...what you people do to your SideWinders, but mine has lasted me many, many years of relatively rough use without any problems. I bought one of the 2nd-gen force-feedback Sidewinder sticks for use with FS2000/CFS1&2 a couple years ago. It doesn't get too beat up in flight sim, but in combat flight sim the stick meets the walls on a regular basis, I haven't noticed any wear on it yet so far. It's been a great stick, from what I hear not exactly the best out there, but it's served me well. The only complaint I would have is that the motor is too weak, no matter how hard it tries it really can't keep you from moving the stick.
I also picked up an open-box Sidewinder wheel last year, haven't used that so much, but the times that I have it's been a pretty solid performer. The biggest complaint I would have about that one would be the pedals. They're entirely plastic, no weight whatsoever to the base, and although using RJ-11 plugs to connect the pedals to the joystick is a neat idea, the cable's casing started tearing very shortly after I first used it from being pushed in and out of the channel made for it to sit in. Again, I'd have to complain a bit about a weak motor, although that could be more a function of the game developers, it just doesn't feel very realistic when driving.
Curious...
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Just want to throw this out there, see if anyone else has had similar experiences...
I work for a company in a Boston suburb, hit three years there this June. At the beginning of this year I was finally given an explanation of my paid time off (10 days vacation, 0 days sick). In early January, my grandmother had a stroke, and asked for a few days off to go back to Maine to visit family. The CEO said I could and I wouldn't have to worry about losing vacation days. I came back the following Monday to find a message from the CEO asking to talk to me. The long and the short of it was, in the 4 days I was away, I had forfeited all my vacation days. Fine, I can deal I suppose. In April, my grandmother passed away. Again, I asked for time off to go to Maine to visit family again. It was granted, including by the person I was working under on a project at the time. I went to Maine again for 4 days, returned the following Monday. This time the CEO was furious that I didn't have the current project I'd been working on done, and suffered a 20% pay cut that week, 'to compensate for lost time.'
Fun fun. If I recall (I don't have the paper at the moment) I will gain an additional 5 vacation days per year when I hit 5 years at the company, if I last that long...
That's true, I had forgotten about that (had a 6-month affair with DAoC also shortly after it launched.) That was kind of interesting, having certain attacks available only after certain conditions or positions and combined with other attacks. It's a definite start, not sure if it's quite the pinnacle of MMORPG combat yet though.
And yeah, the people standing 2m from each other and firing is alive and well in AO. Often times if the player or the enemy (or both) are wielding rifles, the barrels of the guns will go right through their target... I think I read on the upcoming patch notes that they're making baddies stand a little farther away though, so that should help that a little...
I'm a longtime Anarchy Online player (although I have taken a few vacations, the most recent a 6-month romp), it used to bug me to no end when people would get on the public channels simply to rant and rave over how horrible AO was back in the day (it personally didn't bother me a whole lot, it certainly pissed some people off to no end though) and that SWG was going to be akin to the Second Coming. Seeing SWG fall flat on its face at launch makes me so happy. I know none of the fanboys will equate this at all to the problems that AO (and every other MMOG out there) had in its initial stages, but at least it's a bit of justice for me.
I also glanced over the videos of SWG on one of the larger gaming sites (no clue which it was), I find it hilarious how glamorous they try to make the game look. The video I watched was basically someone running a quest. They talked to a couple people, one NPC (I assume) went with the character while they hunted another NPC down. A big, dramatic firefight ensues. The two NPC's and the PC go at it (read: stand still in the field) with their pistols, while the player's doing all kinds of sweeping moves with the camera and such to try to make the fight more interesting than it was.
There's been a longstanding problem with MMOG's (at least MMORPG's) in that combat is always a pretty central part of the game (tradeskills in some are right up there though, but typically the tradeskills facilitate combat, so it all comes back to that) and it's really pretty difficult to make combat interesting... It's evolved from the early days of Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior where you'd have your good guys lined up on one side of the screen and the bad guys lined up on the other side, you tell everyone to ATTACK, sit back, and watch the fun. It really hasn't changed too much since then, either. Sure, it's gotten much prettier and a little more complex in terms of setup, but once your characters start doing their thing, there isn't a whole lot for the player to do. I wait for the day that someone finally comes up with this brilliant idea to really draw the player in to combat... AO at least keeps me somewhat involved since my character sucks enough that when soloing I need to frantically heal myself while trying to keep a constant flow of damage heading towards the object of my frustrations...
I've seen a trailer for FFX-2 and talked to a friend who has the Japanese version, it's apparently pretty much designed to cater to the fans 100%. The trailer has left me pretty scared about the game, it seems to involve a lot of scantily-clad women in somewhat suggestive poses. But then, you can't judge a game by its trailer, I suppose. I picked up FFX without hesitation, I think FFX-2 is definitely going to have to be a rent-first game...
As for FFXI, I've played a couple MMORPG's (Dark Age of Camelot and Anarchy Online) and have gotten pretty burned-out on them. I don't really have the time to invest in them daily, without a single-player half to the game (Phantasy Star Online has a single-player offline mode, doesn' tit?) I'm not sure I'd plunk down the cash for it...
EA would be nice, but I'm waiting for Konami... Metal Gear Solid 3, Metal Gear: Twin Snakes, Metal Gear Solid 4 (possibly, a guy can dream, right?), Gradius V, a new Castlevania game... Konami has catapaulted itself to the top of my list of favorite game companies for now, far surpassing Square's somewhat lackluster offerings in the past couple years.
(Incidentally, I saw a video of Gradius V on IGN, that game looks to be DAMN fun! Classic 2d Gradius action, with stunning graphics, very arcadelike to the extreme. I can recall countless nights sitting in my room playing Gradius III on my SNES, trying to see how many times I could beat it in a row)
I've been waiting for a new MGS (or, to be corny and quote Liquid, "I've been waiting for this!") for a while now, having played MGS2 through to the point of boredom. As a friend pointed out on the Konami coutndown image, the image of the snake appears to be of Russia, could be an interesting setting for a new game. Naturally this would involve Ocelot to a great deal, although I have to say that although Ocelot is an interesting character in his own right, I'd prefer to see Liquid play a larger role in this one than in 2, Ocelot seemed rather tame at times. Also, as much as I got annoyed at people for saying this earlier, Raiden's got to go. Put Solid back in his rightful place.
Also, don't forget about MGS: Two Snakes.:D Never did pick up MGS for PSX, just for PC. Giving the game a facelift would certainly be nice.
I somehow doubt that Microsoft intentionally put this hole into SQL server, so that should probably steer clear of anything malicious. Negligence, perhaps, but this would open a whole can of worms (at least, if it were to show up in the US courts. Although now that this is happening in SK, I'm sure it'll make its way to our shores soon enough.)
I feel sorry for the companys who were sent to their knees over this vulnerability, but if there was a patch out months and months beforehand that could've avoided all this, the end-user needs to share some of the blame for this... There's not much more Microsoft could have done for it, if they'd forced the installation of the patch they'd have been even higher on the privacy zealots' shitlists than they already are.
I do seem to recall in the back of my mind that there was some nasty side-effect of the patch though, although it escapes me at the moment...
The current PS2 IR remotes require a receiver to be plugged into one of the controller ports. The receiver allows a normal controller to be plugged into it as well so you can still use both ports, though. The integrated receiver is just a matter of convenience, I would think. Having a controller plugged into the receiver makes it a little bulky too, IMO.
I feel that Uy (who seems a bit self-righteous in the first place) has definitely crossed a line with this. While junk email is surely annoying, it's also purely electronic, a simple press of the delete key and it's gone, you can continue with your work unencumbered. With this guy giving out his home address, though, Moore is, as the article states, receiving packages, piles of junk mail, threatening phone calls, the works. Email can't blow up in your face; unmarked brown packages can. His personal (and his family's) safety has been compromised, willingly and knowingly (now) by Uy.
The fact that his business address is the same as his home address does cast some doubt on this, as Uy may not have intended to give out Moore's home address, but from what I gather, he knows now, and has still refused to take down the information, so it's not so much of a point anymore.
Just because you don't like someone or what they do, they still have rights. Uy is walking a dangerous line, it would seem, his fate is in the hands of the masses right now. If harm befalls Mr. Moore, Uy's going to be in a spot of trouble.
Well, technically, mb would be a microbit, assuming tech follows the standard abbreviations. Not sure how you pull off a fraction of a bit, but if you can, more power to you.
That's a very good point actually, I hadn't considered that at the time of writing. Although, is samba really the most efficient network file sharing protocol available to Linux? I suppose the simplicity of configuration could be a strong point though. But if it is, surely someone can do better... It never struck me as a blazingly-fast file transfer method.
Sure, the Samba team can (and has) reverse engineered most (all?) of the protocol so far. For that they've certainly earned a mighty reputation. But with any change that Microsoft makes to their protocol, there's going to be a lag period between when the change is introduced and when samba can deal with it. This period would presumably increase (exponentially?) with the massiveness of the change.
With the older versions of Windows becoming unsupported, MS will have less and less of a reason to keep their backwards compatability. Didn't they change the protocol somewhat with 2k or XP?
I stand corrected then. But even so, surely the current incarnation of smb that Microsoft uses in WinXP differs from the implementation that IBM came up with. Barring some sort of licensing agreement they may have entered into with IBM when they began using the protocol, they're still under no obligation to share the details of its workings.
I hear this argument time after time, regarding MS and Samba. I'm curious to hear someone say why they feel that Microsoft is obligated to maintain interoperability with Samba. It's an MS-owned technology, the specs to which aren't terribly open in terms of what's coming down the 'pike. While Microsoft is no doubt aware that Samba has become a rather integral part of many computer users' experience, both in Linux and now OS X, it's acting as something of a rope around their neck; if they wish to implement any major changes to their file sharing protocol, samba likely would be unable to operate properly with it, requiring MS to keep a certain level of backwards-compatability in the protocol if they wish to not alienate these platforms (granted, they probably don't care a whole lot about alienating Linux users, but the OS X market may be more lucrative to them.)
In a perfect world, operating systems would be perfectly interoperable. 100% compatible operating systems don't (given less than a minute of thinking, at least) strike me as a very lucrative market. Why buy a particular OS when you can do the same with the others?
And, to continue my downward spiral to flamebaitdom, let's address the "...and deal with product activation and force DRM down your throats." What is the big deal about product activation? You fill in the form, which only asks you what country you're from (the rest is purely optional, at least on my install CD's) and hit the submit button. That'st he end of it. I've installed WinXP on two desktops and one laptop with this CD and haven't had the MS storm troopers come knocking on my door yet. As for the DRM technologies, so far I have felt no impact from them. While it does apparently exist in Media Player, there's a simple solution around that, don't use Media Player to rip your CD's. I use this marvelous little program called CDex that does a one-stop rip from CD to MP3, Ogg, or any number of other formats. All DRM-free, plays on any computer with the proper codecs. Windows is not forced DRM-land yet, and personally, I doubt it ever will be. Right now we're hearing scares from the 'for the people' organizations about how horrible the future will be and that all this is being pushed through the system without opposition. Believe me, the instant the average consumer is impacted negatively by this, the backers of whatever measure that struck a nerve will be forced to back off.
As someone who has tinnitis (hearing a constant ringning / squealing noise,) I've grown to love computer fans in my bedroom. I had an old K6-2/400 with a monster of a fan on it and one on the front that made a fair deal of noise, I found that I actually was able to fall asleep much faster with that drowning out the ringing in my head. Light music is still supreme, of course, but fan noise works about as well. Now, if we could make musical fans...
A local ISP in midcoast Maine has an underwater lobster trap-mounted webcam, the Lobstah Cam. The page is somewhat sparing in technical details, only that the camera itself is all that's submerged, the computer itself sitting 60' away on the dock in probably a slightly climate-controlled room. Also uses Midcoast's famous (locally, at least) wireless internet connections for internet connectivity (mentioned here), as well. Still interesting to look at from time to time though. At least for a Mainer, maybe...
The PlayOnline servers died horribly when FFXI was released for PS2 in Japan, twice I believe (I think there was a story linked here a while back about that happening.) Hopefully they have different backbones for the web server cluster and the actual FFFXI cluster, otherwise they're just asking for trouble.:-P
The date on the supposed memo is August of 2000. At that point in time, they probably didn't think much of the problem of everyone and their brother reading their internal memos, memos that typically don't go outside the company, as the name suggests. As for asking "when will they learn?", that's not really a valid point, again, given the time at which the memo was written. I forget exactly when the US gov sued MS, but if I recall it had either not happened yet or was just starting to get serious, not giving them enough time to "learn" not to send memos of this nature.
Please, before you take a shot, check that it's a good, clean shot beforehand. Don't need any collateral damage. Injure too many civvies and it's your rear.
Maybe it's just my anti-hysterical nature that doesn't mesh well with slashdotters, but could someone point out to me where in the article they explicitly said the Feds were going to try to shut down IRC networks?
Lesson for the day kiddies: You can't fight battles by putting words in someone's mouth. It just shoots you in the foot.
Coming from Maine and having recently graduated from high school in MSAD #40, I can tell you that teachers in this state don't get incredibly large salaries. I forget the exact figure, but I believe we're one of the lower states in the union.
However, as for the money, it's not the schools that are paying for the laptops. The state isn't actually putting a continuous amount of tax dollars from us into the project. The plan, as I remember it, was to take something like $90m that we have in surplus, and place it in a long-term account, using the interest earned from said cash to pay for the laptops. I'm not sure how much money we'd actually have for each laptop, as assuming that the laptops come at $500 apiece, that'd only be 180,000 of them. But, given that our state population is just over 1 million, there probably aren't even that many seventh graders in the state.
Slashdot Mirror
...what you people do to your SideWinders, but mine has lasted me many, many years of relatively rough use without any problems. I bought one of the 2nd-gen force-feedback Sidewinder sticks for use with FS2000/CFS1&2 a couple years ago. It doesn't get too beat up in flight sim, but in combat flight sim the stick meets the walls on a regular basis, I haven't noticed any wear on it yet so far. It's been a great stick, from what I hear not exactly the best out there, but it's served me well. The only complaint I would have is that the motor is too weak, no matter how hard it tries it really can't keep you from moving the stick.
I also picked up an open-box Sidewinder wheel last year, haven't used that so much, but the times that I have it's been a pretty solid performer. The biggest complaint I would have about that one would be the pedals. They're entirely plastic, no weight whatsoever to the base, and although using RJ-11 plugs to connect the pedals to the joystick is a neat idea, the cable's casing started tearing very shortly after I first used it from being pushed in and out of the channel made for it to sit in. Again, I'd have to complain a bit about a weak motor, although that could be more a function of the game developers, it just doesn't feel very realistic when driving.
Just want to throw this out there, see if anyone else has had similar experiences...
I work for a company in a Boston suburb, hit three years there this June. At the beginning of this year I was finally given an explanation of my paid time off (10 days vacation, 0 days sick). In early January, my grandmother had a stroke, and asked for a few days off to go back to Maine to visit family. The CEO said I could and I wouldn't have to worry about losing vacation days. I came back the following Monday to find a message from the CEO asking to talk to me. The long and the short of it was, in the 4 days I was away, I had forfeited all my vacation days. Fine, I can deal I suppose. In April, my grandmother passed away. Again, I asked for time off to go to Maine to visit family again. It was granted, including by the person I was working under on a project at the time. I went to Maine again for 4 days, returned the following Monday. This time the CEO was furious that I didn't have the current project I'd been working on done, and suffered a 20% pay cut that week, 'to compensate for lost time.'
Fun fun. If I recall (I don't have the paper at the moment) I will gain an additional 5 vacation days per year when I hit 5 years at the company, if I last that long...
That's true, I had forgotten about that (had a 6-month affair with DAoC also shortly after it launched.) That was kind of interesting, having certain attacks available only after certain conditions or positions and combined with other attacks. It's a definite start, not sure if it's quite the pinnacle of MMORPG combat yet though.
And yeah, the people standing 2m from each other and firing is alive and well in AO. Often times if the player or the enemy (or both) are wielding rifles, the barrels of the guns will go right through their target... I think I read on the upcoming patch notes that they're making baddies stand a little farther away though, so that should help that a little...
I'm a longtime Anarchy Online player (although I have taken a few vacations, the most recent a 6-month romp), it used to bug me to no end when people would get on the public channels simply to rant and rave over how horrible AO was back in the day (it personally didn't bother me a whole lot, it certainly pissed some people off to no end though) and that SWG was going to be akin to the Second Coming. Seeing SWG fall flat on its face at launch makes me so happy. I know none of the fanboys will equate this at all to the problems that AO (and every other MMOG out there) had in its initial stages, but at least it's a bit of justice for me.
I also glanced over the videos of SWG on one of the larger gaming sites (no clue which it was), I find it hilarious how glamorous they try to make the game look. The video I watched was basically someone running a quest. They talked to a couple people, one NPC (I assume) went with the character while they hunted another NPC down. A big, dramatic firefight ensues. The two NPC's and the PC go at it (read: stand still in the field) with their pistols, while the player's doing all kinds of sweeping moves with the camera and such to try to make the fight more interesting than it was.
There's been a longstanding problem with MMOG's (at least MMORPG's) in that combat is always a pretty central part of the game (tradeskills in some are right up there though, but typically the tradeskills facilitate combat, so it all comes back to that) and it's really pretty difficult to make combat interesting... It's evolved from the early days of Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior where you'd have your good guys lined up on one side of the screen and the bad guys lined up on the other side, you tell everyone to ATTACK, sit back, and watch the fun. It really hasn't changed too much since then, either. Sure, it's gotten much prettier and a little more complex in terms of setup, but once your characters start doing their thing, there isn't a whole lot for the player to do. I wait for the day that someone finally comes up with this brilliant idea to really draw the player in to combat... AO at least keeps me somewhat involved since my character sucks enough that when soloing I need to frantically heal myself while trying to keep a constant flow of damage heading towards the object of my frustrations...
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Rez yet.
:-P
I'll just go now.
I've seen a trailer for FFX-2 and talked to a friend who has the Japanese version, it's apparently pretty much designed to cater to the fans 100%. The trailer has left me pretty scared about the game, it seems to involve a lot of scantily-clad women in somewhat suggestive poses. But then, you can't judge a game by its trailer, I suppose. I picked up FFX without hesitation, I think FFX-2 is definitely going to have to be a rent-first game...
As for FFXI, I've played a couple MMORPG's (Dark Age of Camelot and Anarchy Online) and have gotten pretty burned-out on them. I don't really have the time to invest in them daily, without a single-player half to the game (Phantasy Star Online has a single-player offline mode, doesn' tit?) I'm not sure I'd plunk down the cash for it...
EA would be nice, but I'm waiting for Konami... Metal Gear Solid 3, Metal Gear: Twin Snakes, Metal Gear Solid 4 (possibly, a guy can dream, right?), Gradius V, a new Castlevania game... Konami has catapaulted itself to the top of my list of favorite game companies for now, far surpassing Square's somewhat lackluster offerings in the past couple years.
(Incidentally, I saw a video of Gradius V on IGN, that game looks to be DAMN fun! Classic 2d Gradius action, with stunning graphics, very arcadelike to the extreme. I can recall countless nights sitting in my room playing Gradius III on my SNES, trying to see how many times I could beat it in a row)
I've been waiting for a new MGS (or, to be corny and quote Liquid, "I've been waiting for this!") for a while now, having played MGS2 through to the point of boredom. As a friend pointed out on the Konami coutndown image, the image of the snake appears to be of Russia, could be an interesting setting for a new game. Naturally this would involve Ocelot to a great deal, although I have to say that although Ocelot is an interesting character in his own right, I'd prefer to see Liquid play a larger role in this one than in 2, Ocelot seemed rather tame at times. Also, as much as I got annoyed at people for saying this earlier, Raiden's got to go. Put Solid back in his rightful place.
:D Never did pick up MGS for PSX, just for PC. Giving the game a facelift would certainly be nice.
Also, don't forget about MGS: Two Snakes.
I somehow doubt that Microsoft intentionally put this hole into SQL server, so that should probably steer clear of anything malicious. Negligence, perhaps, but this would open a whole can of worms (at least, if it were to show up in the US courts. Although now that this is happening in SK, I'm sure it'll make its way to our shores soon enough.)
I feel sorry for the companys who were sent to their knees over this vulnerability, but if there was a patch out months and months beforehand that could've avoided all this, the end-user needs to share some of the blame for this... There's not much more Microsoft could have done for it, if they'd forced the installation of the patch they'd have been even higher on the privacy zealots' shitlists than they already are.
I do seem to recall in the back of my mind that there was some nasty side-effect of the patch though, although it escapes me at the moment...
The current PS2 IR remotes require a receiver to be plugged into one of the controller ports. The receiver allows a normal controller to be plugged into it as well so you can still use both ports, though. The integrated receiver is just a matter of convenience, I would think. Having a controller plugged into the receiver makes it a little bulky too, IMO.
I feel that Uy (who seems a bit self-righteous in the first place) has definitely crossed a line with this. While junk email is surely annoying, it's also purely electronic, a simple press of the delete key and it's gone, you can continue with your work unencumbered. With this guy giving out his home address, though, Moore is, as the article states, receiving packages, piles of junk mail, threatening phone calls, the works. Email can't blow up in your face; unmarked brown packages can. His personal (and his family's) safety has been compromised, willingly and knowingly (now) by Uy.
The fact that his business address is the same as his home address does cast some doubt on this, as Uy may not have intended to give out Moore's home address, but from what I gather, he knows now, and has still refused to take down the information, so it's not so much of a point anymore.
Just because you don't like someone or what they do, they still have rights. Uy is walking a dangerous line, it would seem, his fate is in the hands of the masses right now. If harm befalls Mr. Moore, Uy's going to be in a spot of trouble.
Well, technically, mb would be a microbit, assuming tech follows the standard abbreviations. Not sure how you pull off a fraction of a bit, but if you can, more power to you.
That's a very good point actually, I hadn't considered that at the time of writing. Although, is samba really the most efficient network file sharing protocol available to Linux? I suppose the simplicity of configuration could be a strong point though. But if it is, surely someone can do better... It never struck me as a blazingly-fast file transfer method.
Sure, the Samba team can (and has) reverse engineered most (all?) of the protocol so far. For that they've certainly earned a mighty reputation. But with any change that Microsoft makes to their protocol, there's going to be a lag period between when the change is introduced and when samba can deal with it. This period would presumably increase (exponentially?) with the massiveness of the change.
With the older versions of Windows becoming unsupported, MS will have less and less of a reason to keep their backwards compatability. Didn't they change the protocol somewhat with 2k or XP?
I stand corrected then. But even so, surely the current incarnation of smb that Microsoft uses in WinXP differs from the implementation that IBM came up with. Barring some sort of licensing agreement they may have entered into with IBM when they began using the protocol, they're still under no obligation to share the details of its workings.
I hear this argument time after time, regarding MS and Samba. I'm curious to hear someone say why they feel that Microsoft is obligated to maintain interoperability with Samba. It's an MS-owned technology, the specs to which aren't terribly open in terms of what's coming down the 'pike. While Microsoft is no doubt aware that Samba has become a rather integral part of many computer users' experience, both in Linux and now OS X, it's acting as something of a rope around their neck; if they wish to implement any major changes to their file sharing protocol, samba likely would be unable to operate properly with it, requiring MS to keep a certain level of backwards-compatability in the protocol if they wish to not alienate these platforms (granted, they probably don't care a whole lot about alienating Linux users, but the OS X market may be more lucrative to them.)
In a perfect world, operating systems would be perfectly interoperable. 100% compatible operating systems don't (given less than a minute of thinking, at least) strike me as a very lucrative market. Why buy a particular OS when you can do the same with the others?
And, to continue my downward spiral to flamebaitdom, let's address the "...and deal with product activation and force DRM down your throats." What is the big deal about product activation? You fill in the form, which only asks you what country you're from (the rest is purely optional, at least on my install CD's) and hit the submit button. That'st he end of it. I've installed WinXP on two desktops and one laptop with this CD and haven't had the MS storm troopers come knocking on my door yet. As for the DRM technologies, so far I have felt no impact from them. While it does apparently exist in Media Player, there's a simple solution around that, don't use Media Player to rip your CD's. I use this marvelous little program called CDex that does a one-stop rip from CD to MP3, Ogg, or any number of other formats. All DRM-free, plays on any computer with the proper codecs. Windows is not forced DRM-land yet, and personally, I doubt it ever will be. Right now we're hearing scares from the 'for the people' organizations about how horrible the future will be and that all this is being pushed through the system without opposition. Believe me, the instant the average consumer is impacted negatively by this, the backers of whatever measure that struck a nerve will be forced to back off.
Good day.
As someone who has tinnitis (hearing a constant ringning / squealing noise,) I've grown to love computer fans in my bedroom. I had an old K6-2/400 with a monster of a fan on it and one on the front that made a fair deal of noise, I found that I actually was able to fall asleep much faster with that drowning out the ringing in my head. Light music is still supreme, of course, but fan noise works about as well. Now, if we could make musical fans...
A local ISP in midcoast Maine has an underwater lobster trap-mounted webcam, the Lobstah Cam. The page is somewhat sparing in technical details, only that the camera itself is all that's submerged, the computer itself sitting 60' away on the dock in probably a slightly climate-controlled room. Also uses Midcoast's famous (locally, at least) wireless internet connections for internet connectivity (mentioned here), as well. Still interesting to look at from time to time though. At least for a Mainer, maybe...
The PlayOnline servers died horribly when FFXI was released for PS2 in Japan, twice I believe (I think there was a story linked here a while back about that happening.) Hopefully they have different backbones for the web server cluster and the actual FFFXI cluster, otherwise they're just asking for trouble. :-P
The date on the supposed memo is August of 2000. At that point in time, they probably didn't think much of the problem of everyone and their brother reading their internal memos, memos that typically don't go outside the company, as the name suggests. As for asking "when will they learn?", that's not really a valid point, again, given the time at which the memo was written. I forget exactly when the US gov sued MS, but if I recall it had either not happened yet or was just starting to get serious, not giving them enough time to "learn" not to send memos of this nature.
Please, before you take a shot, check that it's a good, clean shot beforehand. Don't need any collateral damage. Injure too many civvies and it's your rear.
Maybe it's just my anti-hysterical nature that doesn't mesh well with slashdotters, but could someone point out to me where in the article they explicitly said the Feds were going to try to shut down IRC networks?
Lesson for the day kiddies: You can't fight battles by putting words in someone's mouth. It just shoots you in the foot.
Just do it like Microsoft EULA's. Put a sign up at the front of the building, "By opening this door, you agree to..."
Coming from Maine and having recently graduated from high school in MSAD #40, I can tell you that teachers in this state don't get incredibly large salaries. I forget the exact figure, but I believe we're one of the lower states in the union.
However, as for the money, it's not the schools that are paying for the laptops. The state isn't actually putting a continuous amount of tax dollars from us into the project. The plan, as I remember it, was to take something like $90m that we have in surplus, and place it in a long-term account, using the interest earned from said cash to pay for the laptops. I'm not sure how much money we'd actually have for each laptop, as assuming that the laptops come at $500 apiece, that'd only be 180,000 of them. But, given that our state population is just over 1 million, there probably aren't even that many seventh graders in the state.
If you're going to do this, at least get it right. Bea Arthur. "Bee arther naked" sounds vaguely Yoda-esque.