Ok, I have an old Timeline cabinet that I was going to use for a custom game, but never could decide on a theme..... Maybe this is a thread worth capturing. (On slashdot? couldn't be)
You missed a part with Eve. There was the mine, mine, mine until you can earn enough money to survive a jump, jump, jump. I liked Eve, it had a lot of promise. Just not enough to draw me away from Asheron's Call. (WoW did) And since I sometimes have trouble committing time to one game, they have to take down the current king before they can draw me away.
My dream MMORPG would be an open source cooperative universe. Think of the MS domain system (ugh!). I take the software, build a MMORPG environment, then add trusted connections to other people's games. Agree on game $$ exchange rate and object transfer rules. Every game could select it's own genre and tech levels. One group could build a solar system, another might just create planets. You wouldn't have to quit your space game to kill a few dragons, just leave your ship and lasers in orbit, and beam down with your best sword.
EnB died due to lack of content. I signed up for a trial over a holiday weekend, and it that short period of time I was bored and frustrated by the tedious nature of the game. EnB was: get mission, get in ship, leave dock, jump, gate, jump, jump, jump, gate, kill a few things, gate, jump, jump, jump, gate, jump, dock.
WoW is different in that it has lots of content and plenty of detail. But after the first month or so the excitement fades and the bugs get annoying. Now that spring is here, I'm considering letting my subscription lapse. I find WoW so exciting right now that I'm reading slashdot instead. One of my friends is so thrilled with WoW, that he's talking about going back to Asheron's Call.
Since launch I have played 6 different classes, and every profession except Herbalism and Alchemy. And I'm an almost casual player.
And WoW's customer service wouldn't suck so bad if they didn't have so many bugs to ignore.
Minimal electronics? It covered enough for two people with everything but the satellite link. Worst case, you throw in a file server, but you would also be concerned with power consumption there, so you wouldn't be installing a 4 processor box with a 10 drive raid. Again, from the article, they have an office with a secretary. Anything required by the business would stored on a server there, or you could co-locate it with an ISP. But ok, lets assume a light server installed too. I have a little PowerEdge on my test network. 95w peak for boot and 55w once the OS is up and things have settled. I'm not going to test one of my dual proc Proliants, because it would be moronic to install one in a power sensitive environment. You aren't going to pack a complete computer room in a motorhome, at least I wouldn't. I have 2 networks, 3 file servers, 4 desktops, a Mac, 1 xterm/rdp terminal and 3 laptops in mine. If I could live out of a motorhome (need to find a new job), I'd consolidate and drop my test network to one server and one workstation (probably laptop or thin client), plus two new laptops (1 P4, 1 mobile) for personal use along with the mac and a power conscious server(or see if I could hack samba to run a PDC on my WRT56G and put a firewire disk on the mac mini). And I do software development for a living. I doubt that I would ever use the test network without shore power. And there is no reason for ANY equipment to be running when I'm not using it.
I don't believe it was ever stated that living self contained in a motorhome is going to be just like living in a house. There will be trade-offs. For instance, I wouldn't have 3 boxes running 24x7. But please, stop pulling numbers out of your ass. If you're truly interested, I'll go pull the power specs from the florescent lighting I bought for my class C. At a guess, I'd say 12-16watts times 3 to completely light the interior. Climate control and coach monitoring electronics are minimal, the touch screens they installed will use the only insiginificant power. TV, if you want to be power conscious use an LCD TV, DVD player, and satellite receiver. Probably less than 150w total (when in use), unless you bought an obscenely large LCD. And don't forget, you have a genset and solar panels to recharge batteries. You'd never need more than 20 hrs of batteries.
Filet mignon? Running 30,000 BTUs of heat at full capacity 24x7? You're just being ridiculous. If I run the stove in my class C I have to open the door or windows. I checked it in november, 40 degrees to 80 degrees in 10 minutes running two burners. And we're talking about a 25 year old RV.
Like most things in life, there are trade-offs. With a 5th wheel you need to buy a suitable truck. To pull all but the smallest trailer, you really need a 1 ton truck. My uncle tried with a 3/4 ton, but found it under powered on hills and required sacrificing air conditioning frequently. And you can still have parking problems with a full size truck if they haven't restriped the lots to account for larger SUVs. I used to own a full size ford van, turning radius and small parking places were annoying. And then there were two issues my Mom brought up; you have to get out of the tow vehicle and get in the trailer to sleep. For some people that will rule out using free reststops at night. And she wasn't interested in having the additional steps for the bedroom. Every 5th wheel I have seen has the bed over the hitch.
OTOH, with a motorhome you could always spring for a dolly and a used Geo.
A 5th wheel will make it easier to go diesel though. Diesel 1 tons are easy to find, but a diesel motorhome that is less than a class A is practically non-existent. I have asked dealers about diesel class Cs and have either been told that A) people don't want them, or B) the demand for diesel trucks is so high that the motorhome manufacturers can't get diesel chassis. So they come with gas V10s.
If their goal is to be completely self sufficient for a week, they can do it. The extent of roughing it would simply be water conservation on showers. Wet down, turn off water, lather up, rince, and you're done. Remember, they are used to living in a much smaller rig. My class C has a shower, but only a 30 gallon tank.
For power, I can't see someone paying that kind of money and not having batteries and a system wide inverter. And they do have solar, which wouldn't be too useful without a battery or two.
From the article:
But now he is upgrading to a £250,000 vehicle complete with computers, home cinema and solar panels.
Let's run some real numbers.
You can fit 1 - 80 Ah battery (sealed lead acid) in a 1/2 cubic foot. 65 lbs, and $150 if you're interested. The 80 total Ah is rated over a 20 hr draw. 4amps, 48watts per hour.
I just tested some of my equipment, here is what I came up with:
Laptop - supend 1w, boot 43w, run 22w, heavy load 50w Mac Mini - suspend 2w, boot 28w, run 15w, heavy load 28w 17" LCD panel 28w Netgear 10/100 8-port switch 3w Linksys wrt54g 4w
I didn't test my gig switch because I didn't want to knock my servers offline, but from experience I'd say it's going to be less than 5w. I also didn't test CRTs or Intel desktop machines because if they can afford $470k, they can buy new, top of the line laptops. My laptop, BTW, is a 2g Celeron. That would put it somewhere between a P4 and a Pentium M. It's numbers could be adjusted 25% either way.
So, if I were going to put batteries and an inverter in my rig (and I will), I would need: (Laptop, Mac, LCD, Linksys) 112 watts. I'd double that for the batteries, just in case, and the inverter I want is 1000w. I would need 5 batteries to run all my electronics for 20 hours. Weight wise, that's a little high for my class C, but wouldn't be a problem for a class A, it should be spec'd with them anyway.
Oh, and the weather this week in London is a low of 40f with highs in the 50-70f range. And it's still early in the year. Remember, this is a new, high end coach, so it will probably have 2" of polyurethane insulation. That should be R-12 (R-6 per inch), but some manufacturers rate theirs as high as R-8 per inch. Consider that the little tank on your gas grill is a 20lb tank, and LP provides 22,000 BTUs per pound. With a 30,000 BTU furnace, that's nearly 15 hours of continuous use from a 20lb tank.
It may not be the posh lifestyle some people like, but it has an amazing amount of freedom.
BTW, all of these numbers are pointless if they pull into a campground with full hookups. Then their only consumable is LP for cooking. (and food storage capacity)
An RV this size would have a 150-200 gallon fresh tank. Black/gray water tanks will be large enough to accomodate that. The real drain on water would be showers. Me, I like long showers so I'm basically screwed. Propane would be around 200 lbs. If you aren't having to run heat, it would last for months. And a rig that size would have a 7kw genset, your only limitations are fuel and noise. But again, if all you are running is a couple laptops and lights, you should have enough battery for most of the day without the generator.
Things are starting to come together for techies to have a gypsy lifestyle if you want one. Powerful laptops, Wifi hotspots, internet telecommuting, and a house on wheels.
Not a class A, but my class C runs about $220 a year for insurance. $50 higher than my motorcycle. Considerably less than my truck, which is less than my homeowners'.
As for breakdowns, for the amount of money being spent you could get a new diesel pusher. If you're putting enough mileage on one of those to blow a motor, finding someplace to stay while it's in the shop will be trivial. And a motel room is cheap compared to the rebuild cost.
From your comments, it appears you are familiar with the systems of older RVs. But motorhomes are no longer just for the budget minded. (what do you buy when a Hummer isn't impressive enough?) It would be easy to dump a million dollars in one of these. And those people aren't interested in roughing it.
Personally, I'd like to buy a used MCI tour bus and convert it to diesel-electric. Then turn it into a motorhome. But where do you park a 40' vehicle while you do a hobby conversion....
Oh, and with truck stops and rest areas getting WiFi, who needs satellite.
Having to run Norton, Zonealarm and just a few other minor things really drags it down.
There's part of your problem. With the Mac you don't have to worry about running Norton, ZoneAlarm, and the other minor things that keep the nasty people on the net from eating your lunch.
I've got a Mac Mini (the slow one) with 512m RAM and a 2g Intel laptop with 512m RAM. For the things I do, they are similar in speed and capabilities, with two minor exceptions. I don't have to keep defragging the Mac to keep disk performance reasonable. But the Mac appears to take longer to resolve addresses when I'm surfing.
Then again, the DNS lookups may be provider related and I just didn't notice it before. I keep thinking I should let my debian box handle name lookups.
There shouldn't be a whole lot of sediment in their tanks. If there was, it would be 'disturbed' on a regular basis. A high volume station will fill it's tanks several times a week. And the stations have filters in the pumps that are much better than the ones in your car. If they are getting sediment in the fuel from their supplier, the station is going to be annoyed because their pumps would need a lot more maintenance.
It's not uncommon for a station, particularly an older station, to have water in their tanks. Maybe an inch in the bottom. It won't normally be pumped out because the supply tube for the pumps sits several inches from the bottom. (Stations don't want to pump their tanks completely dry, a little rain could cause them to float if they were empty) The water would be disturbed when the tank is filled, but in comparison with the amount of fresh fuel being added, it would be minimal and not likely to affect your car. And if it has an ethanol mix, there won't be any water in the tank at all.
Personally, the only bad gas I have run across in the last 15 years has been in vehicles that have been parked for long periods of time. (or my %^&# motorcycle that I didn't get a chance to ride last year, and didn't re-winterize)
If you're worried about fuel quality, pick a station with high volume. BTW, in many parts of the country, gas is supplied by pipeline. Distributors all pull from the same pipeline, so there is little, if any, difference in the quality of the fuel being sent to stations.
If you got lots of stored procedures (Transact SQL or whatever MS SQL uses these days) then you're in for a world of hurt.
If you have stored procedures and you want to continue to use them, MySQL just isn't possible. As others have mentioned, MySQL doesn't support stored procedures at all.
I would maybe move to Postgress if you are looking for something on the cheap. I don't understand why MySQL has such a following, it's not that great as for as databases go.
Moving to PostgreSQL is far from painless as well, particularly for an entrenched MSSQL shop. I did some work with it, but it has one behavior that drove me nuts and blew away any cost savings. Postgres claims to be case insentive, but... when you type in a SQL statement it lowercases it (unless it is in quotes) and then does a case sensitive compare to tables and attributes. So say you have a table in MSSQL called OrderHeader. With MSSQL your existing code has a bunch of: select * from OrderHeader. PostgreSQL will not work unless you change all your code to: select * from "OrderHeader" or change your table name to orderheader.
MySQL on the other hand is probably doing so well because of the utilities to support it. I would have really preferred to base my projects on Firebird, since it is truly enterprise ready. But compare MySQLAdministrator and myPHPAdmin to FlameRobin. And when I was looking at PostgreSQL all I could find were command line utilities.
How do you build a windows service (that's a daemon for you unix folks but it needs to be specifically built and installed to work properly), have it run as an unprivileged user (i.e. *not* the system account) and have it start when the system boots *without* the user it is supposed to run as logging in at the console?
If it's possible, then it is *very* fucking new.
You have a very unique definition of new. As far back as NT 4 (possibly further, that is just the first version I wrote services for) you have had the ability to launch a service under ANY account and automatically start. You could run it under Guest, if you gave guest the privs to run as a service.
If it doesn't work, please keep quiet about it. I have an NT server that has been running some of my services for over 6 years. They don't run under system (because they need access to network shares) and they DO start automatically when the machine boots.
Oh, well. I live in Canada, where P2P is legal, and the stores still sell music.
Good grief. P2P is legal in the US as well. What is NOT legal is distributing the work of someone else without their permission. You can P2P linux distros and WoW updates all day long if it suits you.
And I think you have it backwards. Copyright law was created to GIVE rights to publishers. It's purpose is to encourage innovation by allowing the creator to control the work for a period of time.
Sure, call it legacy, if you want. But when I run a retail business, and my receipt printers are all parallel port, and my credit card swipes and UPC scanners are all PS/2 port
All of which are available in USB. I can understand not wanting to replace functioning equipment, but saying a PC isn't suitable because it doesn't support your legacy equipment is ridiculous. Having said that, the Mini isn't a great solution for POS anyway.
BTW, you might want to check and make sure your 'UPC scanners' can support the new 'UPC' codes. Jan 1 2005 was the Sunrise date for UCC-12 (UPC), so you need to have support for EAN-8 and EAN-13.
We'd buy mac minis if the video card could handle World of Warcraft.
The video is a little short of RAM, but it handles WoW just fine. Unless you spend a lot of time in heavily populated areas (like IF or doing raids), you probably won't have any problems. It would be nice if they would put out a version with 64M of video RAM.
I bought the 1.2g mini a couple weeks ago. It worked fine out of the box, but WoW required me to upgrade it to 512M.
The roughest thing I do with my mini is WoW. The hardrive handles it nicely and the 1.2g processor is more than sufficient. The only limitation is that it doesn't have enough video ram. The game still plays, but with a large number of players in an area, occasionally I'll get one or two that are white. (but of course, Blizzard also has a few bugs in the Mac client that have been fixed on the Windoze client)
For comparision, WoW cooks my 2.0g Wintel laptop and it's harddrive thrashes if I don't defrag after every update.
BTW, the brick (PS) for my mini is on the floor somewhere.
You're simply deluded. There have always been linux tools that didn't work. Ask anyone who has struggled with MythTV through it's evolution. To assume that everything linux programmers create is perfect is burying your head in the sand.
Your generalizations about programmers are insulting as well. I don't consider myself a linux programmer, but I have looked at a great deal of code for linux apps in the last 10 years. There is plenty of bad programming going on there as well. Or has a linux app never had a buffer overflow? Programmers are: good/bad, talented/hacks, regardless of the platform they use.
If programmers have so much pride in their work, why don't they bother to write documentation so someone can actually use it? Linux documentation is definately hit and miss.
Now, the leaks. In order to build the new tunnel more or less on the footprint of the old one, they excavated on the sides and built a slurry wall by injecting concrete into the excavation. Is it any surprise that it leaks?
You seem to imply that the use of slurry walls is the reason it leaks. I'll admit, I haven't read a whole lot on the problems with the Big Dig, but the ones I have seen indicated slurry contamination. It's a difference between a flawed application and a flawed process.
I do remember reports that the World Trade Center used slurry walls to create the 'bathtub'. The WTC was build in 'reclaimed' land, and even after having two 110 storey building fall on it, it still only had minor leaks. And I can't swear to it, but I think LA used the process in parts of their subway system as well.
For those that aren't aware, slurry walls are used in areas where there is too much ground water to pour conventional concrete.
And with BT, you are helping feed other downloaders as you acquire the file. At the very least, wouldn't that put you in a gray area of facilitating the crime?
Have some faith in SciFi channel. They'll kill all three of them claiming they were too expensive to produce. This isn't the first time they've had Friday night locked, and have thrown it away. Or does no one remember shows like Invisible Man and Farscape?
Remember, this is the channel that brought us John Edwards and Scare Tactics.
If we're going to dream the impossible, how about a lineup of Enterprise, Firefly, and BSG.
Talking loudly, pressing some guy sitting next to her for help with her java, saying "I'd sleep with anyone for As",
You realize that all the Java programmers on Slashdot now desperately want to know what school you attend. There HAS to be some benefit to programming in Java.
Kind of a narrow minded approach to think that CS programs need to revolve around Microsoft products isn't it? It's all about perspective. You think they are dense for not understanding the intricacies of MS's latest desktop OS. And they would feel the same about you for not knowing OSI, the 5 rules of data normalization, or software development methodologies.
And while XP home's limited networking capabilities are annoying, there are other differences. Both in function and license.
If I refused to get and use my corporate AmEx, I'd get reimbursed (and chastised). And when I said I refused to get the corporate card, I'd be having one of those uncomfortable meetings with my director. There are many policies that I disagree with and would fight over, but this isn't one of them. Particularly since up until this event there was no reason not to deal with BoA, other than a personal dislike for a corporation. And even now, the tapes are 'lost', not necessarily in the hands of someone who has the ability to use them.
Probably in the future one of their policies should be to encrypt any offsite tapes, assuming they don't already do so.
BTW, whether you are a government or a corporate employee, deviation from the Standard has it's consequences.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, I have an old Timeline cabinet that I was going to use for a custom game, but never could decide on a theme..... Maybe this is a thread worth capturing. (On slashdot? couldn't be)
You missed a part with Eve. There was the mine, mine, mine until you can earn enough money to survive a jump, jump, jump. I liked Eve, it had a lot of promise. Just not enough to draw me away from Asheron's Call. (WoW did) And since I sometimes have trouble committing time to one game, they have to take down the current king before they can draw me away.
My dream MMORPG would be an open source cooperative universe. Think of the MS domain system (ugh!). I take the software, build a MMORPG environment, then add trusted connections to other people's games. Agree on game $$ exchange rate and object transfer rules. Every game could select it's own genre and tech levels. One group could build a solar system, another might just create planets. You wouldn't have to quit your space game to kill a few dragons, just leave your ship and lasers in orbit, and beam down with your best sword.
I loved the way the Traveller RPG handled it.
EnB died due to lack of content. I signed up for a trial over a holiday weekend, and it that short period of time I was bored and frustrated by the tedious nature of the game. EnB was: get mission, get in ship, leave dock, jump, gate, jump, jump, jump, gate, kill a few things, gate, jump, jump, jump, gate, jump, dock.
WoW is different in that it has lots of content and plenty of detail. But after the first month or so the excitement fades and the bugs get annoying. Now that spring is here, I'm considering letting my subscription lapse. I find WoW so exciting right now that I'm reading slashdot instead. One of my friends is so thrilled with WoW, that he's talking about going back to Asheron's Call.
Since launch I have played 6 different classes, and every profession except Herbalism and Alchemy. And I'm an almost casual player.
And WoW's customer service wouldn't suck so bad if they didn't have so many bugs to ignore.
Minimal electronics? It covered enough for two people with everything but the satellite link. Worst case, you throw in a file server, but you would also be concerned with power consumption there, so you wouldn't be installing a 4 processor box with a 10 drive raid. Again, from the article, they have an office with a secretary. Anything required by the business would stored on a server there, or you could co-locate it with an ISP. But ok, lets assume a light server installed too. I have a little PowerEdge on my test network. 95w peak for boot and 55w once the OS is up and things have settled. I'm not going to test one of my dual proc Proliants, because it would be moronic to install one in a power sensitive environment. You aren't going to pack a complete computer room in a motorhome, at least I wouldn't. I have 2 networks, 3 file servers, 4 desktops, a Mac, 1 xterm/rdp terminal and 3 laptops in mine. If I could live out of a motorhome (need to find a new job), I'd consolidate and drop my test network to one server and one workstation (probably laptop or thin client), plus two new laptops (1 P4, 1 mobile) for personal use along with the mac and a power conscious server(or see if I could hack samba to run a PDC on my WRT56G and put a firewire disk on the mac mini). And I do software development for a living. I doubt that I would ever use the test network without shore power. And there is no reason for ANY equipment to be running when I'm not using it.
I don't believe it was ever stated that living self contained in a motorhome is going to be just like living in a house. There will be trade-offs. For instance, I wouldn't have 3 boxes running 24x7. But please, stop pulling numbers out of your ass. If you're truly interested, I'll go pull the power specs from the florescent lighting I bought for my class C. At a guess, I'd say 12-16watts times 3 to completely light the interior. Climate control and coach monitoring electronics are minimal, the touch screens they installed will use the only insiginificant power. TV, if you want to be power conscious use an LCD TV, DVD player, and satellite receiver. Probably less than 150w total (when in use), unless you bought an obscenely large LCD. And don't forget, you have a genset and solar panels to recharge batteries. You'd never need more than 20 hrs of batteries.
Filet mignon? Running 30,000 BTUs of heat at full capacity 24x7? You're just being ridiculous. If I run the stove in my class C I have to open the door or windows. I checked it in november, 40 degrees to 80 degrees in 10 minutes running two burners. And we're talking about a 25 year old RV.
Like most things in life, there are trade-offs. With a 5th wheel you need to buy a suitable truck. To pull all but the smallest trailer, you really need a 1 ton truck. My uncle tried with a 3/4 ton, but found it under powered on hills and required sacrificing air conditioning frequently. And you can still have parking problems with a full size truck if they haven't restriped the lots to account for larger SUVs. I used to own a full size ford van, turning radius and small parking places were annoying. And then there were two issues my Mom brought up; you have to get out of the tow vehicle and get in the trailer to sleep. For some people that will rule out using free reststops at night. And she wasn't interested in having the additional steps for the bedroom. Every 5th wheel I have seen has the bed over the hitch.
OTOH, with a motorhome you could always spring for a dolly and a used Geo.
A 5th wheel will make it easier to go diesel though. Diesel 1 tons are easy to find, but a diesel motorhome that is less than a class A is practically non-existent. I have asked dealers about diesel class Cs and have either been told that A) people don't want them, or B) the demand for diesel trucks is so high that the motorhome manufacturers can't get diesel chassis. So they come with gas V10s.
If their goal is to be completely self sufficient for a week, they can do it. The extent of roughing it would simply be water conservation on showers. Wet down, turn off water, lather up, rince, and you're done. Remember, they are used to living in a much smaller rig. My class C has a shower, but only a 30 gallon tank.
For power, I can't see someone paying that kind of money and not having batteries and a system wide inverter. And they do have solar, which wouldn't be too useful without a battery or two.
From the article:
But now he is upgrading to a £250,000 vehicle complete with computers, home cinema and solar panels.
Let's run some real numbers.
You can fit 1 - 80 Ah battery (sealed lead acid) in a 1/2 cubic foot. 65 lbs, and $150 if you're interested. The 80 total Ah is rated over a 20 hr draw. 4amps, 48watts per hour.
I just tested some of my equipment, here is what I came up with:
Laptop - supend 1w, boot 43w, run 22w, heavy load 50w
Mac Mini - suspend 2w, boot 28w, run 15w, heavy load 28w
17" LCD panel 28w
Netgear 10/100 8-port switch 3w
Linksys wrt54g 4w
I didn't test my gig switch because I didn't want to knock my servers offline, but from experience I'd say it's going to be less than 5w. I also didn't test CRTs or Intel desktop machines because if they can afford $470k, they can buy new, top of the line laptops. My laptop, BTW, is a 2g Celeron. That would put it somewhere between a P4 and a Pentium M. It's numbers could be adjusted 25% either way.
So, if I were going to put batteries and an inverter in my rig (and I will), I would need:
(Laptop, Mac, LCD, Linksys) 112 watts. I'd double that for the batteries, just in case, and the inverter I want is 1000w. I would need 5 batteries to run all my electronics for 20 hours. Weight wise, that's a little high for my class C, but wouldn't be a problem for a class A, it should be spec'd with them anyway.
Oh, and the weather this week in London is a low of 40f with highs in the 50-70f range. And it's still early in the year. Remember, this is a new, high end coach, so it will probably have 2" of polyurethane insulation. That should be R-12 (R-6 per inch), but some manufacturers rate theirs as high as R-8 per inch. Consider that the little tank on your gas grill is a 20lb tank, and LP provides 22,000 BTUs per pound. With a 30,000 BTU furnace, that's nearly 15 hours of continuous use from a 20lb tank.
It may not be the posh lifestyle some people like, but it has an amazing amount of freedom.
BTW, all of these numbers are pointless if they pull into a campground with full hookups. Then their only consumable is LP for cooking. (and food storage capacity)
An RV this size would have a 150-200 gallon fresh tank. Black/gray water tanks will be large enough to accomodate that. The real drain on water would be showers. Me, I like long showers so I'm basically screwed. Propane would be around 200 lbs. If you aren't having to run heat, it would last for months. And a rig that size would have a 7kw genset, your only limitations are fuel and noise. But again, if all you are running is a couple laptops and lights, you should have enough battery for most of the day without the generator.
Things are starting to come together for techies to have a gypsy lifestyle if you want one. Powerful laptops, Wifi hotspots, internet telecommuting, and a house on wheels.
Not a class A, but my class C runs about $220 a year for insurance. $50 higher than my motorcycle. Considerably less than my truck, which is less than my homeowners'.
As for breakdowns, for the amount of money being spent you could get a new diesel pusher. If you're putting enough mileage on one of those to blow a motor, finding someplace to stay while it's in the shop will be trivial. And a motel room is cheap compared to the rebuild cost.
From your comments, it appears you are familiar with the systems of older RVs. But motorhomes are no longer just for the budget minded. (what do you buy when a Hummer isn't impressive enough?) It would be easy to dump a million dollars in one of these. And those people aren't interested in roughing it.
Personally, I'd like to buy a used MCI tour bus and convert it to diesel-electric. Then turn it into a motorhome. But where do you park a 40' vehicle while you do a hobby conversion....
Oh, and with truck stops and rest areas getting WiFi, who needs satellite.
Having to run Norton, Zonealarm and just a few other minor things really drags it down.
There's part of your problem. With the Mac you don't have to worry about running Norton, ZoneAlarm, and the other minor things that keep the nasty people on the net from eating your lunch.
I've got a Mac Mini (the slow one) with 512m RAM and a 2g Intel laptop with 512m RAM. For the things I do, they are similar in speed and capabilities, with two minor exceptions. I don't have to keep defragging the Mac to keep disk performance reasonable. But the Mac appears to take longer to resolve addresses when I'm surfing.
Then again, the DNS lookups may be provider related and I just didn't notice it before. I keep thinking I should let my debian box handle name lookups.
There shouldn't be a whole lot of sediment in their tanks. If there was, it would be 'disturbed' on a regular basis. A high volume station will fill it's tanks several times a week. And the stations have filters in the pumps that are much better than the ones in your car. If they are getting sediment in the fuel from their supplier, the station is going to be annoyed because their pumps would need a lot more maintenance.
It's not uncommon for a station, particularly an older station, to have water in their tanks. Maybe an inch in the bottom. It won't normally be pumped out because the supply tube for the pumps sits several inches from the bottom. (Stations don't want to pump their tanks completely dry, a little rain could cause them to float if they were empty) The water would be disturbed when the tank is filled, but in comparison with the amount of fresh fuel being added, it would be minimal and not likely to affect your car. And if it has an ethanol mix, there won't be any water in the tank at all.
Personally, the only bad gas I have run across in the last 15 years has been in vehicles that have been parked for long periods of time. (or my %^&# motorcycle that I didn't get a chance to ride last year, and didn't re-winterize)
If you're worried about fuel quality, pick a station with high volume. BTW, in many parts of the country, gas is supplied by pipeline. Distributors all pull from the same pipeline, so there is little, if any, difference in the quality of the fuel being sent to stations.
If you got lots of stored procedures (Transact SQL or whatever MS SQL uses these days) then you're in for a world of hurt.
If you have stored procedures and you want to continue to use them, MySQL just isn't possible. As others have mentioned, MySQL doesn't support stored procedures at all.
I would maybe move to Postgress if you are looking for something on the cheap. I don't understand why MySQL has such a following, it's not that great as for as databases go.
Moving to PostgreSQL is far from painless as well, particularly for an entrenched MSSQL shop. I did some work with it, but it has one behavior that drove me nuts and blew away any cost savings. Postgres claims to be case insentive, but... when you type in a SQL statement it lowercases it (unless it is in quotes) and then does a case sensitive compare to tables and attributes. So say you have a table in MSSQL called OrderHeader. With MSSQL your existing code has a bunch of: select * from OrderHeader. PostgreSQL will not work unless you change all your code to: select * from "OrderHeader" or change your table name to orderheader.
MySQL on the other hand is probably doing so well because of the utilities to support it. I would have really preferred to base my projects on Firebird, since it is truly enterprise ready. But compare MySQLAdministrator and myPHPAdmin to FlameRobin. And when I was looking at PostgreSQL all I could find were command line utilities.
How do you build a windows service (that's a daemon for you unix folks but it needs to be specifically built and installed to work properly), have it run as an unprivileged user (i.e. *not* the system account) and have it start when the system boots *without* the user it is supposed to run as logging in at the console?
If it's possible, then it is *very* fucking new.
You have a very unique definition of new. As far back as NT 4 (possibly further, that is just the first version I wrote services for) you have had the ability to launch a service under ANY account and automatically start. You could run it under Guest, if you gave guest the privs to run as a service.
If it doesn't work, please keep quiet about it. I have an NT server that has been running some of my services for over 6 years. They don't run under system (because they need access to network shares) and they DO start automatically when the machine boots.
Oh, well. I live in Canada, where P2P is legal, and the stores still sell music.
Good grief. P2P is legal in the US as well. What is NOT legal is distributing the work of someone else without their permission. You can P2P linux distros and WoW updates all day long if it suits you.
And I think you have it backwards. Copyright law was created to GIVE rights to publishers. It's purpose is to encourage innovation by allowing the creator to control the work for a period of time.
Sure, call it legacy, if you want. But when I run a retail business, and my receipt printers are all parallel port, and my credit card swipes and UPC scanners are all PS/2 port
All of which are available in USB. I can understand not wanting to replace functioning equipment, but saying a PC isn't suitable because it doesn't support your legacy equipment is ridiculous. Having said that, the Mini isn't a great solution for POS anyway.
BTW, you might want to check and make sure your 'UPC scanners' can support the new 'UPC' codes. Jan 1 2005 was the Sunrise date for UCC-12 (UPC), so you need to have support for EAN-8 and EAN-13.
We'd buy mac minis if the video card could handle World of Warcraft.
The video is a little short of RAM, but it handles WoW just fine. Unless you spend a lot of time in heavily populated areas (like IF or doing raids), you probably won't have any problems. It would be nice if they would put out a version with 64M of video RAM.
I bought the 1.2g mini a couple weeks ago. It worked fine out of the box, but WoW required me to upgrade it to 512M.
The roughest thing I do with my mini is WoW. The hardrive handles it nicely and the 1.2g processor is more than sufficient. The only limitation is that it doesn't have enough video ram. The game still plays, but with a large number of players in an area, occasionally I'll get one or two that are white. (but of course, Blizzard also has a few bugs in the Mac client that have been fixed on the Windoze client)
For comparision, WoW cooks my 2.0g Wintel laptop and it's harddrive thrashes if I don't defrag after every update.
BTW, the brick (PS) for my mini is on the floor somewhere.
You're simply deluded. There have always been linux tools that didn't work. Ask anyone who has struggled with MythTV through it's evolution. To assume that everything linux programmers create is perfect is burying your head in the sand.
Your generalizations about programmers are insulting as well. I don't consider myself a linux programmer, but I have looked at a great deal of code for linux apps in the last 10 years. There is plenty of bad programming going on there as well. Or has a linux app never had a buffer overflow? Programmers are: good/bad, talented/hacks, regardless of the platform they use.
If programmers have so much pride in their work, why don't they bother to write documentation so someone can actually use it? Linux documentation is definately hit and miss.
Now, the leaks. In order to build the new tunnel more or less on the footprint of the old one, they excavated on the sides and built a slurry wall by injecting concrete into the excavation. Is it any surprise that it leaks?
You seem to imply that the use of slurry walls is the reason it leaks. I'll admit, I haven't read a whole lot on the problems with the Big Dig, but the ones I have seen indicated slurry contamination. It's a difference between a flawed application and a flawed process.
I do remember reports that the World Trade Center used slurry walls to create the 'bathtub'. The WTC was build in 'reclaimed' land, and even after having two 110 storey building fall on it, it still only had minor leaks. And I can't swear to it, but I think LA used the process in parts of their subway system as well.
For those that aren't aware, slurry walls are used in areas where there is too much ground water to pour conventional concrete.
And with BT, you are helping feed other downloaders as you acquire the file. At the very least, wouldn't that put you in a gray area of facilitating the crime?
I don't know. At 60, staying awake for 67 hours straight might be some kind of record. I wouldn't want to do it, and I'm not near that old.
Hmmm, I must be unemployed. I wonder why they still keep paying me? And I'm neither the oldest nor the youngest programmer here.
Have some faith in SciFi channel. They'll kill all three of them claiming they were too expensive to produce. This isn't the first time they've had Friday night locked, and have thrown it away. Or does no one remember shows like Invisible Man and Farscape?
Remember, this is the channel that brought us John Edwards and Scare Tactics.
If we're going to dream the impossible, how about a lineup of Enterprise, Firefly, and BSG.
Talking loudly, pressing some guy sitting next to her for help with her java, saying "I'd sleep with anyone for As",
You realize that all the Java programmers on Slashdot now desperately want to know what school you attend. There HAS to be some benefit to programming in Java.
Kind of a narrow minded approach to think that CS programs need to revolve around Microsoft products isn't it? It's all about perspective. You think they are dense for not understanding the intricacies of MS's latest desktop OS. And they would feel the same about you for not knowing OSI, the 5 rules of data normalization, or software development methodologies.
And while XP home's limited networking capabilities are annoying, there are other differences. Both in function and license.
If I refused to get and use my corporate AmEx, I'd get reimbursed (and chastised). And when I said I refused to get the corporate card, I'd be having one of those uncomfortable meetings with my director. There are many policies that I disagree with and would fight over, but this isn't one of them. Particularly since up until this event there was no reason not to deal with BoA, other than a personal dislike for a corporation. And even now, the tapes are 'lost', not necessarily in the hands of someone who has the ability to use them.
Probably in the future one of their policies should be to encrypt any offsite tapes, assuming they don't already do so.
BTW, whether you are a government or a corporate employee, deviation from the Standard has it's consequences.