I wouldn't suggest it. Running Windows itself is one thing but if you try to run much more -- MS Office, OpenOffice, a web browser (take your pick they all use too much memory) you may be disappointed.
The good news is that memory is cheap, depending on the type your machine requires you may pay less than $80. Try crucial.com , they usually have decent prices and free shipping.
Of course if you aren't a gamer and are willing to try something new, try a live CD from any recent Ubuntu / Fedora / whatever Linux distro. You might find the machine is more usable than you realized and it costs nothing to try it.
Mod parent up. Definitely hits the point -- free software allows people to tweak it as they see fit. No one is worried about breaking someone else's license when they want to distribute a plugin. No one has to get "permission".
Actually this is a great idea. Torrents are a great way to help distribute any Linux distro or other free (as in license) software. It saves the organization money while requiring -- at least for most of us -- no additional costs on our end. Just like last night I downloaded OpenOffice 3.1.1 via torrent instead of using the regular download link. My ratio was > 2:1 this morning when I packed up the laptop to go to work.
Mod parent up. I've been using RedHat in some form since 5.2, and we use RHEL3, RHEL5, Fedora 8, and Fedora 11 in our company. (We use so many versions because it usually isn't important enough to switch from say Fedora 8 to 11 for a fileserver, but our mission-critical stuff is always on the latest and greatest. I will be scheduling the update to RHEL 5.4 within the next month.)
I *have* seen problems when someone ran up2date/yum for every package at once from a fresh install of Fedora 8 (ok I admit it, it was me, I wanted to see what would happen). You are asking for trouble if you just haphazardly do that on Fedora or any other cutting-edge distro. Update a few packages at a time, run it for a few days to make sure nothing unexpected happened, then apply the patches in groups. It's common sense really -- if you update 150 packages at once you're bound to find something that doesn't update as expected. Sometimes that's as simple as a change in a config file. But as far as RHEL goes, it's stable. We've gone down twice, once from a thermal failure, and once from someone trying to hot-plug an external MSA30 (just coz it has hot-pluggable drives doesn't mean the whole damn thing is hot-pluggable).
What you pay for is really good support when you need it, just a phone call away. We've had to call 3 or 4 times in 5 years (for how-to's) and they were great. The packages may be a year or so behind (for instance Samba is on the 3.0x series right now whereas the current is 3.3x and beta 3.4x is out) but the stuff is really really stable. No surprises, that's what I like.
Perhaps others have better results from them, but we are in a Verizon colo and have seen firsthand the inefficiency and general bungling of routine items.
We needed more power for our new SAN and blade cabinet... took them MONTHS. They bickered back and forth over what was needed (we gave them the specs at their insistence and they kept arguing between departments about what was needed).
Recently we asked them to move our T-1's and 8 copper lines from one cabinet to the adjacent cabinet. They've tentatively given us a September date and have insisted the charge will be $600-700.
They have received packages for us and not notified us (the SAN calls in defective drives and sometimes HP's system doesn't notify us. We are currently going through the nightmare of migrating off ISEE to their new system which requires at least 2 dedicated blades -- which can't be VM's -- but that's another story).
We asked for a sister colo in Atlanta to have a seamless private connection with the Miami Verizon colo. They had no idea what we were talking about and said there was no way it could be done, and they quoted us significantly HIGHER prices for the same bandwidth for this backup site.
The racks at our Verizon datacenter are so close to their doors that the blade servers can't use their attachment for USB2 connectors (they stick out the front of the blades). There's little room for routing cables properly inside a fully populated cabinet because the door offset is so small.
I hope the phone company end of it performs better than the telco/computing end of it but I'm not holding my breath.
Personally I like the way iTunes organizes my music and keeps the actual files out of my way, but YMMV.
I absolutely agree. Who would have thought I had so many duplicate songs? Only after constantly finding songs all over the place -- for instance Eric Clapton in 4 different categories (Classic Rock, 70's, Rock, and Male Vocalists) did I finally give up and relinquish control.
The only thing I haven't figured out how to do is handle situations where you have the same song, same version on multiple albums. In most music organizers I've seen you have to keep multiple copies, which is what I'm doing now. If I want to play an album, it's usually not "play every song in this album that doesn't happen to be in another album" or some perverse logic like that.
What if you offered a consultation fee? For example I'd be happy to help vet ideas within my limited field for $499 a pop. You are talking about consulting with an expert in whatever field right? A lot of times you may have someone unwilling to make the sacrifices to get something to work or provide the push for the idea to succeed, but they are perfectly capable of poking holes in your idea or providing assurance that you're onto something.
Nowadays I want to spend time with my children, at the expense of my career. I realize that I sacrificed too much family time when they were growing up and I'm playing catch-up. Others undoubtedly feel the same.
I help vet ideas for our company regularly, and I have an NDA signed with that company. I'm happy to help our team succeed -- I like getting my paycheck and the comfort it affords me. I feel important when my opinion is requested. If you find someone of sufficient skills, it may work out that they consult for you regularly. You could both enjoy the benefits of the relationship.
Meh, you sound like a troll. I've used iTunes for my 11,000+ song library for quite some time. I store the music on an external drive, and I make heavy use of syncing with both my iPod shuffle and iPod Touch g2. I build and update playlists no problem and syncing is about as drop-dead simple as it gets.
I can't remember the last time it locked up. And the "can't read tags" and "can't refresh" comments? Really, are you serious? Drop files on it. Boom. They're there. It's so easy my 6-year-old makes playlists for her iPod shuffle.
Microsoft's relatively tiny number of developers have proven time and time again they are not smarter than the average bear, and they cannot prevent attacks and privilege escalations. As an example, lookup any widespread virus infestation and you'll most likely find Windows as the host OS which fails security.
If you don't understand the difference between treating processes like the logged in user and running them with less privs, I don't have enough digital ink to save you. Do some research before you spout off like that, it sounds ridiculous. And a 5-digit ID! What is this world coming to?
While users may cause viruses, most of the largest viruses were spread through Windows and Windows software design flaws, most of them through Microsoft software. Take the privilege issues when previewing an item in Outlook / OE for example. Take launching a browser with system privs by default. Really, look at any of the infestations which have occurred in the past and you'll find a sloppily implemented security practice (or no security thoughts at all) in Microsoft software to blame in the majority of cases.
Will someone tell me why in 2009 we're still seeing so many priv escalations and buffer overflows?
"Anyone knowledgeable" was meant in the context that any able person could access the code to improve it.
And no, I've had very poor response from Microsoft Support over more than 20 years. I wrote my first commercial software -- used by some local H&R Block branches to process payroll -- 28 years ago. I go back to the time when Microsoft gave away their development kits to try to gain marketshare, before OLE was a concept.
As an example of Microsoft's technical support prowess, I give you 2 examples in the past 6 months: Recently it took over a month between HP and Microsoft to figure out why our "supported" EVA 4400 configuration was not working correctly under Windows 2000. Guess what? They don't know why it doesn't work. We did multiple clean installs on new BL460c's and had to reformat and reinstall Windows Server 2003 for the SAN to work. Online resizing? It's in the documents as a feature but it doesn't work even in 2003.
Another example of this supposed prowess: We wanted to migrate from Exchange standard 2000 to Enterprise 2000 (we have a very significant number of CALs that we did not want to repurchase -- it would have been more than $80K wasted). Microsoft could not help. Many Many Many calls were placed and emails exchanged. We ended up having several consultants bid the job but because of their pricing all were rejected. I'm sure there are some knowledgeable people at Microsoft, but they either don't share their knowledge very well or they don't work in email or phone support. The lack of ability for the company to share information -- when information is the heart and soul of Microsoft -- shows their lack of attention.
Now imagine that you're doing a code review. Feel any better now? What's that you say, you still don't understand?
Then get off my lawn. You don't have the experience to discuss this or you'd be aware of these types of issues. Go back to your help desk job, dream big and work hard and come back to me in about 10 years when you've grown some scruff on your chin.
In this case, obvious lack of knowledge regarding Microsoft products -- when that's the whole point of this topic -- should result in "troll" or "overrated" moderations. That's how Fight Club works.
Have you seen the MS security bulletins released so far this year? Literally every product has had multiple critical, must-patch-now, privilege escalation bugs. Massive showstoppers. We've spent huge amounts of money upgrading our network just so we can apply the latest MS patches across the WAN.
Microsoft products have a long history of virus, worm, and bug problems for lots of reasons. One of which is the inability of anyone knowledgeable to review the code quality or to patch security holes. It's a closed-source system and in many cases its defaults leave vital processes vulnerable to attack. Many problems are not solved with an OS-level fix, i.e. buffer overruns. (That was actually quite funny, one unanticipated time when "buffer overruns" and "IE" are in the same sentence and it doesn't involve a Microsoft patch. But I digress.)
Linux systems have been around sufficiently long -- and are in so many things you use each day -- routers, switches, VOIP systems, firewall systems, servers, smartphones, PDAs, palmtop computers and more -- that the track record has been established. The NSA has given Linux its blessing, and recent competitions to try and break SELinux have proven uninteresting. By design it's a more secure system, and because of the quantity and quality of people looking at the code it's able to achieve a higher standard of security.
If you're going to try and hack some user desktops go ahead, Linux hasn't made inroads into the desktop like Windows has. It's the design flaws of Windows to require anitvirus software just to keep the thing alive. But, on the other hand, if you want to try and hack my network, it's protected by a Linux firewall appliance. Note which OS I use when security and stability matters?
"Several GB" in 20 minutes? Rsync might be able to help you speed that up a bit. I can copy 120GB in about 90 minutes using rsync (up to 15MB / second or so on my 2x1GB NIC team), and it doesn't take substantial processor time. If you're on a LAN, don't use the "-v" option so it doesn't waste time trying to compress it, just slam it through.
This particular process runs under Cygwin on the server side (Windows 2003, HP BL460c blades with dual quad-cores, 8 GB of memory -- we're moving to 64-bit in the near future but wanted to go ahead and get the memory when we got the blades.) with a similar blade on the other end (RHEL 5 with another 8GB memory). Now granted I have fiber to the SAN (EVA 4400) for both machines.
Rsync is a mission-critical app for us, I really can't say enough about it. The Windows version is available at http://www.itefix.no/cwrsync/
On a desktop level, I also use my MacBook Pro (OSX 10.4, Dual core 2.4, 4GB memory over Firewire 800) with my 1TB LaCIE BigDisk drive. My XP VM is roughly 28GB and it copies in about 12 minutes, which averages more than 2GB per minute. I think I paid $150 or so for the drive, it was reconditioned. The drive (actually 2 drives in a RAID 0) isn't nearly as fast with multiple read/writes happening, and it does eat some CPU while it's going, but it works for me. HTH.
Rsync is available (and has been available) for quite some time now on the Windows plaform. It's a cross-platform open-source tool that is significantly faster with less overhead than robocopy. I use it in a production environment daily to synchronize Terminal Server user profiles to backup servers (one on, one not on the SAN), guarantee copies to other servers, etc and have had nothing but positive experience with it. Setup can be done without a reboot and the text config file is simple enough for entry-level IT personnel to implement.
We actually keep a "emergency copy" folder for sending large updates to a specific client over the WAN... just copy the (tiny) folder to the client and run the command-line utility. Remove when done. Mix it with PSEXEC and they don't even know what you did... just that that huge file they needed transferred got there in a hurry.
Linkie http://www.itefix.no/cwrsync/
Very good point. In a few guilds I was in before I quit WOW, it was considered a major PIA when someone wanted help with a lower dungeon. For instance the huge level in the desert with the satyrs (sorry I'm not looking it up and it's been so long I forgot). It was a well designed level complete with ghosts and relatively challenging mini-bosses (if your toon was within 5 levels of it) but everyone always skipped it because of the long ride there. Once you got to the flight path you had to navigate manually to the lower southwestern corner, which took many minutes even with the fastest land mounts.
Ashenvale was another huge map, it took forever to walk it (it was a low-level area way back then, dunno now).
Yep. One reason I quit playing was the 3- and 4-ppl multiboxing going on. Give them their own realm or whatever.. it's pointless for those of us who are using a single toon to play the game in the way it was designed to try and compete. You can't farm if they're around; you can't level (because they're busy killing everything -- much faster than any single toon can). You can't beat them at arenas, when they have 4 shammies hitting for 10k a pop you go down in a couple of hits.
In my experience Blizz really screwed up when they allowed multiboxing, whether it's against the rules or not it still sucks... mix multiboxing with the readily available "click the mouse to cast a spell" macros and you have just a lazy kid on the other end clicking a button to win. It would be like me going to a kids' fair and constantly ringing the bell at the sledgehammer booth... pointless.
Towards the end of my time on WOW, I noticed some guilds were farming in larger groups, presumably to offset the advantage that the multiboxers enjoyed. It really screwed up the economy too, where certain items became almost worthless because they could be farmed so easily (primals, but I quit between BC and LK). It was too bad, I spent many many nights on there for such a long time.
Well when he's done and had his turn, I've got some marvelous things to show you. I wouldn't show just anybody, it's our secret. Everyone will want one and we'll be rich and famous so get them while you can now!
Slashdot Mirror
In response to your sig --
I wouldn't suggest it. Running Windows itself is one thing but if you try to run much more -- MS Office, OpenOffice, a web browser (take your pick they all use too much memory) you may be disappointed.
The good news is that memory is cheap, depending on the type your machine requires you may pay less than $80. Try crucial.com , they usually have decent prices and free shipping.
Of course if you aren't a gamer and are willing to try something new, try a live CD from any recent Ubuntu / Fedora / whatever Linux distro. You might find the machine is more usable than you realized and it costs nothing to try it.
YMMV, good luck.
I'm using 1440x900 you insensitive clod!
Brilliant.
and for those of you who have no idea what he's (she's?) parodying, http://www.timecube.com/
Mod parent up. Definitely hits the point -- free software allows people to tweak it as they see fit. No one is worried about breaking someone else's license when they want to distribute a plugin. No one has to get "permission".
Actually this is a great idea. Torrents are a great way to help distribute any Linux distro or other free (as in license) software. It saves the organization money while requiring -- at least for most of us -- no additional costs on our end. Just like last night I downloaded OpenOffice 3.1.1 via torrent instead of using the regular download link. My ratio was > 2:1 this morning when I packed up the laptop to go to work.
Mod parent up. I've been using RedHat in some form since 5.2, and we use RHEL3, RHEL5, Fedora 8, and Fedora 11 in our company. (We use so many versions because it usually isn't important enough to switch from say Fedora 8 to 11 for a fileserver, but our mission-critical stuff is always on the latest and greatest. I will be scheduling the update to RHEL 5.4 within the next month.)
I *have* seen problems when someone ran up2date/yum for every package at once from a fresh install of Fedora 8 (ok I admit it, it was me, I wanted to see what would happen). You are asking for trouble if you just haphazardly do that on Fedora or any other cutting-edge distro. Update a few packages at a time, run it for a few days to make sure nothing unexpected happened, then apply the patches in groups. It's common sense really -- if you update 150 packages at once you're bound to find something that doesn't update as expected. Sometimes that's as simple as a change in a config file. But as far as RHEL goes, it's stable. We've gone down twice, once from a thermal failure, and once from someone trying to hot-plug an external MSA30 (just coz it has hot-pluggable drives doesn't mean the whole damn thing is hot-pluggable).
What you pay for is really good support when you need it, just a phone call away. We've had to call 3 or 4 times in 5 years (for how-to's) and they were great. The packages may be a year or so behind (for instance Samba is on the 3.0x series right now whereas the current is 3.3x and beta 3.4x is out) but the stuff is really really stable. No surprises, that's what I like.
c'mon mods, give him a point for the attempt.
LAME MP3 Encoder http://lame.sourceforge.net/
Perhaps others have better results from them, but we are in a Verizon colo and have seen firsthand the inefficiency and general bungling of routine items.
We needed more power for our new SAN and blade cabinet... took them MONTHS. They bickered back and forth over what was needed (we gave them the specs at their insistence and they kept arguing between departments about what was needed).
Recently we asked them to move our T-1's and 8 copper lines from one cabinet to the adjacent cabinet. They've tentatively given us a September date and have insisted the charge will be $600-700.
They have received packages for us and not notified us (the SAN calls in defective drives and sometimes HP's system doesn't notify us. We are currently going through the nightmare of migrating off ISEE to their new system which requires at least 2 dedicated blades -- which can't be VM's -- but that's another story).
We asked for a sister colo in Atlanta to have a seamless private connection with the Miami Verizon colo. They had no idea what we were talking about and said there was no way it could be done, and they quoted us significantly HIGHER prices for the same bandwidth for this backup site.
The racks at our Verizon datacenter are so close to their doors that the blade servers can't use their attachment for USB2 connectors (they stick out the front of the blades). There's little room for routing cables properly inside a fully populated cabinet because the door offset is so small.
I hope the phone company end of it performs better than the telco/computing end of it but I'm not holding my breath.
Personally I like the way iTunes organizes my music and keeps the actual files out of my way, but YMMV.
I absolutely agree. Who would have thought I had so many duplicate songs? Only after constantly finding songs all over the place -- for instance Eric Clapton in 4 different categories (Classic Rock, 70's, Rock, and Male Vocalists) did I finally give up and relinquish control.
The only thing I haven't figured out how to do is handle situations where you have the same song, same version on multiple albums. In most music organizers I've seen you have to keep multiple copies, which is what I'm doing now. If I want to play an album, it's usually not "play every song in this album that doesn't happen to be in another album" or some perverse logic like that.
What if you offered a consultation fee? For example I'd be happy to help vet ideas within my limited field for $499 a pop. You are talking about consulting with an expert in whatever field right? A lot of times you may have someone unwilling to make the sacrifices to get something to work or provide the push for the idea to succeed, but they are perfectly capable of poking holes in your idea or providing assurance that you're onto something.
Nowadays I want to spend time with my children, at the expense of my career. I realize that I sacrificed too much family time when they were growing up and I'm playing catch-up. Others undoubtedly feel the same.
I help vet ideas for our company regularly, and I have an NDA signed with that company. I'm happy to help our team succeed -- I like getting my paycheck and the comfort it affords me. I feel important when my opinion is requested. If you find someone of sufficient skills, it may work out that they consult for you regularly. You could both enjoy the benefits of the relationship.
Meh, you sound like a troll. I've used iTunes for my 11,000+ song library for quite some time. I store the music on an external drive, and I make heavy use of syncing with both my iPod shuffle and iPod Touch g2. I build and update playlists no problem and syncing is about as drop-dead simple as it gets.
I can't remember the last time it locked up. And the "can't read tags" and "can't refresh" comments? Really, are you serious? Drop files on it. Boom. They're there. It's so easy my 6-year-old makes playlists for her iPod shuffle.
You've never used iTunes have you?
Why don't you two AC's get a room? We're trying to talk here.
72343,1545. RIP CompuServe. I miss ya.
Microsoft's relatively tiny number of developers have proven time and time again they are not smarter than the average bear, and they cannot prevent attacks and privilege escalations. As an example, lookup any widespread virus infestation and you'll most likely find Windows as the host OS which fails security.
If you don't understand the difference between treating processes like the logged in user and running them with less privs, I don't have enough digital ink to save you. Do some research before you spout off like that, it sounds ridiculous. And a 5-digit ID! What is this world coming to?
While users may cause viruses, most of the largest viruses were spread through Windows and Windows software design flaws, most of them through Microsoft software. Take the privilege issues when previewing an item in Outlook / OE for example. Take launching a browser with system privs by default. Really, look at any of the infestations which have occurred in the past and you'll find a sloppily implemented security practice (or no security thoughts at all) in Microsoft software to blame in the majority of cases.
Will someone tell me why in 2009 we're still seeing so many priv escalations and buffer overflows?
"Anyone knowledgeable" was meant in the context that any able person could access the code to improve it.
And no, I've had very poor response from Microsoft Support over more than 20 years. I wrote my first commercial software -- used by some local H&R Block branches to process payroll -- 28 years ago. I go back to the time when Microsoft gave away their development kits to try to gain marketshare, before OLE was a concept.
As an example of Microsoft's technical support prowess, I give you 2 examples in the past 6 months: Recently it took over a month between HP and Microsoft to figure out why our "supported" EVA 4400 configuration was not working correctly under Windows 2000. Guess what? They don't know why it doesn't work. We did multiple clean installs on new BL460c's and had to reformat and reinstall Windows Server 2003 for the SAN to work. Online resizing? It's in the documents as a feature but it doesn't work even in 2003.
Another example of this supposed prowess: We wanted to migrate from Exchange standard 2000 to Enterprise 2000 (we have a very significant number of CALs that we did not want to repurchase -- it would have been more than $80K wasted). Microsoft could not help. Many Many Many calls were placed and emails exchanged. We ended up having several consultants bid the job but because of their pricing all were rejected.
I'm sure there are some knowledgeable people at Microsoft, but they either don't share their knowledge very well or they don't work in email or phone support. The lack of ability for the company to share information -- when information is the heart and soul of Microsoft -- shows their lack of attention.
Now imagine that you're doing a code review. Feel any better now? What's that you say, you still don't understand?
Then get off my lawn. You don't have the experience to discuss this or you'd be aware of these types of issues. Go back to your help desk job, dream big and work hard and come back to me in about 10 years when you've grown some scruff on your chin.
In this case, obvious lack of knowledge regarding Microsoft products -- when that's the whole point of this topic -- should result in "troll" or "overrated" moderations. That's how Fight Club works.
err...
Have you seen the MS security bulletins released so far this year? Literally every product has had multiple critical, must-patch-now, privilege escalation bugs. Massive showstoppers. We've spent huge amounts of money upgrading our network just so we can apply the latest MS patches across the WAN.
It must be drugs. That or you are a troll.
Not this strawman argument again.
Microsoft products have a long history of virus, worm, and bug problems for lots of reasons. One of which is the inability of anyone knowledgeable to review the code quality or to patch security holes. It's a closed-source system and in many cases its defaults leave vital processes vulnerable to attack. Many problems are not solved with an OS-level fix, i.e. buffer overruns. (That was actually quite funny, one unanticipated time when "buffer overruns" and "IE" are in the same sentence and it doesn't involve a Microsoft patch. But I digress.)
Linux systems have been around sufficiently long -- and are in so many things you use each day -- routers, switches, VOIP systems, firewall systems, servers, smartphones, PDAs, palmtop computers and more -- that the track record has been established. The NSA has given Linux its blessing, and recent competitions to try and break SELinux have proven uninteresting. By design it's a more secure system, and because of the quantity and quality of people looking at the code it's able to achieve a higher standard of security.
If you're going to try and hack some user desktops go ahead, Linux hasn't made inroads into the desktop like Windows has. It's the design flaws of Windows to require anitvirus software just to keep the thing alive. But, on the other hand, if you want to try and hack my network, it's protected by a Linux firewall appliance. Note which OS I use when security and stability matters?
"Several GB" in 20 minutes? Rsync might be able to help you speed that up a bit. I can copy 120GB in about 90 minutes using rsync (up to 15MB / second or so on my 2x1GB NIC team), and it doesn't take substantial processor time. If you're on a LAN, don't use the "-v" option so it doesn't waste time trying to compress it, just slam it through.
This particular process runs under Cygwin on the server side (Windows 2003, HP BL460c blades with dual quad-cores, 8 GB of memory -- we're moving to 64-bit in the near future but wanted to go ahead and get the memory when we got the blades.) with a similar blade on the other end (RHEL 5 with another 8GB memory). Now granted I have fiber to the SAN (EVA 4400) for both machines.
Rsync is a mission-critical app for us, I really can't say enough about it. The Windows version is available at http://www.itefix.no/cwrsync/
On a desktop level, I also use my MacBook Pro (OSX 10.4, Dual core 2.4, 4GB memory over Firewire 800) with my 1TB LaCIE BigDisk drive. My XP VM is roughly 28GB and it copies in about 12 minutes, which averages more than 2GB per minute. I think I paid $150 or so for the drive, it was reconditioned. The drive (actually 2 drives in a RAID 0) isn't nearly as fast with multiple read/writes happening, and it does eat some CPU while it's going, but it works for me.
HTH.
Rsync is available (and has been available) for quite some time now on the Windows plaform. It's a cross-platform open-source tool that is significantly faster with less overhead than robocopy. I use it in a production environment daily to synchronize Terminal Server user profiles to backup servers (one on, one not on the SAN), guarantee copies to other servers, etc and have had nothing but positive experience with it. Setup can be done without a reboot and the text config file is simple enough for entry-level IT personnel to implement.
We actually keep a "emergency copy" folder for sending large updates to a specific client over the WAN... just copy the (tiny) folder to the client and run the command-line utility. Remove when done. Mix it with PSEXEC and they don't even know what you did... just that that huge file they needed transferred got there in a hurry.
Linkie http://www.itefix.no/cwrsync/
Very good point. In a few guilds I was in before I quit WOW, it was considered a major PIA when someone wanted help with a lower dungeon. For instance the huge level in the desert with the satyrs (sorry I'm not looking it up and it's been so long I forgot). It was a well designed level complete with ghosts and relatively challenging mini-bosses (if your toon was within 5 levels of it) but everyone always skipped it because of the long ride there. Once you got to the flight path you had to navigate manually to the lower southwestern corner, which took many minutes even with the fastest land mounts.
Ashenvale was another huge map, it took forever to walk it (it was a low-level area way back then, dunno now).
Yep. One reason I quit playing was the 3- and 4-ppl multiboxing going on. Give them their own realm or whatever.. it's pointless for those of us who are using a single toon to play the game in the way it was designed to try and compete. You can't farm if they're around; you can't level (because they're busy killing everything -- much faster than any single toon can). You can't beat them at arenas, when they have 4 shammies hitting for 10k a pop you go down in a couple of hits.
In my experience Blizz really screwed up when they allowed multiboxing, whether it's against the rules or not it still sucks... mix multiboxing with the readily available "click the mouse to cast a spell" macros and you have just a lazy kid on the other end clicking a button to win. It would be like me going to a kids' fair and constantly ringing the bell at the sledgehammer booth... pointless.
Towards the end of my time on WOW, I noticed some guilds were farming in larger groups, presumably to offset the advantage that the multiboxers enjoyed. It really screwed up the economy too, where certain items became almost worthless because they could be farmed so easily (primals, but I quit between BC and LK). It was too bad, I spent many many nights on there for such a long time.
alter table SatelliteInfo add IsClassified bit not null default 1
Then update the rows for the non-Classified ones.
But seriously, "Expensive software"? Isn't most of this stuff custom-built anyway?
A consultant, eh? Making the big promises, he is?
Well when he's done and had his turn, I've got some marvelous things to show you. I wouldn't show just anybody, it's our secret. Everyone will want one and we'll be rich and famous so get them while you can now!
See? It changed already!