How DO YOU THINK they GET THE ORIGINAL ITEM? Typically, they buy it in a store, it's given to them by the studio as a screener/review/demo copy, or (less often) copy it at the studio.
Shoplifting != piracy Shoplifting !-->piracy
I "know people" who pirate movies, music, and software. If you broke into their houses you'd find shelves and shelves of store-bought movies, music, and software. Why? Because they're not shoplifters or thieves. They buy the things they love, and frequently make copies for their friends. Sometimes they set up torrents for them.
This is the norm- not your hypothetical thug who does a smash & grab at Best Buy. You're trying to tie together two crimes (theft of a physical item and copyright violation) that are fundamentally different and unrelated. Stop it. You're wrong, and you're making yourself look like an asshat.
I share your love of the Half-Life series. I'd suggest getting Half-Life 2: Episode One instead. (No, I don't work for Valve or any related company.) It's the same price and continues the HL2 story, and initial reviews are positive.
Episode One comes out tomorrow (6/1), but if you pre-load it today it's 10% off.
If you're willing to explore and interact with the characters enough, the Vortigaunts know and acknowledge that Gordon is under someone else's direct control (aside from the G-Man). The "All-Knowing Vortigaunt" makes a couple of statements to this effect, saying things like "distant eyes look out through yours" and the like. You can find out how to reach him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortigaunt
I think that Gordon doesn't speak for two reasons- one plot related and the other game-related. Plot-wise, despite the angel-of-crowbar-death role into which he's been unwillingly thrust, Freeman is at heart a quiet physicist. His willingness to take a job at the reclusive Black Mesa facility implies that he doesn't date much, and he's probably only really comfortable in a lab or research environment. Alyx mentions at one point that he's not the talkative type. Game-wise, I think that having him not speak is a good idea, as it would reduce the level of immersion in the game. What does Gordon's voice sound like? When I'm playing it sounds like me.
I'm right there with you. I currently own 3 copies of Blade Runner: VHS, the horrid 20th Century Fox DVD (don't even get me started!), and a bootleg ripped from the laser disc.
I'll buy this as soon as it comes out. And when the extra-special-super-duper version with 8 extra frames of "lost" footage comes out I'll probably plunk down the cash for that too.
I hate to give any particular piece of media this much credit, but the world depicted in Blade Runner has been a huge influence on me. It's dirty, rainy, empoverished, violent, and I'd move there tomorrow if I could, even if it meant living on the street.
The AC is right, if a bit pedantic. According to HPL, Khlul'-hloo is the closest approximation that human speech can produce.
However, the generally accepted (and much easier) pronunciation is Cuh-THOO-loo. This is how it's pronounced by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society (http://www.cthulhulives.org), as well as the organizers of the Necronomicon sci-fi/fantasy convention held annually in Tampa, FL (http://www.stonehill.org/necro.htm), whom I know IRL.
I believe that pronouncing it "AIIEEEEEEE!!! THE MADNESS!!! *glork*" is considered acceptable as well.:-)
I apologize for the off-topic nature of this comment, but on the off chance that these words may reach someone within Valve I have to say something.
I love the Half-Life franchise. The gameplay, graphics, and above all STORY are extremely compelling to me. I've had dreams about headcrabs, and have looked into building an HEV costume for science fiction conventions. My co-workers and I used to stay late at work and have HL deathmatch tournaments after hours, and I kept a crowbar hanging on my cube wall.
I hated Steam when it first came out, and still have mixed feelings about it, though I have appreciated the convenience of being able to install any of my Valve games on remote computers (cough, cough,*work*, cough), and I've been counting the days until the June 1st Ep 1 release.
Yes, I am Valve's bitch. I am a Half-Life fanatic.
The only thing I'm more fanatical about is my Mac. See my problem?
With the exception of Valve games, I've purged my outside-of-work life of anything having to do with Windows, and am much happier as a result. My PC now exists for one reason only, and that's Valve. Sure, I play other games, but every other game I like is available on my platform of choice.
I'd like to "vote with my dollars". I really would. But I'd be kidding myself if I said that I'd be willing to give up my HL addiction. It's absurd that I keep a PC set up and updated just to play Valve games, but that's what it has come down to.
Please. Have pity on the pathetic junkie you have created. Port your games to OS X. [/grovel]
It sounds like you've got your system worked out the way you want, but you may want to look into a little app called SideTrack anyway. It's a replacement trackpad driver and config utility that lets you make all manner of customizations for your PB's trackpad, including defining scroll areas (horizontal and/or vertical), right button functionality, and setting the corners as hotkeys for Expose functions (or just about anything else you want to use them for).
Why in Hell would you imagine that nobody wants to hack on the kernel? I've been through this discussion thread three times and have yet to find a single Darwin developer who is either bothered or surprised by it. I've looked at the Darwin dev forums and it appears to be a non-issue there as well.
Of course, there *are* people who want to hack the kernel, but it seems that the most obvious motivation for doing so would be to run OS X on non-Apple hardware. It's pretty clear that if OS X could be run on arbitrary PC hardware then Apple would bleed to death, so this seems like a reasonable move on their part, and one which doesn't appear to impact the legitimate dev community at all.
Let me introduce you to Linux... Been there, done that. I like Linux a lot, and I'm all in favor of open source software. However, I happen to prefer OS X for my own needs, and don't see where this rather trivial move on Apple's part warrants lumping them into the same category as M$. Let's be real here, okay?
Let me get this straight- one component of Darwin is closed source on one platform (just Intel). The rest of Darwin- the part that developers actually work on and need the source to- is still open, and according to other comments here that list is continuing to grow, and your response is to say that Apple might be worse than Microsoft?!? Please read the comments that preceeded yours (the ones posted by actual Darwin devs who are affected by this).
It seems that the only people who are getting wound up about this are the people who either don't like OS X to begin with or are reading the spin and missing the actual point.
I have to disagree on OS X being space hungry. I bought a 12" PowerBook less than a month after they came out, and have been using a 12" PB as primary machine ever since, so I've got more than a little experience with this.
Space-wise, I find that the big advantages of OS X vs Windows are the single menu bar (rather than each app having its own menu bar eating up screen real estate) and the unobtrusive (and hideable) Dock.
You talk about "Folder windows" taking up space, with icons being too large- are you referring to Finder windows? If so, I think I understand the problem. It sounds like you're using Icon View, which sucks. By all means, switch to column view (in the three-button cluster at the top of a Finder window, it's the one on the right). Also, go to Finder preferences (Command-,), and in the General tab check "Open new windows in column view". Column View is what Windows Explorer should be. It's intuitive, very easy to navigate, and space efficient. Also please note that the side bar on the left of the Finder window is customizable. If you've got a directory that you go to frequently you can drag it to the side bar and it gives you a quick shortcut that you can drag items straight to (make sure that Spring-loaded folders are enabled in preferences). This has saved me hours of sorting my porn.;-)
If even that is taking up too much space, you can eliminate the button bar, side bar, and Spotlight field entirely by hitting the little oblong button in the top-right corner.
A couple of other quick notes regarding the Dock (and I apologize if this is all obvious stuff to you, but I don't know you and have know idea what your level of familiarity is with OS X). The default Dock settings are, I believe, designed so that even Stevie Wonder can see it. Go to System Preferences, make it smaller, and move it to the left side of the screen. You'll be glad you did. If you like, you can also set it to auto-hide, so it's only visible when the mouse moves to the edge of the screen.
For all intents and purposes, my 12" PowerBook is my only computer (I've got a PC running as a file server which I never see, and a "gaming machine" that permanently lives at a friend's house that I only use for Half-Life 2). It goes everywhere with me, and I do everything with it- work, surfing, e-mail, audio editing, gaming, DVD mastering- name it (except Half-Life 2, of course. Curse you, Valve!). It works like a champ.
Having a small display is a bit of a trade-off, but frankly it's trivial. At work I have it connected to an external display, which gives me a huge amount of real estate to work with. Everywhere else the portability gained by the form factor is so great that it's a no-brainer. Prior to my 12" I had a 15" TiBook, and while it was reasonably portable the extra bit of hassle of carrying it around prevented it from becoming the "extension-of-self" that my 12" is. Expose makes switching between windows effortless, and the display is still plenty large enough for WoW, Unreal Tournament 2004, and TRON 2.0 to look great and be completely functional.
My wife is in a similar situation with her iBook (though she never uses an external monitor), and is delighted with it even though her eyesight is lousy.
I had almost the exact same situation, except that in my case the cause of the problem was that the cable modem had gotten fried by lightning. It was obvious, but the Time-Warner/Brighthouse fool on the other end insisted on going through troubleshooting anyway. I've done my time in phone support as well, so I'd taken my LAN out of the equation and double-checked before I called. I accepted the BS troubleshooting until he asked me to "bypass the cable" between the modem and my computer. I asked him what the hell that meant (English was clearly not his primary language), and he explained that he wanted me to turn the cable around.
That pushed me over the edge, and I switched from patient and helpful to "why the fuck are you wasting my time?" mode. I got my ticket number and took my burnt up modem to the local office to be replaced. As it turned out, the one they gave me as a replacement was bad as well (I had a friend bring his cable modem over and it worked fine). Needless to say, the next call to support was much shorter and less pleasant, and on my next trip to their office I had them test the replacement unit before I left with it.
Honestly? I trust myself and my wife, and our ability to handle firearms, to stop a serial killer far more than I'd trust police cameras and the hope that the cops would get there in time and save us. I say this as someone who was once a student in a small town where a serial killer was known to be on the loose and murdering students. (Gainesville, FL, fall of 1990)
Don't kid yourself. The three police cars that were parked down the street from my house last night blocking traffic while waiting to ticket people are a bigger threat to my life than terrorists.
Isn't it obvious? They no longer see your mom and 10 million other Americans as citizens, but as potential terrorists. Hell, I almost wish (almost!) that there were 10 million Americans in league with Al Qaeda. Then they could've skipped the whole ugly 9/11 business, started a political party, and run a presidential candidate of their own.
Think about it. At least those wahoos would be up front and honest about being a totalitarian theocracy with no regard for civil liberties.
As does everyone who is smart, industrious, and damn good at what they do.
I'm impressed by your ability to make snap judgments about a person's character based solely on a single, non-inflammatory/. comment. If you have a non-troll point to make, I encourage you to log in and share it with the rest of us. Have the courage to allow us to attach a name to the flame.
I subscribed to both Compute!'s Gazette and RUN back in the glory days of the 64. I still have them around somewhere, including the first issue of RUN. I don't know how many nights I spent typing in programs from the back of those magazines. It was nightmarish at first, but got better once they started using checksum programs (remember MLX?).
About a year ago I found out that my boss at the time had also subscribed to RUN as a kid, and had even had a program published. I probably have it on a 5.25" disk somewhere. I still play Canyons of Zelaz on a 64 emulator from time to time.
Fantastic magazine, and beautiful to look at. I still have the issue that covers TRON and Donkey Kong Jr. strategies, as well as Pitfall for the Atari 2600.
The whole magazine was pure 80's gold, from layout to content.
My favorite quote from that issue- "Admitting you don't own this classic is like admitting that your house doesn't have indoor plumbing." What were they talking about? Asteroids for the 2600, of course!:-)
If I could mod you +6 I would. I think that you've summarized and expanded on every worthwhile point in this entire thread. I've done configuration and support for thin clients off and on for the past 4 years or so, and I can't think of anything to add that you haven't already covered better than I could.
The newer HP thin clients (like the 5700) feature embedded Win XP, rather than CE. We've just recently migrated to them. They're more capable, though I've found them to be trickier to configure. This could just be bias on my part, as I've been working with CE-based thin clients for years and the XP ones are new to me.
It sounds like you're approaching this exactly as you should, and with full awareness of the pros and cons.
You're probably already planning this, but I'll go ahead and give you some unsolicited advice anyway- rather than a single Citrix server, start setting up a farm ASAP. It's overkill for only 25 thin clients, but the redundancy will significantly reduce any downtime due to server failure (theoretically to zero), and as your thin client environment grows the advantages gained through load balancing are enormous.
If your budget allows for it, it's better to have the capacity now than to wait until the users are complaining about slow performance before reacting. It'll also be better for both your server admin(s) and your desktop support to start out with a "server farm mindset". In our environment any widespread issues typically only affect a single server, and it's good for the troubleshooters to be in the habit of making that one of the first things they check.
As others have commented, the problem was most likely either with a poorly set up Citrix environment or with apps that just don't play well with Citrix.
I'm the sole local tech support for ~500 thin clients and 100 full PCs, which access Citrix from a farm located half way across the country. We're just one of several remote sites all accessing the same servers. It's not always lightning fast, but overall it works just fine. I think that the key is making sure that the servers in the Citrix farm are adequate for the job, and that load balancing is properly implemented.
BTW, from a support standpoint there's no comparison between thin clients and PCs. Despite a firewall with some fairly restrictive rules regarding where users can go on the net (it can't be blocked completely- they need net access to do their jobs), the PCs are a constant spyware headache for me, and also seem to have significantly more hardware issues than the thin clients, due to the complexity of the machines and the greater number of moving parts (i.e.- more than zero).
That's a great point. Braille is quite easy for sighted people to learn, and is fairly unambiguous.
As far as systems that are a little easier to write, but still machine-readable, a fun alternative might be the Fardraut font from Xevious and Solvalou.
I've got it as an actual font (called "CZP_Fardraut"), but I can't seem to find it anymore. I'm sure it's out there somewhere.
As alphabets go the letters aren't as distinctive as most, which would make learning it or reading it from a distance a bit of a hassle, but it's definitely possible. Also, the number system is nicely logical.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow! You're an idiot!
How DO YOU THINK they GET THE ORIGINAL ITEM?
Typically, they buy it in a store, it's given to them by the studio as a screener/review/demo copy, or (less often) copy it at the studio.
Shoplifting != piracy
Shoplifting !-->piracy
I "know people" who pirate movies, music, and software. If you broke into their houses you'd find shelves and shelves of store-bought movies, music, and software. Why? Because they're not shoplifters or thieves. They buy the things they love, and frequently make copies for their friends. Sometimes they set up torrents for them.
This is the norm- not your hypothetical thug who does a smash & grab at Best Buy. You're trying to tie together two crimes (theft of a physical item and copyright violation) that are fundamentally different and unrelated. Stop it. You're wrong, and you're making yourself look like an asshat.
I share your love of the Half-Life series. I'd suggest getting Half-Life 2: Episode One instead. (No, I don't work for Valve or any related company.) It's the same price and continues the HL2 story, and initial reviews are positive.
Episode One comes out tomorrow (6/1), but if you pre-load it today it's 10% off.
I will probably pre-order the first episode of theHalf-Life 2 episodes
:-)
Better hurry. The game comes out tomorrow. I expect that the pre-order download traffic is pretty high right now.
I wonder what time zone they're releasing it from? If it's the one I'm in (EDT), then I could be in for a late night tonight.
If you're willing to explore and interact with the characters enough, the Vortigaunts know and acknowledge that Gordon is under someone else's direct control (aside from the G-Man). The "All-Knowing Vortigaunt" makes a couple of statements to this effect, saying things like "distant eyes look out through yours" and the like. You can find out how to reach him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortigaunt
I think that Gordon doesn't speak for two reasons- one plot related and the other game-related. Plot-wise, despite the angel-of-crowbar-death role into which he's been unwillingly thrust, Freeman is at heart a quiet physicist. His willingness to take a job at the reclusive Black Mesa facility implies that he doesn't date much, and he's probably only really comfortable in a lab or research environment. Alyx mentions at one point that he's not the talkative type. Game-wise, I think that having him not speak is a good idea, as it would reduce the level of immersion in the game. What does Gordon's voice sound like? When I'm playing it sounds like me.
I'm right there with you. I currently own 3 copies of Blade Runner: VHS, the horrid 20th Century Fox DVD (don't even get me started!), and a bootleg ripped from the laser disc.
I'll buy this as soon as it comes out. And when the extra-special-super-duper version with 8 extra frames of "lost" footage comes out I'll probably plunk down the cash for that too.
I hate to give any particular piece of media this much credit, but the world depicted in Blade Runner has been a huge influence on me. It's dirty, rainy, empoverished, violent, and I'd move there tomorrow if I could, even if it meant living on the street.
The AC is right, if a bit pedantic. According to HPL, Khlul'-hloo is the closest approximation that human speech can produce.
:-)
However, the generally accepted (and much easier) pronunciation is Cuh-THOO-loo. This is how it's pronounced by the HP Lovecraft Historical Society (http://www.cthulhulives.org), as well as the organizers of the Necronomicon sci-fi/fantasy convention held annually in Tampa, FL (http://www.stonehill.org/necro.htm), whom I know IRL.
I believe that pronouncing it "AIIEEEEEEE!!! THE MADNESS!!! *glork*" is considered acceptable as well.
I apologize for the off-topic nature of this comment, but on the off chance that these words may reach someone within Valve I have to say something.
I love the Half-Life franchise. The gameplay, graphics, and above all STORY are extremely compelling to me. I've had dreams about headcrabs, and have looked into building an HEV costume for science fiction conventions. My co-workers and I used to stay late at work and have HL deathmatch tournaments after hours, and I kept a crowbar hanging on my cube wall.
I hated Steam when it first came out, and still have mixed feelings about it, though I have appreciated the convenience of being able to install any of my Valve games on remote computers (cough, cough,*work*, cough), and I've been counting the days until the June 1st Ep 1 release.
Yes, I am Valve's bitch. I am a Half-Life fanatic.
The only thing I'm more fanatical about is my Mac. See my problem?
With the exception of Valve games, I've purged my outside-of-work life of anything having to do with Windows, and am much happier as a result. My PC now exists for one reason only, and that's Valve. Sure, I play other games, but every other game I like is available on my platform of choice.
I'd like to "vote with my dollars". I really would. But I'd be kidding myself if I said that I'd be willing to give up my HL addiction. It's absurd that I keep a PC set up and updated just to play Valve games, but that's what it has come down to.
Please. Have pity on the pathetic junkie you have created. Port your games to OS X.
[/grovel]
It sounds like you've got your system worked out the way you want, but you may want to look into a little app called SideTrack anyway. It's a replacement trackpad driver and config utility that lets you make all manner of customizations for your PB's trackpad, including defining scroll areas (horizontal and/or vertical), right button functionality, and setting the corners as hotkeys for Expose functions (or just about anything else you want to use them for).
Everyone else? Unanimous? Those are strong statements regarding machines that have been on the market for only two days!
;-)
Unless by "everyone else" you mean "the two people who have actually gotten their hands on one and tried", of course.
Why in Hell would you imagine that nobody wants to hack on the kernel?
I've been through this discussion thread three times and have yet to find a single Darwin developer who is either bothered or surprised by it. I've looked at the Darwin dev forums and it appears to be a non-issue there as well.
Of course, there *are* people who want to hack the kernel, but it seems that the most obvious motivation for doing so would be to run OS X on non-Apple hardware. It's pretty clear that if OS X could be run on arbitrary PC hardware then Apple would bleed to death, so this seems like a reasonable move on their part, and one which doesn't appear to impact the legitimate dev community at all.
Let me introduce you to Linux...
Been there, done that. I like Linux a lot, and I'm all in favor of open source software. However, I happen to prefer OS X for my own needs, and don't see where this rather trivial move on Apple's part warrants lumping them into the same category as M$. Let's be real here, okay?
Let me get this straight- one component of Darwin is closed source on one platform (just Intel). The rest of Darwin- the part that developers actually work on and need the source to- is still open, and according to other comments here that list is continuing to grow, and your response is to say that Apple might be worse than Microsoft?!? Please read the comments that preceeded yours (the ones posted by actual Darwin devs who are affected by this).
It seems that the only people who are getting wound up about this are the people who either don't like OS X to begin with or are reading the spin and missing the actual point.
I have to disagree on OS X being space hungry. I bought a 12" PowerBook less than a month after they came out, and have been using a 12" PB as primary machine ever since, so I've got more than a little experience with this.
;-)
Space-wise, I find that the big advantages of OS X vs Windows are the single menu bar (rather than each app having its own menu bar eating up screen real estate) and the unobtrusive (and hideable) Dock.
You talk about "Folder windows" taking up space, with icons being too large- are you referring to Finder windows? If so, I think I understand the problem. It sounds like you're using Icon View, which sucks. By all means, switch to column view (in the three-button cluster at the top of a Finder window, it's the one on the right). Also, go to Finder preferences (Command-,), and in the General tab check "Open new windows in column view". Column View is what Windows Explorer should be. It's intuitive, very easy to navigate, and space efficient. Also please note that the side bar on the left of the Finder window is customizable. If you've got a directory that you go to frequently you can drag it to the side bar and it gives you a quick shortcut that you can drag items straight to (make sure that Spring-loaded folders are enabled in preferences). This has saved me hours of sorting my porn.
If even that is taking up too much space, you can eliminate the button bar, side bar, and Spotlight field entirely by hitting the little oblong button in the top-right corner.
A couple of other quick notes regarding the Dock (and I apologize if this is all obvious stuff to you, but I don't know you and have know idea what your level of familiarity is with OS X). The default Dock settings are, I believe, designed so that even Stevie Wonder can see it. Go to System Preferences, make it smaller, and move it to the left side of the screen. You'll be glad you did. If you like, you can also set it to auto-hide, so it's only visible when the mouse moves to the edge of the screen.
For all intents and purposes, my 12" PowerBook is my only computer (I've got a PC running as a file server which I never see, and a "gaming machine" that permanently lives at a friend's house that I only use for Half-Life 2). It goes everywhere with me, and I do everything with it- work, surfing, e-mail, audio editing, gaming, DVD mastering- name it (except Half-Life 2, of course. Curse you, Valve!). It works like a champ.
Having a small display is a bit of a trade-off, but frankly it's trivial. At work I have it connected to an external display, which gives me a huge amount of real estate to work with. Everywhere else the portability gained by the form factor is so great that it's a no-brainer. Prior to my 12" I had a 15" TiBook, and while it was reasonably portable the extra bit of hassle of carrying it around prevented it from becoming the "extension-of-self" that my 12" is. Expose makes switching between windows effortless, and the display is still plenty large enough for WoW, Unreal Tournament 2004, and TRON 2.0 to look great and be completely functional.
My wife is in a similar situation with her iBook (though she never uses an external monitor), and is delighted with it even though her eyesight is lousy.
I had almost the exact same situation, except that in my case the cause of the problem was that the cable modem had gotten fried by lightning. It was obvious, but the Time-Warner/Brighthouse fool on the other end insisted on going through troubleshooting anyway. I've done my time in phone support as well, so I'd taken my LAN out of the equation and double-checked before I called. I accepted the BS troubleshooting until he asked me to "bypass the cable" between the modem and my computer. I asked him what the hell that meant (English was clearly not his primary language), and he explained that he wanted me to turn the cable around.
That pushed me over the edge, and I switched from patient and helpful to "why the fuck are you wasting my time?" mode. I got my ticket number and took my burnt up modem to the local office to be replaced. As it turned out, the one they gave me as a replacement was bad as well (I had a friend bring his cable modem over and it worked fine). Needless to say, the next call to support was much shorter and less pleasant, and on my next trip to their office I had them test the replacement unit before I left with it.
Honestly? I trust myself and my wife, and our ability to handle firearms, to stop a serial killer far more than I'd trust police cameras and the hope that the cops would get there in time and save us. I say this as someone who was once a student in a small town where a serial killer was known to be on the loose and murdering students. (Gainesville, FL, fall of 1990)
Don't kid yourself. The three police cars that were parked down the street from my house last night blocking traffic while waiting to ticket people are a bigger threat to my life than terrorists.
Isn't it obvious? They no longer see your mom and 10 million other Americans as citizens, but as potential terrorists. Hell, I almost wish (almost!) that there were 10 million Americans in league with Al Qaeda. Then they could've skipped the whole ugly 9/11 business, started a political party, and run a presidential candidate of their own.
Think about it. At least those wahoos would be up front and honest about being a totalitarian theocracy with no regard for civil liberties.
Best line in the movie. Hell, best line in the entire saga. I was surprised to see Lucas come up with something genuinely profound and relevant.
As does everyone who is smart, industrious, and damn good at what they do.
/. comment. If you have a non-troll point to make, I encourage you to log in and share it with the rest of us. Have the courage to allow us to attach a name to the flame.
I'm impressed by your ability to make snap judgments about a person's character based solely on a single, non-inflammatory
I subscribed to both Compute!'s Gazette and RUN back in the glory days of the 64. I still have them around somewhere, including the first issue of RUN. I don't know how many nights I spent typing in programs from the back of those magazines. It was nightmarish at first, but got better once they started using checksum programs (remember MLX?).
About a year ago I found out that my boss at the time had also subscribed to RUN as a kid, and had even had a program published. I probably have it on a 5.25" disk somewhere. I still play Canyons of Zelaz on a 64 emulator from time to time.
Fantastic magazine, and beautiful to look at. I still have the issue that covers TRON and Donkey Kong Jr. strategies, as well as Pitfall for the Atari 2600.
:-)
The whole magazine was pure 80's gold, from layout to content.
My favorite quote from that issue- "Admitting you don't own this classic is like admitting that your house doesn't have indoor plumbing." What were they talking about? Asteroids for the 2600, of course!
Good times.
If I could mod you +6 I would. I think that you've summarized and expanded on every worthwhile point in this entire thread. I've done configuration and support for thin clients off and on for the past 4 years or so, and I can't think of anything to add that you haven't already covered better than I could.
The newer HP thin clients (like the 5700) feature embedded Win XP, rather than CE. We've just recently migrated to them. They're more capable, though I've found them to be trickier to configure. This could just be bias on my part, as I've been working with CE-based thin clients for years and the XP ones are new to me.
It sounds like you're approaching this exactly as you should, and with full awareness of the pros and cons.
You're probably already planning this, but I'll go ahead and give you some unsolicited advice anyway- rather than a single Citrix server, start setting up a farm ASAP. It's overkill for only 25 thin clients, but the redundancy will significantly reduce any downtime due to server failure (theoretically to zero), and as your thin client environment grows the advantages gained through load balancing are enormous.
If your budget allows for it, it's better to have the capacity now than to wait until the users are complaining about slow performance before reacting. It'll also be better for both your server admin(s) and your desktop support to start out with a "server farm mindset". In our environment any widespread issues typically only affect a single server, and it's good for the troubleshooters to be in the habit of making that one of the first things they check.
As others have commented, the problem was most likely either with a poorly set up Citrix environment or with apps that just don't play well with Citrix.
I'm the sole local tech support for ~500 thin clients and 100 full PCs, which access Citrix from a farm located half way across the country. We're just one of several remote sites all accessing the same servers. It's not always lightning fast, but overall it works just fine. I think that the key is making sure that the servers in the Citrix farm are adequate for the job, and that load balancing is properly implemented.
BTW, from a support standpoint there's no comparison between thin clients and PCs. Despite a firewall with some fairly restrictive rules regarding where users can go on the net (it can't be blocked completely- they need net access to do their jobs), the PCs are a constant spyware headache for me, and also seem to have significantly more hardware issues than the thin clients, due to the complexity of the machines and the greater number of moving parts (i.e.- more than zero).
That's a great point. Braille is quite easy for sighted people to learn, and is fairly unambiguous.
v ious2.htm
As far as systems that are a little easier to write, but still machine-readable, a fun alternative might be the Fardraut font from Xevious and Solvalou.
http://hg101.classicgaming.gamespy.com/xevious/xe
I've got it as an actual font (called "CZP_Fardraut"), but I can't seem to find it anymore. I'm sure it's out there somewhere.
As alphabets go the letters aren't as distinctive as most, which would make learning it or reading it from a distance a bit of a hassle, but it's definitely possible. Also, the number system is nicely logical.