful as well. VMs are nice but are a pain in the arse because you have to buy a separate Windows license for a guest install.

My terminal server configuration is very fancy and features application remoting but any set works IMHO. VNC is OK too but only with UltraVNC mirror driver.

This way you could work in Visual Studio 2008 and save your projects on the *nix box via the network folder share.

As for Ruby... I don't know anything about it--I'm a PureBasic guy myself.

Coffeehouse - What keeps you on Windows?

XaeroVincent — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:19:43 GMT

RoyalSchrubber said:

jonathansampson said:

*snip*

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/505/

I like 'As has been said, AA is done by the card and the driver, and not by Compiz's OpenGL initialization. This is not a problem.'

Typical Linux Hater's 'lusers'..

http://xs219.xs.to/xs219/07356/Screenshot.png
http://dev.compiz-fusion.org/~onestone/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/cube_cylinder.jpg
http://tech.tolero.org/gutsy-review-images/ubuntu%207.10%20(gutsy)%20screenshot%20-%20compiz%20resize%20of%20maximised%20effect.gif

Look at the borders, it looks terrible. Maybe it runs at higher FPS than Aero, but visually it's inferior.

Royal,

You can change the rendering quality of CompizFusion effects.

This said, I almost never use composting effects because they are pointless and an Intel 945GM sucks at it anyway.

Coffeehouse - What keeps you on Windows?

XaeroVincent — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:08:05 GMT

My situation is a bit different.

I use Windows because I need it as a application-remoting terminal server for my father's Fedora 9 desktop and my laptop.

Windows is a great platform but I enjoyed Linux for the technical challenge on boring days.

Linux is pretty boring now because it works as it should on our systems. Most Windows applications work on Linux with our typical WMTS (Wine, Mono, Terminal Services) configuration along with the usual native FOSS diamonds and garbage.

It seems the only challenge these days is running across websites that use proprietary browser plugins, such as Move Media player.

Coffeehouse - So he really did it...

XaeroVincent — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 22:42:16 GMT

I don't think it portrays anything like that.

90% of the rest of the world uses and develops for Windows. Among them are the sour grapes of humanity.

Coffeehouse - Did you see the Obama acceptance speech?

XaeroVincent — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:01:11 GMT

dahat said:

Sabot said:

*snip*

What you just said disturbs me... greatly.

No offense... but if you truly think Obama a centrist then his campaign has done a wonderful job of obfuscation.

If you go through Obama's voting history both in Washington and Illinois, coupled with his two books and some of his past associations that helped bring him to where he is today (most notably the Saul Alinsky organization)

There is one inescapable conclusion provided you seriously look at the facts carefully... he is a 1960's style European Marxist... an ideology that is very far left at least in the US.

(No I'm not saying there is inherently a problem with him being a Marxist, just identifying that he is)

During the primaries he and the other democrats worked hard to out left each other and Obama was quite successful at it.

Only since beating out Clinton has he spent a great deal of time backtracking from many of his earlier stances.

The question needs to be asked which views are the real ones. The ones he initially campaigned on and had spoken and written about previously... or the new ones within the last 2-3 months.

Obama wont solve anything.

Heres what I predict:

* He'll cut the military like Bill Clinton and raise taxes for the rich and use the money for social programs and social security for illegal aliens and the very poor. Cutting the military is a very bad idea now with North Korea potentially resuming nuclear activities and Russia resuming their cold-war mentality by invading Georgia. Georgia has a big oil pipeline that Russia can use to leverage control over many European nations.

* Although he claims that he will reduce federal taxes to the majority of business workers, an increase in capital gain and dividend tax will affect everyone, effectively increasing the cost of living and hurting all investors.

* Universal healthcare is a * idea that the democrats are so quick to praise. Some Canadians will even admit that the government health care is problematic where patients have long wait times for major procedures and fewer doctor visits. Physicians and hospitals would still demand high wages and malpractice lawsuits would still persist. So the costs would be astonomincal--guess who pays for it? Higher taxes for shittier healthcare? I'm not saying the current system isn't broken but that UHC wont fix a damn thing.

Coffeehouse - Windows theme is ugly in TS

XaeroVincent — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:35:41 GMT

You can change the terminal server theme from group policy editor. The problem is that theme will also become the default during a local user session. Look for "Load a specific visual style file or force Windows Classic".

I've patched uxtheme.dll to allow 3rd party themes.

I currently use Clearlooks for Vista, which makes Windows apps appear as GTK+ 2 apps when remotely accessed from my Linux box over seamless terminal services.

Coffeehouse - Here comes Fay

XaeroVincent — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:05:15 GMT

Fun... time to board-up the windows?

In Oregon we are having record breaking heat.

It was 110 F today where I live. o.O

Now I know what its like to live in Death Valley. Except that its hot like this every day there during the summer months.

Coffeehouse - Super Mario Galaxy

XaeroVincent — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 03:51:10 GMT

I have this game as well.

Isn't the music composition just awesome?

Very movie-like orchestra.

Coffeehouse - windows 95 games

XaeroVincent — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 07:19:01 GMT

Bas said:

jh71283 said:

*snip*

It's the only early Windows 95 "trapped in a jungle" game I could think of. I had no idea what word-activated meant.

But from the explanation, I think this is more of a text-parser adventure game, which would put it quite a few years before Windows 95.

Edit: and right after I click submit, I realise what it is. Hugo 3: Jungle of Doom.

Looks more like an MS-DOS game with VGA graphics.

Coffeehouse - Dvorak

XaeroVincent — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:26:54 GMT

Learning DVORAK isn't a good idea if your QWERTY typing skills are to suffer from it.

Virtually all public access and school computers have QWERTY keyboard layouts.

Being proficient with QWERTY is far more necessary than DVORAK because of it.

Coffeehouse - Virus Apple in your PC

XaeroVincent — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:29:59 GMT

stevo_ said:

XaeroVincent said:

*snip*

I just need quicktime for some video I need.. I don't want itunes.. I just want quicktime.. I don't want mobileme... I just want quicktime... I don't want safari... I just want quicktime...

We are we now even debating if this is a problem or not.. it is, just because you know what to do doesn't mean the average user does.. the only reason computers aren't falling on their asses these days is the daft amount of cheap processing power we have..

stevo_,

Get a quicktime alternative, which provides the browser plugin and codecs without the Apple.

http://www.codecguide.com/index.html

Really people... official Apple software isn't as necessary as you think.

Coffeehouse - Virus Apple in your PC

XaeroVincent — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:07:50 GMT

blowdart said:

Dovella said:

*snip*

Without plausible reasons? Ah, way to make the point *snicker*

The solution seems simple to me... don't download and install iTunes.

Why not try Songbird?