Category Archives: News & Updates

Classic DF – 7/26/00

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July 26, 2000: [•] Just a little under a day after we ran a report that Concordes had cracks in their wings one of those jets has crashed. The engines were checked moments before the flight left and one engine caught fire causing the flight to plummet. [•] Dick Cheney has been announced as George Bush’s running mate. [•] The Israel-Palestine Peace Summit didn’t work out. What did you expect? They’ve been fighting for nearly a century now! [•] Filipino Muslim rebels are still holding two Germans hostage and have attacked a Roman Catholic Church with a hand grenade. [•] This year’s Faux Faulkner Contest winner has announced. [•] The US Navy has begun research and development of an electric drive system for their next generation of destroyer ships. [•] The Fijian military has arrested George Speight even though he is supposed to have been pardoned. [•] Columbia’s peace talks have ended without an agreement between the government and rebels. [•] Ex-Indonesian President Suharto has been charged with corruption. [•] A tornado in Minnesota killed one person and damaged hundreds of homes. [•] A police sniper killed the woman being held hostage by a Florida man who later committed suicide. [•] Internet users who seeks sexual partners online are more likely to contract HIV. What can I say? [•] A federal judge has ruled that The Ten Commandments can not be placed on federal or state property. [•] A guest of The Jerry Springer Show has been killed by the people who confronted him on the show. [•] People who underwent a treatment that glued a toupee to their head have successfully sued the company after the hair pieces fell off within days. [•] Cisco has created the community of the future today. [•] Polaroid and Olympus have teamed up to release a instant digital camera. [•] A meteorite hit someone’s Geo Metro. [•] The US government is going online to allow people to pay for licenses and debts. [•] Germany will not block access to racist material over the Internet. [•] Hate on the web isn’t only a problem for Germany. [•] Macweek.com has announced its Macworld winners. [•] Using ecstasy severely damages your brain’s ability to make serotonin, which leads to depression or lack of feelings. [•] Putting yourself in the zone could help you after a stroke. [•] Women are finding it harder to get maternity coverage on their own. [•] Using St. John’s Wort can severely impact the effectiveness of HIV/AIDS treatments, heart medication, cancer treatments, organ transplants, and birth control pills. [•] Biodegradable stents may replace metal ones. [•] The Yahoo! Music Award winners have been announced. [•] Genetic research protesters may have had cyanide containers while protesting The International Society for Animal Genetics conference. [•] Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has had 386 square miles added to it. [•] A new NASA developed sensor system will measure vehicles’ exhaust contents as they get on off ramps. [•] Deja.com will automatically modify posts to include links to a product’s purchasing site upon its mere mentioning and Usenet posters are mad about it. [•] Another web site steals my ideas. [•] MP3Board will let the RIAA remove links as long as they do it on their own. [•] Is online scrutiny legal? Hells yeah. [•] A seven year old boy died after being hit by a van. [•] Police are looking to identify a woman found floating dead in the Hudson River. [•] A new New York State law will allow teachers to remove disruptive students, make attacks in school on faculty or by faculty a felony, and make it mandatory for all teachers to have background checks into past criminal activity. [•] The Times-Herald Record Briefs: a roll-over, a purse snatching, a teen pulls a knife, a man loses his leg in a car accident, prostitutes abound, fraud charges for an ex-mayor, and an accidental drowning. [•] Mike D (Beastie Boys) injured himself biking and as a result The Rhyme and Reason Tour will be postponed. [•] The 2000 Video Music Award nominees have been announced. [•] Pearl Jam has been cleared of all Rokslide charges, but they are demanding an investigation. [•] Death In Vegas has been nominated for a Mercury Award, which is given to an artist who creates an outstanding and groundbreaking album. [•] Billy Corgan got hard-core on ECW. [•] MTV interviews the Deftones. [•] Blockbuster Video wants to stream video to DSL users. [•] The FTC has settled with Toysmart, who won’t be allowed sell their former customers’ information. [•] How to create a web bug to track people on the Net. [•] Is Napster a network security threat? [•] Real Networks is still sending unique identifiers from their software to the a server. [•] How to fight a cult. [•] U2 will not be making a live album. [•] More artists bitch about MP3s. [•] The security at Woodstock 99 stole, took bribes, and rioted. [•] A new search engine will let you locate the cheapest CPU prices on the Net. [•] A new video game, Necron, may be the next cyber-punk addiction. [•] Which game pad is right for you. [•] Take a look at the new Z06 Corvette. It looks fun. [•] However, the new BMW 330xi looks incredible. [•] What does the Kia Rio give you for $9,000? [•] Four German roadster battle it out. [•] Behold the power of pocket rockets! [•] The Chrysler PT Cruisers’ crash rating have been mixed. [•] Azazel I love you! [•] Daemon Immortalis’ The Void is up and running. It looks awesome and therefore you should visit it 🙂 [•] See you tomorrow flood fans. Same flood place. Same flood web site!

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Classic DF – 7/24/00

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July 24, 2000: [•] George Bush Jr. is going to name his running partner. [•] A man killed himself and one of the people he was holding hostage in Florida. [•] Seven Concordes have been grounded after cracks were found in the wings. [•] The Yugoslavian Parliament has approved a law that will extends Milosevic’s term if reelected President. That sucks. [•] Another Caucasian farmer has been killed in Zimbabwe. [•] A wildfire has broken out in Colorado. [•] A building in Philadelphia collapsed killing two people. [•] LA is running low on firefighters and paramedics. [•] Though the government keeps uncovering businesses that commit fraud they don’t ban them or impose fines against them. [•] IBM has introduced the RS/6000 SP super-computer. [•] EMusic.com is offering unlimited downloads of legal MP3s for $9.95 a month. [•] A new bug has been found in Outlook Express that allows buffer overflows to force you machine to do whatever a hacker wants it to. Upgrade to Internet Explorer 5 SP1 to fix it. [•] Windows Me is reviewed. It looks pretty good (don’t they all). [•] Mattel has won a lawsuit against a porn site using the Barbie name. [•] What you missed at H2K. [•] The FBI says that since Carnivore only scans the “to” and “from” fields of a e-mail that it is perfectly safe and maintains privacy. [•] The Duh Study of The Day: Meditating can lower blood pressure. Yeah, relaxing tends to do that. [•] Senior citizen advocates are calling for more stringent nursing homes standards. [•] Harrison Ford will star in the next Indiana Jones installment! [•] China is trying to rescue 500 bears and put an end to bile farms. [•] Cat fish farmers can double profits by growing algae in the same tank. [•] Physicists have discovered a long theorized, but previously undetected subatomic particle. [•] A denial of service attack against cryptome.org has put the web site out of service. Did I mention that these attacks started after they published top secret intelligence papers? [•] Ad revenues are up in newspapers. Looks like the Net won’t kill print media (as expected). [•] Teenagers hanging out on the street are causing problem on Maybrook and Walden (Why should people be able to go outside? Can’t people lock their kids in the cellar? LOL). [•] Warwick’s unofficial soccer league is attracting players. [•] Beatings, robbings, stealing, and everything that makes The Times-Herald Record Briefs interesting. [•] The Arrested Rapper of The Day: Juvenile. [•] Kid Rock has to settle his custody rights with his ex-girlfriends over his child. [•] You can buy the limo in the Starsuckers Inc. video. [•] Posthuman Records is online now. [•] Go.com has gone open source with its engine. [•] Rage Against the Machine played a benefit concert. [•] Is Smashing Pumpkins making another album? [•] Guns ‘N’ Roses is being sued for stealing the melody to Sweet Child of Mine. [•] Apparently Woodstock 99‘s concert was on a toxic waste dump and [•] the water was in short supply. [•] The Radiohead tracks that don’t make Kid A, may be put on a follow up album. [•] Where’s coaxial going? [•] $99 for a RAID card? This must be a dream. [•] Where is Pentium IV headed? [•] It’s official: The Ford Focus is the world’s best selling car . [•] Motortrend is revamping its magazine. [•] Netscape Communicator 4.74 has been released. [•] Need I remind you that I love Azazel? I didn’t think so 🙂 [•] Red Raven got a manager’s position (congratulations). [•] Hoagie’s web page rules. [•] I jammed out with Kevin last night and went over some ideas. He has started telling people about this little project we dare call digitalflood.com™. That project currently called We Come In Peace can be described as (Kevin put it): a cat purring on Mars as an acoustic guitar plucks away. Weird, huh? So I guess if people don’t get it right now, there’s a damn good reason. I warn you– the new stuff is way out there. It definitely isn’t for the faint of heart or the poor of faith. However, I really think that what it can provide is a sense of where I stand and what I want to hear from a musician that no one right now is doing. If everything isn’t too foregone and hopefully we don’t make “bad” art then I believe that anyone who downloads our next MP3s will be happy. Need I say more?

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Classic DF – 7/21/00

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July 21, 2000: [•] Happy Birthday to my Mom! She was 50 years old yesterday. I love you Mom and congratulations 🙂 [•] The US House has passed a lift of the embargo of food, drugs, and travel to Cuba. [•] The US allowed infamous Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann to avoid capture for 4 years. [•] Stephen King will release the first shareware (pay to keep it) book. [•] Tom Welch (no relation to me) and David Johnson have been indicted in trying to bribe Olympics officials. [•] An earthquake hit Mexico City. [•] Augusto “I’m a lying scuzzball” Pinochet claims he never ordered any murders. Yeah, people are just making it up… sure (lying jerk). [•] A fire broke out in Mesa Verde National Park forcing an evacuation. [•] A gunman in Los Angelos shot himself. [•] Lots of tomatoes and no one to buy them. [•] Heroin deaths are up. [•] Namibia says it has to club 60,000 seals to death in order to preserve fish stocks, but wildlife activists say that its just because they want to sell seal balls to the orient for sex potions. [•] A new technique allows both strands of DNA to be analyzed at the same time. [•] Another study has labeled Napster as good for getting people to buy CDs. [•] Sega has stepped up its fight against software piracy and is closing down web sites hosting illegal games for sale. [•] Think you’ve seen the new G4 cube design before? You did. Back then in 1989 the design was called NeXT. [•] Computer enhanced “smart toys” may be the next big thing for Christmas. [•] Scientists have created man made diamonds so close to nature’s that even the atomic structure is nearly 100% of the real thing. [•] The West Nile Virus has come to Orange County, NY. [•] We want you for the Carnie Reserve. [•] A rape attempt was averted when a family shined its car lights on an attacker. [•] Once upon a time a student brought a pipe bomb to school and now he realizes it was stupid. This story even has a happy ending. [•] Monroe wants to add a K-9 cop to its police force. [•] Five people were caught smuggling drugs into the Orange County Jail. [•] A wanted child molester from Chester will see air time on American’s Most Wanted. [•] A missing man was found dead, a woman has been charged in stabbing her husband to death, and a street party is a brewing in The Times-Herald Record Briefs. [•] The new Palm M100 and VIIx have been announced. Both look very promising. [•] The first AutoCAD virus has been found. [•] The last British Ford Escort has rolled off the assembly line. As a proud driver of 3 generations of Escorts I can only say its a sad day in the motor industry, “sob”. [•] The cult of Mac continues. [•] A kid found a deep fried lizard in his Burger King Kid’s Meal. Yummy. [•] The NYC brick attacker has confessed. [•] Make money now! Sell stolen items back to their owners! [•] Creed has nicely told Fred “I’m a really big fat ugly loser” Durst to shut up and to stop thinking the world revolves around his fat ass. [•] Woodstock 99: Fans started the fire, but the promoters supplied the kindling. [•] Secure CRT 3.1 is out and if you shell, then you need. [•] Road & Track Online says that Nissan is upping its production in the US and GM is developing smart collision prevention systems to avoid crashes all together. [•] Learn the guitar styles of Tattoo The Earth. [•] Azazel, I love you! [•] I don’t know who is really into emulation anymore. Back in the day it was a big deal to play video games for Nintendo on your PC and such. Now it’s kind of a mute subject and played out. If you really want to get into some hard to configure stuff check out The Amiga Emulation Page. Since most of the ROMs have been removed they are hard to find, but that’s part of the fun. [•] Big news from the fish bowl– Heike has been banished! Now, this really starting to heat up. Did you see the shower cam? Pretty hot stuff 🙂 [•] Bored? I’m not going to be March 22nd. That’s when Azazel is due to give birth 🙂 And better yet– with my insurance it’s free! Talk to you either Monday or Tuesday. Keep it peachy.

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Classic DF – 7/20/00

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July 20, 2000: [•] Protests have broken out in Japan over the G8 Conference, which protesters says will keep the poorest nations poor and ruin world peace. [•] Greenland’s ice cap is shrinking and ocean levels are rising. Not good. [•] The Emmy Nominations have been announced. [•] Don’t take her monkey! [•] Chinese authorities arrested protesters on the anniversary of the Falun Gong arrests. [•] Mental Note: If they can play ball then they can stay. [•] The US House has passed a marriage tax repeal to grant tax breaks to married couples. [•] An ex-National Guard has been arrested for breaking into a Wisconsin National Guard Base. [•] Protesters want to move a W.W.II monument from in between the Washington and Lincoln Monuments since they believe no man made object should stand between. Bunch of whiners. [•] Unhappy? Divorced? Got the Net? Then there is a web site for you! [•] The MPAA, RIAA, and NMPA are suing Scour.com. We knew it was coming. [•] Visa USA, Cisco, and Sun Microsystems have joined together to create the largest private financial network. [•] How the “dot-nots” compete. [•] Can light moving faster than the speed of light make a faster computer. [•] Duh Study of the Day: 90% of web sites are poorly designed. Hey, that’s why we rule. We just look so damn good 🙂 [•] Meet the new G4. It is incredible. [•] Or if you like colors: the new iMacs are pretty cool too. [•] Colon cancer often is misdiagnosed 1/3 of the time. [•] Now 97% of group B streptococcal infections can be detected in 45 minutes in pregnant women. [•] A drug used to control overdoses and lung disease may prevent kidney damage. [•] Jon Johansen (the creator of DeCSS) is coming to NYC to testify. [•] The FTC says to maintain privacy on the web or die! [•] Sony is going to stream music (Can you say MP3.com?). [•] Lucent will be spinning off an IPO, Softcom and Interactive Video Technologies are merging, and MSN Messenger 3 is out (it supports Net2Phone, Internet paging, and you don’t have to sign up for a Hotmail account). [•] The new Internet Explorer beta is being tested and it can handle cookies. Nice stuff. [•] A man was reporting reckless drivers to the police and then one of them hit him while still on the phone. [•] Jason and Mark Vogt have been accused of more sexual abuse charges. [•] Muggings, burgalries, and golf clubs… oh my. [•] A scooter company has won $500,000 from the Spice Girls. [•] Brace yourself: 3rd Base is back (oh my God). [•] Pearl Jam has been blamed for the Rockslide Festival deaths. Sure, it’s always the bands fault not the actual people pushing and acting like assholes. [•] SeemsLikeSalvation News is reporting Marilyn Manson’s Holy Wood release as October via confirmation by John 5 and that the new A Perfect Circle single will be Hollow (it will include a live cut of Hollow and the remix of Judith by Danny Lohner). [•] Did Apple pull the new ATI Radeon card from the new G4 cube because they leaked information before Macworld? Looks like it. [•] A Russian newscaster has found a new way to attract viewers– strip naked while reading the news. [•] Today’s Rapper in Deep Shit: Eminem won’t be able to plea bargain. [•] New Rhyme & Reason Tour dates have been added. [•] Just what can USB 2.0 do? [•] A review of Abit’s overclocking motherboard. [•] Tweak your Windows 2000 memory settings. [•] Put all your audio inputs, joystick inputs, and more in the front of your PC! [•] Specifications for Ford’s new F150 SVT Lightning are out. [•] The new Toyota Corolla has been announced and it looks very nice. [•] It looks like the PT Cruiser will be the VW Beetle of 2000. [•] GM has increased its ownership in Suzuki and Honda is selling engines to GM. [•] Michael Moore discusses why Ralph Nader may be your man for President. [•] Azazel I love you! [•] It looks like I’ll be moving soon to my mother-in-law’s. Honestly, I’m not to happy about that. I haven’t been getting along with her for a while. It’s not that she is a bad person, but I just don’t agree with 99.9% of what she believes and 50% of what she does. I just don’t like that part of her. I really think she hurts Azazel more then she helps her, but she doesn’t want to believe that because that’s her mom. So I have to respect my wife’s wishes. Honestly, I’m not too happy about any of this, but our future child needs a place to live and my mom just doesn’t have the room, but my mother-in-law does. Ultimately what would make me happy is a place of our own, but that is off a bit (1 or 2 years). Everyone tells me I should bite the bullet and do what’s best for my child. But I ask you is the best exposing our child to what I worst abhor in a person? I don’t know… I just don’t know anymore.

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Classic DF – 2000 Digis Awards

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Hardware Category :
Best Complete Home PC Manufacturer: Dell™ — The latest Dell™ machines throughout last year and this year have taken exceptional strides. With reliable components, software, and excellent construction you can not find a better complete machine… but don’t think it won’t cost you for the top of the line PC. The lower priced PCs are nothing to laugh at however and also make excellent buys over other low end price competitors. Dell™ did for awhile use Aztec™ software modems, which were absolutely horrible, but fixed the situation by no longer using that vendor’s products in its machines or replacing the modem in existing machines. Good job.

Worst Complete Home PC Manufacturer: E-machines™ — They ripped off the IMac™ all in one design. They didn’t have the guts to put the quality parts inside though. E-machines™ are unreliable, low quality, and poorly constructed. The parts are no name components with even less performance. Their high end machines are jokes. E-machines™ make better paper weights then home computers.

Best Commercial/Workstation Complete PC/Server Manufacturer: Dell™ — Surprised? Us neither. The top of the line Dell™ workstations feature powerful Xenon Pentium III™ processors. They have Ultra ATA hard disks. Incredible graphics and sound cards. What more could you want? Okay, they are also nicely built and tested. Good deal (and pricey too). Their servers are fast, built with expandability, and are highly scalable. Very cool (and pricey once again).

Worst Commercial/Work Complete PC/Server Manufacturer: Compaq™ — Before E-machines™ attempted to put together its first garbage PC Compaq™ was turning out inferior products by the ton. Now setting its sights on low cost hungry MIS departments they are trying to produce work stations and servers. More of glorified graphing calculators than workstations; the machines are definitely not meant for high end 3D work and more for office program users. Compaq™ is notorious for using HSP modems, which are the absolute worst modems on the market (HSPs are software modems and therefore suck). Compaq’s™ servers aren’t much better and offer extra features such as hardware failures, slow access rates, and poor uptime.

Best Processor Manufacturer: AMD™ — AMD™ a year ago had a horrible reputation. No one would buy their product. With the release of the Atholon™ processor that totally changed. The Atholon™ processor is ground breaking. While Intel’s™ Coppermine Core Pentium III™ is faster it was because of AMD™ that Intel™ had to up the bar for performance. The Atholon™ as a chip is more then good enough for gaming and normal number crunching. Some reports have complained about its server capabilities, but that isn’t the market AMD™ is after. The market, home users, will find the Atholon™ an exceptional value with excellent features.

Best Sound Card Manufacturer/Chipset: Creative Labs ™ — With the creation of Sound Blaster Live!™ 3D audio positioning took a step forward. The Sound Blaster MP3+™ and Gamer+™ both use Creative Labs’™ proprietary sound fonts technology via its EMU10K1 processor to provide realistic reverb and positioning. Aureal A3D™, their competitor, is good, but sound fonts for gaming especially shows superior realism and the MP3+™ comes with the most complete MP3 software package of any sound card. That is what puts this pick over the top for us.

Best Graphics Card Manufacturer/Chipset: nVidia™ — nVidia™ created the TNT™ Chipset and completely changed the graphics card market forever. Removing 3DFX Voodoo™ from the top spot in under a year nVidia™ then released TNT2™ finally putting Direct3D/Open GL graphics engines on the gaming map. When GeForce 256™ was released it utterly decimated the competition. Using a GNU (graphic processor) instead of the computer CPU to render graphics GeForce™ can render more triangles, pixels, and rotations per second then any other card/chipset. GeForce 256™ literally blows other chipsets away performance wise and is worth the high price for its surperior performance.

Best Modem/Communication Manufacturer: US Robotics ™ — 3Com™ used to own US Robotics™ and therefore had the best modems available for V.90/X2™. Plus X2™ is much more stable then V.90. Throughput rates are excellent and so is the error control/checking. However, when 3Com™ decided to unload US Robotics™ earlier this year every PC user shuddered. Will US Robotics™ maintain its hold on the modem market? We’ll see.

Best Hard Drive Manufacturer: Maxtor™ — Maxtor’s™ Ultra ATA hard drives are fast. Running at 7,200 RPMs with sub-9ms seek times the DiamondMax™ Series is an excellent storage choice. If bigger is better you can’t get much bigger then a 30GB hard drive. Maxtor™ hard drives have excellent reliability and a good warranty. All in all it DiamondMax™ is a great buy.

Coolest Innovation: Intellimouse™ — Microsoft™ really came through with its Intellimouse Explorer™ that uses a digital laser to track the mouse movements instead of a ball like a conventional mouse. It is very accurate and great for art, 3D, CAD, etc… Very cool idea that works well in both concept and design.

Stupidest Innovation: Diamond™ — When Diamond™ decided it didn’t want to be its own company and was bought out by S3™ no one thought there would be a problem. Then S3™ decided it would produce no new products without its proprietary chipsets. That wasn’t so bad. S3 Savage™ is an okay chipset, but the problem was then they pulled all driver support on their legacy products. Well, consumers started complaining and as cited in MaximumPC™ Diamond™ will once again start making drivers for its legacy TNT2/TNT™ and A3D™ chipset products. Too late though since consumers have already moved onto better products produced by Diamonds’™ competitors.
Software:
Best Operating System/Shell: Windows2000™ — Microsoft™ has not always been the most loved company. Windows98™ was a let down until the second edition was released, but stability was still questionable. With Windows2000™ Microsoft™ has hopefully fixed those issues. Windows2000™ is highly stable with a crash protected kernel, self repairing code, multiprocessor support, better file system, less crashes/reboots, Internet integration, and remote/server controls. If I was a home user I wouldn’t run out and buy it, but it is perfect for servers/workstations doing commercial work where up time is important.

Best Office Software Package: Star Office ™ — Sun™ did a good thing when they released their Star Office™ for free. For the first time a powerful and complete work solution package was available for under $10 on a CD. Star Office™ has an excellent word processor, spread sheet, web page authoring tool, web browser, and desktop interface. Highly recommended for business/home users who just can’t afford over priced software.

Best Graphics & Art Creation/Manipulation Software: Photoshop 5 ™ — Adobe Photoshop 5™ is a powerful solution to create graphics for the Internet or publishing. The graphics are rendered and outputted smoothly. The filters are powerful and easily expanded with cool effects plug-in packages that install easily. With a good mouse, steady hand, and some patience you can really output some great art. As always the product is great for photo manipulation. All the graphics on this site incidentally were created in Photoshop 5™.

Best Web Creation Software: Dreamweaver 2 ™ — Macromedia Dreamweaver™ has always been my WYSIWYG web creation tool of choice. It is easily expandable through other products (Flash™, Director™, or other Macromedia™ Products) and also thanks to its scripting features. This web page is made in Dreamweaver™ and everytime we go back to redesign we find something new in the product that we like, it grows with you as you learn to be a better web page designer.

Best Sound Editing/Tracking Software: Acid Pro 2™ — Back in the days of early sound production if you wanted quality sound editing you’d have to pay thousands. Forget that now. With Acid Pro™ you can have a multi-tracking and sound editing (via Sound Forge XP 2™ included in the package) to create music. Acid™ has multiple outputs, effects, and can basically do everything you want with your music. Got to love it… and yes all of DigitalFl00d’s music is done in its lower price ($99) little brother Acid Music™ and that too is a great value.

Best Internet Software: Internet Explorer 5™ — Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.02™ is stable and renders quickly. Its support for HTML 4 and DHTML is excellent. It renders what you tell it to in your design. It has Java, VBscript, and Active X (that may be its only downfall). Unfortunately early versions of Internet Explorer 5.5™ don’t look stable, but our hopes are the next version will be as good as the current one once the Beta version is finalized.

Best Software Innovation: Direct X 7™ — Microsoft™ decided to support hardware acceleration about two years ago with Direct X™. At first people laughed, but now they are choking on it. Direct X™ allows video devices (OpenGL and TNT™) or sound devices (A3D or Sound Fonts) to write from the hardware and control output. What that means is better graphics and sound if you have good hardware. Also this allows programmers to author software that can be generically dropped into a program via Direct X plug-ins™. The world will never be the same.

Worst Software Innovation: Host Signal Processing/Software Emulation Hardware — When Rockwell/Conexant™, PCTel™, Lucent™, Ambient/Cirrus™, and Telepath™ decided that software emulation would be a great way to cut costs they weren’t wrong. By taking a modem (traditionally made up of tons of chips, ROM, RAM, and resistors) and replacing those parts with software that would “pretend” to be hardware they did cut costs. In fact by simply making a modem with a circuit that transferred analog data to a digital PCI port you can then use software to interpret that data. The idea looked great on the drawing board. That was four years ago. Since then a ton of modem makers are relying on the aforementioned chip makers to provide them with PCI controllerless cards that dare sport the word 56K modem. The software is buggy, unreliable, and takes up to three times the resources of conventional hardware modem. To make things worse the completely unreliable V.90 standard doesn’t have good error control to begin with. With the majority of users residing in rural/suburban communities there is no reliable since current phone line standards aren’t high enough to allow anyone can get a true 56K connection. The most common connect speed is 24K and the throughput is usually even lower. To make the situation worse now major vendors such as Compaq™, Gateway™, and even at one point Dell™ have cut costs by using cheap modems then blaming the Internet Service Providers for their defective software modems. So what can you do? Well, software modems are useful for something… they make great coasters!

Worst Software: AOL 5™/Netzip™ — Microsoft™ gets slammed for writing software that takes over your PC, but forget about Internet Explorer™ or antitrust. America Online released version 5 of its Internet access software knowing that once you said “yes” to the install it would render all other browsers and connections to the Internet useless. A lawsuit has since ensued, but no claims or even apologizes have come out officially from AOL™. Right up there with that fiasco is Netzip™ whose product also once installed will deny web pages and file transfers by placing garbage key values in your registry. Both companies deserve to have a nice big steaming bag of shit sent to them for there service contributions to crappy products.
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