I grew up in the 80's with my C64, despite the fact that the games took about half an hour to load, I loved them, because they were really challenging.
I also really liked playing games on the Master system, games like Alex Kid were really quite challenging, the controller wasn't great, you had to have real good finger control on the D-pad to be able to get Alex to do a full height running jump, I remember spending literally hours playing that game with a group of friends and we all used to watch each other and cheer each other on.
These days I find games are too easy, the movement is perhaps too slick, too smooth, too automated. It's gotten to the point where I dont really play games anymore, I cant be bothered with them.
A good example I can think of... Street Fighter 2 (back on the NES or SNES). SF2 was challenging because you had to practice the moves, pulling off a good combo was an art that was hard to master.
Now, the latest SF game on the Game Cube is the complete opposite, you just change the groove and you can pull off any of the special moves by pushing a single button, there is nothing challenging about that, it just means that there are more button hammering newbies that think they are the dogs doo-dahs.
When it comes to FPS games, I dont really hold much with the current crop, games like UT or Quake 3, you run around and shoot, jump in the air a bit and do some circling, it's not really a test of how good at a game you are, it's just set of strategies that anyone worth their salt knows how to use, you can move from one game to the next and not much will have changed, you just have similar controls, similar functions, similar weapons and similar opponents.
Now, think of a more advanced game... e.g CounterStrike, this is a much more challenging game, because you have things like smoke bombs and flash bangs which you can use more strategically, the game goes at a slower pace, but it allows for a better development of your skills, I have always seen Half Life as by far the best First Person game as yet developed, HL2, when it's realeased will probably be the first game that'll interest me in quite some time, I just hope they dont make it too easy.
I dont know how old this is... but I'd guess early to mid 90's, I got it for free when a pair of such items fell off of a trolly at work (they were originally used for CAD).
One of my colleagues was wheeling them down a concrete ramp to our storage area, when a bolt sheered on the trolly, causing the top to collapse and the monitors to impact with the floor (those things are damn heavy by the way), one of them was totalled, but this one worked fine. My boss said I could have it as it's electrical safety would be questionable... plus we always bought monitors in pairs anyway.
I've had it for about 3 years now... only thing I have ever had to do is change the fuse, operates 1024x768 at 100Hz without any problem and is quite nice for DVD's. Not bad for free.
Actually, I was reading somewhere the other day that you only need to pay for the first year, after that you are entitled to use the software forever, but you are only entitled to support and updates for the duration of your subscription. So, if you dont want the support and updated packages after the first year, then it's a flat fee of $50 per desktop.
Sun are integrating all their applications with each other and releasing updates to them all simultaneously, Sun's plan is to release updates to the entire suite (desktop OS and all applications) at the end of each quarter, so the subscription entitles you to an upgrade to the software every 3 months.
Think about whats it costs for Windows for 3 years use $100+ for windows itself, $300+ for office, so shall we say $400? Remember that also assumes youa re going to use the same software for 3 years and that you dont have to upgrade office, etc because your client sends documents in a newer version.
Whats the cost of the Sun Java Desktop? 3 * $50 = $150 for 3 years and the software is updated every 3 months with a single install - Yes a single install. Because the development of all the apps are kept in synch with each other and come from the same supplier it will be like having a service pack for your entire desktop that updates all the components and adds new functionality and new apps with each release. For corporates, it cannot get any simpler.
I think you missed the point. It's symbolic! it doesn't matter whether it's RJ45 or RJ11 (or neither), it looks similar and most geeks would associate it as some form of network connection.
The image itself draws a good parallel between the cyber junkies (the geeks) and drug users, both types of junkie, one uses a modem, the other uses a drug packed into a syringe. The designer is leading us to beleive that the internet / slashdot is like a drug, i.e. is addictive.
Personally, I think that this is one hell of an intelligent T-shirt design. Not to mention that the artwork is fantastic.
This was the first thing I thought of - a Novell Desktop OS!!
Novell must by now realise that as long as Microsoft is in Control of the desktop, it is always going to find it hard to grow business in the server space.
This strategy could be the one that really works for them, a Microsoft independent solution, but still with the history of compatibility that will allow their products to work with Windows.
It would make perfect sense for Novell to build and brand their own desktop OS, it has been the missing piece of the puzzle for many years now.
Now, along comes GNU/Linux, which already has the main components of a desktop office suite available. I wouldn't be at all suprised if Novell were to offer funding for a project like OpenOffice, or even take on a partnership with Sun for StarOffice (or they could buy CodeWeavers and take on development of Crossover Office).
Novell and Sun are getting quite close at the moment with the liberty alliance, now Novell is working on Gnome (the new Solaris desktop), I can see the two companies supporting each other in more ways.
Personally I think this is good for Novell and if Novell can make the right choices it could be very good for the community, I am just going to watch over the next 6 months because I dont think this is the last announcement Novell will make with respect to Linux on the desktop.
Toshiba's Windows CD's contain a symantec ghost.gho file which contains an image of a preconfigured windows installation, they use a cut down bootable version of ghost to re-image the disk.
If you want to dual boot, then you can purchase a copy of Ghost, create a boot floppy (or CD) with CD drivers and use it to copy the ghost image from the Toshiba supplied CD to a partition instead of using the CD's default of having the image span to fill the whole disk. Not really rocket science and it saves you having to pay M$ for another copy of windows.
If Toshiba weren't so crap in the first place, they could have included this functionality on the CD, probably at no cost.
To Toshiba's credit though... it is alot quicker to image a copy of windows to the disk than it is to install it (~8 minutes), and that includes all the drivers and any additional software (e.g DVD player) that Toshiba bundled with the machine.
how do I make two hundred clones of your monster Wintel machine in an hour and a half, without needing an assistant?
It's called Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition, and in fact, over a 100Mbps network you could do it in under an hour, easily. You could also use it to make 200 Lintel box clones as well, your choice.
On Windows, Ghost will strip and regenerate the evil SID's, name the box and even make the damn things join the domain, no hassle at all. You need to buy volume licensed version of M$ products though, otherwise you have to go around to all the machines and activate the software manually, and if your cloning alot of machines, that could take the best part of a day.
I beleive LANDesk does similar work, but I haven't had any experience with it myself. Ghost CE however works great and the Ghost Console is a fantastic way to manage imaging / software installation tasks, remotely on single or multiple machines.
Actually, I have had an orange SPV since it Launched in November and the phone works very well, it does lag occasioanlly, which can be very irritating, it also has a few quirks in terms of the navigation system (it just isn't very logical - sorry microsoft).
However, it's audio quality is fantastic for such a small device, it was in fact the main reason I bought it, as for WAP? Why does anyone even comment on that any more, WAP is useless anyway. The SPV has regular internet access via GPRS, and that works perfectly (it shrinks the images and everything), much better than WAP.
Before Microsoft issued the first software update for the SPV it was pretty clumsy, it's batteries just got sucked into a big black whole somwhere near the screen and it was missing some key functionality, for a start an app for taking and viewing a picture album with the supplied camera attachment - before the update you had to create an MMS message in order to access the camera functionality.
I am very happy with the SPV and what it does, there is not another phone like it available on the market today and I like it because I can replace 2 devices that I always used to carry with me (my phone and my CD player) with 1 device that does what the other two did and a hell of alot more, as an early adopter of this product I am happy to live with the 2 second delay when I launch Windows Media Player if it means my pockets look less bulky.
The SPVx is out in a month or two, which is going to be upgraded for better gaming features and hopefully will have a faster CPU, but I'll be happy with my SPV.
Once upon a time Connectix Developed a PSX emulator for the mac, which they started to port to the PC (it had a court case with Sony and so it was put on hold... IIRC).
One of the selling points of the PS2 is that it plays PS1 games (massive market already), using code that has already been developed by Connectix, MS could have an emulator for PS1 (and possibly PS2) which runs on the Xbox (or Xbox2), if Xbox can play PS games then there is less of a reason to by PS2 / PS3 as opposed to Xbox / Xbox2.
I think it's almost definate that we will see Connectix Technology incorporated into the Xbox as well as windows, in fact this could be more key to the purchase than incorparting VM technology into Windows, although I think having a windows server that could host a bunch of VM's with different OS's is a cool idea.
In Britain, we have outlawed the majority of firearms, any firearms that are legally kept are licensed (for pest control, hunting, etc) or contained strictly for training purposes on a range.
However, outside of this there are a large number of illegal firearms which continue to be brought in to the country. These guns come into the country from places where there are lax gun controls, usually by boat into. It is impossible for us to check every man / woman / child / aircraft / boat or other vehicle which approaches upon our borders. If more countries did the right thing and controlled firearms, then we would have alot less deaths.
Alot of the gun supporters in America complain that while we have locked down the control of guns, we still have high numbers of murders (or homicides if you prefer) which are gun related.
I've heard alot of people use the saying "Guns dont kill people, people kill people", I find no merit in that statement, it's true that a gun needs to be operated (handled or mishandled) by a person, but the gun is certainly an effective tool which makes the job of killing alot easier, after all, that is what a gun is designed for "to kill", in the same way that a bomb is designed "to kill" even if a controlled explosion does make an impressive display of destruction, the primary function of the device is still to kill, you dont see alot of people carrying around bombs for "their protection" do you?
A gun is a weapon designed for death, if you live in the country, hunt for your own food and tend your own table, you have cause to have a fire arm for use to assist you in your need for survival.
If you live in a city, there is nowhere to hunt, you dont need to carry a weapon into a supermarket so you can kill your own chicken, if your carrying a firearm in a city, you have it for the purpose of killing or maiming another human being (whether you beleive it to be in self defence or not) and by carrying it you have justified to yourself that it is ok to do that.
While you Americans may say that you keep a gun for defending your property and your home, what good is your property or your home if youare not alive to enjoy it? In this country, the majority of thieves do not carry guns, they dont need to because no law respecting household keeps such a weapon, if someone breaks in it is more likely to happen when you are not at home, in the unlikely event that you are in the house, you may lose some of your belongings, but when are belongings worth losing life over? I would prefer to keep my life rather than protect a family heirloom.
After a week of trying to get hold of one, I finally got my SPV yesterday, I had my previous 6210 for just over a year and as such was entitled to £50 back if I upgraded it on my current contract.
By being out of stock for a full 7 days Orange saved me £70, the RRP on the phone was £99.99 when I managed to get mine yesterday, so with the £50 trade in, I picked up my lovely new phone for £49.99, in my opinion a bargain!
The reason I bought the phone as opposed to the others on offer was that I wanted to combine my devices, so far I have held off from buying an MP3 player, I avoided buying an iPAQ and my ageing Nokia 6210 had been attacked by my bosses dog (still worth £50 on trade in - thank you Orange!).
People are quite quick to criticise MS on their new product, but lets not forget, they are a new entrant to this market and they are not the first manufacturer to release a phone with a few bugs (hey, if your an early adopter like me, you expect things to maybe not work straight away but to be resolved within a few months).
One of my Previous phones was an Ericcson T18s, I have dreadfull memories of it as it used to crash all the time and turn itself off without warning while it was in my pocket.
Let us not forget that Manufacturers like Nokia, Ericsson, Sagem and Siemens have all had quite a while to iron out any problems they had with their devices, Microsoft/Orange deserve to be given the same benefit of the doubt on their first products.
In the end, consumer demand will dictate what applications appear on SmartPhone2002 and feedback from us early adopters will influence the development of MS SmartPhone devices.
The battery on the SPV seems to be mostly affected by the GPRS feature, this doesn't suprise me as it keeps itself online all day, before I enabled the GPRS feature with orange the battery lasted alot longer. You can turn the feature off, but obviosuly you lose the always on MSN messenger feature and if you want to browse the net you need to turn it back on, or browse whats in the cache already.
While the kaypad is small, I dont see it as much of an obstacle, in fact I prefer that it is small because it means that the screen in larger, increasing the keypad size would make the phone too bulky, although it certainly wouldn't have affected my buying decision if they had done this.
The inclusion of the headphones/handsfree kit and the docking cradle are a nice feature, the camera attachment is tiny, which is ideal because it fits into the change compartment of my wallet (keep it in plastic to protect the lens) and it has a nice holster.
I personally think that it is a well rounded product, with performance that I would expect from a first generation device of this size. And at £50 it's a bargain. If your after one yourself, I have seen them on www.scancom.com for 99p + monthly contract. All bells and whistles included, but they wont upgrade if your already on orange.
Yeah, or maybe they have already thought of that and they are going to spoof their mac address.
It's a usual hacker trick which is not so well known, and certainly not so difficult that it couldn't be done by this software / appliance _ALL_THE_TIME_.
Re:Isn't it obvious???
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Wartrapping?
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· Score: 3, Informative
Probably because the system is a sandbox, what it broadcasts is data about a network which isn't really there, probably setting up a series of spoofed mac addresses and some traffic which it is sending to itself.
The actual system is not designed to accept the data as a useful transmision, it's designed just to log what comes in on it's interfaces (probably set in promiscuous mode) and provide an appropriate response, give the hacker what he'd expect to see.
Sure, some brightspock hacker could find a bug in the software, exploit it and gain access, then browse to and remove any log files that might have been kept. But, by the time the hacker figures out it is a honeypot, the computer has already logged and recorded everything he/she has done to probe the network, and how long do you think it is going to take to find an exploit, that would let him / her remove evidence of his / her presence.
I dont hack, but I have to imagine that it's not quite that easy hacking a black box that you have never seen, when it probably runs some custom OS / software that you most likely will never gain access to. The Honeypot has it's own security through obscurity.
Probably, he or she wont bother and will instead walk away, but the data captured by the device will be invaluable in securing networks which are vulnerable to attack.
You will of course, soon find an elite group of hackers that go around specifically searching for honeypots, so that they can find ways of identifying them, and once one of them finds a way it will be passed on as knowledge, then this test will be done by any attacker as a probe first, so that his / her tactics are not exposed to any honeypots.
AMD licenses the EV6 Front Side Bus on it's Athlon and Duron chips from Compaq, the bus was originally developed for the Alpha chip and even though AMD currently only uses it at 233Mhz, it can scale to 400Mhz which would suggest that it is a big part of AMD's roadmap.
If Intel had the patent, AMD would be Intels licensee, in the same way that AMD currently is with the x86 architecture. This means that they could increase the cost of the license and force the price of AMD chips to be more expensive. Intel could achieve more profit per chip by raising it's prices, and also make money on each chip AMD sells, this is any companies ideal position, make money on everything you sell, make money on everything your competitor sells.
I expect AMD to be the guys who purchase Compaq's Alpha division, if they dont, then they will be in an incredibly bad position, unless they can quickly move to a different Bus architecture (HyperTransport?), but I think this is unlikely.
We do the same thing with VNC on our NT client machines at our other offices, we have it permanently loaded on to the servers, so that it starts as a service on boot, but for our CAD users at other sites, we let them load up VNC as and when, it's not just us in IT that use it either, our CAD manager also uses it in parallel with the phone for training purposes for remote staff.
For our admin stuff we use Metaframe on top of Windows NT Terminal server, so by nature we can just take control by a user permitted 'shadowing' session.
This is true, most of this has come from a partnership between Microsoft and Citrix, incidently, Citrix we're the first people to implement this type of technology on the Windows Platform, and they did it back with Windows 3.x
Citrix now own the source and the IP for Windows for workgroups, they got it for helping microsoft to develop terminal services for NT4.0, however, Microsofts effort at terminal services on NT were pretty poor, to get anything out of terminal services on NT, you need to use Citrix Metaframe, which basicly sits on top of it, and fixes the majority of it's problems, it doesn't fix all of them, but it does make it very usable, I talk about this in one of my other posts so I wont repeat that here, clicking on my info will let you track that down.
Terminal Services in Win2K are more improved, they still only appear in the server version, still to get the real benefit you need Citrix Metaframe on top, it's feature set just makes it much more manageable..
On Win2K server there are two types of Terminal services, the first is just to allow remote administration of the server (a maximum of two terminals), the second allows remote user logons to the server.
But we decided we could save money by using the existing old 486's that we have, loading them with DOS and the citrix ICA client, and then running almost all of our admin apps on 2 citrix servers (soon to be 3).
We actually use Windows here because Office2000 is dictated as the corporate standard by head office. Using Citrix is actually much cheaper for us, because we actually get our clients for pretty much nothing (our old computer stock plus a few donated by other offices), what costs are the servers and the Software licenses. Even with the premium we pay for having the Citrix software, it still works out cheaper than buying 150 computers which are capable of running windows 9x/NT/2000 just for the sake of running Office.
Also pooling our software licences also means that we can reduce software licence costs by only paying for the maximum number of licences that we may use at any one time, as opposed to paying for one for each machine. Also some licenses are only billed per machine installed or per processor, so we save even bigger in those areas, especially considering we can (and do regularly) have 120 users simultanesously across 4 processors or 2 machines...
So what looks expensive, can actually work out cheaper... It's also more convenient for us, because we only have to update software on 2 servers as opposed to say 150 workstations... Considering our company has alot of proprietry software thats updated almost monthly, it makes our job a hell of a lot easier.
To give you an idea, we can support 200 users (including about 50 Fat client NT workstations and 150 Thin Clients) and 2 other offices each having 30-40 'slim' clients (they have most of their apps loaded locally, but get some of their app's delivered from the Application Server - we dont have a very fat pipe between us and our other offices, otherwise we'd go totally thin client here too).
We can support all of these people with an IT department comprising of 4 full time staff, and I can still find time to post to Slashdot at work, so we cant be all _that_ busy can we?:)
Obviously You've never heard of Citrix Metaframe (www.citrix.com) for Unix. On Windows, Citrix Metaframe sits on top of NT Terminal Server, or Windows2000 Server and basicly allows for the deployment of any application, or whole user desktop.
Metaframe for Unix (avalable for Linux, HP UX, Solaris, IBM AIX) does exactly the same thing, but with the Unix system, allowing deployment of Unix Applications and desktops to users. It even lets you do it cross platform using Citrix's Idependant Computer Architecture, so I can access xemacs from a palmtop running windows CE, or I can run MS Word on my linux box, totally seemlessly, I can even access the local drives of my client machine, if I wish (or rather if I as administrator let myself!!).
An administrator can shadow a users desktop, or individual application, this means that support is easy, because the user can see what your doing with the mouse, I have demonstrated procedures to users using a phone call and a shadow session at other offices... but I could do it all over the world if I wanted to, I can even pick up the shadow session somewhere else other than the server, from another client device... So I could support a user in office B, who is logged into an Application server in Office a, while I am sat on the train using my palmtop and a GSM mobile phone.
The possibilities are endless, it's complete freedom of movement, it even makes outsourcing of Helpdesk staff easier when we're short staffed.
This is the future, this is what we'll all be doing in about 2 years.
And you think this helps? Sure it stops a little cash from going into Bill's pockets, but at the same time it is only proving to Micro$oft that you need their Software... And your actions only extend Micro$ofts market share. Obviously, if you do not want to pay for Micro$ofts Software, then there is something wrong with the price, or something wrong with the product... If it's the product at fault... pick a different product, there is always another option. If you don't want to pay the price, don't, but don't use the software, boycott it completely and use a competitor (free or otherwise), that way Industry wakes up and starts to notice that there are other viable alternatives, and then we can maybe break the cycle of being locked into Micro$oft products. Isn't the whole point of the GNU/GPL Open Source model to Circumvent the high prices in software in the first place? If you copy M$ software, you circumvent the Free Software Model.. and by doing so, you don't help solve the problem by showing Micro$oft that you know there are viable Free alternatives. Think about it Micro$oft knows there are viable alternatives to it's software, but it does not feel threatened by any of the competitors to say M$Office (pure example), because nothing comes close in termns of Market share... and it has extra market share because every man and his dog managed to get a copy of Office from one of Micro$oft's $elect CD's, regularly distributed to Microsoft corporate customers... Strangely though, Micro$oft isn't worried about this, and why should they be... because as long people use it (Office) at home, they will still want to use it at Work... and thats where M$ makes the bulk of it's money, corporate sales... Until applications like StarOffice and KOffice begin to really penetrate into corporate environments... Micro$oft is going to keep it's prices artificially inflated... Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem, adopt free software, or at least cheaper non-Microsoft alternatives and help show that the consumer and indeed corporations do not want to pay these high prices. Thats my 2 pence worth.
Remembering that London is not the only place in the UK, Bristol in south west England (about 200 miles west of London, about 20 miles south of Cardiff in wales), is also not a bad option.
Bristol has many high tech companies in, around and close to it. It's constantly attracting new high tech companies because of the quality of graduates being produced by the local Unversity. Which reminds me, the education system isn't bad if you've got any little feet pattering about.
Pay is a little lower than in London, but the cost of living is much less, enough to offset the cost by quite a large margin.
For a New 4 bedroom house expect to pay around £130k or roughly US$210k depending on area, edge of the city, close to the motorway is much cheaper, the houses are generally larger, and it's closer to most of the high tech companies.
For a better idea on prices you could check out a local estate agent like M.Coleman (http://www.mcoleman.co.uk/ - first thing I picked out on yahoo).
Slashdot Mirror
I grew up in the 80's with my C64, despite the fact that the games took about half an hour to load, I loved them, because they were really challenging.
I also really liked playing games on the Master system, games like Alex Kid were really quite challenging, the controller wasn't great, you had to have real good finger control on the D-pad to be able to get Alex to do a full height running jump, I remember spending literally hours playing that game with a group of friends and we all used to watch each other and cheer each other on.
These days I find games are too easy, the movement is perhaps too slick, too smooth, too automated. It's gotten to the point where I dont really play games anymore, I cant be bothered with them.
A good example I can think of... Street Fighter 2 (back on the NES or SNES). SF2 was challenging because you had to practice the moves, pulling off a good combo was an art that was hard to master.
Now, the latest SF game on the Game Cube is the complete opposite, you just change the groove and you can pull off any of the special moves by pushing a single button, there is nothing challenging about that, it just means that there are more button hammering newbies that think they are the dogs doo-dahs.
When it comes to FPS games, I dont really hold much with the current crop, games like UT or Quake 3, you run around and shoot, jump in the air a bit and do some circling, it's not really a test of how good at a game you are, it's just set of strategies that anyone worth their salt knows how to use, you can move from one game to the next and not much will have changed, you just have similar controls, similar functions, similar weapons and similar opponents.
Now, think of a more advanced game... e.g CounterStrike, this is a much more challenging game, because you have things like smoke bombs and flash bangs which you can use more strategically, the game goes at a slower pace, but it allows for a better development of your skills, I have always seen Half Life as by far the best First Person game as yet developed, HL2, when it's realeased will probably be the first game that'll interest me in quite some time, I just hope they dont make it too easy.
I dont know how old this is... but I'd guess early to mid 90's, I got it for free when a pair of such items fell off of a trolly at work (they were originally used for CAD).
One of my colleagues was wheeling them down a concrete ramp to our storage area, when a bolt sheered on the trolly, causing the top to collapse and the monitors to impact with the floor (those things are damn heavy by the way), one of them was totalled, but this one worked fine. My boss said I could have it as it's electrical safety would be questionable... plus we always bought monitors in pairs anyway.
I've had it for about 3 years now... only thing I have ever had to do is change the fuse, operates 1024x768 at 100Hz without any problem and is quite nice for DVD's. Not bad for free.
Actually, I was reading somewhere the other day that you only need to pay for the first year, after that you are entitled to use the software forever, but you are only entitled to support and updates for the duration of your subscription. So, if you dont want the support and updated packages after the first year, then it's a flat fee of $50 per desktop.
Sun are integrating all their applications with each other and releasing updates to them all simultaneously, Sun's plan is to release updates to the entire suite (desktop OS and all applications) at the end of each quarter, so the subscription entitles you to an upgrade to the software every 3 months.
Think about whats it costs for Windows for 3 years use $100+ for windows itself, $300+ for office, so shall we say $400? Remember that also assumes youa re going to use the same software for 3 years and that you dont have to upgrade office, etc because your client sends documents in a newer version.
Whats the cost of the Sun Java Desktop? 3 * $50 = $150 for 3 years and the software is updated every 3 months with a single install - Yes a single install. Because the development of all the apps are kept in synch with each other and come from the same supplier it will be like having a service pack for your entire desktop that updates all the components and adds new functionality and new apps with each release. For corporates, it cannot get any simpler.
I think you missed the point. It's symbolic! it doesn't matter whether it's RJ45 or RJ11 (or neither), it looks similar and most geeks would associate it as some form of network connection.
The image itself draws a good parallel between the cyber junkies (the geeks) and drug users, both types of junkie, one uses a modem, the other uses a drug packed into a syringe. The designer is leading us to beleive that the internet / slashdot is like a drug, i.e. is addictive.
Personally, I think that this is one hell of an intelligent T-shirt design. Not to mention that the artwork is fantastic.
This was the first thing I thought of - a Novell Desktop OS!!
Novell must by now realise that as long as Microsoft is in Control of the desktop, it is always going to find it hard to grow business in the server space.
This strategy could be the one that really works for them, a Microsoft independent solution, but still with the history of compatibility that will allow their products to work with Windows.
It would make perfect sense for Novell to build and brand their own desktop OS, it has been the missing piece of the puzzle for many years now.
Now, along comes GNU/Linux, which already has the main components of a desktop office suite available. I wouldn't be at all suprised if Novell were to offer funding for a project like OpenOffice, or even take on a partnership with Sun for StarOffice (or they could buy CodeWeavers and take on development of Crossover Office).
Novell and Sun are getting quite close at the moment with the liberty alliance, now Novell is working on Gnome (the new Solaris desktop), I can see the two companies supporting each other in more ways.
Personally I think this is good for Novell and if Novell can make the right choices it could be very good for the community, I am just going to watch over the next 6 months because I dont think this is the last announcement Novell will make with respect to Linux on the desktop.
Toshiba's Windows CD's contain a symantec ghost .gho file which contains an image of a preconfigured windows installation, they use a cut down bootable version of ghost to re-image the disk.
If you want to dual boot, then you can purchase a copy of Ghost, create a boot floppy (or CD) with CD drivers and use it to copy the ghost image from the Toshiba supplied CD to a partition instead of using the CD's default of having the image span to fill the whole disk. Not really rocket science and it saves you having to pay M$ for another copy of windows.
If Toshiba weren't so crap in the first place, they could have included this functionality on the CD, probably at no cost.
To Toshiba's credit though... it is alot quicker to image a copy of windows to the disk than it is to install it (~8 minutes), and that includes all the drivers and any additional software (e.g DVD player) that Toshiba bundled with the machine.
how do I make two hundred clones of your monster Wintel machine in an hour and a half, without needing an assistant?
It's called Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition, and in fact, over a 100Mbps network you could do it in under an hour, easily. You could also use it to make 200 Lintel box clones as well, your choice.
On Windows, Ghost will strip and regenerate the evil SID's, name the box and even make the damn things join the domain, no hassle at all. You need to buy volume licensed version of M$ products though, otherwise you have to go around to all the machines and activate the software manually, and if your cloning alot of machines, that could take the best part of a day.
I beleive LANDesk does similar work, but I haven't had any experience with it myself. Ghost CE however works great and the Ghost Console is a fantastic way to manage imaging / software installation tasks, remotely on single or multiple machines.
Actually, I have had an orange SPV since it Launched in November and the phone works very well, it does lag occasioanlly, which can be very irritating, it also has a few quirks in terms of the navigation system (it just isn't very logical - sorry microsoft).
However, it's audio quality is fantastic for such a small device, it was in fact the main reason I bought it, as for WAP? Why does anyone even comment on that any more, WAP is useless anyway. The SPV has regular internet access via GPRS, and that works perfectly (it shrinks the images and everything), much better than WAP.
Before Microsoft issued the first software update for the SPV it was pretty clumsy, it's batteries just got sucked into a big black whole somwhere near the screen and it was missing some key functionality, for a start an app for taking and viewing a picture album with the supplied camera attachment - before the update you had to create an MMS message in order to access the camera functionality.
I am very happy with the SPV and what it does, there is not another phone like it available on the market today and I like it because I can replace 2 devices that I always used to carry with me (my phone and my CD player) with 1 device that does what the other two did and a hell of alot more, as an early adopter of this product I am happy to live with the 2 second delay when I launch Windows Media Player if it means my pockets look less bulky.
The SPVx is out in a month or two, which is going to be upgraded for better gaming features and hopefully will have a faster CPU, but I'll be happy with my SPV.
Once upon a time Connectix Developed a PSX emulator for the mac, which they started to port to the PC (it had a court case with Sony and so it was put on hold... IIRC).
One of the selling points of the PS2 is that it plays PS1 games (massive market already), using code that has already been developed by Connectix, MS could have an emulator for PS1 (and possibly PS2) which runs on the Xbox (or Xbox2), if Xbox can play PS games then there is less of a reason to by PS2 / PS3 as opposed to Xbox / Xbox2.
I think it's almost definate that we will see Connectix Technology incorporated into the Xbox as well as windows, in fact this could be more key to the purchase than incorparting VM technology into Windows, although I think having a windows server that could host a bunch of VM's with different OS's is a cool idea.
In Britain, we have outlawed the majority of firearms, any firearms that are legally kept are licensed (for pest control, hunting, etc) or contained strictly for training purposes on a range.
However, outside of this there are a large number of illegal firearms which continue to be brought in to the country. These guns come into the country from places where there are lax gun controls, usually by boat into. It is impossible for us to check every man / woman / child / aircraft / boat or other vehicle which approaches upon our borders. If more countries did the right thing and controlled firearms, then we would have alot less deaths.
Alot of the gun supporters in America complain that while we have locked down the control of guns, we still have high numbers of murders (or homicides if you prefer) which are gun related.
I've heard alot of people use the saying "Guns dont kill people, people kill people", I find no merit in that statement, it's true that a gun needs to be operated (handled or mishandled) by a person, but the gun is certainly an effective tool which makes the job of killing alot easier, after all, that is what a gun is designed for "to kill", in the same way that a bomb is designed "to kill" even if a controlled explosion does make an impressive display of destruction, the primary function of the device is still to kill, you dont see alot of people carrying around bombs for "their protection" do you?
A gun is a weapon designed for death, if you live in the country, hunt for your own food and tend your own table, you have cause to have a fire arm for use to assist you in your need for survival.
If you live in a city, there is nowhere to hunt, you dont need to carry a weapon into a supermarket so you can kill your own chicken, if your carrying a firearm in a city, you have it for the purpose of killing or maiming another human being (whether you beleive it to be in self defence or not) and by carrying it you have justified to yourself that it is ok to do that.
While you Americans may say that you keep a gun for defending your property and your home, what good is your property or your home if youare not alive to enjoy it? In this country, the majority of thieves do not carry guns, they dont need to because no law respecting household keeps such a weapon, if someone breaks in it is more likely to happen when you are not at home, in the unlikely event that you are in the house, you may lose some of your belongings, but when are belongings worth losing life over? I would prefer to keep my life rather than protect a family heirloom.
After a week of trying to get hold of one, I finally got my SPV yesterday, I had my previous 6210 for just over a year and as such was entitled to £50 back if I upgraded it on my current contract.
By being out of stock for a full 7 days Orange saved me £70, the RRP on the phone was £99.99 when I managed to get mine yesterday, so with the £50 trade in, I picked up my lovely new phone for £49.99, in my opinion a bargain!
The reason I bought the phone as opposed to the others on offer was that I wanted to combine my devices, so far I have held off from buying an MP3 player, I avoided buying an iPAQ and my ageing Nokia 6210 had been attacked by my bosses dog (still worth £50 on trade in - thank you Orange!).
People are quite quick to criticise MS on their new product, but lets not forget, they are a new entrant to this market and they are not the first manufacturer to release a phone with a few bugs (hey, if your an early adopter like me, you expect things to maybe not work straight away but to be resolved within a few months).
One of my Previous phones was an Ericcson T18s, I have dreadfull memories of it as it used to crash all the time and turn itself off without warning while it was in my pocket.
Let us not forget that Manufacturers like Nokia, Ericsson, Sagem and Siemens have all had quite a while to iron out any problems they had with their devices, Microsoft/Orange deserve to be given the same benefit of the doubt on their first products.
In the end, consumer demand will dictate what applications appear on SmartPhone2002 and feedback from us early adopters will influence the development of MS SmartPhone devices.
The battery on the SPV seems to be mostly affected by the GPRS feature, this doesn't suprise me as it keeps itself online all day, before I enabled the GPRS feature with orange the battery lasted alot longer. You can turn the feature off, but obviosuly you lose the always on MSN messenger feature and if you want to browse the net you need to turn it back on, or browse whats in the cache already.
While the kaypad is small, I dont see it as much of an obstacle, in fact I prefer that it is small because it means that the screen in larger, increasing the keypad size would make the phone too bulky, although it certainly wouldn't have affected my buying decision if they had done this.
The inclusion of the headphones/handsfree kit and the docking cradle are a nice feature, the camera attachment is tiny, which is ideal because it fits into the change compartment of my wallet (keep it in plastic to protect the lens) and it has a nice holster.
I personally think that it is a well rounded product, with performance that I would expect from a first generation device of this size. And at £50 it's a bargain. If your after one yourself, I have seen them on www.scancom.com for 99p + monthly contract. All bells and whistles included, but they wont upgrade if your already on orange.
Yeah, or maybe they have already thought of that and they are going to spoof their mac address.
It's a usual hacker trick which is not so well known, and certainly not so difficult that it couldn't be done by this software / appliance _ALL_THE_TIME_.
Probably because the system is a sandbox, what it broadcasts is data about a network which isn't really there, probably setting up a series of spoofed mac addresses and some traffic which it is sending to itself.
The actual system is not designed to accept the data as a useful transmision, it's designed just to log what comes in on it's interfaces (probably set in promiscuous mode) and provide an appropriate response, give the hacker what he'd expect to see.
Sure, some brightspock hacker could find a bug in the software, exploit it and gain access, then browse to and remove any log files that might have been kept. But, by the time the hacker figures out it is a honeypot, the computer has already logged and recorded everything he/she has done to probe the network, and how long do you think it is going to take to find an exploit, that would let him / her remove evidence of his / her presence.
I dont hack, but I have to imagine that it's not quite that easy hacking a black box that you have never seen, when it probably runs some custom OS / software that you most likely will never gain access to. The Honeypot has it's own security through obscurity.
Probably, he or she wont bother and will instead walk away, but the data captured by the device will be invaluable in securing networks which are vulnerable to attack.
You will of course, soon find an elite group of hackers that go around specifically searching for honeypots, so that they can find ways of identifying them, and once one of them finds a way it will be passed on as knowledge, then this test will be done by any attacker as a probe first, so that his / her tactics are not exposed to any honeypots.
AMD licenses the EV6 Front Side Bus on it's Athlon and Duron chips from Compaq, the bus was originally developed for the Alpha chip and even though AMD currently only uses it at 233Mhz, it can scale to 400Mhz which would suggest that it is a big part of AMD's roadmap.
If Intel had the patent, AMD would be Intels licensee, in the same way that AMD currently is with the x86 architecture. This means that they could increase the cost of the license and force the price of AMD chips to be more expensive. Intel could achieve more profit per chip by raising it's prices, and also make money on each chip AMD sells, this is any companies ideal position, make money on everything you sell, make money on everything your competitor sells.
I expect AMD to be the guys who purchase Compaq's Alpha division, if they dont, then they will be in an incredibly bad position, unless they can quickly move to a different Bus architecture (HyperTransport?), but I think this is unlikely.
We do the same thing with VNC on our NT client machines at our other offices, we have it permanently loaded on to the servers, so that it starts as a service on boot, but for our CAD users at other sites, we let them load up VNC as and when, it's not just us in IT that use it either, our CAD manager also uses it in parallel with the phone for training purposes for remote staff.
For our admin stuff we use Metaframe on top of Windows NT Terminal server, so by nature we can just take control by a user permitted 'shadowing' session.
This is true, most of this has come from a partnership between Microsoft and Citrix, incidently, Citrix we're the first people to implement this type of technology on the Windows Platform, and they did it back with Windows 3.x
Citrix now own the source and the IP for Windows for workgroups, they got it for helping microsoft to develop terminal services for NT4.0, however, Microsofts effort at terminal services on NT were pretty poor, to get anything out of terminal services on NT, you need to use Citrix Metaframe, which basicly sits on top of it, and fixes the majority of it's problems, it doesn't fix all of them, but it does make it very usable, I talk about this in one of my other posts so I wont repeat that here, clicking on my info will let you track that down.
Terminal Services in Win2K are more improved, they still only appear in the server version, still to get the real benefit you need Citrix Metaframe on top, it's feature set just makes it much more manageable..
On Win2K server there are two types of Terminal services, the first is just to allow remote administration of the server (a maximum of two terminals), the second allows remote user logons to the server.
Not exactly...
:)
But we decided we could save money by using the existing old 486's that we have, loading them with DOS and the citrix ICA client, and then running almost all of our admin apps on 2 citrix servers (soon to be 3).
We actually use Windows here because Office2000 is dictated as the corporate standard by head office. Using Citrix is actually much cheaper for us, because we actually get our clients for pretty much nothing (our old computer stock plus a few donated by other offices), what costs are the servers and the Software licenses. Even with the premium we pay for having the Citrix software, it still works out cheaper than buying 150 computers which are capable of running windows 9x/NT/2000 just for the sake of running Office.
Also pooling our software licences also means that we can reduce software licence costs by only paying for the maximum number of licences that we may use at any one time, as opposed to paying for one for each machine. Also some licenses are only billed per machine installed or per processor, so we save even bigger in those areas, especially considering we can (and do regularly) have 120 users simultanesously across 4 processors or 2 machines...
So what looks expensive, can actually work out cheaper... It's also more convenient for us, because we only have to update software on 2 servers as opposed to say 150 workstations... Considering our company has alot of proprietry software thats updated almost monthly, it makes our job a hell of a lot easier.
To give you an idea, we can support 200 users (including about 50 Fat client NT workstations and 150 Thin Clients) and 2 other offices each having 30-40 'slim' clients (they have most of their apps loaded locally, but get some of their app's delivered from the Application Server - we dont have a very fat pipe between us and our other offices, otherwise we'd go totally thin client here too).
We can support all of these people with an IT department comprising of 4 full time staff, and I can still find time to post to Slashdot at work, so we cant be all _that_ busy can we?
Obviously You've never heard of Citrix Metaframe (www.citrix.com) for Unix. On Windows, Citrix Metaframe sits on top of NT Terminal Server, or Windows2000 Server and basicly allows for the deployment of any application, or whole user desktop.
Metaframe for Unix (avalable for Linux, HP UX, Solaris, IBM AIX) does exactly the same thing, but with the Unix system, allowing deployment of Unix Applications and desktops to users. It even lets you do it cross platform using Citrix's Idependant Computer Architecture, so I can access xemacs from a palmtop running windows CE, or I can run MS Word on my linux box, totally seemlessly, I can even access the local drives of my client machine, if I wish (or rather if I as administrator let myself!!).
An administrator can shadow a users desktop, or individual application, this means that support is easy, because the user can see what your doing with the mouse, I have demonstrated procedures to users using a phone call and a shadow session at other offices... but I could do it all over the world if I wanted to, I can even pick up the shadow session somewhere else other than the server, from another client device... So I could support a user in office B, who is logged into an Application server in Office a, while I am sat on the train using my palmtop and a GSM mobile phone.
The possibilities are endless, it's complete freedom of movement, it even makes outsourcing of Helpdesk staff easier when we're short staffed.
This is the future, this is what we'll all be doing in about 2 years.
And you think this helps? Sure it stops a little cash from going into Bill's pockets, but at the same time it is only proving to Micro$oft that you need their Software... And your actions only extend Micro$ofts market share. Obviously, if you do not want to pay for Micro$ofts Software, then there is something wrong with the price, or something wrong with the product... If it's the product at fault... pick a different product, there is always another option. If you don't want to pay the price, don't, but don't use the software, boycott it completely and use a competitor (free or otherwise), that way Industry wakes up and starts to notice that there are other viable alternatives, and then we can maybe break the cycle of being locked into Micro$oft products. Isn't the whole point of the GNU/GPL Open Source model to Circumvent the high prices in software in the first place? If you copy M$ software, you circumvent the Free Software Model.. and by doing so, you don't help solve the problem by showing Micro$oft that you know there are viable Free alternatives. Think about it Micro$oft knows there are viable alternatives to it's software, but it does not feel threatened by any of the competitors to say M$Office (pure example), because nothing comes close in termns of Market share... and it has extra market share because every man and his dog managed to get a copy of Office from one of Micro$oft's $elect CD's, regularly distributed to Microsoft corporate customers... Strangely though, Micro$oft isn't worried about this, and why should they be... because as long people use it (Office) at home, they will still want to use it at Work... and thats where M$ makes the bulk of it's money, corporate sales... Until applications like StarOffice and KOffice begin to really penetrate into corporate environments... Micro$oft is going to keep it's prices artificially inflated... Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem, adopt free software, or at least cheaper non-Microsoft alternatives and help show that the consumer and indeed corporations do not want to pay these high prices. Thats my 2 pence worth.
Remembering that London is not the only place in the UK, Bristol in south west England (about 200 miles west of London, about 20 miles south of Cardiff in wales), is also not a bad option.
Bristol has many high tech companies in, around and close to it. It's constantly attracting new high tech companies because of the quality of graduates being produced by the local Unversity. Which reminds me, the education system isn't bad if you've got any little feet pattering about.
Pay is a little lower than in London, but the cost of living is much less, enough to offset the cost by quite a large margin.
For a New 4 bedroom house expect to pay around £130k or roughly US$210k depending on area, edge of the city, close to the motorway is much cheaper, the houses are generally larger, and it's closer to most of the high tech companies.
For a better idea on prices you could check out a local estate agent like M.Coleman (http://www.mcoleman.co.uk/ - first thing I picked out on yahoo).
(Sorry, little bit of home town pride there)