Month: September 2020

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Windows Me, 20 Years Later: Was It Really That Bad?

While Millennium Edition is mostly remembered as a disastrous hell pit: it did try to roll up quite a few odds and ends. That’s probably part of why it was so buggy, and XP had more time.
To be fair the Windows 9x line probably brought their operating system as far forward as it could really go without dropping the relationship to MS-DOS. A compatibility issue of decreasing importance by the time 98 SE reached customers, and more and more software came to expect a 32-bit Windows and modern memory management units.
XP is itself long post it’s throw out date: but was definitely a step in the right direction. Part of me remembers it fondly because it was the first time we really had a computing environment that could play games, and want e limited by outdated hardware. At the same time the shiny of business as usual left me ready for a unix environment long beds XP itself became outdated.
Part of me rather wonders what the modern desktop might look like if Microsoft would of had as much ownership of Xenix as they ended up with NT. At least few of us really need MS-DOS or 286 compatibility today as much as we may want Windows 98 or XP compatibility.
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Probably the third dinner I’ve made out of the batch of meatloaf. Not to mention, combined with the leftover potatoes and vegetables from tonight: I just packed three lunches with the remaining meatloaf, lol.

Misty and company of course just wonder why there’s no doggy share.

It’s probably a good thing that tonight is also meaty / gravy bits for the hungry doggos.

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XBOX SERIES X AND S: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE NEXT-GEN OF XBOX

I kind of like the contrast these two machines offer.

That the Series X targets 2160p60 is pretty straight forward. Having a matching Ultra HD Blu-Ray drive is nice value, much as my original One’s Full HD Blu-ray drive or my PlayStation 2’s DVD player was handy on the wallet.

So in essence if you wanna have the biggest horse power: buy the Series X. If you just wanna have fun or save money: get the Series S.

Seems the Series S basically targets Full HD televisions. Enough oompth to for a 1440p60 target should make anyone’s 1080p HDTV happy whether the resources are pumped into eye candy or only milked for PC monitors in that resolution. You’re not going to find tons of consumer oriented 1440p QHD television.

My main curiosity, I think will be what difference the differences in compute power bring.

Especially as time goes on and on, and games take greater advantage of modern hardware. The focus on the hardware being more like a feature profile has been a positive for the One/One S and One X bit. I expect that it will continue with the Series S and Series X, however long the earlier consoles remain good enough for general gaming. I like the idea of “Xbox games” that scale to your console more than I like the idea of “Generations” and backwards compatibility. Even more so given the relationship to Windows.

Given the goal of being cheaper: cutting both memory and the optical drive make sense.

In all the years that I’ve owned an Xbox One: games on disc have been a waste. Literally, I have had more use for 3.5″ floppy diskettes in the past decade than I have for the buying video games on Blu-ray disc. When I’ve done so: without failure it lead to downloading all the freaking stuff anyway. In effect making the disc little more than a resellable license key, but at least optical discs (probably) make better frisbees than floppies.

Rather the value I’ve had out of the console’s optical drive has been purely video related. I have two Blu-ray drives. One in my desktop PC that I use for ripping content, and the one in my Xbox one that I’ll occasionally use to check the discs. Most times I just rip and later stream to my Fire TVs via Plex.

When it comes to the whole resale and used games front, I don’t think having to put a disc in the drive is worth that for me. Rather I think some system for linking license keys to an account and some kind of cross signature verification between your logged in device, and Microsoft’s servers, would be a better move. I.e. chuck the disc, unlink the key from your account and trade or sell it to a friend. Screw the damned optical disc. Having to download 20 to 100 gigs of shit is inescapable at this point, so you’re basically screwed if popping a Blu-ray in is the only way to get your game on.

I think I’ve had the original model Xbox One since about 2015 or 214. In all of that time the options for getting games on disc or used, surely hasn’t saved me the cost difference between the two new consoles. Hell, subscribing to Game Pass has probably saved me more in the long term than the used games market has saved me since 1993. Yes, I’m getting old.

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 Greedy Fool; noun.

What happens when you reach the end of Central Processing, and instead of rushing through the exit: decide to wipe the last Blinky off your tail before it can chomp your neck off.

And then you realize you just swapped Chaingun -> Rocket Launcher instead of Chaingun -> Shotgun, and blow yourself back to the starting point.

Yeah. Not quite my brightest moment ever. Well, I’m sure the look on my face maybe. On the upside the Spectre didn’t survive the blast either.

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 How things work around here:

Willow: stare

Me: “You had a pretzel, and Corky’s too. I think you can let me have a cookie or two.”

Corky: “Did someone call about food?”

Me: Eats third cookie 

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 Somewhere between having to blow my noise before I’m out of bed, and brushing my teeth it occurred to me that the September resurgence of Ragweed must be about now.

Sure enough it is. And I’m really glad when that shit is gone.

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Normally I don’t make meatloaf. But this time I decided to solve the main logistics problem: giving myself a good head start on cooking time. Plus two pounds makes a ton of meatloaf.

For reasons unknown to me: I seem incapable of remembering to warm up the meat in advance, so that I don’t end up with a frozen slab of meat for a mixing hand. But that’s a chronic problem that remains heat after year, lol.

Willow was pretty convinced that this meal should be shared, but had to settle for her own meat and gravy bits after human’s dinner.

And she’s probably right about the sharing. I feel like I just ate enough for three or four people. Plus there’s at least four times as much meatloaf in the refrigerator, a comparable glob if potatoes and the on seasoned portion of the vegetables.

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 Last night, I was really tied. Misty was kind of looking at me with concern in her eyes as if to say, “Don’t fall out of the chair human, you’ll die if you hit the floor that tired.”

Tonight on the other hand: she’s looking as if to say: “Why you no bring me another treat.”

Oh, alright lit’ Mis’ I’ll go and get a treat, lol.

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New safety rules in C++ Core Check 

While the for loop part may be a bit spotty, in the sense you should be paying attention and know which you want when writing the statement. I have to admit I would have liked the auto thing.

I’ve mainly relied on C++14 since about 2016 for my C++ use whenever possible, and sometimes newer because of standard library. While catching up wasn’t as painful as I thought, aside from how long it’s taken for C++17 to trickle through various Linux distributions, there were a few things I found myself watching closer.

One of these was the way auto typing copes with references. I learned pretty quickly to watch my syntax  when using auto. If a real warning was available: it would have been much faster to notice the distinction. In my code, you’ll usually see auto used when the type would be redundant salt. But we usually want our sugars to not to have unintended pains, lol.

The code samples on the switch/case part also makes me remember just how verbose C’s simple switch/case statements are by today’s standards. Damn it, now my kind is flashing to SML….lol

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 Evidence of the intelligence and sublime comfort that comes with being a dog.

Why am I never smart enough to take a proper nap? 🤣