This got mod'ed way up yet it really has nothing to do with what I took as the core issues from the story:
1) Job security has nearly vanished. I'll go along with that... my Grandfather worked for a pension and knew he had a job for life... my Father will -probably- get a pension and has been able to keep his current job for 25 years... I'm feeling lucky that I've kept my job for 3 years through the tech decline and if I want to retire, it's -all- up to me.
2) Democracy and sense of community are on the decline... yep. Why would I vote in the local elections every year when I'm lucky to stay in an are for more than 2-4 years before I lose my job or get transferred? Why buy a house or get roots in a community when, to keep my carerr afloat (tech industry) I have to either be location flexible or invest retirement-level amounts of money to buy a house in the major tech sectors?
So, I agree in general with the article. And in the long term it may foster a new and/or better way of life, but I don't think it's going to be good for me or my family.
It's sort of like Social Security... I think the country would be better off without it, but it's going to hurt -me- if/when it goes away since I'm investing in it now.
buy a Cobalt appliance or it's like... or just install Webmin or something similar for free. Both of those are easier to manage than IIS for a server dishing out many different web sites.
If you look at the "-$400 million" quote, it looks like he feels the old Apple sold itself out in the NeXT merger.
Kinda like how McDonnel Douglas was able to get Boeing to pay them billions to take over their company in exchange for keeping their name.
Also similar to what HP seems to want to do with Compaq, luckily for them, HP seems to be wising up to this.
However, in Apple's case I think the reverse swap was worthwhile. OSX is the first Apple technology that I have actively wanted to own. It is just a shame that it didn't come out as Rhapsody's vision, I would have bought it for my PC years ago and Windows would far less of a stranglehold on the market.
I left out mention of Microsoft's usage, which is actually pretty massive. Microsoft is moving from it's older SMB "domain" authentication scheme to what they are calling "Active Directory Services".
ADS is based on LDAP, but as with many Microsoft uses, has been "extended" a bit past the standard such that it doesn't easily interface with other LDAP servers.
This started mid-way into the Windows 2000 product and is the default way to build a network with Win2K Advanced Server and Windows XP Server. This means that Microsoft is probably the largest current implementation of LDAP (though most MCSEs probably have no clue how powerful this can be and often will use the older SMB Domains since they are more familiar with it).
LDAP == Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (I think, that's from memory).
LDAP was originally intended to be a more flexible and less resource intensive implementation of Directories (phone books are a good example but not the only one) a'la the older X.500 protocol.
LDAP has been embraced by alot of companies like Microsoft and Sun (my employer) as a core server technology to form the "glue" between distributed services.
One of the most common uses is to maintain remote password authentication databases. Similar in concept to RADIUS or NIS, but in a more standard implementation without all of the overhead.
For instance, Sun is moving it's internal network to LDAP authentication (originally it was unconnected, later they used NIS, both older systems are still in use at Sun right now). It allows an employee to use the same password for many different resources on the internal network while having a single place to update that password.
The first thing I thought of when I saw this was an old BBS hoax...
The time was somewhere around 1985...
The hoax was a program that claimed to have (drum roll please) 100:1 file compression. So sure, I downloaded the thing on my lovely 1200 baud modem, installed it and tested it on a 512K file.
Sure enough, the resulting file was less than 5K... slightly -better- than 100:1 compression. I was impressed.
Then I took a close look at the program and, after investigation, found that even though this file was 5K, my disk space available had not decreased... in fact... it had increased by... 5K.
Of course, the hoax was that this program simply renamed and hid the old file and installed a TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident... old DOS terminology for essentially a background daemon, though a real ugly method) that, whenever you went to touch the file, it intercepted the call and fed you the renamed old version.
...
A variation on this didn't do the TSR... it just pretended to compress the file and you had to "uncompress" (ie, unhide the old version and rename it over the faked file) with the same program.
...
I would love for this new technology to work, but chances are in real life applications it's going to be about as productive as the BBS hoax was.
I went out about 3 weeks ago and picked up a 27" HD-ready Samsung Dynaflat at Best Buy for about $900 (actually, $820 but that was due to a 10% discount).
This is a now defunct model, but with the exception of the lack of Picture-in-Picture it is identical to the 27" Samsung Tantus.
Anyway, to make a long story short, what sold me on this TV (it's a 4:3 so you view 16:9 in letterbox) was viewing it side-by-side with a high-end NTSC ("normal" or 480i) TV. The Samsung has a scan doubler, which makes even normal NTSC look twice as good as a normal TV since it displays the 480i ("i" is for interlaced) in a pseudo 480p ("p" is for progressive or non-interlaced).
I'm about to buy a progressive scan DVD player to take advantage of the 480p mode. I've been holding off to buy a "real" DVD player (currently I use a PS2) until I could get a good progressive scan DVD player for under $250.
Another selling point of this TV was that it had all the inputs I could need... 1 * CATV, 2 * Composite, 2 * SVideo, 1 * standard component and 1 * progressive component).
It's important to realize that HD-ready sets do -not- have a built-in HDTV tuner. Those still regularly go for $700+. I'm holding off getting one until they are well under $500, probably another year or so.
I would say that even though I can't view HDTV on it, buying this HDTV was a terrific move. I figure I'll end up putting it in a spare room for a second TV in 3-4 years when the larger widescreen HDTVs with built-in tuners come down below $1500. For now it is still a terrific kick in the pants for my TV viewing habits.
Actually, Quake did have pretty crappy net play. QuakeWorld fixed it (and I would agree was a complete and total gem). So in this case you could both be correct.
I decided to plop down $19 for a used copy of FFIX last weekend. I'd never touched an FF game before then and had only watched maybe 5 minutes of someone playing FFVII before that.
I'm completely hooked... I put in about 20 hours so far and have only owned it for 6 days. I realize that is piddlin compared to how much time some people put into gaming around the old 'dot, but for me that is pretty extreme.
I've had a PS2 for almost a year now, never having owned a console before except an Atari 2600 in the very early '80s. This is the first game that has made me sit down and play my PS2 for more than an hour at a time without getting bored.
Generally speaking I'm an RPG'er... I've played all of the D&D titles that have come out on the PC going back to the original Pool of Radiance to the new Pool of Radiance (that spans about 12 years if I guestimate) and have done plenty of MUDs, MOOs, etc.
FFIX has been a breath of fresh air... not completely easy (I've been killed 3 times so far, not alot, but proves the game isn't -completely- simple) but not hard. I don't know if I'll invest time going back to the previous ones, but I'll definitely hook up for FFX when it comes out.
Given that the game was meant for PS1, it's very pretty... the sounds leave a bit to be desired. I would like to see changes and improvements in the game, but the fact that I can use my PS2 in the living room instead of my PC in my office (I work from home, so it does make a difference to me) means that I'll finish FFIX before I find any other PC games to play.
I'm actually pretty worried that FFXI is going online... while that may be fun, I would sure like to see more games like FFIX and FFX out there for the PS2... any recommendations on other titles that I should look into?
My guess is we won't... it's exercises like this that keep management relations good with the rest of the staff. The productivity gained by a company that has good employee relations will -much- more than make up for the.1% (literally) of the year that the spent not working during this movie.
> You know, geeking out now and then is cool and
> all, but why, exactly, do you need this much
> server equipment for a "home network?"
For the same reason that some dude around the corner has essentially a complete auto-body shop in his garage and some lady has a sewing room in here house that is bigger than her bedroom with 5 different types of sewing machines (one with a computer), a quilting loom and walls of thread.
Strongly agreed on your Speakeasy recommendation... I've had Speakeasy sDSL for almost 2 years now. There have been a couple of growing pains, but in general when I talk to them they are nearly as knowledgable as I am on various 'net and *nix topics. As a reformed *nix ISP sysadmin, I had grown quite sick of the lack of knowledge in the various other companies' technical support (I've had cable and aDSL in the past). Plus, Speakeasy is very affordable and has a specific "we allow servers" policy. I've run my own server for the entire time and never been forced to change my IPs except when having my connection rerouted for better performance.
It's always satisfying to hear about a great new product, go to the homepage, and find a screenshot captured from a co-worker's workstation... go Jonathan!:)
The makers have committed to a US version that supports NTSC output instead of PAL and a US power supply. It's pushing the US release out a month or two but should answer the needs of US users.
So they won't buy the phone. I have never felt Handspring was marketing to the masses with any of their products. Maybe to the majority of Palm users, but no one I know would consider that to be "the masses".
I've heard rumours that Americans have to pay to receive calls. I hope it's not true, but if it is, it's something that needs fixing.
Generally speaking, in the states we start paying for outbound wireless calls as soon as we initiate the call. For incoming calls most services give you the first minute free (to decide whether you want to take the call) and then pay the same rate as outbound calls.
In many cases, we even have to pay for the minutes used to check our voicemail (which I find much more offensive than having to pay for the incoming calls).
However, unlike many portions of Europe, our landline systems are completely free for any inbound and outbound local area calls. This makes a difference in that we can call our ISP from a landline and stay connected for hundreds of hours each month and often incur no charge over the standard phone line cost (between $10US and $20US per month) and the ISP cost (between $0US and $25US per month). To my understanding, in Europe you often get ISP service essentially for free, but have to pay per minute outbound fees on your landline.
Everything is a compromise and everyone gets their money in the end.
I think you misunderstand the phrase "security through obscurity is bad" (STOIB). Password protections and encryption are not obscure... obscurity means no one (supposedly) knows they exist. Everyone can know that I -have- a password protection scheme on my computer, it doesn't mean that they actually know what that password is. My password then is (I hope:) "obscure", but my security scheme is not.
Similarly, if I were to hack my Linux box to store encrypted passwords in an "unknown" file (say,/etc/bogus) that was readable by anyone, but no one knew what the information in the file was, that would be STOIB. However, if I put it in a standard location (/etc/shadow), but make sure that only "root" can read it, that is not STOIB.
The phrase was coined to indicate a scheme where something is -not- encrypted/whatever and instead is considered to be "secure" because "no one knows about it" (ie, it is "obscure").
Examples of this:
posting sensitive documents on a web server that has no links to the URLs for those documents and then assuming that no one can get them because no one knows about them.
"security through obscurity" -is- bad here... with the tools at hand (search engines and robot exclusion files as an extremely simple example) people -will- find this information at some point.
creating a user account with an unusual name and no password and assuming that no one will be able to log in as that user because they don't know the username
As with the previous example, security through obscurity again is bad here, but only in the light of "bad" meaning "stupid", not necessarily evil.
writing software that has a hole in it, discovering the hole but not disclosing the fact that it exists for the purposes of keeping the software "secure" instead of patching the hole and disclosing the hole's existence to encourage people to patch their software
This is the arena where the "bad" in "STOIB" is "evil" or at least damaging to other people. In this example, you as the software author -caused- the hole in the other person's system, you should be the one to fix it or at least not prevent other people from fixing them.
"STOIB" only involves Intellectual Property if you claim that the only way to combat STOIB is to be Open Source and this is definitely the hardline. However, closed systems can still issue patches and disclose security issues without giving out their IP.
Agreed. They are helpful when done minimally, especially for those of us that don't have digital (satellite or digicable) services.
I was working in a television station when these things started to get popular. In fact, I was one of the people who helped make our station's logo as transparent as possible.
First it was just during the beginning of the news, then all through the news, then all day long... then the broadcast networks left theirs on all day long... then all of the cable networks left one on all day long.
I have no issue with them when done "right". "Right" by my definition is as transparent and small as possible, preferrably -just- a logo and no text. If you're going to "tease" a special with an animation it should only happen once during a block of programming or -right- after the commercial and last no more than 5 seconds.
Of the "educational" channels, Animal Planet is the worst ("Croctober" opaque full color animations? Made me completely avoid anything to do with that special). History channel is worse with it's solid gold logo and the word "History" on everything. It would be highly preferrable to have a transparent "H" and nothing else. HGTV seems to understand the concept of simplicity pretty well.
Things got much worse after 9/11/01... all of a sudden there were waving full color opaque flags and bright stars on all the logos. I'm now to the point where I would happily see them all removed to get rid of the nasty ones. However, in an ideal world they would all still be there but very minimalistic. The only stations I don't want to see the minimalogos on is the pay-for-premiums like HBO, since I don't want to stare at the logo during a feature.
As for the other issue, channels like CNNHN and Fox News scrolling every little quote they can scrounge across the screen, OUCH. This is specifically why I didn't watch Bloomberg TV. At a maximum I want the announcer, a well done graphic, and and explainer quote. I want all the text on the screen to relate to the story I'm watching. If you have to refer to additional stories, start additional channels and just run a miniature TV guide at the bottom so I can switch if I want to. Otherwise we're just further investing a culture of lack of concentration.
I also don't particularly see need to make CNNHN or Fox "tag-team". I preferred the single announcer format, again, for focusability reasons.
Stephen R. Donaldson will not be read in 50 years time as a popular 20th century author. Unless everyone is a manic depressive leper, that is.
Humbug... all that shows is that you are considering the only books he has written to be the Covenant stuff.
Take a look at the "Gap" series... completely different from the Covenant books. I'm not saying he's going to be a well-read author in the future, as your post said, that's not predictable (which conflicts with your ability to predict that Donaldson -won't- be there).
But, it would be sad for you to write off an author because you didn't like the tone of less than half of his titles. That would be sort of like writing off Stephen King because you didn't like "the Shining" and then not realizing he had gone beyond the Horror genre.
Donaldson is one of the only authors I make a point of checking out for new titles whenever I browse in the Sci/Fantasy sections...
Tolkien is a step above in his single series of Fantasy, but Donaldson is perhaps the most original thinker of the current generations. I read the first Covenant series before I read Tolkien and it still has a strong place in my heart. I've re-read it twice now, about every 10 years or so (about the same pace that I re-read Tolkien's books).
If you liked the idea of the strong back-story that Tolkien had in the Lord of the Rings (which became the Silmarillion) you'll enjoy the fact that Donaldson has very strong back-stories as well in all of his series. He also writes very inventive short stories. Plus, if you are like me and hate waiting for the next installment of a series, all of his currently mentioned series are each "complete" (unless he changes his mind later, which I won't mind).
I -think- I've read everything of his except "The Man Who Fought Alone" (which just came out and appears to not be SciFi or Fantasy but straight fiction from the review). My rankings as follows in case anyone wants to venture out for them. Note that this is my rankings, not chronological. I'm obviously ranking some "clusters" together... the stories in each series are done in a serial format rather than independent novels of a similar theme, so I would always rank their order chronologically within each series and have listed them in that order as such.
The first Thomas Covenant trilogy ("Lord Foul's Bane", "The Illearth War", "The Power That Preserves")... these were the first 3 novels he published and are a very dark, very original fanstasy theme (original meaning very unlike Tolkien, Anthony, etc etc... almost entirely new monsters and magic concepts... I love Tolkien because it's Tolkien, but I get very tired of other authors wanting to be in similar realms... this realm is quite different). The books start slow but by page 100 you're sucked in. One of the most interesting things about this series is that the author purposefully doesn't ever make a decisive statement to the question: is Covenant insane or is this fantasy world real?
"Daughter of Regals and Other Tales"... a collection of short stories including an omitted chapter from the first Covenant series (IMO, you should skip this omitted chapter and it's preface until you've finished the first Covenant seriers... otherwise I might have placed this above the Covenant series in rank since it's easier to get into.
The Gap series ("The Real Story: the Gap into Conflict", "Forbidden Knowledge: the Gap into Vision", "A Dark and Hungry God Arises: the Gap into Power", "Chaos and Order: the Gap into Madness", "This Day All Gods Die: the Gap into Ruin")... no... it's not about clothing. This is a very nicely done SciFi series that takes you through a very dark group of characters. Definitely not for the little ones, this series has some mature themes and the content can be a bit harsh. More of a saga than an epic tale in that the number of characters is fairly small, but that just allows for lots of plot and character development, and the characters you do meet are very interesting. Donaldson shows alot of the flare that made me so enjoy Asimov's Foundation series. He doesn't bog you down with unneeded details on physics, yet makes good cases for the choices he made on certain aspects (like using mass-based weapons in space). The first book in this series is quite short and as such you can get a good idea if you like this style with a small investment of time. And if you do, it is followed by a very rich series of books.
"Reave the Just and Other Tales"... another great collection of short stories. If you're not up for a long series, grab this one and "Daughter" and you'll still be happy.
The Second Thomas Covenant Trilogy ("The Wounded Land", "The One Tree" and "White Gold Wielder")... this trilogy is still quite unique but it suffers from "sequelitis" to some extent. Alot of the angst the reader felt in the first series at Covenant's mental condition is replaced with other stressors that, for me, just didn't hit home as hard. This series also attempts to show more of the lands of this fantasy world. Sometimes this is quite welcome, but other times it stretches the story somewhat thin. I have never quite decided if I think there was 1 too many or 1 too few books in this series (time to go read them a second time). Either way, still an absolute "must" if the end of the first trilogy left you wondering what would become of this fantasy world in the (many) years following the end of the first trilogy. Completely new supporting cast and very imaginative creations throughout the series.
Mordant's Need series ("The Mirror of Her Dreams" and "A Man Rides Through")... hmmm... I've never re-read these books even though I bought the original hardbacks 15 years ago. I didn't particularly find this series that interesting. However, if you're looking to read Donaldson's style and don't want to read through some of the darker stories or you prefer a more
"Camelot"-ish feel to your stories, this would be the series to go with. My main complaint was that if you did serious plot analysis it seemed to be a rehash of the first Thomas Covenant series without the emotional commitment. Perhaps this was an attempt at Donaldson to completely exercise/exorcise the themes from the first Covenant series so that he could move Covenant along in the second series or maybe the publisher required another series that would seem to be close enough not to alienate his fans. Only 2 books in the series and easy reading so still worthwhile if you're a fan. Chronologically this was Donaldson's second series.
He has written a few short stories that have been published in other collections (he did a short for the collection "Berserker Base") and there have been supporting works by other authors (like the very detailed "Atlas of the Land" by Karen Wynn Fonstad, now out of print, and "Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Variations on the Fantasy Tradition" by W. A. Senior). However, they're hard to find and the above list covers 95%+ of the available material.
All of the hotels I've seen these at seem to have them in the $10 range.
At least in my case, I expense any hotel I stay at (since when I'm not working I stay at a motel:) and I'm just not willing to plunk down $10/hour of my own money (they don't reimburse movies or games) for very old games.
I've never seen anything but SNES... newer games might have been worth the $10/hour.
I'm a whole lot happier playing my Gameboy than SNES... the GBA games are often better than the SNES games. I think most kids probably would rather play their portable game system, too.
Or, better yet, spend the $10 on a cab ride and go catch a local attraction.
-> Yep... that's machine code for "Hell". So the parts of the code in question that we can decipher from the table would would read (spaces between each value, [?] means undeciphered):
[?] NUL L [?] !
-> Looking for more program examples on Google gave this:
-> Reading through the document shows that the program structure in the PDF executes the program and after the program is done has the data container for the text "Hello world!". So... if this is a complete program it has to initialize, display the data (print), and then end the program. The string we're trying to decipher most likely terminates the program, possibly it prints the program and then terminates but machine language is pretty long, so probably just terminates it.
-> Looking one more time on Google was lucky... giving us:
Assuming no hard drives, no 100Mhz bus, no SVGA monitor, no additional PCI cards, a relatively small/slow CPU and a tiny power supply, this thing will have much much much less RF noise than a normal PC that needs a shielded soundcard.
I agree with the article... when this crud happens, the model that makes Ebay thrive is broken.
I've had a similar experience, though much less cost. I bid and won an auction from a seller who had positive feedback. I sent a Money Order as requested (only $35, but still... ) and waited... and waited...
When I went back to Ebay, I found that his account had been revoked. Ugh...
A few weeks later I got an email from him saying he had just moved and it was on it's way "soon". 3 months later and various attempts through email failed. I did get his real name (he had an AOL email address and put his name in his profile) but he no longer lives in the same city so I can't track him further and $35 isn't really enough to involve the postmaster.
I wish there were a way to petition Ebay to help, but understandably I can't prove nearly enough damage to get them to track him down, and their info is probably old, too.
BTW, I promised him if I didn't get it I would try and warn people... so... if anyone knows Casey Bennet from Terra Haute, Indiana... also goes by the AOL email address of Kakugojin@AOL.com... ya owe me ya butthead. If anyone here actually knows you, please feel free to email me at jahf-at-yahoo-dot-com.
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This got mod'ed way up yet it really has nothing to do with what I took as the core issues from the story:
... my Grandfather worked for a pension and knew he had a job for life ... my Father will -probably- get a pension and has been able to keep his current job for 25 years ... I'm feeling lucky that I've kept my job for 3 years through the tech decline and if I want to retire, it's -all- up to me.
... yep. Why would I vote in the local elections every year when I'm lucky to stay in an are for more than 2-4 years before I lose my job or get transferred? Why buy a house or get roots in a community when, to keep my carerr afloat (tech industry) I have to either be location flexible or invest retirement-level amounts of money to buy a house in the major tech sectors?
... I think the country would be better off without it, but it's going to hurt -me- if/when it goes away since I'm investing in it now.
1) Job security has nearly vanished. I'll go along with that
2) Democracy and sense of community are on the decline
So, I agree in general with the article. And in the long term it may foster a new and/or better way of life, but I don't think it's going to be good for me or my family.
It's sort of like Social Security
buy a Cobalt appliance or it's like ... or just install Webmin or something similar for free. Both of those are easier to manage than IIS for a server dishing out many different web sites.
If you look at the "-$400 million" quote, it looks like he feels the old Apple sold itself out in the NeXT merger.
Kinda like how McDonnel Douglas was able to get Boeing to pay them billions to take over their company in exchange for keeping their name.
Also similar to what HP seems to want to do with Compaq, luckily for them, HP seems to be wising up to this.
However, in Apple's case I think the reverse swap was worthwhile. OSX is the first Apple technology that I have actively wanted to own. It is just a shame that it didn't come out as Rhapsody's vision, I would have bought it for my PC years ago and Windows would far less of a stranglehold on the market.
I left out mention of Microsoft's usage, which is actually pretty massive. Microsoft is moving from it's older SMB "domain" authentication scheme to what they are calling "Active Directory Services".
ADS is based on LDAP, but as with many Microsoft uses, has been "extended" a bit past the standard such that it doesn't easily interface with other LDAP servers.
This started mid-way into the Windows 2000 product and is the default way to build a network with Win2K Advanced Server and Windows XP Server. This means that Microsoft is probably the largest current implementation of LDAP (though most MCSEs probably have no clue how powerful this can be and often will use the older SMB Domains since they are more familiar with it).
LDAP == Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (I think, that's from memory).
LDAP was originally intended to be a more flexible and less resource intensive implementation of Directories (phone books are a good example but not the only one) a'la the older X.500 protocol.
LDAP has been embraced by alot of companies like Microsoft and Sun (my employer) as a core server technology to form the "glue" between distributed services.
One of the most common uses is to maintain remote password authentication databases. Similar in concept to RADIUS or NIS, but in a more standard implementation without all of the overhead.
For instance, Sun is moving it's internal network to LDAP authentication (originally it was unconnected, later they used NIS, both older systems are still in use at Sun right now). It allows an employee to use the same password for many different resources on the internal network while having a single place to update that password.
The first thing I thought of when I saw this was an old BBS hoax ...
...
... slightly -better- than 100:1 compression. I was impressed.
... in fact ... it had increased by ... 5K.
... old DOS terminology for essentially a background daemon, though a real ugly method) that, whenever you went to touch the file, it intercepted the call and fed you the renamed old version.
... it just pretended to compress the file and you had to "uncompress" (ie, unhide the old version and rename it over the faked file) with the same program.
The time was somewhere around 1985
The hoax was a program that claimed to have (drum roll please) 100:1 file compression. So sure, I downloaded the thing on my lovely 1200 baud modem, installed it and tested it on a 512K file.
Sure enough, the resulting file was less than 5K
Then I took a close look at the program and, after investigation, found that even though this file was 5K, my disk space available had not decreased
Of course, the hoax was that this program simply renamed and hid the old file and installed a TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident
...
A variation on this didn't do the TSR
...
I would love for this new technology to work, but chances are in real life applications it's going to be about as productive as the BBS hoax was.
I went out about 3 weeks ago and picked up a 27" HD-ready Samsung Dynaflat at Best Buy for about $900 (actually, $820 but that was due to a 10% discount).
... 1 * CATV, 2 * Composite, 2 * SVideo, 1 * standard component and 1 * progressive component).
This is a now defunct model, but with the exception of the lack of Picture-in-Picture it is identical to the 27" Samsung Tantus.
Anyway, to make a long story short, what sold me on this TV (it's a 4:3 so you view 16:9 in letterbox) was viewing it side-by-side with a high-end NTSC ("normal" or 480i) TV. The Samsung has a scan doubler, which makes even normal NTSC look twice as good as a normal TV since it displays the 480i ("i" is for interlaced) in a pseudo 480p ("p" is for progressive or non-interlaced).
I'm about to buy a progressive scan DVD player to take advantage of the 480p mode. I've been holding off to buy a "real" DVD player (currently I use a PS2) until I could get a good progressive scan DVD player for under $250.
Another selling point of this TV was that it had all the inputs I could need
It's important to realize that HD-ready sets do -not- have a built-in HDTV tuner. Those still regularly go for $700+. I'm holding off getting one until they are well under $500, probably another year or so.
I would say that even though I can't view HDTV on it, buying this HDTV was a terrific move. I figure I'll end up putting it in a spare room for a second TV in 3-4 years when the larger widescreen HDTVs with built-in tuners come down below $1500. For now it is still a terrific kick in the pants for my TV viewing habits.
Actually, Quake did have pretty crappy net play. QuakeWorld fixed it (and I would agree was a complete and total gem). So in this case you could both be correct.
I decided to plop down $19 for a used copy of FFIX last weekend. I'd never touched an FF game before then and had only watched maybe 5 minutes of someone playing FFVII before that.
... I put in about 20 hours so far and have only owned it for 6 days. I realize that is piddlin compared to how much time some people put into gaming around the old 'dot, but for me that is pretty extreme.
... I've played all of the D&D titles that have come out on the PC going back to the original Pool of Radiance to the new Pool of Radiance (that spans about 12 years if I guestimate) and have done plenty of MUDs, MOOs, etc.
... not completely easy (I've been killed 3 times so far, not alot, but proves the game isn't -completely- simple) but not hard. I don't know if I'll invest time going back to the previous ones, but I'll definitely hook up for FFX when it comes out.
... the sounds leave a bit to be desired. I would like to see changes and improvements in the game, but the fact that I can use my PS2 in the living room instead of my PC in my office (I work from home, so it does make a difference to me) means that I'll finish FFIX before I find any other PC games to play.
... while that may be fun, I would sure like to see more games like FFIX and FFX out there for the PS2 ... any recommendations on other titles that I should look into?
I'm completely hooked
I've had a PS2 for almost a year now, never having owned a console before except an Atari 2600 in the very early '80s. This is the first game that has made me sit down and play my PS2 for more than an hour at a time without getting bored.
Generally speaking I'm an RPG'er
FFIX has been a breath of fresh air
Given that the game was meant for PS1, it's very pretty
I'm actually pretty worried that FFXI is going online
My guess is we won't ... it's exercises like this that keep management relations good with the rest of the staff. The productivity gained by a company that has good employee relations will -much- more than make up for the .1% (literally) of the year that the spent not working during this movie.
> You know, geeking out now and then is cool and
:)
> all, but why, exactly, do you need this much
> server equipment for a "home network?"
For the same reason that some dude around the corner has essentially a complete auto-body shop in his garage and some lady has a sewing room in here house that is bigger than her bedroom with 5 different types of sewing machines (one with a computer), a quilting loom and walls of thread.
Because we can and because we want to
Strongly agreed on your Speakeasy recommendation ... I've had Speakeasy sDSL for almost 2 years now. There have been a couple of growing pains, but in general when I talk to them they are nearly as knowledgable as I am on various 'net and *nix topics. As a reformed *nix ISP sysadmin, I had grown quite sick of the lack of knowledge in the various other companies' technical support (I've had cable and aDSL in the past). Plus, Speakeasy is very affordable and has a specific "we allow servers" policy. I've run my own server for the entire time and never been forced to change my IPs except when having my connection rerouted for better performance.
It's always satisfying to hear about a great new product, go to the homepage, and find a screenshot captured from a co-worker's workstation ... go Jonathan! :)
The makers have committed to a US version that supports NTSC output instead of PAL and a US power supply. It's pushing the US release out a month or two but should answer the needs of US users.
So they won't buy the phone. I have never felt Handspring was marketing to the masses with any of their products. Maybe to the majority of Palm users, but no one I know would consider that to be "the masses".
Generally speaking, in the states we start paying for outbound wireless calls as soon as we initiate the call. For incoming calls most services give you the first minute free (to decide whether you want to take the call) and then pay the same rate as outbound calls.
In many cases, we even have to pay for the minutes used to check our voicemail (which I find much more offensive than having to pay for the incoming calls).
However, unlike many portions of Europe, our landline systems are completely free for any inbound and outbound local area calls. This makes a difference in that we can call our ISP from a landline and stay connected for hundreds of hours each month and often incur no charge over the standard phone line cost (between $10US and $20US per month) and the ISP cost (between $0US and $25US per month). To my understanding, in Europe you often get ISP service essentially for free, but have to pay per minute outbound fees on your landline.
Everything is a compromise and everyone gets their money in the end.
Similarly, if I were to hack my Linux box to store encrypted passwords in an "unknown" file (say, /etc/bogus) that was readable by anyone, but no one knew what the information in the file was, that would be STOIB. However, if I put it in a standard location (/etc/shadow), but make sure that only "root" can read it, that is not STOIB.
The phrase was coined to indicate a scheme where something is -not- encrypted/whatever and instead is considered to be "secure" because "no one knows about it" (ie, it is "obscure").
Examples of this:
"security through obscurity" -is- bad here ... with the tools at hand (search engines and robot exclusion files as an extremely simple example) people -will- find this information at some point.
As with the previous example, security through obscurity again is bad here, but only in the light of "bad" meaning "stupid", not necessarily evil.
This is the arena where the "bad" in "STOIB" is "evil" or at least damaging to other people. In this example, you as the software author -caused- the hole in the other person's system, you should be the one to fix it or at least not prevent other people from fixing them.
"STOIB" only involves Intellectual Property if you claim that the only way to combat STOIB is to be Open Source and this is definitely the hardline. However, closed systems can still issue patches and disclose security issues without giving out their IP.
It was free, no one got paid for it, and the answers were much more complete than alot of other interviews.
Why complain unless you are willing to step up and do better?
Agreed. They are helpful when done minimally, especially for those of us that don't have digital (satellite or digicable) services.
... then the broadcast networks left theirs on all day long ... then all of the cable networks left one on all day long.
... all of a sudden there were waving full color opaque flags and bright stars on all the logos. I'm now to the point where I would happily see them all removed to get rid of the nasty ones. However, in an ideal world they would all still be there but very minimalistic. The only stations I don't want to see the minimalogos on is the pay-for-premiums like HBO, since I don't want to stare at the logo during a feature.
I was working in a television station when these things started to get popular. In fact, I was one of the people who helped make our station's logo as transparent as possible.
First it was just during the beginning of the news, then all through the news, then all day long
I have no issue with them when done "right". "Right" by my definition is as transparent and small as possible, preferrably -just- a logo and no text. If you're going to "tease" a special with an animation it should only happen once during a block of programming or -right- after the commercial and last no more than 5 seconds.
Of the "educational" channels, Animal Planet is the worst ("Croctober" opaque full color animations? Made me completely avoid anything to do with that special). History channel is worse with it's solid gold logo and the word "History" on everything. It would be highly preferrable to have a transparent "H" and nothing else. HGTV seems to understand the concept of simplicity pretty well.
Things got much worse after 9/11/01
As for the other issue, channels like CNNHN and Fox News scrolling every little quote they can scrounge across the screen, OUCH. This is specifically why I didn't watch Bloomberg TV. At a maximum I want the announcer, a well done graphic, and and explainer quote. I want all the text on the screen to relate to the story I'm watching. If you have to refer to additional stories, start additional channels and just run a miniature TV guide at the bottom so I can switch if I want to. Otherwise we're just further investing a culture of lack of concentration.
I also don't particularly see need to make CNNHN or Fox "tag-team". I preferred the single announcer format, again, for focusability reasons.
But then again, I'm known to be opinionated.
Humbug ... all that shows is that you are considering the only books he has written to be the Covenant stuff.
Take a look at the "Gap" series ... completely different from the Covenant books. I'm not saying he's going to be a well-read author in the future, as your post said, that's not predictable (which conflicts with your ability to predict that Donaldson -won't- be there).
But, it would be sad for you to write off an author because you didn't like the tone of less than half of his titles. That would be sort of like writing off Stephen King because you didn't like "the Shining" and then not realizing he had gone beyond the Horror genre.
Donaldson is one of the only authors I make a point of checking out for new titles whenever I browse in the Sci/Fantasy sections ...
Tolkien is a step above in his single series of Fantasy, but Donaldson is perhaps the most original thinker of the current generations. I read the first Covenant series before I read Tolkien and it still has a strong place in my heart. I've re-read it twice now, about every 10 years or so (about the same pace that I re-read Tolkien's books).
If you liked the idea of the strong back-story that Tolkien had in the Lord of the Rings (which became the Silmarillion) you'll enjoy the fact that Donaldson has very strong back-stories as well in all of his series. He also writes very inventive short stories. Plus, if you are like me and hate waiting for the next installment of a series, all of his currently mentioned series are each "complete" (unless he changes his mind later, which I won't mind).
I -think- I've read everything of his except "The Man Who Fought Alone" (which just came out and appears to not be SciFi or Fantasy but straight fiction from the review). My rankings as follows in case anyone wants to venture out for them. Note that this is my rankings, not chronological. I'm obviously ranking some "clusters" together ... the stories in each series are done in a serial format rather than independent novels of a similar theme, so I would always rank their order chronologically within each series and have listed them in that order as such.
He has written a few short stories that have been published in other collections (he did a short for the collection "Berserker Base") and there have been supporting works by other authors (like the very detailed "Atlas of the Land" by Karen Wynn Fonstad, now out of print, and "Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Variations on the Fantasy Tradition" by W. A. Senior). However, they're hard to find and the above list covers 95%+ of the available material.
All of the hotels I've seen these at seem to have them in the $10 range.
:) and I'm just not willing to plunk down $10/hour of my own money (they don't reimburse movies or games) for very old games.
... newer games might have been worth the $10/hour.
... the GBA games are often better than the SNES games. I think most kids probably would rather play their portable game system, too.
At least in my case, I expense any hotel I stay at (since when I'm not working I stay at a motel
I've never seen anything but SNES
I'm a whole lot happier playing my Gameboy than SNES
Or, better yet, spend the $10 on a cab ride and go catch a local attraction.
(off topic)
...
w k4.htm
......!..L.!Hell
... that's machine code for "Hell". So the parts of the code in question that we can decipher from the table would would read (spaces between each value, [?] means undeciphered):
P rogram.PDF
... if this is a complete program it has to initialize, display the data (print), and then end the program. The string we're trying to decipher most likely terminates the program, possibly it prints the program and then terminates but machine language is pretty long, so probably just terminates it.
... giving us:
t c.pdf
... that is the machine language for terminating a program. At the least it works on MS-DOS and can be compiled using the "debug" command.
... 20 minutes well spent ... learned something.
Let's find out
Question:
What does "B8 00 4C CD 21" mean?
Summary:
Google is a wonderful thing when combined with some deduction.
Details:
... Original String:
B8 00 4C CD 21
... Google Search of "B8 00 4C CD 21":
* http://www.co103.iup.edu/teaching/cosc300/cosc300
[snip]
e 10C "Hello world!$"
-d 100 118
10A9:0100 BA 0C 01 B4 09 CD 21 B8-00 4C CD 21 48 65 6C 6C
10A9:0110 6F 20 77 6F 72 6C 64 21-24 o world!$
[/snip]
-> Hmm, looks like machine code, could "48 65 6C 6C" be the "Hell" in "Hello world!"?
* http://physics.concordia.ca/~eddy/234/ascii.html
-> Yep
[?] NUL L [?] !
-> Looking for more program examples on Google gave this:
* http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~fgonzale/egn3210/First
-> Reading through the document shows that the program structure in the PDF executes the program and after the program is done has the data container for the text "Hello world!". So
-> Looking one more time on Google was lucky
* http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/reference/heuris
Conclusion
Elapsed Time
Assuming no hard drives, no 100Mhz bus, no SVGA monitor, no additional PCI cards, a relatively small/slow CPU and a tiny power supply, this thing will have much much much less RF noise than a normal PC that needs a shielded soundcard.
I agree with the article ... when this crud happens, the model that makes Ebay thrive is broken.
... ) and waited ... and waited ...
...
... so ... if anyone knows Casey Bennet from Terra Haute, Indiana ... also goes by the AOL email address of Kakugojin@AOL.com ... ya owe me ya butthead. If anyone here actually knows you, please feel free to email me at jahf-at-yahoo-dot-com.
... that felt good.
I've had a similar experience, though much less cost. I bid and won an auction from a seller who had positive feedback. I sent a Money Order as requested (only $35, but still
When I went back to Ebay, I found that his account had been revoked. Ugh
A few weeks later I got an email from him saying he had just moved and it was on it's way "soon". 3 months later and various attempts through email failed. I did get his real name (he had an AOL email address and put his name in his profile) but he no longer lives in the same city so I can't track him further and $35 isn't really enough to involve the postmaster.
I wish there were a way to petition Ebay to help, but understandably I can't prove nearly enough damage to get them to track him down, and their info is probably old, too.
BTW, I promised him if I didn't get it I would try and warn people
Ahhh