You also have to blame the football double headers on FOX. Games are scheduled for a 3 hr block of TV time but notoriously go over; FOX has yet to complete it's coverage of a second game (save for last week, they didn't show a second game, opting for the Phantom Menace) by 7pm EST, and typically will bounce to other games they are covering if any are still being played when another game is over. Plus their 'team' has to get in their last words, so not only has Futurama not been seen (save for West Coast), but poor King of the Hill has been pre-empted nearly every week too (and IMO, this show is getting too little respect; it's not laugh a minute, but is very close in the combination of laughter and human emotion that Simpsons had in seasons 1-6.)
Actually, there's more of a trick to this than you think.
Any other field outside of IT, where people rarely work more than 40-50hrs a week, it's quite common for workers to mingle after work in activities, have parties for other coworkers, etc.
Since you only see these people for maybe upwards of an hour a day on average, they can be friends, or if you have problematic workers, you only have to deal with them for a short time, and thus they don't cause too much social trauma in the workplace. Additionally, 40 hr/wk, plus, say, an addition 10hr/wk with coworker activities, still leaves plenty of personal and family time, so it's balanced well.
In IT, where it's very easy to be required to work 60hr+/wk, you're seeing your coworkers a lot more than just an 1hr a day, and particularly if you have annoying coworkers, every extra minute can add up. Because you're now spending more time at work, you also tend to value your personal time more, and doing outside-work activities with coworkers probably loses out to getting away from them. And typically IT work can be a stressful job given the typical 'gap' between what the IT worker knows and what the customer knows, with the IT worker having to try to bridge that gap. All those factors make for the IT workplace to be potentially socially-stressed.
That's not to say that every IT workplace is like that, and I think that's the gist of this question; is there a commonality to social life of the IT workplace, or are their shining examples or dreadful situations that are worth hearing about?
And I'll also point out that the federal Supreme Court, by not deciding to take a case, has also acknowledged that WA state's spam laws do not violate the Commerce clause as stated by the WA Supreme Court, since they are aimed to prevent fraud (such as false headers or incorrect removal instructions) as opposed to restricting commercial speech as other anti-spam laws have tried to done in the past. See this CNet story, for example (Tried to submit this when this was hot, of course it was rejected:-)
In conjunction with his new book, Newsweek this week had a brief interview with him, mostly covering similar concerns; again, not enough space to convey everything that is wrong, but a very good read for JQPublic. (Eg, he likens how before the Internet, talking about Star Trek amoung friends was concidered benign, now you have to play on PAramont's rules if you use the Internet).
If I was charged a penny a page for a physical medium item like a newspaper or magazine, I know that 1) there would be no physical problems in delivering that page to me and 2) I can use that page over and over again.
In the internet medium, what happens if the routing decides to go south while that page was being delivered, requiring me to reload? What happens if I click a link on that page that took me to some place off site to read more about something, then when going back, the browser was forced to re-request the site again? What if I want to use that page as a reference, bookmarking, but being charged a penny ever time I accessed it?
(Yes, there's ways to bookkeep around all these problems, but I doubt that most sites would figure out all the right nuances).
There's just too many technical problems that can happen that a pay-per-page scheme can work. Instead, if those sites that cannot continue to fund themselves on banner ads should either look into 1) getting a better targetted banner ad provider, just as how/. has done, which will have a much better click-thru rate for your site, or 2) adopt a pay-per-term such as Salon has done for premium content. In the latter case, if your content is that good, you'll thrive (as I understand it, Salon's Premium is doing well, given their good content to start with), but otherwise, you'll flounder (and maybe for good reason).
And in the end, while I don't do it know, a web site with content and delivery like Salon would be worth about the same price as a magazine subscription for a year (eg $30-$40/yr) as long as it's unlimited access to the site.
One of the problems right now in the PC and the console gaming market is the type of games. Most PC games have been designer, at least at the single player level, for you to have to sit down for a few hours to play at a time, and many lack randomness or other aspects that increase the playability of games. (Particularly, there is a inversely proportional relationship; games that tend offer a lot of randomness also demand a lot of time (Civ 3), while fixed games don't demand this (Half-Life)).
Sometimes, I just want to play an arcade like game; lots of randomness, but little time investiment.
The games typically made for consoles are along these lines, though certainly need not be limited to these. I've been OD'ing on Crazy Taxi 1/2 of late:-), because 1) it's fast to get into, 2) short time investment for amount of fun, and 3) sufficiently random and fixed to be enjoyable. Many of the sports games for consoles are like this (I understand that this is one reason why Tony Hawk's game is hot).
There are few, if any, comparable games on the PC. The closest that seems to come this direction are games like Bejeweled, but that's less dexterity than brain power. I'd love to see more games like this on the PC, but I believe the problem is that they don't sell well because of the apparent competition from the console market.
I agree -- I would expect no less of, say, Coke or Pepsi internal sales memos when either wins over a restuarant or food distributor to their side. As long as they are using fair tactics, (in this case, numerous salespersons with the right spin on the data) there's no problem.
We do need to keep vigilant, however, for when MS may abuse their monopoly position in order to extend their markets. If MS changed an internal protocol that failed to allow SAMBA or other file server software to intermingle with established desktop machines, and used that to say "Well, you can't use Linux and MS solutions in the same place", there would be trouble.
This, however, is nothing, but does at least reflect that Linux is no laughing matter at MS. How's the mantra go? "First they laugh at you, then they compete with you, then you win"?
I'll add from playing Rune on the PC (twice) that the single player version of the game can get frustrating as well.
Part of the problem is that because this is no longer a shoot-em-up, there's no ammo problems. With HL, you could choose to try to mow down headcrabs with a rare hand grendade, or slowly but precisely pick them off one by one with common pistol bullets. With Rune, you chose if you want to slash, hack, or bash, and work from there. Yes, sheilds could be damaged, but I rarely used it; once the big weapons were present, I forgot about the sheild as I could run forward, attack, then run back better than defending by blockign the attack. So there was little incentive to play 'cautiously' in the game.
Also, the SP levels were rather poorly laid out. After you got past the setup, the first several levels were all wimpy enemies with the worse being the tube-claw monsters that were a pain to kill because of timing. This went on for *several* levels. Then you come across the netherrealm with *very* hard enemies that you have to decapitate in order to kill, and the only way to decap them was to jump up and slice or hack; you couldn't easily decap at ground level with them. This got tedious very very fast. However, after that set of levels, the game becomes a bit more interesting, but you've already done 1/3rd of it without a lot of exciting payoff, IMO.
Interesting when you talk about Oni; it has a small ammo/efficiency aspect, since you can choose to use weapons instead of fistdecuffs to win (and in some cases, that was a better solution), but again, the end portion of the game got boring since it was simply using the same moves on the same types of opponents, just in increasingly larger numbers. Great idea, but the SP just got boring particularly with the overly-large levels.
Many Mobo makers (at least, those that work with AMD chipsets) appear to plan ahead when they design the board and BIOs, in that while the initial revision of the board might only support
up to a given CPU, but as the newer CPUs (which they knew were in the AMD pipeline, just not when) are released, they can release BIOS upgrades that allow the newer chips to be used on the older motherboards. If you are actively swapping out your CPU every time there's an upgrade, you can probably get a year's worth out of a brand new mobo.
Plus, with the cost of the mobo outweighed nowadays by CPU and video card costs, it's rather reasonable to update your mobo when you get a new CPU
Well, for example, I got MI1 and 2 through a deal with the MI3 package, but both are DOS games. While they run ok, there's now a problem with sound in DOS games, particularly with most SB cards and newer mobos (generally, you always diable SB16 emulation, which disables the ability to use sound in games).
With a Windows or Linux based system, the sound can now be processed by the modern drivers, and thus avoiding this problem with lack of sound. So being able to play these old games, just for the fun of it, is now possible again.
I believe a day after that possible local user exploit was discovered, in which the 2.4.x series was patched, they released what best could be called an interim 2.2, labeled 2.2.19.1. At least, from debian's info, here's what 2.2.19.1 had (note the high priority for a kernel image:)
kernel-source-2.2.19 (2.2.19.1-1) stable unstable; urgency=high
* Removed non-free Keyspan firmware (closes: #113382).
* Fixed suid ptrace exploit (Solar Designer).
* Fixed local symlink DoS (Solar Designer).
* Added support for nm256xl+ (Mattia Monga, closes: #113343).
If only we told people how to *use* computers as opposed to teaching them to click on specific buttons and using specific menu items to do specific tasks...
Typically, as long as an OS has a consistent interface *and* plenty of help, I doubt a well-trained computer user will get lost. However, sheep that are trained on how to use Windows or Word or Excel will flounder when they have to deviate a bit from the path.
The XP interface isn't terrible. (I'm a sucker for AA fonts and alpha layer fun). All the buttons are in the usual places, but look just a bit different. But because we've "trained" people to look for a black X on a grey button in the top right corner of a blue-background window border in order to close a window, the new XP interface will give those sheep headaches. Microsoft's fault? No; I blame "..For Dummies" and the rest for the sheep mentality.
Remember that Nethack is real-world-clock-sensitive. If you play on a Friday the 13th, past midnight, or on Halloween, a lot of fun but deadly things can happen.
Of course, there's a better chance at getting some of the better goodies when the difficulty is higher, so it might be worth trying...
My current system is a 1.2ghz tbird on a KT7A-Raid board, as it replaced a shot 600mhz P2 & mobo in the middle of the summer. With that 600mhz, I didn't even think about system health (the few checks I made showed the CPU at no greater than 40degC ever). However, with this new system, I freaked out during the initial months with the temperature issue. Using the supplied heatsink and fan, my chip was running at ~50degC with case temperatures near 30degC (middle of summer). At that time, I was scared of burning out the tbird even knowning that the tbird die was meant to withstand much higher temperatures up to 95degC. So I loaded up my case with lots of fans; a slot fan near my nvidia card, two rear exhaust fans, and updating the power supply to a 400W on the AMD approved list. I got the temperature to notch down a few more degrees at the cost of extra parts and some extra noise; after running SETI on it for sufficiently long enough, I'm less worried about the health of that system though I still track it on a daily basis and have watchdog programs to shut down in case there's a problem.
This, plus all the hassles I had to do to get stability in the Nvidia card with BIOS settings (like getting the I/O voltage up from the default 3.3 to 3.6V) and some PCI issues have resolved me to investigate the custom shops (Alienware as an example) when I am looking to my next system. As I've seen in ads and reviews by Maximum PC, they know how to build temperature cool and mostly silent systems, and know how to manuever the maze of ACPI, PCI, BIOS settings, and OS configuration to make sure that the machine shipped to you is stable and ready to go. Of course, one easily pays a ~50% price tag on this on top of parts and software, but I feel that this extra cost is worth the benefit of getting a well built system, particularly in the age of dating hardware specs.
Note that it's not that I can't put these systems together that I feel this way; the 600mhz and the tbird system were all from computer show parts. However, it's the concern and hassle of dealing with a possibly unstable system that concern me.
You have a large grid. You're placed in the middle somewhere. Scattered about the level are 'daleks' or 'robots', depending on how much trouble the author wanted with BBC. Each 'turn', you move one space; each robot moves one of the eight possible directions towards you one space. If two robots ended in the same space at the end of that turn, they died and left a pile of rubble. If a robot hit the rubble after moving, it also died. If a robot touched you, or you collided with the rubble, you lost. The idea was to have all the robots collide with other robots or rubble, and leaving you alive. Typically you'd have a limited number of 'teleports' that would drop you in a random location on the grid that you could use instead of moving.
I've always wanted to play a full-size, real-life game of Daleks! (or Robots! or whatever title you remember it as!) As long as they can only move in ordinal directions, I'm set!
(or insert 'Berserk' or 'Robotron/Llamatron' to your heart's desire...:-)
Adric was play by Matthew Whitehouse on Dr. Who in the late Tom Baker/early Davidson earlys (would be early 80s without going to check myself on that). Adric was picked up for the TARDIS crew in the episode "Full Circle"; the character was a teenage boy that was awfully smart; his outfit included a gold-plated star badge that indicated an award for outstanding mathematics ability. A few episodes later (Logopolis) he learns the matematics of Block Transfer Computation which is what helps the TARDIS define it's exterior dimenssion, in only a rather short time. The next episode, Castrovalva, has the Doctor's nemesis, the Master, using Adric's new knowledge to lure the Doctor into a trap.
After that point, they don't play too much on the issue of Adric's intelligence; instead, he was a decent alternative to the always screaming Tegan and the rather quiet Nyssa.
Adric's farewell was one of the more spectactular in the series; in "Earthshock", as the Cyberman (another foe of the Doctor) have taken over a spaceship containing a large amount of explosives, taken it back in time 65million years, and plan to throw it at the earth as to destroy *all* life on the planet, Adric sacrifices himself to mearly have the ship 'glance' at the earth as opposed to a direct impact, thus reducing the force of the explosion and only killing off the dinosaurs. Before he leaves the Doctor the last time, he gives him his award badge; unfortunately, the Doctor finds that he must use it to kill off the Cyberman leader (who are fatally influenced by gold); it was the only episode of DW to end with no music over the credits, only an image of the broken badge.
Needless to say, after a few episodes, the Adric character was treated about the same as Wesley. If there was a USENET at that time, I would not be surprised to find a similar.die.die.die newsgroup.
From interviews that I've read, Matthew w. is in much of the same position as Wil is with Wesley; the role was a break into the industry, and did get a lot of negative attention; while he doesn't resent playing the role, he rather not talk about it and instead focus on his current career.
I know it's redundant, but Lucas has always said that Star Wars is aimed at kids; it's a classic tale of good vs evil when you pull out the SFX and the like. However, regardless of the plot, the Star Wars series has done wonders to push the entire movie industry forward in terms of SFX and sound improvements. So I will be going to see SW 2, despite numerous rumors that Jar-Jar is back, and while I might moan at the story, I expect to be fascinated by the production.
While MS is certainly trying to spin it there way, the end of the NYTimes article claims that the spin is going against them; particularly in light of anti-trust claims.
But I disagree that you think that MS didn't block on purpose. If all they had done was to only allow IE browsers onto the site, I can see that as being a bit of egotism and lack of foresight in whomever programmed that. However, as specifically pointed out, it was blocked certain browser strings; that is, with the default Opera identification string, it was blocked, but when it was changed by one letter, access was granted.
But again, as the NYT article indicates, that might not have been done at the upper levels; it could have been some younger native programmer not realizing the right way to impose such a block. However, given that the latter version happened over the former, it suggests there might have been much more deeper alternative motives for this switch.
HTML 4.0 has a wonderful tag called the OBJECT tag. It allows you to include multi-media content but allows multiple levels of defaults if that content can't be displayed on the target browser. (Compared to IMG, where it only has one level, the ALT tag, and this can't be formatted nicely in HTML).
E.G., if I wanted a Flash animation, but defaulting to a static JPG if Flash wasn't available, or in the case of a text browser, a
short paragraph describing what the user could have seen, I could do this:
OBJECT type="x-application/flash" src="image.swf">
<OBJECT type="image/jpg" src="image.jpg">
This is a the default text rendering here.
</OBJECT>
</OBJECT>
If OBJECT was used more, then it wouldn't matter if content was mostly in plug-ins; it should be no problem to rewrite it to use alternate methods to maximize those who can see it. In non-4.0 browsers, the code above simply looks like the inner text block, so they will still see something.
The problem is that OBJECT is yet to be strongly implemented by any browser, IE, NS, Opera, etc. Yet it was introduced in the HTML 4.0 standard, which is more than a year old, so it's a matter of getting these browser makers (all of them, not just a few select ones) up to speed on the latest approved spec asap. With how Mozilla does a separate development of the Gecko engine that handles the HTML display from the mechanics of browsing and the UI, this can help, but I doubt that one can do a similar separation with code from IE or Opera.
Actually , with regard to stuff before 1995, they're trying. I submitted a story (rejected of course) about 2 months ago that Google was hunting for specific USENET achive CDs, the "NetNews" CD collection from 1992 to 1995. The specifics are here, but basically, they have some, but are missing a lot. They'd rather have the complete collection before they put up pre-1995 articles.
Most engineering professionals can take what is known as a Professional Engineering exam; this is equivalent to the bar for lawyers or AMA certification for doctors. The test is typically done in two parts, one that you can take right after college, and the other after 5 years of 'practical' experience in the field. The first test is very general, covering all fields of engineering (fluid dynamics, chemistry, physics, mathematics, statistics, statics, etc), but the scores are weighted based on your profession; a mechanical engineer probably doesn't need to know much chemistry or statistics, but better dang well be up to speed on statics and the like. If you pass this test, you are "an Engineer in Training" (thus, this is typcially the EIT test). The second part is much more open ended and typically geared towards your profession. Passing this grants you the Professional Engineer title. (that's why you'll see P.E. after some names).
Now, the rules vary from state to state, but in most cases, you have to be a PE to design any facility, structure, or whatever that is larger than a small room, in where there may be possible issues with the public safety. Thus, you'd obviously want bridges done by mech e's, chemical plants by chem e's, etc. The idea is that the PE certification of the design ensures that the public safety has been met to a certain degree.
While this idea is great and all , there are currently major problems due to the state-by-state nature of it. For example, just like with bar tests, you need to be recertified in a new state if you move. Another problem is that because of how some aspects are designed, there's a lot of overlap of displines, and some state rules force the weaker displine to have more effect. In CA for example, in designing a chemical plant, you'll typically have a Mech E., Chem E., and Civil E. all working together on the design. However, current law states that only a Mech E's can certify the plant design; thus, the mech E can add, say, a hugh vat of sulfuric acid (a highly toxic safety hazard) for no reason, and yet could get the plans certified by him with no input from the Chem. E. In effect, the PE certification of chemical engineers is worthless in CA. There's a large number of industrial Chem E's fighting these types of rules to make it better.
Will Computer Engineers need to be certified? I would that those that are designing systems that pose potental harm to the public good, such as air traffic control systems, medical systems, water and power plans controls, should have some sort of certification, but in conjunction with those that would normally work on those projects as well. However, for the end-user's casual programs, including Windows, office software, browsering, servers, etc, it's unnecessary because those items pose very little *direct* harm to the public. (Do note that even Microsoft signs off on libilities for malfunctions of their software, and says that it shouldn't even been used in critical situations as listed above).
Of course, the other question is that where do you draw the line at what 'programming' is. Is writing a Visual Basic script programming? Is JavaScript programming? These are all tools that cannot be easily controlled as too many users use them already. So trying to limit all programming is near impossible. But certainly regulating and certifying programs that run the public infrastructure and those that write them is a good step.
Slashdot Mirror
Any other field outside of IT, where people rarely work more than 40-50hrs a week, it's quite common for workers to mingle after work in activities, have parties for other coworkers, etc. Since you only see these people for maybe upwards of an hour a day on average, they can be friends, or if you have problematic workers, you only have to deal with them for a short time, and thus they don't cause too much social trauma in the workplace. Additionally, 40 hr/wk, plus, say, an addition 10hr/wk with coworker activities, still leaves plenty of personal and family time, so it's balanced well.
In IT, where it's very easy to be required to work 60hr+/wk, you're seeing your coworkers a lot more than just an 1hr a day, and particularly if you have annoying coworkers, every extra minute can add up. Because you're now spending more time at work, you also tend to value your personal time more, and doing outside-work activities with coworkers probably loses out to getting away from them. And typically IT work can be a stressful job given the typical 'gap' between what the IT worker knows and what the customer knows, with the IT worker having to try to bridge that gap. All those factors make for the IT workplace to be potentially socially-stressed.
That's not to say that every IT workplace is like that, and I think that's the gist of this question; is there a commonality to social life of the IT workplace, or are their shining examples or dreadful situations that are worth hearing about?
And I'll also point out that the federal Supreme Court, by not deciding to take a case, has also acknowledged that WA state's spam laws do not violate the Commerce clause as stated by the WA Supreme Court, since they are aimed to prevent fraud (such as false headers or incorrect removal instructions) as opposed to restricting commercial speech as other anti-spam laws have tried to done in the past. See this CNet story, for example (Tried to submit this when this was hot, of course it was rejected :-)
Star Wars Episode 2 release to theaters in US is May 16, 2002; 20th century is aiming to get as near as possibly simulatenous release in the UK.
In conjunction with his new book, Newsweek this week had a brief interview with him, mostly covering similar concerns; again, not enough space to convey everything that is wrong, but a very good read for JQPublic. (Eg, he likens how before the Internet, talking about Star Trek amoung friends was concidered benign, now you have to play on PAramont's rules if you use the Internet).
In the internet medium, what happens if the routing decides to go south while that page was being delivered, requiring me to reload? What happens if I click a link on that page that took me to some place off site to read more about something, then when going back, the browser was forced to re-request the site again? What if I want to use that page as a reference, bookmarking, but being charged a penny ever time I accessed it?
(Yes, there's ways to bookkeep around all these problems, but I doubt that most sites would figure out all the right nuances).
There's just too many technical problems that can happen that a pay-per-page scheme can work. Instead, if those sites that cannot continue to fund themselves on banner ads should either look into 1) getting a better targetted banner ad provider, just as how /. has done, which will have a much better click-thru rate for your site, or 2) adopt a pay-per-term such as Salon has done for premium content. In the latter case, if your content is that good, you'll thrive (as I understand it, Salon's Premium is doing well, given their good content to start with), but otherwise, you'll flounder (and maybe for good reason).
And in the end, while I don't do it know, a web site with content and delivery like Salon would be worth about the same price as a magazine subscription for a year (eg $30-$40/yr) as long as it's unlimited access to the site.
Sometimes, I just want to play an arcade like game; lots of randomness, but little time investiment.
The games typically made for consoles are along these lines, though certainly need not be limited to these. I've been OD'ing on Crazy Taxi 1/2 of late :-), because 1) it's fast to get into, 2) short time investment for amount of fun, and 3) sufficiently random and fixed to be enjoyable. Many of the sports games for consoles are like this (I understand that this is one reason why Tony Hawk's game is hot).
There are few, if any, comparable games on the PC. The closest that seems to come this direction are games like Bejeweled, but that's less dexterity than brain power. I'd love to see more games like this on the PC, but I believe the problem is that they don't sell well because of the apparent competition from the console market.
We do need to keep vigilant, however, for when MS may abuse their monopoly position in order to extend their markets. If MS changed an internal protocol that failed to allow SAMBA or other file server software to intermingle with established desktop machines, and used that to say "Well, you can't use Linux and MS solutions in the same place", there would be trouble.
This, however, is nothing, but does at least reflect that Linux is no laughing matter at MS. How's the mantra go? "First they laugh at you, then they compete with you, then you win"?
Part of the problem is that because this is no longer a shoot-em-up, there's no ammo problems. With HL, you could choose to try to mow down headcrabs with a rare hand grendade, or slowly but precisely pick them off one by one with common pistol bullets. With Rune, you chose if you want to slash, hack, or bash, and work from there. Yes, sheilds could be damaged, but I rarely used it; once the big weapons were present, I forgot about the sheild as I could run forward, attack, then run back better than defending by blockign the attack. So there was little incentive to play 'cautiously' in the game.
Also, the SP levels were rather poorly laid out. After you got past the setup, the first several levels were all wimpy enemies with the worse being the tube-claw monsters that were a pain to kill because of timing. This went on for *several* levels. Then you come across the netherrealm with *very* hard enemies that you have to decapitate in order to kill, and the only way to decap them was to jump up and slice or hack; you couldn't easily decap at ground level with them. This got tedious very very fast. However, after that set of levels, the game becomes a bit more interesting, but you've already done 1/3rd of it without a lot of exciting payoff, IMO.
Interesting when you talk about Oni; it has a small ammo/efficiency aspect, since you can choose to use weapons instead of fistdecuffs to win (and in some cases, that was a better solution), but again, the end portion of the game got boring since it was simply using the same moves on the same types of opponents, just in increasingly larger numbers. Great idea, but the SP just got boring particularly with the overly-large levels.
Plus, with the cost of the mobo outweighed nowadays by CPU and video card costs, it's rather reasonable to update your mobo when you get a new CPU
With a Windows or Linux based system, the sound can now be processed by the modern drivers, and thus avoiding this problem with lack of sound. So being able to play these old games, just for the fun of it, is now possible again.
I believe a day after that possible local user exploit was discovered, in which the 2.4.x series was patched, they released what best could be called an interim 2.2, labeled 2.2.19.1. At least, from debian's info, here's what 2.2.19.1 had (note the high priority for a kernel image:) kernel-source-2.2.19 (2.2.19.1-1) stable unstable; urgency=high
* Removed non-free Keyspan firmware (closes: #113382).
* Fixed suid ptrace exploit (Solar Designer).
* Fixed local symlink DoS (Solar Designer).
* Added support for nm256xl+ (Mattia Monga, closes: #113343).
-- Herbert Xu Sat, 20 Oct 2001 17:39:35 +1000
Typically, as long as an OS has a consistent interface *and* plenty of help, I doubt a well-trained computer user will get lost. However, sheep that are trained on how to use Windows or Word or Excel will flounder when they have to deviate a bit from the path.
The XP interface isn't terrible. (I'm a sucker for AA fonts and alpha layer fun). All the buttons are in the usual places, but look just a bit different. But because we've "trained" people to look for a black X on a grey button in the top right corner of a blue-background window border in order to close a window, the new XP interface will give those sheep headaches. Microsoft's fault? No; I blame "..For Dummies" and the rest for the sheep mentality.
Of course, there's a better chance at getting some of the better goodies when the difficulty is higher, so it might be worth trying...
This, plus all the hassles I had to do to get stability in the Nvidia card with BIOS settings (like getting the I/O voltage up from the default 3.3 to 3.6V) and some PCI issues have resolved me to investigate the custom shops (Alienware as an example) when I am looking to my next system. As I've seen in ads and reviews by Maximum PC, they know how to build temperature cool and mostly silent systems, and know how to manuever the maze of ACPI, PCI, BIOS settings, and OS configuration to make sure that the machine shipped to you is stable and ready to go. Of course, one easily pays a ~50% price tag on this on top of parts and software, but I feel that this extra cost is worth the benefit of getting a well built system, particularly in the age of dating hardware specs.
Note that it's not that I can't put these systems together that I feel this way; the 600mhz and the tbird system were all from computer show parts. However, it's the concern and hassle of dealing with a possibly unstable system that concern me.
You have a large grid. You're placed in the middle somewhere. Scattered about the level are 'daleks' or 'robots', depending on how much trouble the author wanted with BBC. Each 'turn', you move one space; each robot moves one of the eight possible directions towards you one space. If two robots ended in the same space at the end of that turn, they died and left a pile of rubble. If a robot hit the rubble after moving, it also died. If a robot touched you, or you collided with the rubble, you lost. The idea was to have all the robots collide with other robots or rubble, and leaving you alive. Typically you'd have a limited number of 'teleports' that would drop you in a random location on the grid that you could use instead of moving.
(or insert 'Berserk' or 'Robotron/Llamatron' to your heart's desire... :-)
Adric was play by Matthew Whitehouse on Dr. Who in the late Tom Baker/early Davidson earlys (would be early 80s without going to check myself on that). Adric was picked up for the TARDIS crew in the episode "Full Circle"; the character was a teenage boy that was awfully smart; his outfit included a gold-plated star badge that indicated an award for outstanding mathematics ability. A few episodes later (Logopolis) he learns the matematics of Block Transfer Computation which is what helps the TARDIS define it's exterior dimenssion, in only a rather short time. The next episode, Castrovalva, has the Doctor's nemesis, the Master, using Adric's new knowledge to lure the Doctor into a trap.
After that point, they don't play too much on the issue of Adric's intelligence; instead, he was a decent alternative to the always screaming Tegan and the rather quiet Nyssa.
Adric's farewell was one of the more spectactular in the series; in "Earthshock", as the Cyberman (another foe of the Doctor) have taken over a spaceship containing a large amount of explosives, taken it back in time 65million years, and plan to throw it at the earth as to destroy *all* life on the planet, Adric sacrifices himself to mearly have the ship 'glance' at the earth as opposed to a direct impact, thus reducing the force of the explosion and only killing off the dinosaurs. Before he leaves the Doctor the last time, he gives him his award badge; unfortunately, the Doctor finds that he must use it to kill off the Cyberman leader (who are fatally influenced by gold); it was the only episode of DW to end with no music over the credits, only an image of the broken badge.
Needless to say, after a few episodes, the Adric character was treated about the same as Wesley. If there was a USENET at that time, I would not be surprised to find a similar .die.die.die newsgroup.
From interviews that I've read, Matthew w. is in much of the same position as Wil is with Wesley; the role was a break into the industry, and did get a lot of negative attention; while he doesn't resent playing the role, he rather not talk about it and instead focus on his current career.
But I disagree that you think that MS didn't block on purpose. If all they had done was to only allow IE browsers onto the site, I can see that as being a bit of egotism and lack of foresight in whomever programmed that. However, as specifically pointed out, it was blocked certain browser strings; that is, with the default Opera identification string, it was blocked, but when it was changed by one letter, access was granted.
But again, as the NYT article indicates, that might not have been done at the upper levels; it could have been some younger native programmer not realizing the right way to impose such a block. However, given that the latter version happened over the former, it suggests there might have been much more deeper alternative motives for this switch.
E.G., if I wanted a Flash animation, but defaulting to a static JPG if Flash wasn't available, or in the case of a text browser, a short paragraph describing what the user could have seen, I could do this:
OBJECT type="x-application/flash" src="image.swf">
If OBJECT was used more, then it wouldn't matter if content was mostly in plug-ins; it should be no problem to rewrite it to use alternate methods to maximize those who can see it. In non-4.0 browsers, the code above simply looks like the inner text block, so they will still see something.<OBJECT type="image/jpg" src="image.jpg">
This is a the default text rendering here.
</OBJECT>
</OBJECT>
The problem is that OBJECT is yet to be strongly implemented by any browser, IE, NS, Opera, etc. Yet it was introduced in the HTML 4.0 standard, which is more than a year old, so it's a matter of getting these browser makers (all of them, not just a few select ones) up to speed on the latest approved spec asap. With how Mozilla does a separate development of the Gecko engine that handles the HTML display from the mechanics of browsing and the UI, this can help, but I doubt that one can do a similar separation with code from IE or Opera.
Actually , with regard to stuff before 1995, they're trying. I submitted a story (rejected of course) about 2 months ago that Google was hunting for specific USENET achive CDs, the "NetNews" CD collection from 1992 to 1995. The specifics are here, but basically, they have some, but are missing a lot. They'd rather have the complete collection before they put up pre-1995 articles.
Now, the rules vary from state to state, but in most cases, you have to be a PE to design any facility, structure, or whatever that is larger than a small room, in where there may be possible issues with the public safety. Thus, you'd obviously want bridges done by mech e's, chemical plants by chem e's, etc. The idea is that the PE certification of the design ensures that the public safety has been met to a certain degree.
While this idea is great and all , there are currently major problems due to the state-by-state nature of it. For example, just like with bar tests, you need to be recertified in a new state if you move. Another problem is that because of how some aspects are designed, there's a lot of overlap of displines, and some state rules force the weaker displine to have more effect. In CA for example, in designing a chemical plant, you'll typically have a Mech E., Chem E., and Civil E. all working together on the design. However, current law states that only a Mech E's can certify the plant design; thus, the mech E can add, say, a hugh vat of sulfuric acid (a highly toxic safety hazard) for no reason, and yet could get the plans certified by him with no input from the Chem. E. In effect, the PE certification of chemical engineers is worthless in CA. There's a large number of industrial Chem E's fighting these types of rules to make it better.
Will Computer Engineers need to be certified? I would that those that are designing systems that pose potental harm to the public good, such as air traffic control systems, medical systems, water and power plans controls, should have some sort of certification, but in conjunction with those that would normally work on those projects as well. However, for the end-user's casual programs, including Windows, office software, browsering, servers, etc, it's unnecessary because those items pose very little *direct* harm to the public. (Do note that even Microsoft signs off on libilities for malfunctions of their software, and says that it shouldn't even been used in critical situations as listed above).
Of course, the other question is that where do you draw the line at what 'programming' is. Is writing a Visual Basic script programming? Is JavaScript programming? These are all tools that cannot be easily controlled as too many users use them already. So trying to limit all programming is near impossible. But certainly regulating and certifying programs that run the public infrastructure and those that write them is a good step.