2400bps? damn.. you're a young one.. some of us started using 300 baud accoustic copplers. Not only were they slow, but if there had been mp3s at the time, you wouldn't have been able to listen to them over speakers for fear you might lose your connection;)
Somehow I think some people are mistaking "checking" and "controlling".
Yes, you can check how much bandwidth you used so far.
No, you can't really control it, at least if you use your connection regularly for more than "checking you bank account and then logging off".
As soon as you start using bittorrent or another P2P network (and there are actual legal reasons to do that), your computer is going to receive and send tons of packets. The funny part comes when you closed your client and you keep on receiving requests from other people who have your IP Address as a potential seeder. Even more funny when you have a dynamic IP and get seeding requests because the guy who had the IP address before you was sharing the latest American Idol album. Similarly, if you're using an IM, chances are your client is continuously sending and receiving packets, even if you're not actively talking to someone.
Another nice case? You have a FTP or SSH server, and some idiot runs a bot to brute-force your root password. If you're unlucky, he'll be doing this for a few hours, resulting in a lot of unwanted traffic.
There is no way to control the amount of data coming and going from your router. You can check, yes.. but apart from avoiding being connected as much as possible, there's nothing you can do to actively CONTROL it.
yep. Something similar crossed my mind when I read about it at the shop.
Thankfully, it's not as bad as its name. It's based on Fedora8, and uses a slightly modified xfce desktop. My biggest complaint with it is that stuff stops working if you install the wrong things from the fedora repos, but that might just be the Acer part of the pus.
Seems like I hit someone's nerve here.. I'll try to go for the 3rd Troll mod in a row then :
I'm *not* making shit up. I just can't be bothered to remember the correct sequence of rather boring shit happening in Crysis. If Aztec is the guy who was hanging from the tree (damn...I really didn't see that one coming), then it came fairly early after parachuting down, and the sheer length of the damn un-breakable cutscene made it feel like there were more than one.
And no, cutscenes are not the devil. Some games use them well, in small doses. When a game consists mainly of cutscenes and the actual gameplay consists of pressing a randomly changing "continue" button though, then the game is, in my book, a PoS. If I want to watch a movie, I'll pop in a DVD. Developping tension and a story without the use of cutscenes is more difficult, as you can't rely on the player to, for example, look at the blood dripping on the floor, and then slowly pan up to reveal the bloody cadaver of a guy he really doesn't care about., and very few games come to mind which did it well... somehow Crysis doesn't appear in the list.
If you want something in that class with a decent keyboard, check out the Acer Aspire One.
Bought one for 329 euros a few days ago, and its keyboard is really good (I can type blind with it.. that's how good it is). Only stupid design decision is to put the page up/page down keys directly above the cursor keys.
Apart from the Linpus distro which is a bit touchy when it gets to updating some libs, I don't regret the buy
When an architect designs a building, if you're not an architect you'll have to just hope he knows what he's doing, both from a structural and from an ergonomical point of view.
When you go to a doctor, he might or might not find out about your low blood sugar. If you are to have an operation, you first have to sign a disclaimer.
Of course, if you're an architect yourself, you will know whether his conduct and the resulting product are professional. Same if you are a doctor.
And similarly, if you are not a web-coding monkey, you won't know whether a PHP website is a work of art or not. Nor will you be able to infer from someone bashing a whole programming language just because he happens to have some dislike for it, that the person is far away from being professional itself.
what one views as professional depends a lot on the point of view and personal experience
From the trailers and TFA, heavy rain will be MGS4-like in that it's about pressing the right buttons at the right time. Thus the relevance
Crysis... I honestly can't say I played it long. I tried it at a friend's who had the gear to run it. My experience went like this : I am in a plane, I can move my head around, I jump out of the plane, I can move my head around a bit.. uiii.. shiny clouds... I land and run for 30 sec. first cutscene. I run a bit more, shoot 2 enemies, next cutscene... I run a bit more... cutscene... I run a tiny bit more... the sun goes up.. uhh.. cutscene. That's where I gave up.
Interestingly, the best game of the last few years in my opinion used a relatively old (but quite good) engine and had exactly TWO cutscenes. The first one when you woke up, and the last one where you were not served cake. Somehow it was able to convey a complex and interesting story all the same.
There's also a sense of distance and scale because going on foot to the next objective can often take a very long time.
Due to the 10 cut-scenes you have the pleasure to watch while trying to get from A to B.
Realistic graphics in a game don't make a good game. They can help make a game better. If a game is 90% cutscenes, intercut with "now press the A-,X-, up-, up- buttons, then pause exactly 4.5 secs, and press Y to get to the next 10 minute long cutscene" interaction, then they are the equivalent to a (BAD) Steve Jackson Gamebook or, more accurately, one of the old Laserdisc-based games. They are not games. They are movies with an interactive element thrown in.
Having been an on_site customer of a DSL company, I can assure you that on-site techs do think that they are paid to show up and aren't actually there to make sure the services their employers sells to me are working. Here are how I view the ways they've tried to just end the call/go away without fixing anything :
1. "Explain that the issue is elsewhere and that preventing me from leaving will only prolong their outage." : "Elsewhere" WHERE?If the problem is not here, you can still call your colleagues, who will fix the thing wherever elsewhere is and you can stay where you are to make sure you actually fixed my problem. THAT is your job.
2. "Show that the problem is with their own equipment, and that I'm not responsible for it." Always a good one : if there was no powersurge (a UPS works wonder to avoid losing equipment to those), no changes in the configuration nor the equipment, and everything has been rebooted and checked just ffs, and it still doesn't work, then saying that it's my equipment is pure BS. Like #1, all you do is push the responsability on someone else. As there is nobody besides me (the customer) and your employer ( which you are paid to represent), there is noone to take the blame, no matter how hard you try.
3. That's called blackmailing, and might result in a lawsuit against you and your employer.
4. and I might offer to have your head on a plate and your job down the drain.. depending on how good a customer I am (for your employer)
The key in getting some sort of service from ISPs is to ask to speak with superiors until you get someone who can't do anything for you directly but will get pissed at his subordinates for passing the call up.
Context sensitive translation for non french speakers :
"{Mild expletive censored because you know children might read this}! Green thing not found at McDonald! Green thing not found at McDonald! Arnold Schwarzeneger"
even more strangely, three of the four reviewers never reviewed anything but this book, and the fourth had only three reviews, one of which was about shoes. Oh.. and it was writen by an someone with an indian name... cheat?!
Yes. I know about ATI releasing the specs, which is why I said it might have gotten better now, though I guess it's going to be some time before we see anything happen (but it probably will)
you should get your facts straight : ATI's linux drivers are atrocious (might have changed in the last 6 months or so, but I wouldn't bet on it)
Between the two, only nVidia has halfway good drivers for their products.
An anonymous informed source at Apple (code name : "SteveJ_001") confirmed that your informed source wasn't THAT informed.
From this: "Jobs commented on one of the hot-button issues: He confirmed that the iPhone operating system contains a kill switch that gives Apple the capability to reach into an iPhone (presumably during a sync operation) and remove a malicious application.
"Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull," he said."
Doesn't say anything about Core Location, just that it can remove whole application deemed "malicious". Interestingly, from the same article: 'Separately, an Apple spokeswoman defended the decision to pull a program called I Am Rich, which cost $999.99 and did nothing but display the image of a ruby on the iPhoneâ(TM)s screen, off the App Store shelves. She characterized it as a "judgment call."'
So, it *IS* a kill switch, and Apple admits being judgemental about the applications people should have/buy and which one they shouldn't. Spin this!
I won't comment on your complete answer, but this really caught my eye:
picture/sound quality - dvd isn't that big of an improvement over VHS really, Especially at the time. Dolby Digital is nice (DTS not even available yet), but back then the equipment was very expensive so the only ones who saw an improvement in audio quality were those with lots of money to buy an expensive stereo. Early DVD encoding wasn't great, picture quality was better than VHS but really not by much. (I think the jump to hi-def is a much bigger improvement than even the best dvd over vhs)
Picture and sound quality was absolutely brilliant compared to VHS. I don't know what you were smoking back then, but VHS always had horrid quality, with bleeding colours and an awfull resolution.
The only reason it survived for 9 years after DVDs came out is that home DVD "recorders" were expensive. The big difference between VHS vs DVD and DVD vs Bluray is that you could see the great improvement DVDs brought on your standard TV set, whereas the improvement from DVD to BluRay is not apparent, unless you change your whole setup... and even then it's not sure it's really worth the money.
The beautifull thing about EVE is that playing doesn't involve actually *PLAYING*. you pay CCP for the right to level while offline.
If you feel the urge to actually go online, you should have some good mining bots. This way, you'll be able to watch a movie on your tv-set in the living room, instead of having to check whether it's time to hit the "return to base to unload button"
Once you've spent enough time not playing, you'll be able to join corporation-wide battles, which involves incredibly high-tech weapons which can kill your opponents half a light year away. Of course, that means you won't actually ever see exciting battles. You'll only survive/be able to stay in your corp, of course, if you do exactly what your commanding officer says. Soloing is *NOT* an option
So, join EVE! It's like real life, you'll work for others while doing highly repetitive tasks,but at least you don't have to log on much!
I was talking about the Shuffle, so the video aspect is not an issue.
The lack of clip isn't exactly a problem : the Stone, like the Shuffle, is extremely small, and virtually unbreakable unless you directly step on it. The best way to carry it is in any pocket, if you don't mind people not knowing what your mp3 player looks like.
If I have the option between a belt-clip or more functions, no worries about iTune not running on my OS of choice and the additional ability to be used as a USB stick for a price that's a fifth cheaper, I guess I'll pass on the belt clip . Your mileage might vary of course
Creative Labs Zen Stone, comparable to the Shuffle (none of the jagged edges GP was complaining about), supports MP3 and no DRM, can be used as a USB stick, supports directories and sequential directory Fast-Forward (which the shuffle *can't*!), comes in different cool color and a very nice design, with approx. the same size as a Shuffle. Sound quality is subjective, but as far as I read, the Zen Stone sounds better than the Shuffle
First price tag found when googling "creative labs zen stone" : $34.99
If that's the case, then complain at VMWare. Their Ubuntu8.04 image is screwed up for people with non QWERTY keyboards. The VMWare tools are also not available as.deb package, which means that anybody trying Ubuntu in VMWare will necessarily go through a compile (and probably subsequently say that "Linux is not ready for the desktop, cause you have to compile stuff just to install")
A standard Ubuntu 8.04 install sets up the keyboard correctly.
Re:2008 - The Desktop Linux Dream Is Dead
on
OSCON 2008 Roundup
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· Score: 1
Sounds less like spam and more like FUD to me. Any/. Dev wanna check from which IP address GP and this comment came from? Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if they came from the Redmond area.
I guess GP meant that the employees are paid for normal hours while working long ones. There was a story about that here some times ago, but I can't find it anymore.
Making a device that is easy to break makes failure of a noble endeavor that much more likley.
"easy to break" as in "booting windows and connecting to the internet without firewall or AV? The OLPC's SUGAR software can be reset to its original state by pressing one button.
Like many ~older~ people, my first computers (Casio PB100 portable computer and then a C64) were tinker-friendly. I learned programming because 1) I thought it was interesting, and 2) the OS I was using gave me the tools to do so right away. Checking the source code of most programs was just a matter of typing "list", and changing it was just moving the cursor and typing.
That's what SUGAR offers. most kids won't do it, but I'm pretty sure quite a lot will. Apart from a possible dev career, programming is a good exercise in logical and structured thinking. So, even if they don't go on and stay in the IT field, they'll probably be better at math and science due to it, and will have better perspectives
What does XP offer in that regard, except the means to learn how to use office software?
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2400bps? damn .. you're a young one .. some of us started using 300 baud accoustic copplers. Not only were they slow, but if there had been mp3s at the time, you wouldn't have been able to listen to them over speakers for fear you might lose your connection ;)
Because the last time I checked, I wasn't forced to use water, gas or electricity by people who happened to pass by.
A better analogy is your phone bill : would you want to pay everytime someone calls you, just beacuse you actually answered?
Somehow I think some people are mistaking "checking" and "controlling".
Yes, you can check how much bandwidth you used so far.
No, you can't really control it, at least if you use your connection regularly for more than "checking you bank account and then logging off".
As soon as you start using bittorrent or another P2P network (and there are actual legal reasons to do that), your computer is going to receive and send tons of packets. The funny part comes when you closed your client and you keep on receiving requests from other people who have your IP Address as a potential seeder. Even more funny when you have a dynamic IP and get seeding requests because the guy who had the IP address before you was sharing the latest American Idol album.
Similarly, if you're using an IM, chances are your client is continuously sending and receiving packets, even if you're not actively talking to someone.
Another nice case? You have a FTP or SSH server, and some idiot runs a bot to brute-force your root password.
If you're unlucky, he'll be doing this for a few hours, resulting in a lot of unwanted traffic.
There is no way to control the amount of data coming and going from your router. You can check, yes .. but apart from avoiding being connected as much as possible, there's nothing you can do to actively CONTROL it.
Thankfully, it's not as bad as its name. It's based on Fedora8, and uses a slightly modified xfce desktop. My biggest complaint with it is that stuff stops working if you install the wrong things from the fedora repos, but that might just be the Acer part of the pus.
Seems like I hit someone's nerve here .. I'll try to go for the 3rd Troll mod in a row then :
I'm *not* making shit up. I just can't be bothered to remember the correct sequence of rather boring shit happening in Crysis. If Aztec is the guy who was hanging from the tree (damn ...I really didn't see that one coming), then it came fairly early after parachuting down, and the sheer length of the damn un-breakable cutscene made it feel like there were more than one.
And no, cutscenes are not the devil. Some games use them well, in small doses. When a game consists mainly of cutscenes and the actual gameplay consists of pressing a randomly changing "continue" button though, then the game is, in my book, a PoS. If I want to watch a movie, I'll pop in a DVD. ... somehow Crysis doesn't appear in the list.
Developping tension and a story without the use of cutscenes is more difficult, as you can't rely on the player to, for example, look at the blood dripping on the floor, and then slowly pan up to reveal the bloody cadaver of a guy he really doesn't care about., and very few games come to mind which did it well
If you want something in that class with a decent keyboard, check out the Acer Aspire One. .. that's how good it is).
Bought one for 329 euros a few days ago, and its keyboard is really good (I can type blind with it
Only stupid design decision is to put the page up/page down keys directly above the cursor keys.
Apart from the Linpus distro which is a bit touchy when it gets to updating some libs, I don't regret the buy
When an architect designs a building, if you're not an architect you'll have to just hope he knows what he's doing, both from a structural and from an ergonomical point of view.
When you go to a doctor, he might or might not find out about your low blood sugar. If you are to have an operation, you first have to sign a disclaimer.
Of course, if you're an architect yourself, you will know whether his conduct and the resulting product are professional. Same if you are a doctor.
And similarly, if you are not a web-coding monkey, you won't know whether a PHP website is a work of art or not. Nor will you be able to infer from someone bashing a whole programming language just because he happens to have some dislike for it, that the person is far away from being professional itself.
what one views as professional depends a lot on the point of view and personal experience
From the trailers and TFA, heavy rain will be MGS4-like in that it's about pressing the right buttons at the right time. Thus the relevance
Crysis ... I honestly can't say I played it long. I tried it at a friend's who had the gear to run it. My experience went like this : .. uiii .. shiny clouds... I land and run for 30 sec. first cutscene. I run a bit more, shoot 2 enemies, next cutscene ... I run a bit more ... cutscene ... I run a tiny bit more ... the sun goes up .. uhh .. cutscene.
I am in a plane, I can move my head around, I jump out of the plane, I can move my head around a bit
That's where I gave up.
Interestingly, the best game of the last few years in my opinion used a relatively old (but quite good) engine and had exactly TWO cutscenes. The first one when you woke up, and the last one where you were not served cake. Somehow it was able to convey a complex and interesting story all the same.
There's also a sense of distance and scale because going on foot to the next objective can often take a very long time.
Due to the 10 cut-scenes you have the pleasure to watch while trying to get from A to B.
Realistic graphics in a game don't make a good game. They can help make a game better. If a game is 90% cutscenes, intercut with "now press the A-,X-, up-, up- buttons, then pause exactly 4.5 secs, and press Y to get to the next 10 minute long cutscene" interaction, then they are the equivalent to a (BAD) Steve Jackson Gamebook or, more accurately, one of the old Laserdisc-based games. They are not games. They are movies with an interactive element thrown in.
Having been an on_site customer of a DSL company, I can assure you that on-site techs do think that they are paid to show up and aren't actually there to make sure the services their employers sells to me are working. Here are how I view the ways they've tried to just end the call/go away without fixing anything :
1. "Explain that the issue is elsewhere and that preventing me from leaving will only prolong their outage." : "Elsewhere" WHERE?If the problem is not here, you can still call your colleagues, who will fix the thing wherever elsewhere is and you can stay where you are to make sure you actually fixed my problem. THAT is your job.
2. "Show that the problem is with their own equipment, and that I'm not responsible for it." Always a good one : if there was no powersurge (a UPS works wonder to avoid losing equipment to those), no changes in the configuration nor the equipment, and everything has been rebooted and checked just ffs, and it still doesn't work, then saying that it's my equipment is pure BS. Like #1, all you do is push the responsability on someone else. As there is nobody besides me (the customer) and your employer ( which you are paid to represent), there is noone to take the blame, no matter how hard you try.
3. That's called blackmailing, and might result in a lawsuit against you and your employer.
4. and I might offer to have your head on a plate and your job down the drain .. depending on how good a customer I am (for your employer)
The key in getting some sort of service from ISPs is to ask to speak with superiors until you get someone who can't do anything for you directly but will get pissed at his subordinates for passing the call up.
Context sensitive translation for non french speakers :
"{Mild expletive censored because you know children might read this}! Green thing not found at McDonald! Green thing not found at McDonald! Arnold Schwarzeneger"
even more strangely, three of the four reviewers never reviewed anything but this book, and the fourth had only three reviews, one of which was about shoes. Oh .. and it was writen by an someone with an indian name ... cheat?!
Yes. I know about ATI releasing the specs, which is why I said it might have gotten better now, though I guess it's going to be some time before we see anything happen (but it probably will)
you should get your facts straight : ATI's linux drivers are atrocious (might have changed in the last 6 months or so, but I wouldn't bet on it) Between the two, only nVidia has halfway good drivers for their products.
Virus scanner *ASK* you whether you want to disable applications or files before doing so, unless you tell them to do it automatically.
An anonymous informed source at Apple (code name : "SteveJ_001") confirmed that your informed source wasn't THAT informed.
From this :
"Jobs commented on one of the hot-button issues: He confirmed that the iPhone operating system contains a kill switch that gives Apple the capability to reach into an iPhone (presumably during a sync operation) and remove a malicious application. "Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull," he said."
Doesn't say anything about Core Location, just that it can remove whole application deemed "malicious". Interestingly, from the same article :
'Separately, an Apple spokeswoman defended the decision to pull a program called I Am Rich, which cost $999.99 and did nothing but display the image of a ruby on the iPhoneâ(TM)s screen, off the App Store shelves. She characterized it as a "judgment call."'
So, it *IS* a kill switch, and Apple admits being judgemental about the applications people should have/buy and which one they shouldn't. Spin this!
I won't comment on your complete answer, but this really caught my eye :
picture/sound quality - dvd isn't that big of an improvement over VHS really, Especially at the time. Dolby Digital is nice (DTS not even available yet), but back then the equipment was very expensive so the only ones who saw an improvement in audio quality were those with lots of money to buy an expensive stereo. Early DVD encoding wasn't great, picture quality was better than VHS but really not by much. (I think the jump to hi-def is a much bigger improvement than even the best dvd over vhs)
Picture and sound quality was absolutely brilliant compared to VHS. I don't know what you were smoking back then, but VHS always had horrid quality, with bleeding colours and an awfull resolution. ... and even then it's not sure it's really worth the money.
The only reason it survived for 9 years after DVDs came out is that home DVD "recorders" were expensive.
The big difference between VHS vs DVD and DVD vs Bluray is that you could see the great improvement DVDs brought on your standard TV set, whereas the improvement from DVD to BluRay is not apparent, unless you change your whole setup
Very impressive setup.
Let me guess : you're NOT working for Apple, right?
The beautifull thing about EVE is that playing doesn't involve actually *PLAYING*. you pay CCP for the right to level while offline.
If you feel the urge to actually go online, you should have some good mining bots. This way, you'll be able to watch a movie on your tv-set in the living room, instead of having to check whether it's time to hit the "return to base to unload button"
Once you've spent enough time not playing, you'll be able to join corporation-wide battles, which involves incredibly high-tech weapons which can kill your opponents half a light year away. Of course, that means you won't actually ever see exciting battles. You'll only survive/be able to stay in your corp, of course, if you do exactly what your commanding officer says. Soloing is *NOT* an option
So, join EVE! It's like real life, you'll work for others while doing highly repetitive tasks,but at least you don't have to log on much!
I was talking about the Shuffle, so the video aspect is not an issue.
The lack of clip isn't exactly a problem : the Stone, like the Shuffle, is extremely small, and virtually unbreakable unless you directly step on it. The best way to carry it is in any pocket, if you don't mind people not knowing what your mp3 player looks like.
If I have the option between a belt-clip or more functions, no worries about iTune not running on my OS of choice and the additional ability to be used as a USB stick for a price that's a fifth cheaper, I guess I'll pass on the belt clip . Your mileage might vary of course
Creative Labs Zen Stone, comparable to the Shuffle (none of the jagged edges GP was complaining about), supports MP3 and no DRM, can be used as a USB stick, supports directories and sequential directory Fast-Forward (which the shuffle *can't*!), comes in different cool color and a very nice design, with approx. the same size as a Shuffle. Sound quality is subjective, but as far as I read, the Zen Stone sounds better than the Shuffle
First price tag found when googling "creative labs zen stone" : $34.99
"virtual applicance"? as in : runs in VmWare?
If that's the case, then complain at VMWare. .deb package, which means that anybody trying Ubuntu in VMWare will necessarily go through a compile (and probably subsequently say that "Linux is not ready for the desktop, cause you have to compile stuff just to install")
Their Ubuntu8.04 image is screwed up for people with non QWERTY keyboards. The VMWare tools are also not available as
A standard Ubuntu 8.04 install sets up the keyboard correctly.
Sounds less like spam and more like FUD to me. Any /. Dev wanna check from which IP address GP and this comment came from? Somehow I wouldn't be surprised if they came from the Redmond area.
I guess GP meant that the employees are paid for normal hours while working long ones. There was a story about that here some times ago, but I can't find it anymore.
Making a device that is easy to break makes failure of a noble endeavor that much more likley.
"easy to break" as in "booting windows and connecting to the internet without firewall or AV? The OLPC's SUGAR software can be reset to its original state by pressing one button.
Like many ~older~ people, my first computers (Casio PB100 portable computer and then a C64) were tinker-friendly. I learned programming because
1) I thought it was interesting, and
2) the OS I was using gave me the tools to do so right away. Checking the source code of most programs was just a matter of typing "list", and changing it was just moving the cursor and typing.
That's what SUGAR offers. most kids won't do it, but I'm pretty sure quite a lot will. Apart from a possible dev career, programming is a good exercise in logical and structured thinking. So, even if they don't go on and stay in the IT field, they'll probably be better at math and science due to it, and will have better perspectives
What does XP offer in that regard, except the means to learn how to use office software?