A fancy GUI is all very well, but does this come with some decent command line tools to scriptify adding and removing users and the like? One of the things that's kept my department on NIS for so long is that absolute hideous unfriendliness of the OpenLDAP tools vs useradd, usermod and friends.
Have you heard of ldapadd and ldapmodify? These tools are available from OpenLDAP or from pretty much any OS that is LDAP capable. I know you're probably just trolling but it's quite obvious you've never used LDAP or you'd know that it's trivially simple to add or modify entries using these command line tools.
The Net was created by the US government, a whole bunch of US, Asian and Europeans built the hardware running it and a British guy invented the Web. Doesn't look like multicultural involvement has made it terribly unstable. I think China's Great Firewall is an excellent example of what happens when one government has too much control.
You know what? I am pretty much anti-anything that this current administration does, but I have to say that I don't see the problem in letting the US control ICANN. The plain and simple fact of the matter is that the US Department of Defense (through DARPA) created the internet. We invested millions and built the infrastructure that makes it possible for people like Tim Berners-Lee to create worthwhile applications (WWW) that ride on top of it. You don't like it? Tough. Create your own root and use it instead.
All of this whining by socialist Europeans that would rather see the internet turn into some type of global hippie commune where no commerce is transacted and those of us in the first world have to pay for internet connections for some tribal village in Africa that could care less about the internet is pretty much just that: whining.
The fact of the matter is that any other government could have invented the internet had they been willing to invest the time and money it takes to build new technology, but instead the entire world has benefitted from the investment that the US government made. We share the technologies with other countries freely, and we don't ask anything of them. Go ahead and run your own root nameservers, we won't even stop you. Just don't ask for control over ours.
Think this is unfair? Big bully US government won't share their toys? Tough, go get your own toys.
My only problem with your letter (other than that it's a little confrontational) is your quickness to blame this on conservatives. Although there are certainly too many Jack Thompsons in the world, there are also plenty of Hillary Clintons and Tipper Gores. This is not a liberal-vs-conservative issue - it's a government-vs-individual issue.
People who tend to be pro-big-government also tend to be pro-censorship, and there are at least as many big government liberals as conservatives. The real lesson is that all of us, regardless of the direction of our leanings, need to watch out for those would would claim to represent our wants as they strip us of our liberties. Republican, Democrat, or whatever else you might happen to be, don't think it can't happen in your party.
You are right in that I probably shouldn't use the word conservative, but this highlights my general disgust with Joe Lieberman in the first place. He claims to be a Democrat, and yet if you look at his policy he is more inline with conservatives in the Bush administration than any liberal agenda that I know about.
He was pro-war from the beginning, and is still pro-war even though most sensible americans are calling for a withdrawal. He is also strongly pro-Israel and has a whole slew of other conservative agenda issues.
In summary: Joe Lieberman is a Democrat in name only, just because a good percentage of this state won't vote for anyone from the elephant party.
I just sent a letter to Joseph Lieberman, and if you live in either CT or NY I suggest you do the same (send one to Hillary Clinton if you live in NY of course). This is the only way they'll know we don't approve of their actions:
Dear Senator Lieberman,
Today I learned that in two weeks time, you will be introducing a bill along with Senator Clinton titled the "Family Entertainment Protection Act." I would like to request that you reconsider introducing such a bill.
I am 32 years old, college educated, and work as a professional in the chip manufacturing and semiconductor industry here in Connecticut. I am also a gamer. I play all types of video games, including violent ones, and have never felt the urge to commit any violent acts in real life. Much like sports, games are a good stress reliever and can help people to work out their aggressive tendencies in a non-harmful way. There are millions of people like me that are professional adults, have real jobs, and play video games. Guess what? We're also voters and we won't hesitate to send you back to Connecticut in 2006.
The bill that you are prepared to introduce would have the end result of introducing a type of censorship and control that is unprecedented over any type of media, whether it be books, films, or music.
The bill you are proposing limits free speech and the creative expression of the artists that make video games, and don't try to think for one second that games are not an art form. As a United States Senator, you swore an oath to uphold the constitution. The fact that you would even consider introducing such legislation gives me serious doubts about your abilities as a senator and representative of the people.
I have heard conservatives argue that video games contribute to violence in our youth, and I want to make sure that you don't believe those lies either. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, violent crime in schools has declined dramatically since 1994, the same time period that video game sales have increased dramatically. Please see the following study: http://youthviolence.edschool.virginia.edu/violenc e-in-schools/national-statistics.html
In conclusion, if you propose this bill I will not vote for your reelection to the US Senate next November, and will actively encourage everyone I know in Connecticut to do the same.
Don't make the mistake of thinking all of your constituents aren't capable of thinking and acting for themselves. Video games are like any other media and should be controlled by an individual child's parents. If a parent doesn't want their kid playing Grand Theft Auto, they should watch their children and not let them play it. How hard is this if the child is living in the same house as the parent? It is just like any other media, whether it's a book, a movie, or television. The responsbility is the parents and the parents alone to ensure that their kids aren't exposed to things they find offensive. Government should never interfere in this.
This isn't *strictly* true. While you're correct that anyone can pop out a lvl 20 character, they have to unlock the skills and items and such in the roleplaying side of the game - so if I buy the game and roll up a PVP character, and play it against someone who's played through the RP side of things many times, they'll pretty much guaranteed win on equipment alone (armor reduces damage, items boost stats, etc.)
Agreed, there are skills to unlock, however those that don't like playing the RP side of things can now unlock skills fairly quickly through PvP faction rewards.
Most of the time if you're trying to stop a car, you don't even aim for the driver, you'd be aiming for the engine block, which is unfortunately mounted in front of the driver. Cracking the block pretty much guarantees a quick disable of the vehicle, and is conveniently located "center mass" so it's not difficult to hit.
Here's a better idea: If you're so concerned about drivers ramming the checkpoint with their vehicles, why not put road spikes that are activated with a button at the 100 foot, 50 foot, and 25 foot mark leading up to the checkpoint. If a driver starts speeding towards the checkpoint, bam, press a button and all 4 wheels are gone. Hell, they could even have some kind of steel barriers/holes that open up in the road when a button is pressed. There are a lot better ways to stop a speeding vehicle from hitting a checkpoint or guard structure. Just some good old fashioned jersey barriers should do the trick.
I am personally waiting for the game that takes into account the player's skill at the game itself instead of having XXX level will beat XXX-1 level, or YYY class will always defeat YZY class. It's idiotic and boring, and brings little to tactics in games of scale.
You should check out Guild Wars. It's made by NCSoft and the designers of the game designed it from day one specifically for that reason: balanced PVP. There are no uber-leet godly items that give players an unfair advantage. Anyone can create a PVP character that has the same items and stats as anybody else does at maximum level, giving you the opportunity to fight in a fantasy battleground where some kid that spent $100 on eBay isn't going to beat you just because he bought some godly sword of slaying that kills anyone in 1 hit.
PvE content is admittedly a little lacking compared to WoW, but it's a great game and has probably the best PvP experience I've seen yet.
Unfortantely, because you are not an American you don't realize the totality of the situations as it stands. Let me first say this, and acknowlege my own part in it; 2000 I voted for the moron because I thought he was better than Gore. 2004 I didn't vote at all because I figured it was tweedle dee and tweedle dum [regardless, I'm in a state that always votes democratic but I must acknowledge my mistake before my critique]. Obviously, I was very very wrong and every day Bush manages to prove that to me again.
I'm sorry, but I just have to say:
WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?
You elected this guy once, and helped to get him elected again by not voting, and I'm sorry, but in 2004 and even 2000 you had to be aware of the conservative agenda of Bush's backers.
As stupid as us Americans can be for electing Bush, this just proves that even people who should know better are still stupid about this stuff.
For what it's worth, I'm an american that proudly voted Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. Become part of the solution, not part of the problem.
"Making a 2-gram memory chip requires 1.3 kilograms (1,300 grams) of fossil fuels and materials."
Still bullshit. That memory chip may take 1.3 kilograms of fossil fuels to create, but how much fossil fuel do you have to burn to create 3 tons of molten hot steel and put it into the shape of an SUV?
These machines are said to take as much resources as the now infamous SUV to produce.
I agree with a lot of your points, but please, there is no way that the 25 pounds worth of silicon, metal, and plastic that is my computer, took as much resources as an SUV to produce. This glaring untruth weakens the rest of your arguments.
You go guy! well said. If I had mod points, I'd give them all to ya!
Thanks. Just so you know, I'm a big privacy advocate, but I get a little frustrated sometimes reading comments from people that are obviously paranoid. They make privacy advocates look like nuts.
Re:It was called Google Desktop "search" ....
on
Google Releases GDS 2.0
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You know why I don't install Google toolbar, web-accelerator or Yahoo ! companions ?. I grew up in a web where everything was addressed and could be accessed by me with almost any capable tool in the market - these guys are trying to dictate tools for me according to their content marketing. They already know which websites I hit (Ads), what I look for (search), what I buy (froogle), whom I mail (gmail) and now they want in on the Desktop too. I don't want them to be the know-all spooks.
I don't know why you guys don't chill out a little bit with the privacy concerns. If you want to search the web, that's fine, go to the google website and search. There's no need for a download and there's no need for additional software on your computer, other than the web browser of course.
Now, on the other hand, if you want to INDEX and SEARCH your local hard drive, you're going to need something a little more powerful than a website off in the middle of the internet to do that (unless of course you want to let an internet spider index your local machine, which I'm guessing you don't since you sound all concerned and uppity about privacy). I'm sorry, but yes, you WILL HAVE TO INSTALL something in order to index your local hard drive. Google does not send any information back to their servers. The index stays local, and all of your private information stays local.
Google has always been extremely clear on their privacy policy. If you're so paranoid that you don't even want them hosting your email, you've got some serious paranoia issues because Google is a private company, not the government or the NSA, and if you can't trust any private company with your email then you better just cancel all your internet access and accounts right now, since ANY private company can turn your data over to the government at ANY time (given the proper subpoena).
I'm sick of all you privacy nuts complaining when a company like Google offers a new service. You guys are just luddites that happen to use computers. If you're so worried about your precious little pr0n archive ending up in the NSA's hand then you better go lock yourself in a bunker up in Montana and hide from the rest of the world. Come to think of it, why don't you go do that? It would save us from having to hear your constant bitching on Slashdot.
This is the portion of the web that I'd like to see - not the commerical portion but the hobbyist and enthusiast sites that may be out there without lots of incoming links that would make them more highly rated and/or visible to Google.
Dude, if your idea of the dark web is millions of spam infested blog pages that have been crawled by a million spam robots putting links in the comment pages, along with a smattering of Mediawiki sites that have similarly been "0wnz0r3d" by spam crawlers that edit the pages and fill it full of links to online casinos, online pharmacies, and penis enlargement pills, more power to you...
I'll leave the "dark" web where it belongs... in the dark.
OSx86 Project's CEpeep researched building a x86 machine that will run Mac OS X for Intel for under $200. The machine has the same Intel chipset on the motherboard and a processor with SSE3. Total includes CPU, MB, RAM, Case, HD, and DVD drive.
From what I've heard, the SSE3 unit on the Celeron processor you're talking about is terrible, giving people abysmal performance in Rosetta emulated applications, which basically means all PowerPC apps available. Buy it if you want, but don't expect a 2.4 ghz. Celeron with only 256k of L2 cache to perform anywhere near a 3.6 ghz. P4 with 2MB of L2 cache.
Buyer beware... FWIW I think you're better off spending an extra $300 and getting a Mac mini. It'll be supported for years to come, and it will run Altivec applications without choking.
Hmm. I must have imagined this news report for the other day [isn.ethz.ch] where "The Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) released a fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, against terrorism and extremism last week"
While this is a positive step, wake me up when a middle-eastern group of Mullahs do this. Most of the muslims in the rest of the world won't listen to these guys anyway, since they've been thoroughly "corrupted" by their hedonistic western lifestyles. I'd like to see some hardline mullahs in Pakistan condemn terrorism... that would be a real step.
Re:1.25 Mini -- Hidden cheapest Superdrive system
on
New iBook and Apple mini
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· Score: 2, Informative
More to the point, the *only* difference between the $599 and $699 is the Superdrive. They've changed a $100 BTO html SELECT box into a new level o' Mac.
The reason Apple did this is for their retail stores. When most consumers walk in to buy a computer, they want it right now, not 4-6 weeks later after it's been built to order in China and shipped to them. Having a low-end consumer model with a DVD burner in it is a necessity if they want to target the consumer. Remember, most people buying a mini are probably buying one for the first time, and are not the type of people to spend more than 1 minute thinking about the configuration and pricing/building it online. They just know that they want a computer that they can edit their home movies on.
As far as electronic vaulting, Iron Mountain is the leader in the industry. They are also the leader in offsite data protection. The company is very interesting, having been founded shortly after WWII during the cold war era, they built a huge underground facility which was literally a miniature city underground, the idea being that in the event of a nuclear war, all the top executives and financial leaders from banks and other federal institutions would be relocated to the secure facility, where backup mainframes and copies of all the data would allow the federal reserve to continue to operate during nuclear winter.
The company I work for uses them for offsiting tapes, but the e-vaulting option looks appealing and we may start doing that. Some of the highlights of the e-vaulting solution they offer are AES-256 encryption, a native client for Linux, Windows, Unix, and just about any other platform, and a proven track record when it comes to data protection. Find out more here: Link to click on
Also, if you're interested in reading the fascinating history of Iron Mountain, I found this article especially interesting to read.
So during a critical emergency, how many people have time to go digging through their basement to find an old telephone?
Most fairly new cordless phones allow you to put two AA rechargeable NiMH batteries in the base station, which should keep you going for a couple hours in the event of a power outage. I know mine has this feature, which isn't as good as having a plain old analog telephone if the power is out for days, but works fine for a couple hours, and also has the convenience factor of charging the batteries in case I need a spare set for the cordless handset during a long conversation.
My econobox that get's 42mpg went up to an average of 43mpg when I disabled the Daytime Running lights that was simply a diode that was turning on the headlamps when the car was running.
I call BS. My car has Xenon HID lights plus foglights and I get no noticeable difference in gas mileage whether I drive with them on all the time or off. And because my car has auto-off headlights that stay on for 30 seconds after I turn off the vehicle, I leave them on all the time. It's safer, and other drivers are more likely to notice you're coming at them if they're on. You're foolish if you manually disabled your daytime running lights. They are probably only 15 watts per bulb (x2) and there is no physical way that this small amount of draw off your alternator will affect your gas mileage in a noticeable way.
Second, RPGs must allow for character growth that's driven by a player's choices or actions.
From TFA: Nearly every decision players made had the potential to lead their character down the path of good or the path of evil. Those changes would be reflected in the story sequences and the reactions of other characters in the game. Discovering that the game was not only aware of the choices you'd made but would judge you by them was an amazing first for gamers.
The funny thing is that although the article said that games which adapt to your choices have only been around recently, I distinctly remember playing Ultima II on my Commodore 64 many years ago. That game changed depending on your actions. You were supposed to be the avatar, and if you stole from people or did bad things, other people would remember your actions and act differently towards you. It's funny how often the older games had much better gameplay, despite the poor graphics, then newer games do.
They're streaming live TV to you and they don't charge for it? They must have discovered some source of free bandwidth!
RTFA. This is Time Warner Cable, who owns the network. They are streaming IPTV over their own local network. When you have all your subscribers running on a 100 megabit segment, and each channel can be compressed down to 500-1000k a second, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that multicasting ~70 channels will take up anywhere from 35-70 megabits out of 100 available for each neighborhood network segment. This leaves between 30-65 megabits for voice, data, and other traffic. Implement QoS and multicasting and you can guarantee that IPTV won't step all over somebody else's internet usage traffic, or vice versa.
This is not streaming TV over the internet; it's streaming IPTV over a small private MAN (metropolitan area network).
Slashdot Mirror
A fancy GUI is all very well, but does this come with some decent command line tools to scriptify adding and removing users and the like? One of the things that's kept my department on NIS for so long is that absolute hideous unfriendliness of the OpenLDAP tools vs useradd, usermod and friends.
Have you heard of ldapadd and ldapmodify? These tools are available from OpenLDAP or from pretty much any OS that is LDAP capable. I know you're probably just trolling but it's quite obvious you've never used LDAP or you'd know that it's trivially simple to add or modify entries using these command line tools.
The Net was created by the US government, a whole bunch of US, Asian and Europeans built the hardware running it and a British guy invented the Web. Doesn't look like multicultural involvement has made it terribly unstable. I think China's Great Firewall is an excellent example of what happens when one government has too much control.
You know what? I am pretty much anti-anything that this current administration does, but I have to say that I don't see the problem in letting the US control ICANN. The plain and simple fact of the matter is that the US Department of Defense (through DARPA) created the internet. We invested millions and built the infrastructure that makes it possible for people like Tim Berners-Lee to create worthwhile applications (WWW) that ride on top of it. You don't like it? Tough. Create your own root and use it instead.
All of this whining by socialist Europeans that would rather see the internet turn into some type of global hippie commune where no commerce is transacted and those of us in the first world have to pay for internet connections for some tribal village in Africa that could care less about the internet is pretty much just that: whining.
The fact of the matter is that any other government could have invented the internet had they been willing to invest the time and money it takes to build new technology, but instead the entire world has benefitted from the investment that the US government made. We share the technologies with other countries freely, and we don't ask anything of them. Go ahead and run your own root nameservers, we won't even stop you. Just don't ask for control over ours.
Think this is unfair? Big bully US government won't share their toys? Tough, go get your own toys.
My only problem with your letter (other than that it's a little confrontational) is your quickness to blame this on conservatives. Although there are certainly too many Jack Thompsons in the world, there are also plenty of Hillary Clintons and Tipper Gores. This is not a liberal-vs-conservative issue - it's a government-vs-individual issue.
People who tend to be pro-big-government also tend to be pro-censorship, and there are at least as many big government liberals as conservatives. The real lesson is that all of us, regardless of the direction of our leanings, need to watch out for those would would claim to represent our wants as they strip us of our liberties. Republican, Democrat, or whatever else you might happen to be, don't think it can't happen in your party.
You are right in that I probably shouldn't use the word conservative, but this highlights my general disgust with Joe Lieberman in the first place. He claims to be a Democrat, and yet if you look at his policy he is more inline with conservatives in the Bush administration than any liberal agenda that I know about.
He was pro-war from the beginning, and is still pro-war even though most sensible americans are calling for a withdrawal. He is also strongly pro-Israel and has a whole slew of other conservative agenda issues.
In summary: Joe Lieberman is a Democrat in name only, just because a good percentage of this state won't vote for anyone from the elephant party.
Hehe... Funny that you would post the one comment that was sort of ... "meh..." ... in a Sun discussion.
Have you played with Sol10/ZFS yet? I just got a new job and I've just convinced the CIO to purchase a bunch of X2100/4100s... w00t!
Anyway, they were set to make HP with Redhat the corporate standard but HP came in at 2x the price!
I hope this works out... cross whatever you've got two of for me...
This isn't *strictly* true. While you're correct that anyone can pop out a lvl 20 character, they have to unlock the skills and items and such in the roleplaying side of the game - so if I buy the game and roll up a PVP character, and play it against someone who's played through the RP side of things many times, they'll pretty much guaranteed win on equipment alone (armor reduces damage, items boost stats, etc.)
Agreed, there are skills to unlock, however those that don't like playing the RP side of things can now unlock skills fairly quickly through PvP faction rewards.
Most of the time if you're trying to stop a car, you don't even aim for the driver, you'd be aiming for the engine block, which is unfortunately mounted in front of the driver. Cracking the block pretty much guarantees a quick disable of the vehicle, and is conveniently located "center mass" so it's not difficult to hit.
Here's a better idea: If you're so concerned about drivers ramming the checkpoint with their vehicles, why not put road spikes that are activated with a button at the 100 foot, 50 foot, and 25 foot mark leading up to the checkpoint. If a driver starts speeding towards the checkpoint, bam, press a button and all 4 wheels are gone. Hell, they could even have some kind of steel barriers/holes that open up in the road when a button is pressed. There are a lot better ways to stop a speeding vehicle from hitting a checkpoint or guard structure. Just some good old fashioned jersey barriers should do the trick.
I am personally waiting for the game that takes into account the player's skill at the game itself instead of having XXX level will beat XXX-1 level, or YYY class will always defeat YZY class. It's idiotic and boring, and brings little to tactics in games of scale.
You should check out Guild Wars. It's made by NCSoft and the designers of the game designed it from day one specifically for that reason: balanced PVP. There are no uber-leet godly items that give players an unfair advantage. Anyone can create a PVP character that has the same items and stats as anybody else does at maximum level, giving you the opportunity to fight in a fantasy battleground where some kid that spent $100 on eBay isn't going to beat you just because he bought some godly sword of slaying that kills anyone in 1 hit.
PvE content is admittedly a little lacking compared to WoW, but it's a great game and has probably the best PvP experience I've seen yet.
Unfortantely, because you are not an American you don't realize the totality of the situations as it stands. Let me first say this, and acknowlege my own part in it; 2000 I voted for the moron because I thought he was better than Gore. 2004 I didn't vote at all because I figured it was tweedle dee and tweedle dum [regardless, I'm in a state that always votes democratic but I must acknowledge my mistake before my critique]. Obviously, I was very very wrong and every day Bush manages to prove that to me again.
I'm sorry, but I just have to say:
WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?
You elected this guy once, and helped to get him elected again by not voting, and I'm sorry, but in 2004 and even 2000 you had to be aware of the conservative agenda of Bush's backers.
As stupid as us Americans can be for electing Bush, this just proves that even people who should know better are still stupid about this stuff.
For what it's worth, I'm an american that proudly voted Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. Become part of the solution, not part of the problem.
"Making a 2-gram memory chip requires 1.3 kilograms (1,300 grams) of fossil fuels and materials."
Still bullshit. That memory chip may take 1.3 kilograms of fossil fuels to create, but how much fossil fuel do you have to burn to create 3 tons of molten hot steel and put it into the shape of an SUV?
These machines are said to take as much resources as the now infamous SUV to produce.
I agree with a lot of your points, but please, there is no way that the 25 pounds worth of silicon, metal, and plastic that is my computer, took as much resources as an SUV to produce. This glaring untruth weakens the rest of your arguments.
You go guy! well said. If I had mod points, I'd give them all to ya!
Thanks. Just so you know, I'm a big privacy advocate, but I get a little frustrated sometimes reading comments from people that are obviously paranoid. They make privacy advocates look like nuts.
You know why I don't install Google toolbar, web-accelerator or Yahoo ! companions ?. I grew up in a web where everything was addressed and could be accessed by me with almost any capable tool in the market - these guys are trying to dictate tools for me according to their content marketing. They already know which websites I hit (Ads), what I look for (search), what I buy (froogle), whom I mail (gmail) and now they want in on the Desktop too. I don't want them to be the know-all spooks.
I don't know why you guys don't chill out a little bit with the privacy concerns. If you want to search the web, that's fine, go to the google website and search. There's no need for a download and there's no need for additional software on your computer, other than the web browser of course.
Now, on the other hand, if you want to INDEX and SEARCH your local hard drive, you're going to need something a little more powerful than a website off in the middle of the internet to do that (unless of course you want to let an internet spider index your local machine, which I'm guessing you don't since you sound all concerned and uppity about privacy). I'm sorry, but yes, you WILL HAVE TO INSTALL something in order to index your local hard drive. Google does not send any information back to their servers. The index stays local, and all of your private information stays local.
Google has always been extremely clear on their privacy policy. If you're so paranoid that you don't even want them hosting your email, you've got some serious paranoia issues because Google is a private company, not the government or the NSA, and if you can't trust any private company with your email then you better just cancel all your internet access and accounts right now, since ANY private company can turn your data over to the government at ANY time (given the proper subpoena).
I'm sick of all you privacy nuts complaining when a company like Google offers a new service. You guys are just luddites that happen to use computers. If you're so worried about your precious little pr0n archive ending up in the NSA's hand then you better go lock yourself in a bunker up in Montana and hide from the rest of the world. Come to think of it, why don't you go do that? It would save us from having to hear your constant bitching on Slashdot.
This is the portion of the web that I'd like to see - not the commerical portion but the hobbyist and enthusiast sites that may be out there without lots of incoming links that would make them more highly rated and/or visible to Google.
Dude, if your idea of the dark web is millions of spam infested blog pages that have been crawled by a million spam robots putting links in the comment pages, along with a smattering of Mediawiki sites that have similarly been "0wnz0r3d" by spam crawlers that edit the pages and fill it full of links to online casinos, online pharmacies, and penis enlargement pills, more power to you...
I'll leave the "dark" web where it belongs... in the dark.
OSx86 Project's CEpeep researched building a x86 machine that will run Mac OS X for Intel for under $200. The machine has the same Intel chipset on the motherboard and a processor with SSE3. Total includes CPU, MB, RAM, Case, HD, and DVD drive.
From what I've heard, the SSE3 unit on the Celeron processor you're talking about is terrible, giving people abysmal performance in Rosetta emulated applications, which basically means all PowerPC apps available. Buy it if you want, but don't expect a 2.4 ghz. Celeron with only 256k of L2 cache to perform anywhere near a 3.6 ghz. P4 with 2MB of L2 cache.
Buyer beware... FWIW I think you're better off spending an extra $300 and getting a Mac mini. It'll be supported for years to come, and it will run Altivec applications without choking.
Hmm. I must have imagined this news report for the other day [isn.ethz.ch] where "The Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) released a fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, against terrorism and extremism last week"
While this is a positive step, wake me up when a middle-eastern group of Mullahs do this. Most of the muslims in the rest of the world won't listen to these guys anyway, since they've been thoroughly "corrupted" by their hedonistic western lifestyles. I'd like to see some hardline mullahs in Pakistan condemn terrorism... that would be a real step.
More to the point, the *only* difference between the $599 and $699 is the Superdrive. They've changed a $100 BTO html SELECT box into a new level o' Mac.
The reason Apple did this is for their retail stores. When most consumers walk in to buy a computer, they want it right now, not 4-6 weeks later after it's been built to order in China and shipped to them. Having a low-end consumer model with a DVD burner in it is a necessity if they want to target the consumer. Remember, most people buying a mini are probably buying one for the first time, and are not the type of people to spend more than 1 minute thinking about the configuration and pricing/building it online. They just know that they want a computer that they can edit their home movies on.
I had a cell phone that was too small in that the buttons were impossible for me to press with my (sausage like) fingers without messing up.
Beep-Beep-Beep - The fingers you've used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now...
- Recorded message in a Simpsons episode when Homer gains too much weight and tries to use the phone.
As far as electronic vaulting, Iron Mountain is the leader in the industry. They are also the leader in offsite data protection. The company is very interesting, having been founded shortly after WWII during the cold war era, they built a huge underground facility which was literally a miniature city underground, the idea being that in the event of a nuclear war, all the top executives and financial leaders from banks and other federal institutions would be relocated to the secure facility, where backup mainframes and copies of all the data would allow the federal reserve to continue to operate during nuclear winter.
The company I work for uses them for offsiting tapes, but the e-vaulting option looks appealing and we may start doing that. Some of the highlights of the e-vaulting solution they offer are AES-256 encryption, a native client for Linux, Windows, Unix, and just about any other platform, and a proven track record when it comes to data protection. Find out more here: Link to click on
Also, if you're interested in reading the fascinating history of Iron Mountain, I found this article especially interesting to read.
But will they have the new fast, low-power chips that IBM recently announced?
No, why would Apple put a G5 in the iBook when it hasn't even made it to the PowerBook yet?
So during a critical emergency, how many people have time to go digging through their basement to find an old telephone?
Most fairly new cordless phones allow you to put two AA rechargeable NiMH batteries in the base station, which should keep you going for a couple hours in the event of a power outage. I know mine has this feature, which isn't as good as having a plain old analog telephone if the power is out for days, but works fine for a couple hours, and also has the convenience factor of charging the batteries in case I need a spare set for the cordless handset during a long conversation.
HID lights use less power than conventional lights. 35w or so, versus 55.
Then again, DRLs use about 35 I think...
Even with a power draw of a few hundred watts, I doubt you'd see an appreciable MPG difference.
My econobox that get's 42mpg went up to an average of 43mpg when I disabled the Daytime Running lights that was simply a diode that was turning on the headlamps when the car was running.
I call BS. My car has Xenon HID lights plus foglights and I get no noticeable difference in gas mileage whether I drive with them on all the time or off. And because my car has auto-off headlights that stay on for 30 seconds after I turn off the vehicle, I leave them on all the time. It's safer, and other drivers are more likely to notice you're coming at them if they're on. You're foolish if you manually disabled your daytime running lights. They are probably only 15 watts per bulb (x2) and there is no physical way that this small amount of draw off your alternator will affect your gas mileage in a noticeable way.
Second, RPGs must allow for character growth that's driven by a player's choices or actions.
From TFA:
Nearly every decision players made had the potential to lead their character down the path of good or the path of evil. Those changes would be reflected in the story sequences and the reactions of other characters in the game. Discovering that the game was not only aware of the choices you'd made but would judge you by them was an amazing first for gamers.
The funny thing is that although the article said that games which adapt to your choices have only been around recently, I distinctly remember playing Ultima II on my Commodore 64 many years ago. That game changed depending on your actions. You were supposed to be the avatar, and if you stole from people or did bad things, other people would remember your actions and act differently towards you. It's funny how often the older games had much better gameplay, despite the poor graphics, then newer games do.
They're streaming live TV to you and they don't charge for it? They must have discovered some source of free bandwidth!
RTFA. This is Time Warner Cable, who owns the network. They are streaming IPTV over their own local network. When you have all your subscribers running on a 100 megabit segment, and each channel can be compressed down to 500-1000k a second, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that multicasting ~70 channels will take up anywhere from 35-70 megabits out of 100 available for each neighborhood network segment. This leaves between 30-65 megabits for voice, data, and other traffic. Implement QoS and multicasting and you can guarantee that IPTV won't step all over somebody else's internet usage traffic, or vice versa.
This is not streaming TV over the internet; it's streaming IPTV over a small private MAN (metropolitan area network).