The problem is that, unlike with the tired mails, you actually want to _look_ at the stuff you get. And there, of course, you run the risk of running into the rack-flashing equivalent of really bad "I'm tired" nonsense. And that's not necessarily something I need to see when I'm too tired to deal with anatomical catastrophes.
The original warcraft had the awesomest voice acting of all times (especially when repeatedly clicking on the characters.) That was funnier than the game itself (at least after a few beers.)
That aside, I really liked Homeworld. The radio voices were really dispassionate and distant, and in combination with the sound effects and music gave the game a very eerie atmosphere.
My third favorite are the German soldiers in the sub pen mission in MoHAA--they're standing around discussing something like "why are all the Norwegians so mad at us? Just because we're taking their women to Germany to breed the master race." It's flawless unaccented German, and I honestly have to respect any German voice actor who could pull off a line like that without breaking up laughing.
Sorry to hear that, sounds like you have stupid purchasing people. They're not all cretins (unlike HR.)
The purchasing people rule nothing except for having a say in the budget. If I wanted to buy an E15k but we had $50k in the kitty, well, that's it for my E15k.
You can exchange "bean-counters" for "purchasing idiots" for all I care, but no matter what you buy it's still gotta conform to some sort of budget reality, that's (unfortunately) part of business life.
Like it or not, management buzzwords like TCO form part of the decision what to buy. Say you have item 'x'. It costs 100 bucks to buy and 50 bucks to run reliably over 3 years. Item 'y' costs 50 bucks and costs 75 to run reliably over 3 years. Item 'x' is way superior to 'y', more reliable, prettier, whatever, but 'x' gets the job done, and your budget is 125 bucks? What do you think company average will buy? That's right, they'll buy 'x' because your CEO plays golf with the CEO of the company that produces 'x', but you get my point.
Admittedly, the poor techs are left holding the bag. Admittedly, the amount of grief, headaches and overtime and other unquantifiable factors (at least not on some PWC consultant's powerpoint presentation) will not be considered. But unless you have pretty good management (rare, although I have been fortunate in that regard) money talks, overworked sysadmin walks.
Bill Gates uses Windux. Bill Joy uses the Network (it's the Computer!) Steve Jobs' entire evil overlord alpine command center runs on NextStep Linus uses FreeBSD (but on a Transmeta) Kevin Mitnick uses no OS, he's not allowed to Richard Stallmann bangs two rocks together in binary, but they're free rocks! Dr. Phil runs Microsoft Bob (tm) (it cares) Oprah uses UGoGirlnix Martha Stewart uses OS/390 over a VT100 at the prison library Michael Moore uses Windows (it's also bloated and stupid) George Bush uses an etch-a-sketch John Kerry used to use a Mac but his chin kept hitting the touchpad
Seriously though; a purchasing department should (ideally, har har) consider TCO of a new piece of equipment. In a large corporation, it's a hefty factor in making a decision to go with vendor x or vendor y--"how well can this be fixed? How fast can they service this? How much will it cost me?"
Remember that for a lot of hardware, the initial acquisition cost is only a small portion of its overall lifetime cost.
I just found out today that Switzerland passed a law in 2002 forbidding manufacturers' garages from claiming that third-party repairs and service work would void automobile warranties, even though car owners could save up to half in parts and labor costs.
If I were a purchasing executive, and had just blown a large amount of money on an SL8500, I'd seriously reconsider buying from StorageTek in the future if they were going to lock me in to their own service plans with such an ability to set prices without any competition.
Remember kids, vote with your wallets and let them know it...
1. Pr0n drove the continuing development of the internet 2. Internet pr0n is becoming increasingly technologically sophisticated and interactive 3. Mobile devices are the natural extension of the internet 4. Use of cell phones among children is increasingly prevalent 5. Graphics from cell phones can now be projected on to your shirt 6. Oh dear...
Why restricted? All you need to do is hack MudSH to be a bit more, uh, challenging to your users ("You turn left into/etc. A giant firebreathing dragon labelled 'root' awaits you.")
This is actually a great idea./dev/null is so much more cost-effective for storing large amounts of broadcast-quality TV then ugly, expensive hard drives or tapes.
Fair enough point, but there's something a bit special about computer games. Like CDs, games include a little booklet. I personally find it more convenient to buy something and have the commands right there at my fingertips (on a dead tree) than having to background my game and check a file somewhere. Sounds simple, but hey, it's true. I know I could print it out, but to be honest, I am not terribly averse to just spending the money and getting on with life.
Also, I prefer online games, where it's easy to check for valid keys. I will readily pirate a multiplayer game to try offline a bit until I think I'm ready and know whether the game's worthwhile, at which point I will usually buy it for networked play.
The poster has a very good point. There is a reason why 419 scams are named as they are--after a section of Nigeria's penal code. Simply stated, the occurrence of types of wire fraud is higher in some countries than others--while putting together a security incident response team for a client, we found a whole "419 ISP" infrastructure located in Ghana, including several subnets, mail servers on multiple operating systems, and loads of what we assumed were semipublic terminals dedicated to sending out fraudulent crap.
We gathered through a bit of digging that an Israeli company was at least partially behind the whole deal, but this was by no means an isolated incident.
I have very very serious problems with the criteria for inclusion in many commercial blacklists--including censorware, antispam and others. However, in many cases, inclusion is justified. If a country sees a high rate of blacklisting, well, do something about it.
A few years ago, Switzerland had free SMS phone gateways--many UK providers blocked SMS traffic from here, as their subscribers were being mercilessly spammed. The block was justified, and the local telcos took action; now it's no more. Asking others to at least investigate whether there's some good reason behind a blacklist, and if so, eliminating it, is not excessive.
...but at times effective. I can't say anything about Macedonia, as I've not had any interaction with anything from that country to my knowledge (except for the thuggish looking gentlemen in black BMWs who cruise around my city with FYROM bumper stickers) but in our case, just blacklisting all Thai, Chinese and Korean IPs from sending us mail has done absolute miracles for our spam counts...
When I am employed on a project, I work a lot. When I come home, I like to unwind playing games a bit. Maybe I'm missing the point, but sometimes I just don't _want_ to solve a problem the subtle, elegant way--I played Deus Ex once, and after being told that it was possible to solve it without firing a shot, I resolved to finish the game in as violent, confrontational a manner as possible.
Why? Pure fun. From listening to friends who finished it, I believe there are plenty of intelligent, thinking gamers out there who will not put their head through the wall figuring out how to finish a game. Not me--that's (usually) not my style. I like the fact that less ham-handed ways of solving games are available, for the rare times when I feel like doing the intellectual thing, but usually, well, thag smash crush.
That said, Deus Ex 2 licked the sweat from a dead man's b***s. The plot, the dialogues, the voice acting, the characters were cheesy and contrived and the developers should look to themselves before criticizing the gamers. Maybe the people blowing up the turrets were just annoyed that they'd just spent 40 bucks on such a crappy game?
Point taken, but wasn't Last Tango in Paris considered "unsuitable for children" exactly because of all the sex and nudity?
Or, I guess they could have a "porn" rating, one for "artsy but adults only", one for "loads of nekkid boffing, but done very tastefully", one for "s00per violent and gross", and one for everything from "Samuel L. Bronkowitz Presents".
You paint smiley faces and flowers on your smart bombs ("just saying hi!")
You shoot for the knees rather than the head (hey, extra challenge)
You send nice flower bouquets and balloons to people you just fragged
You run your tanks on "green" diesel
You think about it for a really really really long time before krushing someone
You train your special forces to creep up behind people and say "BOO!" really loud to try and scare 'em off.
Whenever you wipe out a third world dictator, you send him a friendly card ("blue is the sky, green is the grass, thanks for letting us kick your ass")
Slashdot Mirror
Been done--http://www.flashyourrack.com
The problem is that, unlike with the tired mails, you actually want to _look_ at the stuff you get. And there, of course, you run the risk of running into the rack-flashing equivalent of really bad "I'm tired" nonsense. And that's not necessarily something I need to see when I'm too tired to deal with anatomical catastrophes.
Maybe they can pay someone like Burt Rutan...hushed silence...ten....million...dollars! to send a space ship up there to fix it.
Oh wait...
You definitely, utterly, absolutely must have to are obliged to rent and watch Split Second with Rutger Hauer.
People like you are inhuman. You remind me of the English cop. The rest of us, on the other hand, are probably hung over.
The original warcraft had the awesomest voice acting of all times (especially when repeatedly clicking on the characters.) That was funnier than the game itself (at least after a few beers.)
That aside, I really liked Homeworld. The radio voices were really dispassionate and distant, and in combination with the sound effects and music gave the game a very eerie atmosphere.
My third favorite are the German soldiers in the sub pen mission in MoHAA--they're standing around discussing something like "why are all the Norwegians so mad at us? Just because we're taking their women to Germany to breed the master race." It's flawless unaccented German, and I honestly have to respect any German voice actor who could pull off a line like that without breaking up laughing.
Yeah, but with the flight ticket to the UK and all the travel expenses it'd still come out to a pretty hefty price, no?
Sorry to hear that, sounds like you have stupid purchasing people. They're not all cretins (unlike HR.)
The purchasing people rule nothing except for having a say in the budget. If I wanted to buy an E15k but we had $50k in the kitty, well, that's it for my E15k.
You can exchange "bean-counters" for "purchasing idiots" for all I care, but no matter what you buy it's still gotta conform to some sort of budget reality, that's (unfortunately) part of business life.
Like it or not, management buzzwords like TCO form part of the decision what to buy. Say you have item 'x'. It costs 100 bucks to buy and 50 bucks to run reliably over 3 years. Item 'y' costs 50 bucks and costs 75 to run reliably over 3 years. Item 'x' is way superior to 'y', more reliable, prettier, whatever, but 'x' gets the job done, and your budget is 125 bucks? What do you think company average will buy? That's right, they'll buy 'x' because your CEO plays golf with the CEO of the company that produces 'x', but you get my point.
Admittedly, the poor techs are left holding the bag. Admittedly, the amount of grief, headaches and overtime and other unquantifiable factors (at least not on some PWC consultant's powerpoint presentation) will not be considered. But unless you have pretty good management (rare, although I have been fortunate in that regard) money talks, overworked sysadmin walks.
Bill Gates uses Windux.
Bill Joy uses the Network (it's the Computer!)
Steve Jobs' entire evil overlord alpine command center runs on NextStep
Linus uses FreeBSD (but on a Transmeta)
Kevin Mitnick uses no OS, he's not allowed to
Richard Stallmann bangs two rocks together in binary, but they're free rocks!
Dr. Phil runs Microsoft Bob (tm) (it cares)
Oprah uses UGoGirlnix
Martha Stewart uses OS/390 over a VT100 at the prison library
Michael Moore uses Windows (it's also bloated and stupid)
George Bush uses an etch-a-sketch
John Kerry used to use a Mac but his chin kept hitting the touchpad
I don't own any EMC kit either! *-8)
Seriously though; a purchasing department should (ideally, har har) consider TCO of a new piece of equipment. In a large corporation, it's a hefty factor in making a decision to go with vendor x or vendor y--"how well can this be fixed? How fast can they service this? How much will it cost me?"
Remember that for a lot of hardware, the initial acquisition cost is only a small portion of its overall lifetime cost.
I just found out today that Switzerland passed a law in 2002 forbidding manufacturers' garages from claiming that third-party repairs and service work would void automobile warranties, even though car owners could save up to half in parts and labor costs.
If I were a purchasing executive, and had just blown a large amount of money on an SL8500, I'd seriously reconsider buying from StorageTek in the future if they were going to lock me in to their own service plans with such an ability to set prices without any competition.
Remember kids, vote with your wallets and let them know it...
I claim that
1. Pr0n drove the continuing development of the internet
2. Internet pr0n is becoming increasingly technologically sophisticated and interactive
3. Mobile devices are the natural extension of the internet
4. Use of cell phones among children is increasingly prevalent
5. Graphics from cell phones can now be projected on to your shirt
6. Oh dear...
Why restricted? All you need to do is hack MudSH to be a bit more, uh, challenging to your users ("You turn left into /etc. A giant firebreathing dragon labelled 'root' awaits you.")
This is actually a great idea. /dev/null is so much more cost-effective for storing large amounts of broadcast-quality TV then ugly, expensive hard drives or tapes.
Fair enough point, but there's something a bit special about computer games. Like CDs, games include a little booklet. I personally find it more convenient to buy something and have the commands right there at my fingertips (on a dead tree) than having to background my game and check a file somewhere. Sounds simple, but hey, it's true. I know I could print it out, but to be honest, I am not terribly averse to just spending the money and getting on with life.
Also, I prefer online games, where it's easy to check for valid keys. I will readily pirate a multiplayer game to try offline a bit until I think I'm ready and know whether the game's worthwhile, at which point I will usually buy it for networked play.
Putting my fist through a laptop in sheer fury.
Note to self, it's not worth it.
I hate computers.
Why is this moderated flamebait?
The poster has a very good point. There is a reason why 419 scams are named as they are--after a section of Nigeria's penal code. Simply stated, the occurrence of types of wire fraud is higher in some countries than others--while putting together a security incident response team for a client, we found a whole "419 ISP" infrastructure located in Ghana, including several subnets, mail servers on multiple operating systems, and loads of what we assumed were semipublic terminals dedicated to sending out fraudulent crap.
We gathered through a bit of digging that an Israeli company was at least partially behind the whole deal, but this was by no means an isolated incident.
I have very very serious problems with the criteria for inclusion in many commercial blacklists--including censorware, antispam and others. However, in many cases, inclusion is justified. If a country sees a high rate of blacklisting, well, do something about it.
A few years ago, Switzerland had free SMS phone gateways--many UK providers blocked SMS traffic from here, as their subscribers were being mercilessly spammed. The block was justified, and the local telcos took action; now it's no more. Asking others to at least investigate whether there's some good reason behind a blacklist, and if so, eliminating it, is not excessive.
...but at times effective. I can't say anything about Macedonia, as I've not had any interaction with anything from that country to my knowledge (except for the thuggish looking gentlemen in black BMWs who cruise around my city with FYROM bumper stickers) but in our case, just blacklisting all Thai, Chinese and Korean IPs from sending us mail has done absolute miracles for our spam counts...
When I am employed on a project, I work a lot. When I come home, I like to unwind playing games a bit. Maybe I'm missing the point, but sometimes I just don't _want_ to solve a problem the subtle, elegant way--I played Deus Ex once, and after being told that it was possible to solve it without firing a shot, I resolved to finish the game in as violent, confrontational a manner as possible.
Why? Pure fun. From listening to friends who finished it, I believe there are plenty of intelligent, thinking gamers out there who will not put their head through the wall figuring out how to finish a game. Not me--that's (usually) not my style. I like the fact that less ham-handed ways of solving games are available, for the rare times when I feel like doing the intellectual thing, but usually, well, thag smash crush.
That said, Deus Ex 2 licked the sweat from a dead man's b***s. The plot, the dialogues, the voice acting, the characters were cheesy and contrived and the developers should look to themselves before criticizing the gamers. Maybe the people blowing up the turrets were just annoyed that they'd just spent 40 bucks on such a crappy game?
No no, you're talking metric bits/bytes. He means imperial.
Sheesh, those Europeans, always trying to get everyone to change to their kooky system.
"sound like a robot"? Friend, I strongly recommend you do a google search for 'eliza'.
You may be surprised.
Don't laugh, it exists.
Yeah, but show me the part about the balloon that got there within 2 minutes.
*pop* "AAAIEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" *splat*
Point taken, but wasn't Last Tango in Paris considered "unsuitable for children" exactly because of all the sex and nudity?
:-)
Or, I guess they could have a "porn" rating, one for "artsy but adults only", one for "loads of nekkid boffing, but done very tastefully", one for "s00per violent and gross", and one for everything from "Samuel L. Bronkowitz Presents".
Sorry, I had to laugh out loud at this:
http://www.airbornelaser.com/fun/
"Fun stuff: This section has been removed at the request of AirborneLaser".
What do you mean, the Pentagon has no sense of humor?
imagine him falling into the flamy thingie
Hm I just did and I think it'd be pretty damn funny. "He went out with a bang!"
"It's raining men", indeed.
You apologize after cold-clocking someone.
You paint smiley faces and flowers on your smart bombs ("just saying hi!")
You shoot for the knees rather than the head (hey, extra challenge)
You send nice flower bouquets and balloons to people you just fragged
You run your tanks on "green" diesel
You think about it for a really really really long time before krushing someone
You train your special forces to creep up behind people and say "BOO!" really loud to try and scare 'em off.
Whenever you wipe out a third world dictator, you send him a friendly card ("blue is the sky, green is the grass, thanks for letting us kick your ass")
Works a charm. Yah for pacifism!