As a scandinavian I can't understand how people can put up with their ISPs charging by the Megabyte, it's very early 1990's...
I've currently got 8/0.8 ADSL (fullt g.dmt) and there are no caps at all, I even know of ISPs that don't block a single port (but they do send out abuse warnings to customers caught running spambots and also shut them down if they get more than one report of spam).
Basically the whole "charge for use" thing seems to be something that greedy american ISPs do to maximize profits..
I won't disagree with you about the complexity of the Apache httpd, but I've run into a lot of software that I've found to be much harder to properly build and configure.
The main reason why I actually like Apache is because it is well documented, you can actually look at the official docs and figure out how to do something (although there are still a few things that might not make sense at first). There are lots of other apps out there that have config files that make no sense without proper docs and that have really bad docs on top of that, not to mention software that has a default config that is so far beyond sanity that you have to sit down and make your own config from scratch since the default makes all sorts of wild assumptions about the default values. I mean, I've installed commercial software that would install with a default config that wouldn't even allow the software to run...
Another problem with web apps that a lot of people seem to dismiss is what happens when the app crashes, or the server's PSU dies or anything else that takes down the app.
Where I currently work we have somewhere in the order of 15 to 20 web apps, about six to ten of which are critical to be able to do work, these are run by several different groups of sysadmins spread out in various geographical locations and connected to our LAN through the massive corporate VPN. At any given point in time it can be safely assumed that at least one of these apps is having problems, and about once a week one of the critical apps break...
We've actually had situations where a large number of people couldn't do anything as we were sitting around waiting for an app to be fixed. In fact, this seems to happen at least once every month and I'm not counting minor glitches, I'm talking about those times when you end up spending an hour and and a half doing nothing while waiting for an app to work again.
Now, I suppose if you build an industrial strength app and run it on completely redundant hardware with a backup system ready to kick in then this won't be a problem, but this is business and you know that's not how it plays out. It tends to end up being some random off-the-shelf server that's barely able to handle the load because some beancounter thought the estimate for the bare minimum was "good enough" which in turn results in the inevitable failed hardware upgrade with the three hours of downtime because what worked on the test box didn't work on the production server.. In short, running an app on a central server might be a good idea if you have the resources for it, but a lot of times it's safer to just use regular fat clients.
Why should we make porn hard to get? I can't say I'm very interested in porn any more, but when I was 12-15 it was pretty interesting, not so much the behaviour of those involved as actually seeing members of the opposite sex naked (seems there are a bunch of parents out there telling girls to never ever let boys see them naked or touch them, go figure). Of course, I live in a scandinavian country where it's not illegal to sell porn to kids (it's not illegal to refuse to sell it either), and as far as I can tell just about everyone I know remembers that first time they bought a porn mag when they were in their early teens, despite this most of us turned out just fine..
Also, the whole age verification and CC# thing is stupid, in most of the world there are lots of adults who don't have credit cards, and age verification services would somehow have to verify who you are, thus effectively preventing "normal people" (non-businessmen) from distributing their own porn as they would have to perform some form of verification of the age of the viewer. Maybe we should outlaw talking about religion to children under 18? And have all websites that talk about religion verify the age of those trying to view them. After all, people who embrace religion don't think clearly and are generally brainwashed while they're still kids...
Actually, I spent most of my time playing C&C (and sequels) against human opponents, sure there were some obvious flaws (tank rush) but by making up your own custom rules (works when playing against "real people" over a LAN where you can throw stuff at people as punishment for breaking the rules) like "No one attacks anyone else for the first five minutes" or "2 vs 2, you are not allowed to stab your ally in the back." you could create some really interesting strategic problems, how do you tank rush someone who has had ample time to fortify his base and also has an ally with just as many tanks as you do?
Also, as others have pointed out, don't use 802.11b/g just because you think wireless is cool, use it if you have to, otherwise just stick to a regular wired network and save yourself the trouble. Besides, 1 Gbps ethernet or even regular 100 Mbps fast ethernet is so much more predicateble and reliable, even if there is no interference from other wireless networks..
I run into problems like this on a daily basis and there are lots of different things you can try to get your signal strength up, some won't be very useful on their own in your situation but every little bit helps.
Some of these tips are a bit "brute force" for those times when you can't coordinate your setups with your neighbours' setups, others require cooperation to work well..
First of all you could try finding out what channels your closest neighbours are running their networks on, and then try to find a channel that's as far as possible from those channels.
Next you could try moving your wireless access point and/or your computer
It might also be worth a try to change your encryption settings, switch to WPA-PSK or WPA2-PSK if you're using WEP or the other way around, sounds crazy but sometimes it actually helps, kind of a cargo cult solution but it's worth a shot.
Directional antennas on both your AP and your NIC might help but it's probably easier to just use regular ethernet over CAT5E/6 if your computer is a regular desktop/tower machine.
If you are able to talk to your neighbours and coordinate your efforts with theirs then you could try setting up the different WLANs in the building so that everyone turns their signal strength down a bit while also changing channels in such a way that no two adjacent networks are running on channels that are adjacent to each other, the closer two nets are geographically the further away from each others' channels they should be.
You might also want to make sure that you don't have any other electronic equipment that's causing problems, I've seen cordless phones that weren't even supposed to be running on the 2.4GHz band cause problems with WLANs and TVs...
There are a few other tricks you could try in order to boost signal strength but a lot of those really only apply if your signal strength is bad without there being other networks nearby, like if your access point is far from the computer then you might try getting yourself a repeater but I'm guessing you're in a fairly small apartment so that shouldn't apply..
I'd have to say that this is your very subjective opinion, I remember not really getting what the appeal of Warcraft and Warcraft 2 was, but I gladly paid for my C&C games.
While you do have a point about how everyone should have to support as you put it "the end devices" there are limits to this. Internal helpdesk at a large company is fine, or end-user support at a smaller company where you also get to do some sysadmin stuff. But I think I speak for just about anyone who has done regular end-user tech support (over the phone) in the last five to ten years (the age of outsourcing) when I say that all you learn from that is that users are generally stupid, aggressive and demand things that are impossible unless we have completely misunderstood the laws of physics ("I demand you have new modem delivered to me by this afternoon", "Sir, that's impossible, our central warehouse is a four hour _flight_ from where you are located, and you're paying us $30/month so we'd rather you go rot in hell..").
The outsourcing bit is also important as it used to be that when you couldn't find any other job you could always do tech support and then move on to 2nd line tech support, maybe some internal helpdesk and then sysadmin stuff. Nowadays if you start out doing front line tech support that's as far as you're gonna go, that's the only position available to you at the company you're working at, 2nd line and sysadmin jobs are handled by the client company...
Actually, the term "Personal computer" existed before the IBM PC. Somehow over the years "PC" and thus also "Personal computer" became a term mainly used for IBM PC-compatible machines powered by some chip compatible with the Intel x86 series of CPUs. Using the term to describe a Mac, an Amiga or a Spectravideo SVI-328 would thus be perfectly alright. In fact, as late as the mid-90's boxed software would still list "100% IBM PC Compatible computer" or some variation as a requirement..
Wow, the first person in this thread to mention Clarify.. I used Clarify briefly for a while and I honestly found it a lot more useful than most other systems like it, mainly because it wasn't some horribly crippled in-house software. That said, it is way to complex for most people's needs.
The movie was called Takedown, it was called "Hackers 2: Takedown" in the US but I just don't see the connection so I'm assuming someone wanted to make it clear to the masses that this was a movie about "Computars" and "teh intarweb"...
I doubt it, I work in tech support and there are a lot of smart well-educated people here, the problem is that unless you'r pretty much required to side with the company and come up with stupid explanations for why the company is right and the customer is wrong, even if you know the customer is right... (there's also a vast gray area where it might make sense from a customer satisfaction point to let the customer be right but where it has been decided that the customer is wrong). I know I've said some pretty stupid things and defended the company's behaviour when talking to customers, even when I've really agreed with the customer..
Oops, the end of the first paragraph was supposed to read:
"...then imagine what happens when management thinks that 200 customers waiting for more than three hours for you to take their call is perfectly ok and that you should just suck it up..."
Sounds a lot like tech support, especially if you're an outsourced part of the machinery that has no say in what hours you work and have little chance of promotion, then imagine what happens when management thinks that 200 customers waiting for more than three hours for you to take their call..
I've seen lots of people burn out doing that kind of work, in comes a twenty-something straight from college who is thinking of tech support as a first stepping-stone to a "real" tech job, four months later the same twenty-something quits his job because without having found a good job yet because he is so tired of the crappy hours, the low pay and not being able to actually fix any of the problems that occur.
So in tech support there is definitely a lot of the attitude that the company can go screw itself, when the CEO can take three-hour lunches at the golf club without anyone complaining (hell, even 2nd line support get away with being gone a little longer than the time that is scheduled) and 1st line tech support (including the team leader) gets a pay cut if they're more than fifteen minutes late back from lunch. Not to mention when they take away tools for diagnosing and solving problems (this includes blocking just about everything in the firewall and refusing to open it even after us explaining that we need certain ports to be open) because 1st line keeps noticing lots of mistakes made by the techs and 2nd line, a volume of mistakes that would get anyone a harsh talking to if not fired...
/Mikael
Re:Integration has always been Apple's differentia
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I don't know of any Wacom tablets that don't work with Macs, in fact, I've got one hooked up to my intel mac right now... That is, Wacom tablets are not Windows-exclusive.
The same goes for a lot of hardware, just about anything that you connect on the outside of your computer and isn't more than 10% below what would be considered normal for that type of hardware tends to work with macs. Of course, if you're one of those guys buying $12 USB wireless NICs and then wondering why it's not running well then maybe it's just a matter of you being a "PC guy"...
My first computer was an SVI-328, with a wooping 80kB of RAM and 32kB of ROM, not to mention the powerful 3.6 (IIRC) MHz Z80 CPU, those were the times..:)
In a strange way I miss that old thing, it wasn't MSX compatible but close enough.
Actually, the nazis cleared out jews and other "undesirables" from any place that they managed to conquer. Also, a fairly large chunk of the Soviet union was in europe and the number I listed wasn't civilian and military casualties, it was just military.
Anyway, I see that you're not arguing that the US somehow took as much of a beating as everyone else did so no point in arguing any further about that bit.:)
I believe the point was that it wasn't your parents' door that kicked down when they were looking for jews/communists/etc..
Anyway, according to the statistics I found on Wikipedia (yes I know, I'm lazy), the US lost 407,300 soldiers during the entire war while Yugoslavia lost 446,000 soldiers. However, I think it's interesting that you didn't mention the numbers for any of the other allied countries, especially considering that the US population is a lot higher than that of your average european country.
Anyway, here are some of the numbers:
France - 212,000
United Kingdom - 382,600 (With colonies)
Soviet Union - 10,700,000 (A country with a population comparable to the US)
We have a law like that in Sweden as well, the basic idea of the law could be described as "You can say you hate jews and wish they all died but you can't say 'kill all jews'", its also about context, if you, a six-foot-seven skinhead run up to a short skinny black girl and start ranting about black people then your physical appearance and how threatening the situation could be considered to be should be factored in. Of course, like all laws this law gets misinterpreted by both sides...
I just tried TCE and got kicked from the first server I joined after only two rounds because I accidentally shot a teammate (me and another player went around a corner and some guy far off started shooting at us, we returned fire and I killed him, turns out he was one of our guys), so I'm not sure if everyone is nice and friendly. Oh well, I'll keep trying.
For most "real" wiring you need to be an electrician and "the blue book" is what you follow. The blue book can best be described as a shitload of rules for exactly how to perform an installation, and if you want to keep your job you'd better follow the rules. I've seen some crazy older installations though, green and yellow phase is one example (green and yellow is ground, only ground and let me repeat this to you again only ground and nothing but ground), that was one seriously scary installation..
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I've currently got 8/0.8 ADSL (fullt g.dmt) and there are no caps at all, I even know of ISPs that don't block a single port (but they do send out abuse warnings to customers caught running spambots and also shut them down if they get more than one report of spam).
Basically the whole "charge for use" thing seems to be something that greedy american ISPs do to maximize profits..
/Mikael
The main reason why I actually like Apache is because it is well documented, you can actually look at the official docs and figure out how to do something (although there are still a few things that might not make sense at first). There are lots of other apps out there that have config files that make no sense without proper docs and that have really bad docs on top of that, not to mention software that has a default config that is so far beyond sanity that you have to sit down and make your own config from scratch since the default makes all sorts of wild assumptions about the default values. I mean, I've installed commercial software that would install with a default config that wouldn't even allow the software to run...
/Mikael
Where I currently work we have somewhere in the order of 15 to 20 web apps, about six to ten of which are critical to be able to do work, these are run by several different groups of sysadmins spread out in various geographical locations and connected to our LAN through the massive corporate VPN. At any given point in time it can be safely assumed that at least one of these apps is having problems, and about once a week one of the critical apps break...
We've actually had situations where a large number of people couldn't do anything as we were sitting around waiting for an app to be fixed. In fact, this seems to happen at least once every month and I'm not counting minor glitches, I'm talking about those times when you end up spending an hour and and a half doing nothing while waiting for an app to work again.
Now, I suppose if you build an industrial strength app and run it on completely redundant hardware with a backup system ready to kick in then this won't be a problem, but this is business and you know that's not how it plays out. It tends to end up being some random off-the-shelf server that's barely able to handle the load because some beancounter thought the estimate for the bare minimum was "good enough" which in turn results in the inevitable failed hardware upgrade with the three hours of downtime because what worked on the test box didn't work on the production server.. In short, running an app on a central server might be a good idea if you have the resources for it, but a lot of times it's safer to just use regular fat clients.
Also, the whole age verification and CC# thing is stupid, in most of the world there are lots of adults who don't have credit cards, and age verification services would somehow have to verify who you are, thus effectively preventing "normal people" (non-businessmen) from distributing their own porn as they would have to perform some form of verification of the age of the viewer. Maybe we should outlaw talking about religion to children under 18? And have all websites that talk about religion verify the age of those trying to view them. After all, people who embrace religion don't think clearly and are generally brainwashed while they're still kids...
/Mikael
/Mikael
/Mikael
Some of these tips are a bit "brute force" for those times when you can't coordinate your setups with your neighbours' setups, others require cooperation to work well..
There are a few other tricks you could try in order to boost signal strength but a lot of those really only apply if your signal strength is bad without there being other networks nearby, like if your access point is far from the computer then you might try getting yourself a repeater but I'm guessing you're in a fairly small apartment so that shouldn't apply..
/Mikael
/Mikael
The outsourcing bit is also important as it used to be that when you couldn't find any other job you could always do tech support and then move on to 2nd line tech support, maybe some internal helpdesk and then sysadmin stuff. Nowadays if you start out doing front line tech support that's as far as you're gonna go, that's the only position available to you at the company you're working at, 2nd line and sysadmin jobs are handled by the client company...
/Mikael
/Mikael
/Mikael
/Mikael
/Mikael
the problem is that unless you'r pretty much required to
was supposed to be:
the problem is that you're pretty much required to
/Mikael
"...then imagine what happens when management thinks that 200 customers waiting for more than three hours for you to take their call is perfectly ok and that you should just suck it up..."
I've seen lots of people burn out doing that kind of work, in comes a twenty-something straight from college who is thinking of tech support as a first stepping-stone to a "real" tech job, four months later the same twenty-something quits his job because without having found a good job yet because he is so tired of the crappy hours, the low pay and not being able to actually fix any of the problems that occur.
So in tech support there is definitely a lot of the attitude that the company can go screw itself, when the CEO can take three-hour lunches at the golf club without anyone complaining (hell, even 2nd line support get away with being gone a little longer than the time that is scheduled) and 1st line tech support (including the team leader) gets a pay cut if they're more than fifteen minutes late back from lunch. Not to mention when they take away tools for diagnosing and solving problems (this includes blocking just about everything in the firewall and refusing to open it even after us explaining that we need certain ports to be open) because 1st line keeps noticing lots of mistakes made by the techs and 2nd line, a volume of mistakes that would get anyone a harsh talking to if not fired...
/Mikael
The same goes for a lot of hardware, just about anything that you connect on the outside of your computer and isn't more than 10% below what would be considered normal for that type of hardware tends to work with macs. Of course, if you're one of those guys buying $12 USB wireless NICs and then wondering why it's not running well then maybe it's just a matter of you being a "PC guy"...
/Mikael
In a strange way I miss that old thing, it wasn't MSX compatible but close enough.
/Mikael
Anyway, I see that you're not arguing that the US somehow took as much of a beating as everyone else did so no point in arguing any further about that bit. :)
/Mikael
Anyway, according to the statistics I found on Wikipedia (yes I know, I'm lazy), the US lost 407,300 soldiers during the entire war while Yugoslavia lost 446,000 soldiers. However, I think it's interesting that you didn't mention the numbers for any of the other allied countries, especially considering that the US population is a lot higher than that of your average european country.
Anyway, here are some of the numbers:
/Mikael
/Mikael
/Mikael
/Mikael