I can't find another game that gives a better FPS experience.
Looks like CowboyNeal has never played Tribes2. It was incredibly innovative, and the engine was very good for combined indoor and outdoor playing. The game came with integrated 'email', IRC and newsgroup-ish fora, which was extremely cool (but never lived up to its potential since the "community" got killed along with Dynamix). I recently started playing it again and with a GeForce4 plus every setting cranked up, it's a really pretty game, too.
But where T2 really shined was in teamwork with vehicles. If you've ever played Tribes2 with four or five buddies you were communicating with, you know what I mean. There's nothing like a combined bomber/tank strike (with fighter escort) or a transport full of juggernauts to give you a great FPS experience. Or sending out scouts ahead of a couple engineers with deployable inventory stations, with shrikes keeping everyone's heads down. The Renegades mod really added a lot with all sorts of deployable stuff. I always liked mortar turrets.
'Course T2 wasn't all twitchy like Quake-ish games, and the maps were extremely large and detailed, so I can see why some people overlook it.
So, when considering Hurricane.net bear in mind you may well have problems with email being rejected and even complete blackholing of connectivity to/from some sites.
I had no idea. I've had an account with them for years and haven't had any mail come back.
I've recommended Hurricane Electric to a lot of friends and they've all had good experiences. I've personally used them for 5 years and have had no problems. I ssh in and run Pine every day.
They have fairly cheap ($10) web hosting on shared Linux (Debian, I think) servers. For that ten bucks, you get:
True Virtual Host (http:// www.yourname.com)
Support for PHP 4
Your Own Secure Web (SSL) Directory
Your Own MySQL Database
Your Own Standard Web Directory
Your Own cgi-bin Directory
Your Own Anonymous FTP Directory
Direct Access Via FTP
Direct Access Via telnet
Direct Access Via ssh
Gigabit (1,000 megabit/second) Backbone
Multiple Connections For Backup And Redundancy
Battery Backup and Emergency Generator
High Performance Carefully Managed Web Servers
Online Billing Information
POP3 Authenticated SMTP
Multiple POP3 Mailboxes per Account
Unlimited Mail Forwarding
Unlimited Mail Autoresponders
Procmail filters
Detailed Daily Web and FTP Activity Reports
Access To Raw web server access_log Files
Server Side Includes
Full Shell Account
Full Unix Development Environment
Java and Javac
Perl
Tcl
gcc
crontab
Web-based email
(I just pasted that from their info page.)
The only downside is storage. You only get 50MB with the ten dollar package. For $25 a month you get 250MB (and 26 POP accounts).
"Really liking OS X" is exactly why I haven't shelled out for an Apple.:-) I know that once I do, I'll have a very hard time trying not to pay the Apple Hardware Tax for a real spiffy OS. If Apple ported OS X to x86, I'd definitely buy it. I'd even pay for software (rather than troll freshmeat for freeware that does what I need doing).
It's very hard to resist going over to the dark side, but my wife's habit of closely following our finances has certainly helped.
I've got an "old" 700MHz ThinkPad A20M with Linux on it. I drag it everywhere. It's built like a tank (though not as tough as a ToughBook). You can find them online for between $300 and $500. Red Hat 9 will detect every piece of hardware in them save for the WinModem. Suspend works fine (make sure to turn off xscreensaver), but I haven't tried hibernate.
I've been coveting a Powerbook (pretty much every geek friend I've got has drank the Apple KoolAid) but just haven't been able to get past that impending feeling of buyer's remorse. All I really need is a decently fast Unix-ish laptop with 802.11b. And after hearing the friends with TiBooks complain about the finish coming off, heat, the case cracking, etc, I decided that I can handle using a slower x86 laptop. Having to make payments on a computer which has obvious defects is not something I'd take too well. I don't get a "cool" OS, but I've got two grand more cash in the bank than I'd otherwise have.
If I were you, I'd think very seriously about selling your Apple while you can still recover most your losses.
I got an SN41G2 for my birthday Saturday. The installation manual not only says to install the CPU using thermal grease, but it also has a little picture (step 2.3.4 on page 7) of a small, gloved hand squirting a healthy dollop on the top of the chip. The accessory pack comes with a small packet of Stars brand "Heatsink Compound" with which to do the job. I ordered an OEM CPU yesterday, and it's going to be installed with the thermal grease that the Shuttle came with. If AMD doesn't like that then they can take it up with Shuttle.
I can't speak to the issue of AMD CPUs frying themselves. None of the many AMD processors I've owned since I first bought a K6/166 have ever become overly warm or lit on fire. But then again, I usually take the 30-50% I save from not buying Intel and get a good cooler (along with other accessories).
-B
Re:Small form factor roundup on Ars today
on
Mini-Box M-100
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· Score: 1
Damn. I almost bought one last week (kind of a "buy the holster, have to buy the gun now" thing my uncle taught me). I glad I held off. Can you O/C them if they are in a SHuttle? I imagine those thigns have pretty strict heat requirements. Although if it'll cool a 3000+, it'll cool a 3500+ which has been bumped up.
Since the last CPU I overclocked was a K6/150, how does one go about it these days? Did you just bump up the multiplier? Can you mess with the voltage as well?
Off to do some googling...
-B
Re:Small form factor roundup on Ars today
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Mini-Box M-100
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· Score: 1
I had wondered about both of those things. The noise I might be able to handle. My main workstation has a Turbo-Cool 2X on it which is pretty loud. Very loud, actually. But it's under the desk, which helps a little.
As far as drivers, I'm primarily thinking of a Windows-only box, since I want my dual-boot machine (the one with the F15-sounding fan in it) back on Linux full-time. Nvidia released fairly new drivers for linux. Do therse have missing features as well? I was thinking of making a little 10GB partition for Linux just for grins, but if I have to wait for the maturity level of chipset drivers to go up I guess I could.
-B
Small form factor roundup on Ars today
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Mini-Box M-100
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· Score: 4, Informative
This is probably spill-over from the small form factor roundup on ArsTechnica today. There's a lot more info over there about the M-100 and a few others (including the Netdrive, which was on Slashdot a while back).
As for me, next week the birthday elf is gonna bring me a Shuttle SN41G2 and a Athlon 2800+ Barton core CPU -- or I'm going to hunt that little shit down and kick his ass. Santa didn't bring me a tiny PC and it nearly cost him his life. He got to walk away with only having lost two reindeer. The elf ain't going to be so lucky. So pony up with the SFF computer or watch your back...
But think of the thousands of acres of pristine lunar rain forests!
If there's rain forest now, then it stands to reason that there was some amount of biomass in the past. Which has been buried and compacted and reduced to various complex organic molecules. With a lot of stored solar energy in them. That means... OIL!!!
Screw that Alaska nonsense, we're going to the moon!
Why is it that creationists are so looked down upon, but other religions that, for example, believe that the world is sitting on an elephant that is sitting on a turtle are okay? Is it because it is expected that white people in North America should know better, but non-whites are free to believe whatever they want?!? That to me seems at the very least bigotted.
Damn. If I had any mod points, you'd have gotten one. I'd have liked to have given you two or three, actually.
I was always apalled at the double standard most people in N. Am have for those of us that don't believe in the version of Jesus as some white dude who spoke like King James. I mean, I should be as free to say that I'm an apatheist as a dark-looking guy should be to say that he believes in the Mystical Turtle of Life, right? Not a chance. The swarthy fellow gets a "Wow, you have a really interesting belief system... tell me more about your culture" kind of reaction and I get one like "You're going to hell... you know that, right?"
As a white American male, I'm expected to espouse the traditional Christian myths. If I had an accent or something I could say whatever I wanted. But since I sound like a typical Californian, I have to say "Jesus saves! Praise be!" or I either get shit on or an attempt to save my soul. My wife gave me a bumper sticker that says "Jesus is coming. Look busy." You wouldn't believe the amount of grief I get for that. I think it's funny as all get-out, yet most people (Americans) don't seem to have a very open sense of humor when it comes to a white guy calling bullshit on the whole Bible story. The Turkish guy can have a "Praise Allah" sticker -- basically discounting Christianity out of hand -- and gets nothing. Is it because deep down your average Baptist or Episcopalian or whatever automatically discounts the foreign guy as a heathen? It's an "us vs. them" thing? I don't know.
I'm fine with any religion, as long as you don't try to convince me yours is the one I should believe in. You ever had a Taoist tell you that you're going to hell unless you fessed up with the sins and got with their program? When's the last time a Hindu tried to convert you? When's the last time a pair of Muslims came to your door and tried to foist their nonsensical tracts on you?
As much as people in the U.S. preach tolerance, I don't see a lot of it...
Please say that you're kidding. You honestly don't know how explosives work, do you?
Or did you read and article and just happen to miss this part:
"The probes are based on bunker-buster penetrators, but instead of explosives, would carry sophisticated scientific instruments hardened against the shock of striking the lunar surface."
You might want to refrain from commenting on anyone else's stupidity or engineering skills.
If someone submitted a story with a statement like that subject, they'd hear about it. But (Mac) people can bag on anything non-Mac and get away with it easy enough. Anything that isn't Apple is beneath consideration, probably out of habit or aesthetic reasons or past history, whatever. I personally like Mac OS X very much, but I'm more pragmatic in my choices than many Mac users seem to be. I just can't use OS X because Mac hardware "isn't ready for me".
The last completely new PC I bought was 4 years ago, and it was built from components. I've since upgraded quite a few of the parts in it (video card, CPU/RAM, motherboard), but quite a bit of it is still original (hard drives, SCSI cards, CD/CD-R, sound card, case, monitor, etc). I'll probably keep buying a new motherboard/CPU/RAM combo for the next 5-6 years or so. My previous PC lasted 9 years, and if I could find modern AT motherboards I'd still be putting new parts in it.
The point is that every two or three years I can throw $300 at my initial $2000 investment and basically get a very workable system (with more horsepower than current Macs, I might add). Until I can do that with Apple hardware, Mac OS X will never be "ready for me" -- not because I don't like it, but because it's just not the best value. Besides, Linux on my desktop works just fine (and it's also free, as is 98% of the software I use, so that's a nice bonus). Sure it ain't perfect, but what is?
Wow. That's really amazing. Truly. Honestly. Mean it.
Took me about 21 seconds. Once I was out of the bean bag room and away from the exasperation of two hours of bullshit rapid-fire questions from a dozen people from all directions. And by "nobody getting it right" I meant that they said that most people instinctively say "they're not separated", not that most people can't do basic math.
Anyway, the point of that type of interview was to see how people dealt with pressure, not math.
Cool -- I'm glad no fits. But I can't do Switzerland... I heard that when a foreigner moves there and tries to get a job, he gets taxed at 100% on all income from Switzerland, to protect the local's jobs. If you get citizenship, everything gets back to normal, but I don't imagine that would be very easy. Also I don't speak the language. Drag. I hear the chocolate is fantastic. Plus, the Swiss Miss is a stone fox. And, she makes cocoa!
I have a friend who was in "the intelligence community" and spent a lot of time in Switzerland. He liked it but would never move there. He said it was like everyone was waiting for something big and bad to happen to them. He also said it was too clean. He called it a "Stepford country". I have to take his word for it. But the Swiss Miss is indeed a fox...
I'm behind you on the training idea. You could do something along the lines of a military model, where people sign up for a specialty, get trained, and then ship out to where the job is. I'd get behind that...
Now, I wouldn't feel so bad paying through the nose in taxes if I knew that it was going toward something positive. We've got so many people that could contribute but once you're down and out, you're doomed there. I had a guy ask me for change outside a Jack in the Box one time. Dude was able-bodied, and sitting underneath a giant "Help Wanted -- All Shifts!" sign. There's no reason for that kind of activity. But the guy probably didn't have an address, and couldn't have taken the job even if he wanted to. At least not unless he *really* wanted to flip burgers.
Maybe what we need is like what you say. Everyone gets 6 months (or whatever) welfare/aid. Just like now. But beyond that if you want help you have to take some assessments and whatnot. Give them an ASVAB-ish test, some more directed skill-based exams, find out what they know and what they are good at and what they want to do and figure something up. Pair them up with a counselor (perhaps a former enrollee?) who works with them for training and such. After they're done the counselor helps with placement. Give applicants an address/drop box, help them get clothing (I'd donate clothes I no longer want if I got a tax break and knew someone who needed them would get them), get them a good looking CV, interview skills, job counseling, etc., along with actual training in a skill.
You'd probably want to throw in drug treatment/counseling in there somewhere, too. I'd generally agree with a statement like "All government aid recipients must be drug free while receiving such aid". I'm like *wildly* hands-off when it comes to drug use (although I don't use anything but beer myself). Unless such use could imperil others, I couldn't care less what drugs people use. But I think if you're on aid then you don't have the luxury of being able to use drugs even recreationally. Getting your life in order should be first.
I'm big on the "do work, get money" thing, as you know, so I think this plan would actually work out. Until it got co-opted and twisted and abused by politicians.
The medical question is tough. We do have pretty good tech, but it's a scandal that so many people have no access to healthcare. I think maybe a hybrid system would do the trick. Nationalized healthcare, but private clinics for special purposes, sort of like medical contracting companies. Hmm...
You know back during one of the times we were poor (the time between my dad losing it all and my mom starting her store) my little sister got TB. We went to the coutry hospital and all got tested. I went there a couple times. I remember it being pretty damn bad (I once got seated on a bench in between two groups of a bunch of guys wearing orange jumpsuits all chained together) but I got treated. They had "normal" doctors that did rotations there, as well as doctors that worked there full-time (mostly newcomers to the U.S.). They also had a lot of students. I got worked on by students once. It was OK. Something like that (on a larger scale) would work.
I worked at a dotcom for about a year and a half. Their interview process took a lot of cues from the MS "puzzle questions" it seems. But my dotcom interview had a twist.
I showed up for what I was told would be an informal interview (I had worked with many of the people there before). I was given a chair in the middle of a big room full of beanbags while the engineering group filed in and sat down. Then they each opened their laptops, pulled up a big list of puzzle interview questions, got on IRC with each other and grilled me for two hours.
I got the "Why are manhole covers round?" question (my answer was something like: "Uh... ah... err... Because the guy that invented the manhole liked round (and needed covers to match)?") and a few others like it, as well as some more "straight" tech questions (stuff like "What are your three favorite Unix commands and why?" and "How do sockets work?"). The only puzzle question I didn't answer on the spot was "How far apart are the hands on a clock if it's 3:15?" I said that there are no hands on a digital clock. Then when that got the looks I knew it would get I said "They aren't seprated" and immediately retracted it as being wrong. Then I said "Pass". On the way out the door, I figured the answer out and called the hiring manager on my cell phone. Apparently nobody got the clock one right.
I don't remember the other questions, but they were about half the nonsense "move Mt. Fuji" ones and half honest ones that tested analytical ability under some pressure. I got tired of the whole thing after about 45 minutes (witness my answer to the clock question). I started copping out with an attitude like "Look, nobody can be expected to know everything, but everyone should be able to find anything out and then quickly apply that knowledge. Let me use my laptop and I'll answer any question you want answered. Sit me in front of the hypothetical AIX machine and I'll figure out why it's not booting -- using some basic reasoning, a little general experience and the Net. But don't ask me questions my experience alone can't answer unless you expect me to also work in a similar vacuum. In which case I'm not sure I want to work here in the first place..."
I'm frankly surprised I got the job but I guess I said the right things.
I think those puzzle questions are more to make the interviewer feel smart than to test the interviewee. They want to instill a sense of "Ohhh, he's asking me really smart questions! I wanna work here with these 1337 people!" If I want to see moxie in an interviewee, I'll ask them to tapdance or something.
A lot of seems pretty reasonable. I'd rather see anyone who wants a job getting trained instead of just "employed" outright (and I'd say that anyone who wants any federal help at all would be required to either seek work or participate in training). I'm not so much a fan of us imposing our will on other countries, so I'm with you the world police issue. Healthcare I'm conflicted on. The private system has given us a pretty darn good, and very advanced, system. Or at least it seems people come to the U.S. when they want some weird operation. The for-profit system creates a lot of R&D, so I'm of two minds on that one.
I think that white collar criminals can do far, far, more harm to society than your average pot smoker. But I think beyond the punitive, government ought take a more hands-off approach with business. Let them do their thing. There's a reason the U.S. has a powerful global economic standing. As bad as you might think it is, free market capitalism has brought us a lot of benefits.
It's easy to sit on the sidelines and snipe, but the fact of the matter is you've done nothing to address my original post.
Snipe? Please. I was pointing out facts. And I did address your point: I don't think his leaving the post is such a bad thing, because from where I sit (as a member of the general public/electorate, and not privy to the inner workings of Mr Schmidt's mind or his tenure at MS) I'm not at all sure what he did security-wise while at Microsoft. I don't know, as an outsider, what exactly he did at Microsoft, and so all I have to judge him as a public official is his track record, or failing that, the track record of the company he was a chief executive at.
Like I said, I don't know the man, and I don't mean to denigrate him. But the fact remains that he was Chief Security Officer at Microsoft. Microsoft has an abysmal security record. That reflects on Mr. Schmidt, right or wrong. He was the top man. Yet you say that it really wasn't his job to be worried about product security. That sounds like a cop-out to most people, myself included. That is what seems disingenous, not my commenting on his apparent track record (or lack thereof, I suppose, since he didn't actually do much any normal Microsoft customer would be able to see). His record at MS is all I've got, and MS's record is his record. It's not a terribly good one, regardless of how personable or knowledgeable the man is.
You have to step back and look at it from an outsider's perspective. Not everyone has the luxury to know him personally, and we can't all use our personal or professional knowledge of him to forgive what otherwise looks like an appalling record. Most people saw the appointing of Microsoft's Chief Security Officer to Cybersecurity Advisor as something similar to appointing ValuJet's chief of aircraft maintenance to head the NTSB or Anderson Consulting's ethics oversight committee chairman to the SEC. That's sad but true (and before you give me grief over the gravity of the compariions, I pulled those two examples from memory of online posts I read). That perception is based on MS's record. Which is Mr. Schmidt's record, regardless of whether or not it was actually in his mandate as Chief Security Officer to worry about product security.
I'm sorry if you feel he's been unfairly treated, but that's just how it lays out. I'm sure he was a fine administrator, and I'm sure he was good at cat herding. You'd have to be, even at a company smaller than MS. I guess I'd like someone that has a provable track record to step in a make substantive, postive changes to keep us safe from a network/computing perspective. Although another poster was probably right in saying the government probably just wanted someone to blame if it hit the fan.
It's important to note that his time at Microsoft had nothing to do with their products (this in response to all those "we all know how secure Microsoft products are" trolls out there).
Yeah, about that Windows update service, when it got compromised Mr. Schmidt did...? What exactly? Was that "product security" or "infrastructure security"? Or was the actual buffer overflow a product-level security issue, but the unpatched servers a corporate security issue? I wonder which one would have been easier to prevent... Hmmm...
When Microsoft started distributing the NIMDA worm was that the application group's screw-up? Did Mr. Schmidt's security policies extend to internal processes like QA? Surely when they release software internally, Mr. Schmidt's group had to make sure that it was safe, right? Why not give the rest of the world the same courtesy? Does MS have separate internal and external QA groups? If not, do their internal SQL, web, etc servers have holes? Is MS's security policy therefore "crunchy on the outside, soft in the middle"? That's not very reassuring.
I could go on, but rather than be labeled a "troll" for simply pointing out facts and asking rhetorical questions, I'd just like to offer that perhaps, just perhaps, there might be some merit to the whole "security is a process, not a product" idea. Put another way, I for one would feel better if the U.S. Cybersecurity Advisor didn't have a "that's not my department" precedent coloring his judgement. Or maybe I'm taking your statement out of context and unfairly judging Mr. Schmidt for being asleep at the wheel when he was merely in the passenger seat inert, in which case I apologize.
While I certainly have nothing personal against Mr. Schmidt, like it or not he was the front man for Microsoft's "security". If MS gets a bad rap on security issues, for whatever reason, then Mr. Schmidt takes the heat on it -- if only for being the most visible target. And honestly, you can't really say with a straight face that MS's products have nothing to do with its corporate security. Microsoft's products have everything to do with many thousands of other corporations' security. If those products had built with security in mind, maybe there wouldn't need to be this big, mystical demarcation between the security inherent in MS's products and its corporate computing infrastructure. In the public's eye, anyway, there isn't any difference. Microsoft is its products -- and its products have a really appalling track record with regard to security.
Now you don't have to worry about embedded newlines.
Yeah, I know. My old.sig was dd used exactly like you say. I saw it everwhere so I switched to something 'different' (but under 120 characters itself). And I had a version that used cat, but it wasn't nearly as 1337 as head.
I only care as long as I get something. Or maybe even not. I could handle having just a newline as a.sig...
Sounds cool, actually. I put a little bit more $ into it for the premium of using Mac hardware, but I really wanted OS X driving my entertainment center. I find it far more functional and flexible than XP Media Edition, and with Konfabulator, anything is possible:)
You should have seen what I used to have: the same TV and receiver and an old Thinkpad running XMMS with a patch cable going from the headphone jack to the aux speaker-in on the receiver. We didn't save video; we had to remember when to be home.:-)
I haven't tried Tivo personally. With the money I spent I could have, I'm sure, but hey, I'm a project kinda guy.
Yeah, I hear ya. I'm the same way. Problem is, I have more projects than I can reasonably be expected to finish in my lifetime. It was time to cut down. And the wife wanted a PVR-type thing. So TiVo it was.
I think I failed to mention that I painted it gloss black with silver metallic highlights. crappy paint job, but oh well.
Well now you're talking.:-)
I had this idea for using one of those Shuttle XPC form factor mini PCs as the basis for an entertainment center, and then Alienware came out with one. It runs XP Media Center Edition, which is a deal breaker in and of itself (never mind the cost; those XPC cases are like $150 so I have no idea how they can get away with selling their low-end unit for $1,700). It's just as well since my wife would have niether waited for me to get off my ass and build something or wanted me to spend the money for an Alienware box.
Another idea I had for a project was an in-dash audio player that would stream MP3s to my truck's stereo. It would be based on a Linux PC (the guts out of a laptop), aand have 802.11b connectivity. I was going to write scripts that would detect when the truck was in range of my home network and then rsync all the music files it didn't have and go on standby. I was going to use an old palm pilot as the display/remote. Then I saw that these guys made a unit called an Empeg that did almost exactly what I wanted. I shelved my projet and decided to buy an Empeg. Except the soon-to-be-released Wersion 2 was going to have a PCMCIA slot (which meant an Orinoco card could slide right in there) so I waited. Then SONICblue, those no-talent assmonkeys, bought Empeg out and killed the in-dash unit. I've since given away the laptop which was the basis for my original idea.
I don't know what the moral of those two stories is. Carpe Diem? Scratch your itches? Do what makes you happy? Dunno...
Slashdot Mirror
Looks like CowboyNeal has never played Tribes2. It was incredibly innovative, and the engine was very good for combined indoor and outdoor playing. The game came with integrated 'email', IRC and newsgroup-ish fora, which was extremely cool (but never lived up to its potential since the "community" got killed along with Dynamix). I recently started playing it again and with a GeForce4 plus every setting cranked up, it's a really pretty game, too.
But where T2 really shined was in teamwork with vehicles. If you've ever played Tribes2 with four or five buddies you were communicating with, you know what I mean. There's nothing like a combined bomber/tank strike (with fighter escort) or a transport full of juggernauts to give you a great FPS experience. Or sending out scouts ahead of a couple engineers with deployable inventory stations, with shrikes keeping everyone's heads down. The Renegades mod really added a lot with all sorts of deployable stuff. I always liked mortar turrets.
'Course T2 wasn't all twitchy like Quake-ish games, and the maps were extremely large and detailed, so I can see why some people overlook it.
-B
I had no idea. I've had an account with them for years and haven't had any mail come back.
-B
They have fairly cheap ($10) web hosting on shared Linux (Debian, I think) servers. For that ten bucks, you get:
True Virtual Host (http:// www.yourname.com)
Support for PHP 4
Your Own Secure Web (SSL) Directory
Your Own MySQL Database
Your Own Standard Web Directory
Your Own cgi-bin Directory
Your Own Anonymous FTP Directory
Direct Access Via FTP
Direct Access Via telnet
Direct Access Via ssh
Gigabit (1,000 megabit/second) Backbone
Multiple Connections For Backup And Redundancy
Battery Backup and Emergency Generator
High Performance Carefully Managed Web Servers
Online Billing Information
POP3 Authenticated SMTP
Multiple POP3 Mailboxes per Account
Unlimited Mail Forwarding
Unlimited Mail Autoresponders
Procmail filters
Detailed Daily Web and FTP Activity Reports
Access To Raw web server access_log Files
Server Side Includes
Full Shell Account
Full Unix Development Environment
Java and Javac
Perl
Tcl
gcc
crontab
Web-based email
(I just pasted that from their info page.)
The only downside is storage. You only get 50MB with the ten dollar package. For $25 a month you get 250MB (and 26 POP accounts).
-B
It's very hard to resist going over to the dark side, but my wife's habit of closely following our finances has certainly helped.
-B
I always huff the bag. Always. Nothing beats that new electronics smell to let you know that you're a consumer.
-B
-B
I've been coveting a Powerbook (pretty much every geek friend I've got has drank the Apple KoolAid) but just haven't been able to get past that impending feeling of buyer's remorse. All I really need is a decently fast Unix-ish laptop with 802.11b. And after hearing the friends with TiBooks complain about the finish coming off, heat, the case cracking, etc, I decided that I can handle using a slower x86 laptop. Having to make payments on a computer which has obvious defects is not something I'd take too well. I don't get a "cool" OS, but I've got two grand more cash in the bank than I'd otherwise have.
If I were you, I'd think very seriously about selling your Apple while you can still recover most your losses.
-B
-B
I can't speak to the issue of AMD CPUs frying themselves. None of the many AMD processors I've owned since I first bought a K6/166 have ever become overly warm or lit on fire. But then again, I usually take the 30-50% I save from not buying Intel and get a good cooler (along with other accessories).
-B
Since the last CPU I overclocked was a K6/150, how does one go about it these days? Did you just bump up the multiplier? Can you mess with the voltage as well?
Off to do some googling...
-B
As far as drivers, I'm primarily thinking of a Windows-only box, since I want my dual-boot machine (the one with the F15-sounding fan in it) back on Linux full-time. Nvidia released fairly new drivers for linux. Do therse have missing features as well? I was thinking of making a little 10GB partition for Linux just for grins, but if I have to wait for the maturity level of chipset drivers to go up I guess I could.
-B
As for me, next week the birthday elf is gonna bring me a Shuttle SN41G2 and a Athlon 2800+ Barton core CPU -- or I'm going to hunt that little shit down and kick his ass. Santa didn't bring me a tiny PC and it nearly cost him his life. He got to walk away with only having lost two reindeer. The elf ain't going to be so lucky. So pony up with the SFF computer or watch your back...
-B
If there's rain forest now, then it stands to reason that there was some amount of biomass in the past. Which has been buried and compacted and reduced to various complex organic molecules. With a lot of stored solar energy in them. That means... OIL!!!
Screw that Alaska nonsense, we're going to the moon!
-B
Damn. If I had any mod points, you'd have gotten one. I'd have liked to have given you two or three, actually.
I was always apalled at the double standard most people in N. Am have for those of us that don't believe in the version of Jesus as some white dude who spoke like King James. I mean, I should be as free to say that I'm an apatheist as a dark-looking guy should be to say that he believes in the Mystical Turtle of Life, right? Not a chance. The swarthy fellow gets a "Wow, you have a really interesting belief system... tell me more about your culture" kind of reaction and I get one like "You're going to hell... you know that, right?"
As a white American male, I'm expected to espouse the traditional Christian myths. If I had an accent or something I could say whatever I wanted. But since I sound like a typical Californian, I have to say "Jesus saves! Praise be!" or I either get shit on or an attempt to save my soul. My wife gave me a bumper sticker that says "Jesus is coming. Look busy." You wouldn't believe the amount of grief I get for that. I think it's funny as all get-out, yet most people (Americans) don't seem to have a very open sense of humor when it comes to a white guy calling bullshit on the whole Bible story. The Turkish guy can have a "Praise Allah" sticker -- basically discounting Christianity out of hand -- and gets nothing. Is it because deep down your average Baptist or Episcopalian or whatever automatically discounts the foreign guy as a heathen? It's an "us vs. them" thing? I don't know.
I'm fine with any religion, as long as you don't try to convince me yours is the one I should believe in. You ever had a Taoist tell you that you're going to hell unless you fessed up with the sins and got with their program? When's the last time a Hindu tried to convert you? When's the last time a pair of Muslims came to your door and tried to foist their nonsensical tracts on you?
As much as people in the U.S. preach tolerance, I don't see a lot of it...
-B
Or did you read and article and just happen to miss this part:
You might want to refrain from commenting on anyone else's stupidity or engineering skills.
-B
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The last completely new PC I bought was 4 years ago, and it was built from components. I've since upgraded quite a few of the parts in it (video card, CPU/RAM, motherboard), but quite a bit of it is still original (hard drives, SCSI cards, CD/CD-R, sound card, case, monitor, etc). I'll probably keep buying a new motherboard/CPU/RAM combo for the next 5-6 years or so. My previous PC lasted 9 years, and if I could find modern AT motherboards I'd still be putting new parts in it.
The point is that every two or three years I can throw $300 at my initial $2000 investment and basically get a very workable system (with more horsepower than current Macs, I might add). Until I can do that with Apple hardware, Mac OS X will never be "ready for me" -- not because I don't like it, but because it's just not the best value. Besides, Linux on my desktop works just fine (and it's also free, as is 98% of the software I use, so that's a nice bonus). Sure it ain't perfect, but what is?
-B
Wow. That's really amazing. Truly. Honestly. Mean it.
Took me about 21 seconds. Once I was out of the bean bag room and away from the exasperation of two hours of bullshit rapid-fire questions from a dozen people from all directions. And by "nobody getting it right" I meant that they said that most people instinctively say "they're not separated", not that most people can't do basic math.
Anyway, the point of that type of interview was to see how people dealt with pressure, not math.
-B
I have a friend who was in "the intelligence community" and spent a lot of time in Switzerland. He liked it but would never move there. He said it was like everyone was waiting for something big and bad to happen to them. He also said it was too clean. He called it a "Stepford country". I have to take his word for it. But the Swiss Miss is indeed a fox...
I'm behind you on the training idea. You could do something along the lines of a military model, where people sign up for a specialty, get trained, and then ship out to where the job is. I'd get behind that...
Now, I wouldn't feel so bad paying through the nose in taxes if I knew that it was going toward something positive. We've got so many people that could contribute but once you're down and out, you're doomed there. I had a guy ask me for change outside a Jack in the Box one time. Dude was able-bodied, and sitting underneath a giant "Help Wanted -- All Shifts!" sign. There's no reason for that kind of activity. But the guy probably didn't have an address, and couldn't have taken the job even if he wanted to. At least not unless he *really* wanted to flip burgers.
Maybe what we need is like what you say. Everyone gets 6 months (or whatever) welfare/aid. Just like now. But beyond that if you want help you have to take some assessments and whatnot. Give them an ASVAB-ish test, some more directed skill-based exams, find out what they know and what they are good at and what they want to do and figure something up. Pair them up with a counselor (perhaps a former enrollee?) who works with them for training and such. After they're done the counselor helps with placement. Give applicants an address/drop box, help them get clothing (I'd donate clothes I no longer want if I got a tax break and knew someone who needed them would get them), get them a good looking CV, interview skills, job counseling, etc., along with actual training in a skill.
You'd probably want to throw in drug treatment/counseling in there somewhere, too. I'd generally agree with a statement like "All government aid recipients must be drug free while receiving such aid". I'm like *wildly* hands-off when it comes to drug use (although I don't use anything but beer myself). Unless such use could imperil others, I couldn't care less what drugs people use. But I think if you're on aid then you don't have the luxury of being able to use drugs even recreationally. Getting your life in order should be first.
I'm big on the "do work, get money" thing, as you know, so I think this plan would actually work out. Until it got co-opted and twisted and abused by politicians.
The medical question is tough. We do have pretty good tech, but it's a scandal that so many people have no access to healthcare. I think maybe a hybrid system would do the trick. Nationalized healthcare, but private clinics for special purposes, sort of like medical contracting companies. Hmm...
You know back during one of the times we were poor (the time between my dad losing it all and my mom starting her store) my little sister got TB. We went to the coutry hospital and all got tested. I went there a couple times. I remember it being pretty damn bad (I once got seated on a bench in between two groups of a bunch of guys wearing orange jumpsuits all chained together) but I got treated. They had "normal" doctors that did rotations there, as well as doctors that worked there full-time (mostly newcomers to the U.S.). They also had a lot of students. I got worked on by students once. It was OK. Something like that (on a larger scale) would work.
-B
I showed up for what I was told would be an informal interview (I had worked with many of the people there before). I was given a chair in the middle of a big room full of beanbags while the engineering group filed in and sat down. Then they each opened their laptops, pulled up a big list of puzzle interview questions, got on IRC with each other and grilled me for two hours.
I got the "Why are manhole covers round?" question (my answer was something like: "Uh... ah... err... Because the guy that invented the manhole liked round (and needed covers to match)?") and a few others like it, as well as some more "straight" tech questions (stuff like "What are your three favorite Unix commands and why?" and "How do sockets work?"). The only puzzle question I didn't answer on the spot was "How far apart are the hands on a clock if it's 3:15?" I said that there are no hands on a digital clock. Then when that got the looks I knew it would get I said "They aren't seprated" and immediately retracted it as being wrong. Then I said "Pass". On the way out the door, I figured the answer out and called the hiring manager on my cell phone. Apparently nobody got the clock one right.
I don't remember the other questions, but they were about half the nonsense "move Mt. Fuji" ones and half honest ones that tested analytical ability under some pressure. I got tired of the whole thing after about 45 minutes (witness my answer to the clock question). I started copping out with an attitude like "Look, nobody can be expected to know everything, but everyone should be able to find anything out and then quickly apply that knowledge. Let me use my laptop and I'll answer any question you want answered. Sit me in front of the hypothetical AIX machine and I'll figure out why it's not booting -- using some basic reasoning, a little general experience and the Net. But don't ask me questions my experience alone can't answer unless you expect me to also work in a similar vacuum. In which case I'm not sure I want to work here in the first place..."
I'm frankly surprised I got the job but I guess I said the right things.
I think those puzzle questions are more to make the interviewer feel smart than to test the interviewee. They want to instill a sense of "Ohhh, he's asking me really smart questions! I wanna work here with these 1337 people!" If I want to see moxie in an interviewee, I'll ask them to tapdance or something.
-B
A lot of seems pretty reasonable. I'd rather see anyone who wants a job getting trained instead of just "employed" outright (and I'd say that anyone who wants any federal help at all would be required to either seek work or participate in training). I'm not so much a fan of us imposing our will on other countries, so I'm with you the world police issue. Healthcare I'm conflicted on. The private system has given us a pretty darn good, and very advanced, system. Or at least it seems people come to the U.S. when they want some weird operation. The for-profit system creates a lot of R&D, so I'm of two minds on that one.
I think that white collar criminals can do far, far, more harm to society than your average pot smoker. But I think beyond the punitive, government ought take a more hands-off approach with business. Let them do their thing. There's a reason the U.S. has a powerful global economic standing. As bad as you might think it is, free market capitalism has brought us a lot of benefits.
Anyway, no fits.
-B
Snipe? Please. I was pointing out facts. And I did address your point: I don't think his leaving the post is such a bad thing, because from where I sit (as a member of the general public/electorate, and not privy to the inner workings of Mr Schmidt's mind or his tenure at MS) I'm not at all sure what he did security-wise while at Microsoft. I don't know, as an outsider, what exactly he did at Microsoft, and so all I have to judge him as a public official is his track record, or failing that, the track record of the company he was a chief executive at.
Like I said, I don't know the man, and I don't mean to denigrate him. But the fact remains that he was Chief Security Officer at Microsoft. Microsoft has an abysmal security record. That reflects on Mr. Schmidt, right or wrong. He was the top man. Yet you say that it really wasn't his job to be worried about product security. That sounds like a cop-out to most people, myself included. That is what seems disingenous, not my commenting on his apparent track record (or lack thereof, I suppose, since he didn't actually do much any normal Microsoft customer would be able to see). His record at MS is all I've got, and MS's record is his record. It's not a terribly good one, regardless of how personable or knowledgeable the man is.
You have to step back and look at it from an outsider's perspective. Not everyone has the luxury to know him personally, and we can't all use our personal or professional knowledge of him to forgive what otherwise looks like an appalling record. Most people saw the appointing of Microsoft's Chief Security Officer to Cybersecurity Advisor as something similar to appointing ValuJet's chief of aircraft maintenance to head the NTSB or Anderson Consulting's ethics oversight committee chairman to the SEC. That's sad but true (and before you give me grief over the gravity of the compariions, I pulled those two examples from memory of online posts I read). That perception is based on MS's record. Which is Mr. Schmidt's record, regardless of whether or not it was actually in his mandate as Chief Security Officer to worry about product security.
I'm sorry if you feel he's been unfairly treated, but that's just how it lays out. I'm sure he was a fine administrator, and I'm sure he was good at cat herding. You'd have to be, even at a company smaller than MS. I guess I'd like someone that has a provable track record to step in a make substantive, postive changes to keep us safe from a network/computing perspective. Although another poster was probably right in saying the government probably just wanted someone to blame if it hit the fan.
-B
Yeah, about that Windows update service, when it got compromised Mr. Schmidt did...? What exactly? Was that "product security" or "infrastructure security"? Or was the actual buffer overflow a product-level security issue, but the unpatched servers a corporate security issue? I wonder which one would have been easier to prevent... Hmmm...
When Microsoft started distributing the NIMDA worm was that the application group's screw-up? Did Mr. Schmidt's security policies extend to internal processes like QA? Surely when they release software internally, Mr. Schmidt's group had to make sure that it was safe, right? Why not give the rest of the world the same courtesy? Does MS have separate internal and external QA groups? If not, do their internal SQL, web, etc servers have holes? Is MS's security policy therefore "crunchy on the outside, soft in the middle"? That's not very reassuring.
I could go on, but rather than be labeled a "troll" for simply pointing out facts and asking rhetorical questions, I'd just like to offer that perhaps, just perhaps, there might be some merit to the whole "security is a process, not a product" idea. Put another way, I for one would feel better if the U.S. Cybersecurity Advisor didn't have a "that's not my department" precedent coloring his judgement. Or maybe I'm taking your statement out of context and unfairly judging Mr. Schmidt for being asleep at the wheel when he was merely in the passenger seat inert, in which case I apologize.
While I certainly have nothing personal against Mr. Schmidt, like it or not he was the front man for Microsoft's "security". If MS gets a bad rap on security issues, for whatever reason, then Mr. Schmidt takes the heat on it -- if only for being the most visible target. And honestly, you can't really say with a straight face that MS's products have nothing to do with its corporate security. Microsoft's products have everything to do with many thousands of other corporations' security. If those products had built with security in mind, maybe there wouldn't need to be this big, mystical demarcation between the security inherent in MS's products and its corporate computing infrastructure. In the public's eye, anyway, there isn't any difference. Microsoft is its products -- and its products have a really appalling track record with regard to security.
-B
Yeah, I know. My old .sig was dd used exactly like you say. I saw it everwhere so I switched to something 'different' (but under 120 characters itself). And I had a version that used cat, but it wasn't nearly as 1337 as head.
I only care as long as I get something. Or maybe even not. I could handle having just a newline as a .sig...
-B
You should have seen what I used to have: the same TV and receiver and an old Thinkpad running XMMS with a patch cable going from the headphone jack to the aux speaker-in on the receiver. We didn't save video; we had to remember when to be home. :-)
I haven't tried Tivo personally. With the money I spent I could have, I'm sure, but hey, I'm a project kinda guy.
Yeah, I hear ya. I'm the same way. Problem is, I have more projects than I can reasonably be expected to finish in my lifetime. It was time to cut down. And the wife wanted a PVR-type thing. So TiVo it was.
I think I failed to mention that I painted it gloss black with silver metallic highlights. crappy paint job, but oh well.
Well now you're talking. :-)
I had this idea for using one of those Shuttle XPC form factor mini PCs as the basis for an entertainment center, and then Alienware came out with one. It runs XP Media Center Edition, which is a deal breaker in and of itself (never mind the cost; those XPC cases are like $150 so I have no idea how they can get away with selling their low-end unit for $1,700). It's just as well since my wife would have niether waited for me to get off my ass and build something or wanted me to spend the money for an Alienware box.
Another idea I had for a project was an in-dash audio player that would stream MP3s to my truck's stereo. It would be based on a Linux PC (the guts out of a laptop), aand have 802.11b connectivity. I was going to write scripts that would detect when the truck was in range of my home network and then rsync all the music files it didn't have and go on standby. I was going to use an old palm pilot as the display/remote. Then I saw that these guys made a unit called an Empeg that did almost exactly what I wanted. I shelved my projet and decided to buy an Empeg. Except the soon-to-be-released Wersion 2 was going to have a PCMCIA slot (which meant an Orinoco card could slide right in there) so I waited. Then SONICblue, those no-talent assmonkeys, bought Empeg out and killed the in-dash unit. I've since given away the laptop which was the basis for my original idea.
I don't know what the moral of those two stories is. Carpe Diem? Scratch your itches? Do what makes you happy? Dunno...
-B