Shameless Thread Tie-in...
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SuSE 7.3 vs XP
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· Score: 1
The Windows box is still a necessity. I have a 4 year old who likes educational games and without Windows, they simply don't run. Windows XP has also proven very adept at guiding my non-techie wife through moving pictures between the digital camera and the hard drive.
Sounds like what you really need is...
... a Mac.
8)
Re:Why SuSE?
on
SuSE 7.3 vs XP
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Debian *stable* security updates go in the tree maintained at security.debian.org.
They are timely, and sources.apt is by default configured to include it.
My full-manual Pentax K-1000, handheld self-powered light meter, and pocket-sized Kodak technical reference have *yet* to be outdated, and they're almost 20 years old.
And I can work it all without batteries, which is really neat on long backpacking trips, or when I store it away for months.
I see a lot of g4m3rz crowing online about the ungodly framerates they've managed to acheive through a combination spending a lot of cash and tweaking configurations until the wee hours of the morning-- 100fps and up.
If my monitor is only painting the beam at a rate of around 70Hz-- an acceptible rate for most mid-range monitors-- it would seem to me that for any framerate above that frequency the excess frames will never get drawn to the screen and are totally wasted.
Coupled with the fact that the majority of people aren't sensitive to frame rates over about 30fps, it makes even less sense. There's a reason movies run at about 24fps, after all.
There are traditionally three factors to authentication: 1) something you know, 2) something you have, and 3) something you are.
The fewer factors you use, the less secure the authentication.
Most common authentication is one-factor, usually factor (1), a password. Smartcard schemes employ two-factor authentication-- factors (2), the card, and (1) the card's PIN.
The best schemes are three-factor, incorporating both smartcard + PIN and a biometric reading.
While I understand the usefulness as a buffer for read data, and the convenience for saving games, there's one thing I really worry about:
Patches.
Not system patches-- hell, even the PS2 has had to do that (DVD driver anyone?)-- but game patches. I worry that the presence of a multi-GB hard drive in the console will tempt developers into the "release early and patch" method so common with PC games.
One of the reasons I've traditionally preferred console games to PC games is that out of the box, they work far more often than not. The shoddy quality of the average initial release of a PC game astounds me. I've even bought games that had box inserts telling me to be sure to patch the game before playing it THE FIRST TIME. Hell, I've purchased PC games that WOULDN'T EVEN INSTALL without a patch first.
Since you couldn't do that with a console-- until Xbox-- it was less of a problem. Yes, I've bought buggy games for the PS in the past, but even the worst of them was at least playable. And it happened far far less often.
That doesn't negate their reporting provided it is factual. Chomsky well documents the sources of his facts. You'll note, if you read his writings, that he performs his own analysis of those facts.
Whether you agree with his analysis is up to you. However, for anyone who purports that Chomsky is wrong, the burden of proof is on them to document specific examples of where Chomsky has "made up" his facts.
You're missing the point of the people objecting. They're not saying that the details of the story are counterfactual, but that the motivations that are only briefly presented are not completely true. Given that "Black Hawn Down" isn't a story about those motivations or the politics surrounding the events depicted, calling them "wrong" in their opinions is, well, wrong.
This is a similar situation to how I see the recent film "Pearl Harbor". That movie was about the lives of a small number of (fictional and fictionalized) individuals in the midst of the US entry into WWII. It was *not* a film about the Japanese motivations and the politics involved in attacking Pearl, and duly skimps on those details. "Tora, Tora, Tora," however *was* intended to cover this in some detail, and as a result covers the Japanese side of the story in greater detail than "Pearl Harbor."
As I've heard before, there's three sides to every war story-- yours, theirs, and the truth. I think this maxim applies to "Black Hawk Down" as well.
Thankfully, the iMac announced as I was contemplating a complete tech refresh for the home. So my iBook arrives Friday, and the iMac in Feb-- I couldn't justify a DVD-R to myself, so I went for the mid-range.
I've had opportunity to play with OSX recently, and I really look forward to putting the Linux desktop in the back room, and having a UNIX laptop that actually *works* without days of hammering at recalcitrant and semi-supported hardware.
My technophobe son will love them too. And that, when it came down to a decision, was the swing vote.
As for service, with an iMac, you buy AppleCare for $249 and Apple fixes anything that fails for three years. I just sent a PowerBook in because the graphics adapter failed, and it was only gone for two days.
iMac AppleCare is $149, and they told me they do in-home service; no shipping required. Notebooks are $249, and must be shipped to the service center.
But then, notebooks inherently live in less friendly environments.
How often do you reposition the screen of your computer?
About every 15 minutes.
I like to kick back with my feet on my desk while I'm surfing, half turned away from the monitor so I can keep an eye on the TV. When I'm working on something, or playing a game, I sit in a normal position. And when it's the kids' bedtime I like to turn the *other* way so I can watch their bedrooms and make sure they *stay* in bed...
All of which means my monitor gets turned a lot. The way the iMac mounts the monitor will be a boon to me-- and yes, I ordered one, along with an iBook.
Half the games that they play stem from the fact that their employees don't look outside the Microsoft bubble.
I've been saying this for years. MS employees work together, play together, live in the same neighborhoods, and generally socialize only with each other.
Microsoft is one of the most insular tech communities I've ever had dealings with. When the anti-trust suit brought out the fear and loathing that many former and current partners truly feel, people who work for Microsoft were genuinely suprised. They just didn't see it before.
I bought a PS2 for this Christmas, and somehow ended up with a *very* early revision system. Within a week, it had stopped playing any widescreen DVDs; I suppose we tickled a bug somewhere. I tried updating to no avail.
So I went back to the store and exchanged it for another unit, this time a more recent revision. Problem solved.
My point is if it fails to work because of a defect, why bother calling any kind of customer service? Return the unit to the vendor. This drops it back in the manufacturer's lap, and you don't end up being hassled. That's why God created return policies.
And if you bought it from a place that won't accept returns on defective merchandise, I can only say: Caveat emptor, mon ami.
Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Recent IT salary surveys show that UNIX and NT administrators with equivalent experience and skill draw similar salaries, with the NT side showing faster growth.
... businesses want students who are proficient with Windows and Office...
I was recently ordered to a course on web page design, for inscrutable managerial reasons. The course covered basic database-driven stuff, using Microsoft's ASP. (I duplicated all the work using Perl ASP on my Linux laptop.)
When I asked why the instructor-- who clearly had a lot of UNIX experience-- why the course was taught using MS products, he replied:
"UNIX people can always use Windows. Windows people can't always use UNIX."
The really nice thing is this "solar" device works at night, with somewhat reduced output. The differential between surface and peak altitude temperatures is always present, so the chimney will always draw and the turbines will always spin.
Another similar idea for a clean generating plant uses the temperature differential between ocean surface and deep subsurface water to operate a turbine, using alcohol as a working fluid, IIRC.
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The Windows box is still a necessity. I have a 4 year old who likes educational games and without Windows, they simply don't run. Windows XP has also proven very adept at guiding my non-techie wife through moving pictures between the digital camera and the hard drive.
Sounds like what you really need is...
... a Mac.
8)
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Debian *stable* security updates go in the tree maintained at security.debian.org.
They are timely, and sources.apt is by default configured to include it.
To quote:
"Ammendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
My full-manual Pentax K-1000, handheld self-powered light meter, and pocket-sized Kodak technical reference have *yet* to be outdated, and they're almost 20 years old.
And I can work it all without batteries, which is really neat on long backpacking trips, or when I store it away for months.
At what intensity. That's the point. Color temperature doesn't address that.
Another point to make-- my local loop of cable is fed by fiber. Who's more likely to get fiber to my curb, the cable company or the phone company?
DSL is only dedicated to the terminating point, usually a DSLAM.
SBC is extending DSL coverage with DSLAMs located outside the CO, typically on the poles in the serviced areas.
The question then becomes: how much bandwidth is the pole-mounted DSLAM fed, hmmm?
I see a lot of g4m3rz crowing online about the ungodly framerates they've managed to acheive through a combination spending a lot of cash and tweaking configurations until the wee hours of the morning-- 100fps and up.
If my monitor is only painting the beam at a rate of around 70Hz-- an acceptible rate for most mid-range monitors-- it would seem to me that for any framerate above that frequency the excess frames will never get drawn to the screen and are totally wasted.
Coupled with the fact that the majority of people aren't sensitive to frame rates over about 30fps, it makes even less sense. There's a reason movies run at about 24fps, after all.
Why not make both required for authentication?
There are traditionally three factors to authentication: 1) something you know, 2) something you have, and 3) something you are.
The fewer factors you use, the less secure the authentication.
Most common authentication is one-factor, usually factor (1), a password. Smartcard schemes employ two-factor authentication-- factors (2), the card, and (1) the card's PIN.
The best schemes are three-factor, incorporating both smartcard + PIN and a biometric reading.
While I understand the usefulness as a buffer for read data, and the convenience for saving games, there's one thing I really worry about:
Patches.
Not system patches-- hell, even the PS2 has had to do that (DVD driver anyone?)-- but game patches. I worry that the presence of a multi-GB hard drive in the console will tempt developers into the "release early and patch" method so common with PC games.
One of the reasons I've traditionally preferred console games to PC games is that out of the box, they work far more often than not. The shoddy quality of the average initial release of a PC game astounds me. I've even bought games that had box inserts telling me to be sure to patch the game before playing it THE FIRST TIME. Hell, I've purchased PC games that WOULDN'T EVEN INSTALL without a patch first.
Since you couldn't do that with a console-- until Xbox-- it was less of a problem. Yes, I've bought buggy games for the PS in the past, but even the worst of them was at least playable. And it happened far far less often.
So I worry about that hard drive. I really do.
... for real comparison, compare with an Athlon 2000+ (probably at LEAST as fast as the dual 1Gghz G4 ...
You've clearly never used a G4, have you?
DVD-_R_/CD-RW, add another couple of hundred.
Add more for a MOTHERBOARD.
And your time to order, receive, check, assemble, test, install, update, find drivers, and tweak is worth how much, exactly...?
He already has something to blame it on-- Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.
Bill Gates never said "640 KB of memory should be enough for anybody."
The Redmond crew are still denying the "air supply" comment, too. Did that make it not happen?
That doesn't negate their reporting provided it is factual. Chomsky well documents the sources of his facts. You'll note, if you read his writings, that he performs his own analysis of those facts.
Whether you agree with his analysis is up to you. However, for anyone who purports that Chomsky is wrong, the burden of proof is on them to document specific examples of where Chomsky has "made up" his facts.
You're missing the point of the people objecting. They're not saying that the details of the story are counterfactual, but that the motivations that are only briefly presented are not completely true. Given that "Black Hawn Down" isn't a story about those motivations or the politics surrounding the events depicted, calling them "wrong" in their opinions is, well, wrong.
This is a similar situation to how I see the recent film "Pearl Harbor". That movie was about the lives of a small number of (fictional and fictionalized) individuals in the midst of the US entry into WWII. It was *not* a film about the Japanese motivations and the politics involved in attacking Pearl, and duly skimps on those details. "Tora, Tora, Tora," however *was* intended to cover this in some detail, and as a result covers the Japanese side of the story in greater detail than "Pearl Harbor."
As I've heard before, there's three sides to every war story-- yours, theirs, and the truth. I think this maxim applies to "Black Hawk Down" as well.
Thankfully, the iMac announced as I was contemplating a complete tech refresh for the home. So my iBook arrives Friday, and the iMac in Feb-- I couldn't justify a DVD-R to myself, so I went for the mid-range.
I've had opportunity to play with OSX recently, and I really look forward to putting the Linux desktop in the back room, and having a UNIX laptop that actually *works* without days of hammering at recalcitrant and semi-supported hardware.
My technophobe son will love them too. And that, when it came down to a decision, was the swing vote.
As for service, with an iMac, you buy AppleCare for $249 and Apple fixes anything that fails for three years. I just sent a PowerBook in because the graphics adapter failed, and it was only gone for two days.
iMac AppleCare is $149, and they told me they do in-home service; no shipping required. Notebooks are $249, and must be shipped to the service center.
But then, notebooks inherently live in less friendly environments.
How often do you reposition the screen of your computer?
About every 15 minutes.
I like to kick back with my feet on my desk while I'm surfing, half turned away from the monitor so I can keep an eye on the TV. When I'm working on something, or playing a game, I sit in a normal position. And when it's the kids' bedtime I like to turn the *other* way so I can watch their bedrooms and make sure they *stay* in bed...
All of which means my monitor gets turned a lot. The way the iMac mounts the monitor will be a boon to me-- and yes, I ordered one, along with an iBook.
Half the games that they play stem from the fact that their employees don't look outside the Microsoft bubble.
I've been saying this for years. MS employees work together, play together, live in the same neighborhoods, and generally socialize only with each other.
Microsoft is one of the most insular tech communities I've ever had dealings with. When the anti-trust suit brought out the fear and loathing that many former and current partners truly feel, people who work for Microsoft were genuinely suprised. They just didn't see it before.
I bought a PS2 for this Christmas, and somehow ended up with a *very* early revision system. Within a week, it had stopped playing any widescreen DVDs; I suppose we tickled a bug somewhere. I tried updating to no avail.
So I went back to the store and exchanged it for another unit, this time a more recent revision. Problem solved.
My point is if it fails to work because of a defect, why bother calling any kind of customer service? Return the unit to the vendor. This drops it back in the manufacturer's lap, and you don't end up being hassled. That's why God created return policies.
And if you bought it from a place that won't accept returns on defective merchandise, I can only say: Caveat emptor, mon ami.
Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Recent IT salary surveys show that UNIX and NT administrators with equivalent experience and skill draw similar salaries, with the NT side showing faster growth.
I was recently ordered to a course on web page design, for inscrutable managerial reasons. The course covered basic database-driven stuff, using Microsoft's ASP. (I duplicated all the work using Perl ASP on my Linux laptop.)
When I asked why the instructor-- who clearly had a lot of UNIX experience-- why the course was taught using MS products, he replied:
"UNIX people can always use Windows. Windows people can't always use UNIX."
'Nuff said.
The really nice thing is this "solar" device works at night, with somewhat reduced output. The differential between surface and peak altitude temperatures is always present, so the chimney will always draw and the turbines will always spin.
Another similar idea for a clean generating plant uses the temperature differential between ocean surface and deep subsurface water to operate a turbine, using alcohol as a working fluid, IIRC.
In Bible-ese, "40 days and 40 nights" is idomatic for "a long enough time that you'd think it was forever, but we don't really know how long it was."