Personally I'd start at the beginning and keep at it from there;) That would be "The Colour of Magic" followed by "The Light Fantastic".
These were the first two Discworld books... but to be honest if you wanted to see more "mature" Discworld novels when Terry Pratchett had really grown into a better writer (the first two books were good conceptually but failed somewhat in the narrative), then I'd probably recommend "Guards, Guards" as the first book to read. Why? Well, it really sets up some more of the reality of the city of Ankh Morpork (London by another name, really), and introduces characters who become key later. Reading Moving Pictures or even Small Gods before reading Guards, Guards will actually cause you to miss a couple of the "in-jokes" that are there for fans of the series.
I'd say my favorite of the series though still has to be Mort... that book really stands on its own but resonates through subsequent books (especially where Death is concerned).
Note that all of those games you mentioned (probably bar Populous) actually came rather late to the 16-bit party. I consider the 16-bit era to have begun in 1985 with the release of the Amiga 1000 and Atari ST. That's when I got my first Atari (didn't buy an Amiga until 1989). Although I know the 16-bit era continued up until about 1996 or so, the games you listed mostly were around 1990 or later (Syndicate was 1993!)
The 16-bit era started to take a back seat to the 32-bit era around the same time Syndicate was released... mostly due to rapidly improving graphics cards on the PC platform... not to mention SoundBlaster and Adlib cards.
Maybe I'm just showing my age... but the cream of the crop in gaming was actually toward the end of the 8-bit era. Since there were no powerful CPU's or great graphics cards, gameplay took a front-row seat. The 16-bit era... at least at its inception... heralded a new era of graphics and incredible CPU power (for its time). Unfortunately, for many years the platforms suffered from "incredible-hardware-itis", where game makers spent more time focused on the graphics than the gameplay.
This got better; some 16-bit games toward the end of that era were great... but I still felt they lacked something from the 8-bit era. The 32-bit era (and primarily the PC) heralded even more, but delivered exponentially less. So much time these days is spent polishing the graphics and creating a marketing blitz, that somewhere along the way gameplay seems to have taken a back seat.
This has just gotten worse in recent years as "newer", "faster" and "glitzier" have become the watchwords of the game industry. The focus on adapting to the latest "cool tech" instead of spending time actually making the game fun to play.
There have been exceptions... but that's part of their problem; they're exceptions. What do I play these days on my PC? Freespace 2 still gets fired up occasionally (there are third-party updates that take advantage of newer hardware), and Independence War 2. These are good games that use the technology to advance the gameplay. Beyond that, a copy of UAE and copies of all my old Amiga games keep me occupied. I haven't seen a game in a long time I actually want to buy... I played Halo 2 on my friend's X-Box... but it was vapid. I also played Star Wars Battlefront 2 on his X-Box and found myself bored to tears after an hour or so. Is this what quality games are these days???
... though the price is a little high for what you get.
I recently took a motorcycling vacation through the UK, and honestly finding places to stay was a little tougher than it is in the US. Here you can be sure of finding a budget hotel easily and quickly. Most of the time, to find somewhere to stay in the UK you've got to be either (a) near a big city or (b) near a tourist trap. That becomes a problem because typically the hotels are more expensive in these areas.
Had this sort of thing been available, then the two nights I spent in London out of my two weeks I probably would have stayed there. It seems like just the sort of thing I needed; small, convenient and the price is not too high. My experience of hotels in England seems typically much higher than I'm used to. While traveling (not for business) I'm usually more than happy with a $40 per night Red Roof Inn.
Having said that, I did end up staying at a hostel in Cardiff that was a lot cheaper than this (and almost stayed at a hostel in Brighton except for finding a great deal on a hotel room down the street). If you don't mind the "communal living" stuff and can live with the odor of weed in the lounge then this is a great option, especially if you're touring on a motorbike or just generally trying to keep the budget low.
Back on topic, I would definitely use hotels like this when traveling. Usually all I need is a single night, and I don't intend on spending a huge amount of time in the room itself. I find the wireless Internet and stuff a little useless though... if this is really a room just to sleep and then go do stuff then why do you need a reason to stick around the little room?? When I was touring, if I wanted to use the Internet I normally didn't use the Hotel Internet connection and instead found a nearby Internet cafe. More sociable, and usually pretty cheap. Plus, I got some good (and bad) tea and coffee out of it:)
Remember the time when the most acclaimed minds in the world thought that the world was flat?
Actually, generally Christians believed the world to be flat... not all the "most acclaimed minds in the world" were Christian.
The reason for this is simply that taken at face value, the Bible intimates in a couple of areas that the world is flat (referring to "the four corners of the world", and a passage in (I believe) Mark which mentions a mountain visible across the world; only possible on a flat Earth). Literal interpretation of biblical teachings led to that belief.
Taken as a whole in history, the Flat Earth theory was only a "blip on the radar" of belief. It was a short-lived belief that was relatively quickly debunked. Yes, in Christian societies it was pretty devoutly believed because (a) the people at the top stated it often, and (b) the average lay person did not have a way to access information that contradicted this statement (few could read, and few that could had access to anything other than the bible at their local church).
Even the ancient greeks documented their belief that the world was a perfect sphere (it's not, but they didn't have instrumentation to disprove that), though to be honest most societies in history have not really given the shape of the world much thought. Most of them just knew that it was and it never really occurred to most societies to even consider that it might be shaped at all. Between the ancient greeks and the Christian belief of the flat Earth I don't think there were any documented ideas either way, thus it could be said that even making the argument that the Earth had shape and was therefore limited in scope had the benefit of novelty.
... many of the concepts and ideas in The Sims were lifted wholesale from "Little Computer People", which I remember playing on my old Commodore 64 around the 1985/1986 timeframe. To me, LCP was just "cuter" and actually more fun. Sure, it got old... but when I played The Sims I think I played for all of two or three evenings then just tuned it out. Micro-managing the mundane is not my idea of fun.
I'd have to say that I agree with others here. Pretty much anyone who built a MythTV box once can build one for you... but why? If it broke, who would you call to fix it? I know I for one wouldn't want to be on-call for people with problems with Myth unless I was making a good living at it.
Try Knoppmyth, or go to The Fedora Myth(TV)ology site for the excellent Fedora guide which I followed myself and built a very good and stable Mythbox. So far going on 7 months and two major revisions of MythTV (0.16 to the current 0.18.1) without a hitch... and even better my wife and kids can use it without problems. Hell, only occasionally does a problem surface.
However, the problems ARE the problem. When problems do occur, it would be better if you'd had the experience building the box... that way you know where your problems might lie. Similarly, some Linux experience might be advantageous. It's really not hard building a good Myth box... but I also stuck pretty closely with standard, recognized hardware (PVR-250, Geforce2MX, Athlon 800) that would do the trick rather than try some of the more "out there" configurations. Of course, I also had a nice ATX case for hi-fi component matching (an old Gateway Destination PC) that matched my Harmon Kardon sound system perfectly.
YMMV... but my advice is to check out that guide. If you want to build a good Myth box... follow it to the letter and you'll be good to go.
Because it wouldn't have fit into the machine, silly! Besides, it probably would have been hard to keep the sheep still while laser-etching another animal on it's hide.
Because when running Windows platform, application isolation is key. We have a lot of servers in our datacenter, but we encourage our application engineers to maintain a one-application-per-server architecture because it means in the event of a system failure we're looking at one application being impacted instead of several.
Now, I agree this is inefficient... this is why we're reviewing VMWare ESX farms...
A company called Axio makes a great range of backpacks... I myself have a Tekno laptop backpack that I use when I'm riding my motorbike (most of the time these days) and having to carry around electronic gear for work.
I recently took a motorcycling vacation in the UK, and I took my Tekno with me along with my laptop, various paper items, mouse, power supply, air/car power adapter, iPod Nano, noise cancelling headphones and all sorts of other equipment. My cellphone clipped nicely to one of the external rings on the straps so I could reach it even when on my bike (but using it with gloves and a helmet proved a bit of a challenge )
Seriously, if you have to carry around electronic gear you could do worse than the Tekno. It looks a little geeky, but the hard shell is waterproof even when riding in driving rain at 50mph or so... I've proven that. It's also very comfortable even over 400 miles of riding in a single day, plus a lot of walking around that I did in the process.
Of course, as many have pointed out you could probably reduce or eliminate most of the electronic gear you carry, but you may be like me and have a desire to have most of your gear with you over extended periods just in case you need it.
So far, the only complaints I've had with the Tekno are (a) scratches appear easily and (b) can get uncomfortable on a motorbike in 100 degree heat with this against your back... but that's true of most backpacks anyway. Oh, and (a) I found I could fix by occasionally taking my car washing buffer to it... works like a champ:)
Really. Despite the fact that this has already been identified as a probable urban legend by Snopes, I ask everyone on this site to think of this like an engineer.
Think about this. You're designing an electronic key-card system for a hotel. In order to do this you have to deal with lobby-monkeys who only occasionally swipe the card correctly through the machine when the customer's checking in. These cards are going to get shoved in pockets, scratched and generally abused.
Now, as an engineer are you going to create a solution that (a) writes to the magnetic strip for every person who checks into the hotel, running the risk that the card runs through skewed or otherwise renders the information unusable, or (b) are you going to assign each card a unique ID number similar to a credit card number that's permanently printed on the card repeatedly across the magnetic strip.
Talk amongst yourselves, but think about the fact that a mag-stripe WRITER costs more than a mag-stripe READER. If you control the locks from a central computer which only has to recognize that card (a) opens door (z), then how are you going to engineer that system for optimum efficiency and lowest cost?
While I don't doubt some droid might consider it a nice idea to have all the customer's info on the card, it doesn't make an awful lot of sense from an engineering perspective now, does it?
And yes, I've worked on hotel key card systems, and no I've never seen one that writes the cards in any way shape or form on check in.
Actually, it sort of is... just don't go to Motorola for it. They won't give it out because it's down to your provider.
I got an unlock code for my MPX220 when I went to Cingular and explained to them that I was travelling to Europe (specifically England) in October and had a requirement to have a local phone while I was there. They suggested International Roaming but I just explained patiently that this didn't cut it and I would rent a phone if I had to. Voila... one unlock code.
The reason? Well, I'm picking up a Virgin Mobile SIM card for my phone while I'm in England so that I can make local calls and people can call me. No international roaming. I want to bring my phone with me partly because it has my trip itinerary and everything in there too... would be a PITA to copy down onto paper or something to carry.
Is not the lawsuits themselves, but the fact that the RIAA doesn't realize that people aren't buying their product these days because quite frankly it sucks.
Have you listened to the radio lately? No, neither have I. Well, that's not entirely true... with the summer season upon us I started riding my motorcycle around instead of my car. No radio. The other day when I was having a dead-battery problem on my bike I drove my car for the first time in a while... and listened to the radio. It was almost like I'd never left. Most of the songs were the same plastic crap that was being played 4 months ago when I last listened to the radio, and that stuff that was new was barely distinguishable from the older stuff that played "around" it.
I would be the first to admit that there's the occasional gem on the radio these days, but I think the last album I purchased was The Killers. No, it's not because I download RIAA music; actually I download a lot of indie music that's available on the net for download "with the promise to buy our album" sort of thing. The independent recordings are usually decent quality MP3's, and if I like them I'll order the album DIRECTLY FROM THE SOURCE. I don't need a record store any more. If I want a nice CD in a jewel case... hell, most of the indy bands out there can afford to stamp a hundred CD's that are nicely labelled... jewel cases are incredibly cheap... and modern decent color printers can make awesome inlays. Hell, for a couple hundred bucks you can buy a color laser printer these days!
So why do I need the RIAA again? Generally they represent companies that take the same crap that was successful last year and recycle it into this years "pop sensation". It's gotten to the point that I don't even know who this years "hot acts" are because I can't distinguish them from last year's lot.
And no, this isn't because I'm "getting old". I still listen to new music and still expand my horizons into new fields any time I can. I buy music not because it's "what I liked last year" but because I've been given a lead on it by a friend and downloaded a LEGAL MP3, Ogg or WMA from the band's own website and I like their stuff. If I don't like their stuff then I can delete the file, not buy the album and then no-one loses.
The RIAA needs to realize their business model is flawed. They're not going to survive much more than a few more years unless the member companies of the RIAA change their thinking on what opportunities new technologies represent. Honestly I think we're just seeing the last dying gasps of a business model that's bleeding from fatal wounds but hasn't stopped moving yet.
Of course, here on/. I'm sort of preaching to the choir.
For much the same reason you get a degree; to get your foot in the door when you're looking for a job.
A certification won't guarantee you a spot in the company, but it DOES increase your chances.
Take my workplace for example. We're a large company and a relatively large division of that company. When a job is posted as available, incoming resumes and applications go first through Human Resources. Now, every application gets "vetted" by the HR people, and quite frankly they know next to nothing about what constitutes a good IT guy.
Now, when the resume or application has "run the gauntlet" then we'll get to see them. That's when we can choose our candidates.
The problem with this? Well, at some point the HR people decided that industry certifications were a requirement for this job. Apparently they don't listen when we say otherwise. As a result the certification at least gets your resume in front of the manager, but does not necessarily get you hired.
FYI, once the resume hits us, we pretty much ignore the certifications part and look at the meat (work experience and so forth). To my mind, good work experience is much better than certifications.
Having said that, there are ways to shortcut this system, but they're rare and usually involve a reference from an employee already working there.
So, it depends on the type of company you want to work with. Small companies typically don't care too much about certs. Consulting companies usually require them. Big companies don't really care, but you're not going to even get their attention unless you have at least one certification at the top of your resume.
Honestly though, for the cost of most certs these days you may as well just get one. Hell, if you self-study you can get an MCP with a single test (about $100)... that at least gets your "in".
The BBC has long held with the idea that the content they produced should be as available as possible, at least to the British people. This is interesting in that it marks a step away from the idea of being UK-only focused (at least potentially).
Now, as an ex pat myself I still find myself drawn to BBC programming; partly becuase I still find the English accents more "comfortable" than American for certain types of TV, but mostly because I find the general quality of writing and acting tends to be better. US TV is awfully focused on "How can we sell something to the public using the ruse of a drama", while the BBC has always subscribed to the notion "Let's entertain our people with good drama." This leads to a lot of good quality American TV shows that eventually pander too much to advertisers and/or "consumer advocate groups" and as such tend to eventually target at the lowest common denominator of the audience. This is why subsequent seasons of many TV shows seem to become progressively worse than the last.
This isn't really just an American phenomenon; I see this in some British TV shows as well, but in general it seems more prevalent in the US. Perhaps that because there are more hours of TV produced, more channels or something... I haven't really performed any sort of analysis; just my observations.
Getting back on topic though I have to say that I enjoy BBC content and would gladly pay an annual fee (like the license fee) for unlimited and unfettered access to this content. To me it would be better value than most of the crap I get on my satellite TV and never watch... and BBC America doesn't really count because many of the shows pre-date my moving to this country (10 years ago), and those that are more recent are often repeated incessantly and thus lose some of their "luster". A subscription to content would allow me to grab content on my broadband connection as I want to see it, then dump it to the hard drive of my MythTV box for viewing on the family television. Better than crowding around a monitor and just as comfortable as sitting watching regular TV.
I can't be the only person out there to be able to count the number of programs they actually watch on American TV on the fingers of one hand... not to mention being able to put my finger on what I consider quality TV because it is so different from all the other chaff on TV.
I'll probably get lost amongst the chatter here, but I have to weigh in as I've been both a manager and a technical guy for most of my career. I've had more time as a techie simply because I prefer that line to the management track.
Basically, a good manager does not have to be good at the job of his employees. In fact, more often than not it's preferable that he's not. The reason for this is that managers (good managers at any rate) need to deal with stuff that technical guys find wearing or even bullshit. Stuff like project planning, resource allocation, and generally playing the "politics game". If you're a technical guy in a management position, there's an almost natural tendency to presume that you're better than your employees. That leads to a presumption that you know the answer when they do not, and thus that you can do their job better than they can. It then irrevocably leads to a manager who micro-manages his employees. This makes him a lousy manager.
I personally went into the management job and knew this was a risk. As a result I made a conscious effort to seperate myself from the technology even to the point that I requested my rights to the system be taken away (I was granted admin privileges when I started). This forced me to go to my employees and look to them for solutions. As such, when we had a problem I usually sat down with them, explained the problem and asked them to give me a BRIEF overview of their proposed solution. I always told them to avoid technical details as I didn't need them. Then I usually asked for a timeline for a fix and walked away. I could then go back to the manager / business owner / department head who reported the problem and give them my take on the problem and give them a timeline (usually plus a few hours or days depending upon the extent of the problem). I never told them who was working the problem or how it was going to get fixed. That's how a manager works. This way I showed trust in my employees abilities, kept the heat off their back and set the expectations of the reporter that the problem was being diligently worked on and thus would be fixed.
I'd say 80% of my job was "public-relations" based. To me, my technical knowledge was somewhat of a liability. I ended up looking at solutions to problems and sometimes over-analyzing the solution my employees had come up with. I had my own ideas about solutions more often than not but had to keep them to myself. I couldn't test or implement because I had no access, and if I were to try then I would be showing my employees that I didn't trust their judgement. This undermines the entire department and thus turns you again into a bad manager.
Eventually I quit. Not because I wasn't wanted in the position (I had great working relationships with my employees that I enjoyed and still stay in touch with some of them), but because I had found my "geek-karma" to be a liability to my direction as a manager. I wasn't comfortable being the "general", I found I much preferred being "in the trenches". Besides, honestly I find that I can be much more flexible with my schedule as a techie than I ever could as a manager. Even though I have the occasional evening and weekend work I need to do, I prefer it over the constant 11 and 12 hour days I needed to get all my stuff done as a manager, the interminable meetings and the absolute hard-and-fast requirement that I be in the office between the hours of 8am and 5pm every day... even if I'd been there until 2am dealing with paperwork.
And as for those who comment that a manager will take your "thunder" as a "hot-shot", think about this. When you f**k up, a good manager will also take the hit. I can't count the number of times I had a screw up in my ranks that I had to go to my management and say, "A member of my group dropped the ball. They're diligently working on a solution and I will take full responsibility for it." I got on the wrong side of a few upper managers because I refused to state who on my group screwed up. I always told them I would deal with it in
Which then brings up the problem of application compatibility. As I mentioned in one of my other posts (though not specifically), many of our "custom" or at least "not-off-the-shelf" applications are only certified for Windows 2000 SP3, and have either never been tested or never certified on anything newer. This leads to the problem of the vendor leading the customer down a dark and dangerous path, but unfortunately corporate politics plays too much into this.
We aren't allowed to run un-certified applications due to business requirements (we're governed by worldwide and federal regulations which are sometimes contradictory), and thus to upgrade the operating system would be to essentially "un-certify" these applications. It isn't really as cut and dried as even I like.
Personally, I run XP SP2 on my laptop (with permission). The only reason I get away with that is because I'm in IT and therefore don't have to run the business applications that are not certified for this platform. If I do... well that's what VM's are for
Unfortunately, again comes the Corporate politics. We tried to implement something like this, but all it took was one manager with a valid beef and a loud enough voice and all of a sudden we found ourselves back to basics.
The problem with these kind of "ideal world" configurations is that there's nearly always one application that is overlooked. With almost 300 "custom applications" in our environment today THAT WE KNOW ABOUT (and probably twice that many we don't), hitting the nail on the head first time is impossible.
While events like the last few days serve to improve things via reactionary methods, unfortunately they usually don't extend to "rehashing old failed ideas", at least as management looks at it. If I can repackage it with a different name, maybe:)
Oh no, the actual patching method was pretty simple, automated and realistically only ate up a total of about 4 or 5 of those hours. The problems came when it came to controlled reboots, reboot schedules, application and server interdependencies and so forth. Also, the politics of dealing with servers in remote locations and having to call on-call staff in the middle of the night to power-cycle a box because McAfee hung the server on shutdown. That's what causes time... and is common across platforms.
In this case, no. Although we can't pinpoint it, it looks as though this worm actually came in on an infected laptop. There's almost nothing that can realistically be done to prevent this unless we also want to force everyone to use desktops. I know a lot of managers (and IT people... myself included) who often work from coffee shops on wireless connections when we need to. It people like myself can be expected to be conscientious about using at least a software firewall; managers and project managers? Well, I'll leave that to you to fill in that blank:)
Myself I ended up at work 20 hours on Monday this week patching servers. Given that we have about 500 servers in our environment with one person doing the patching this wasn't so bad.
We ended up with a lot of problem because of this worm... less because it actually caused problems with the machines but more because we could see machines constantly trying to infect one another. It wasn't pretty. Our workstations were most at risk, being the largest installed base but also running Windows 2000 SP3 (not SP4 unfortunately). No patch has been generally released for SP3 WS's, but a custom patch IS available from Microsoft if you request it. Due to other factors in play, we have elected to upgrade to SP4 and install the appropriate hotfixes. This is not going to be pretty over about 10,000 workstations.
See, what some people miss when they say that any infection may be due to bad administration is simply that we're dealing with huge numbers of machines, both servers and workstations that are potentially vulnerable. Due to application compatibility and tested standardized platforms we often don't even get the option to keep stuff up to date. The only reason we even have Windows 2003 servers in place today is because we forced the issue with our Corporate guys when we implemented Active Directory; we informed them that we had a need for functionality not provided by Windows 2000 AD (which was true). There is a project currently under way to test Windows XP for rollout, but honestly chances are that Vista will be shipping by the time we even reach 50% rollout mark.
So, why the rant? Well, it must be understood that jumping on the latest patches is not always an option in the corporate environment. Also, jumping on the operating system bandwagon is rarely an option because there's a lot of regression testing that has to be done. Hell, there are some instances where we're having to push the application vendors to support Windows 2003 Servers in our Citrix environment because they've never tested it. Welcome to the realities of Corporate IT.
Are there solutions? Sure! However, none of them are acceptable to most corporations. Linux is not an option, neither is OSX. In both cases we come back to the legacy support issue. Citrix to share the applications? Great... but you're only redirecting the problem to the server farms, not eliminating it. Real world Corporate IT is not as black and white as people would like it to be, myself included.
This virus gained traction because most corporations work this way. It wasn't helped by the fact that McAfee and Symantec both waited two days after the virus was discovered to release a signature update that recognized it.
One positive thing though; this virus is forcing the management to finally listen to my department's complaints that we need to be more proactive about patch management, and this time stuff might get done. We've got a long way to go, but this should be the start of something better.
Hmm... apparently, my dear you are not British. Figure it out, it's not that hard. Last I checked this was a multinational as well as multicultural web site; I refuse to change my mode of speech to "Uhmerikuhn" on this board because I speak a little differently from the masses.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally I'd start at the beginning and keep at it from there ;) That would be "The Colour of Magic" followed by "The Light Fantastic".
These were the first two Discworld books... but to be honest if you wanted to see more "mature" Discworld novels when Terry Pratchett had really grown into a better writer (the first two books were good conceptually but failed somewhat in the narrative), then I'd probably recommend "Guards, Guards" as the first book to read. Why? Well, it really sets up some more of the reality of the city of Ankh Morpork (London by another name, really), and introduces characters who become key later. Reading Moving Pictures or even Small Gods before reading Guards, Guards will actually cause you to miss a couple of the "in-jokes" that are there for fans of the series.
I'd say my favorite of the series though still has to be Mort... that book really stands on its own but resonates through subsequent books (especially where Death is concerned).
Note that all of those games you mentioned (probably bar Populous) actually came rather late to the 16-bit party. I consider the 16-bit era to have begun in 1985 with the release of the Amiga 1000 and Atari ST. That's when I got my first Atari (didn't buy an Amiga until 1989). Although I know the 16-bit era continued up until about 1996 or so, the games you listed mostly were around 1990 or later (Syndicate was 1993!)
;)
The 16-bit era started to take a back seat to the 32-bit era around the same time Syndicate was released... mostly due to rapidly improving graphics cards on the PC platform... not to mention SoundBlaster and Adlib cards.
All this is, of course, IMNSHO
Maybe I'm just showing my age... but the cream of the crop in gaming was actually toward the end of the 8-bit era. Since there were no powerful CPU's or great graphics cards, gameplay took a front-row seat. The 16-bit era... at least at its inception... heralded a new era of graphics and incredible CPU power (for its time). Unfortunately, for many years the platforms suffered from "incredible-hardware-itis", where game makers spent more time focused on the graphics than the gameplay.
This got better; some 16-bit games toward the end of that era were great... but I still felt they lacked something from the 8-bit era. The 32-bit era (and primarily the PC) heralded even more, but delivered exponentially less. So much time these days is spent polishing the graphics and creating a marketing blitz, that somewhere along the way gameplay seems to have taken a back seat.
This has just gotten worse in recent years as "newer", "faster" and "glitzier" have become the watchwords of the game industry. The focus on adapting to the latest "cool tech" instead of spending time actually making the game fun to play.
There have been exceptions... but that's part of their problem; they're exceptions. What do I play these days on my PC? Freespace 2 still gets fired up occasionally (there are third-party updates that take advantage of newer hardware), and Independence War 2. These are good games that use the technology to advance the gameplay. Beyond that, a copy of UAE and copies of all my old Amiga games keep me occupied. I haven't seen a game in a long time I actually want to buy... I played Halo 2 on my friend's X-Box... but it was vapid. I also played Star Wars Battlefront 2 on his X-Box and found myself bored to tears after an hour or so. Is this what quality games are these days???
And there I was believing the bible... I thought right at the beginning Light() was just declared.
... though the price is a little high for what you get.
:)
I recently took a motorcycling vacation through the UK, and honestly finding places to stay was a little tougher than it is in the US. Here you can be sure of finding a budget hotel easily and quickly. Most of the time, to find somewhere to stay in the UK you've got to be either (a) near a big city or (b) near a tourist trap. That becomes a problem because typically the hotels are more expensive in these areas.
Had this sort of thing been available, then the two nights I spent in London out of my two weeks I probably would have stayed there. It seems like just the sort of thing I needed; small, convenient and the price is not too high. My experience of hotels in England seems typically much higher than I'm used to. While traveling (not for business) I'm usually more than happy with a $40 per night Red Roof Inn.
Having said that, I did end up staying at a hostel in Cardiff that was a lot cheaper than this (and almost stayed at a hostel in Brighton except for finding a great deal on a hotel room down the street). If you don't mind the "communal living" stuff and can live with the odor of weed in the lounge then this is a great option, especially if you're touring on a motorbike or just generally trying to keep the budget low.
Back on topic, I would definitely use hotels like this when traveling. Usually all I need is a single night, and I don't intend on spending a huge amount of time in the room itself. I find the wireless Internet and stuff a little useless though... if this is really a room just to sleep and then go do stuff then why do you need a reason to stick around the little room?? When I was touring, if I wanted to use the Internet I normally didn't use the Hotel Internet connection and instead found a nearby Internet cafe. More sociable, and usually pretty cheap. Plus, I got some good (and bad) tea and coffee out of it
Remember the time when the most acclaimed minds in the world thought that the world was flat?
Actually, generally Christians believed the world to be flat... not all the "most acclaimed minds in the world" were Christian.
The reason for this is simply that taken at face value, the Bible intimates in a couple of areas that the world is flat (referring to "the four corners of the world", and a passage in (I believe) Mark which mentions a mountain visible across the world; only possible on a flat Earth). Literal interpretation of biblical teachings led to that belief.
Taken as a whole in history, the Flat Earth theory was only a "blip on the radar" of belief. It was a short-lived belief that was relatively quickly debunked. Yes, in Christian societies it was pretty devoutly believed because (a) the people at the top stated it often, and (b) the average lay person did not have a way to access information that contradicted this statement (few could read, and few that could had access to anything other than the bible at their local church).
Even the ancient greeks documented their belief that the world was a perfect sphere (it's not, but they didn't have instrumentation to disprove that), though to be honest most societies in history have not really given the shape of the world much thought. Most of them just knew that it was and it never really occurred to most societies to even consider that it might be shaped at all. Between the ancient greeks and the Christian belief of the flat Earth I don't think there were any documented ideas either way, thus it could be said that even making the argument that the Earth had shape and was therefore limited in scope had the benefit of novelty.
... many of the concepts and ideas in The Sims were lifted wholesale from "Little Computer People", which I remember playing on my old Commodore 64 around the 1985/1986 timeframe. To me, LCP was just "cuter" and actually more fun. Sure, it got old... but when I played The Sims I think I played for all of two or three evenings then just tuned it out. Micro-managing the mundane is not my idea of fun.
I'd have to say that I agree with others here. Pretty much anyone who built a MythTV box once can build one for you... but why? If it broke, who would you call to fix it? I know I for one wouldn't want to be on-call for people with problems with Myth unless I was making a good living at it.
Try Knoppmyth, or go to The Fedora Myth(TV)ology site for the excellent Fedora guide which I followed myself and built a very good and stable Mythbox. So far going on 7 months and two major revisions of MythTV (0.16 to the current 0.18.1) without a hitch... and even better my wife and kids can use it without problems. Hell, only occasionally does a problem surface.
However, the problems ARE the problem. When problems do occur, it would be better if you'd had the experience building the box... that way you know where your problems might lie. Similarly, some Linux experience might be advantageous. It's really not hard building a good Myth box... but I also stuck pretty closely with standard, recognized hardware (PVR-250, Geforce2MX, Athlon 800) that would do the trick rather than try some of the more "out there" configurations. Of course, I also had a nice ATX case for hi-fi component matching (an old Gateway Destination PC) that matched my Harmon Kardon sound system perfectly.
YMMV... but my advice is to check out that guide. If you want to build a good Myth box... follow it to the letter and you'll be good to go.
Because it wouldn't have fit into the machine, silly! Besides, it probably would have been hard to keep the sheep still while laser-etching another animal on it's hide.
Because when running Windows platform, application isolation is key. We have a lot of servers in our datacenter, but we encourage our application engineers to maintain a one-application-per-server architecture because it means in the event of a system failure we're looking at one application being impacted instead of several.
Now, I agree this is inefficient... this is why we're reviewing VMWare ESX farms...
Does anyone other than this British guy find this comment deliciously ironic?
A company called Axio makes a great range of backpacks... I myself have a Tekno laptop backpack that I use when I'm riding my motorbike (most of the time these days) and having to carry around electronic gear for work.
:)
I recently took a motorcycling vacation in the UK, and I took my Tekno with me along with my laptop, various paper items, mouse, power supply, air/car power adapter, iPod Nano, noise cancelling headphones and all sorts of other equipment. My cellphone clipped nicely to one of the external rings on the straps so I could reach it even when on my bike (but using it with gloves and a helmet proved a bit of a challenge )
Seriously, if you have to carry around electronic gear you could do worse than the Tekno. It looks a little geeky, but the hard shell is waterproof even when riding in driving rain at 50mph or so... I've proven that. It's also very comfortable even over 400 miles of riding in a single day, plus a lot of walking around that I did in the process.
Of course, as many have pointed out you could probably reduce or eliminate most of the electronic gear you carry, but you may be like me and have a desire to have most of your gear with you over extended periods just in case you need it.
So far, the only complaints I've had with the Tekno are (a) scratches appear easily and (b) can get uncomfortable on a motorbike in 100 degree heat with this against your back... but that's true of most backpacks anyway. Oh, and (a) I found I could fix by occasionally taking my car washing buffer to it... works like a champ
Really. Despite the fact that this has already been identified as a probable urban legend by Snopes, I ask everyone on this site to think of this like an engineer.
Think about this. You're designing an electronic key-card system for a hotel. In order to do this you have to deal with lobby-monkeys who only occasionally swipe the card correctly through the machine when the customer's checking in. These cards are going to get shoved in pockets, scratched and generally abused.
Now, as an engineer are you going to create a solution that (a) writes to the magnetic strip for every person who checks into the hotel, running the risk that the card runs through skewed or otherwise renders the information unusable, or (b) are you going to assign each card a unique ID number similar to a credit card number that's permanently printed on the card repeatedly across the magnetic strip.
Talk amongst yourselves, but think about the fact that a mag-stripe WRITER costs more than a mag-stripe READER. If you control the locks from a central computer which only has to recognize that card (a) opens door (z), then how are you going to engineer that system for optimum efficiency and lowest cost?
While I don't doubt some droid might consider it a nice idea to have all the customer's info on the card, it doesn't make an awful lot of sense from an engineering perspective now, does it?
And yes, I've worked on hotel key card systems, and no I've never seen one that writes the cards in any way shape or form on check in.
Actually, it sort of is... just don't go to Motorola for it. They won't give it out because it's down to your provider.
I got an unlock code for my MPX220 when I went to Cingular and explained to them that I was travelling to Europe (specifically England) in October and had a requirement to have a local phone while I was there. They suggested International Roaming but I just explained patiently that this didn't cut it and I would rent a phone if I had to. Voila... one unlock code.
The reason? Well, I'm picking up a Virgin Mobile SIM card for my phone while I'm in England so that I can make local calls and people can call me. No international roaming. I want to bring my phone with me partly because it has my trip itinerary and everything in there too... would be a PITA to copy down onto paper or something to carry.
Is not the lawsuits themselves, but the fact that the RIAA doesn't realize that people aren't buying their product these days because quite frankly it sucks.
/. I'm sort of preaching to the choir.
Have you listened to the radio lately? No, neither have I. Well, that's not entirely true... with the summer season upon us I started riding my motorcycle around instead of my car. No radio. The other day when I was having a dead-battery problem on my bike I drove my car for the first time in a while... and listened to the radio. It was almost like I'd never left. Most of the songs were the same plastic crap that was being played 4 months ago when I last listened to the radio, and that stuff that was new was barely distinguishable from the older stuff that played "around" it.
I would be the first to admit that there's the occasional gem on the radio these days, but I think the last album I purchased was The Killers. No, it's not because I download RIAA music; actually I download a lot of indie music that's available on the net for download "with the promise to buy our album" sort of thing. The independent recordings are usually decent quality MP3's, and if I like them I'll order the album DIRECTLY FROM THE SOURCE. I don't need a record store any more. If I want a nice CD in a jewel case... hell, most of the indy bands out there can afford to stamp a hundred CD's that are nicely labelled... jewel cases are incredibly cheap... and modern decent color printers can make awesome inlays. Hell, for a couple hundred bucks you can buy a color laser printer these days!
So why do I need the RIAA again? Generally they represent companies that take the same crap that was successful last year and recycle it into this years "pop sensation". It's gotten to the point that I don't even know who this years "hot acts" are because I can't distinguish them from last year's lot.
And no, this isn't because I'm "getting old". I still listen to new music and still expand my horizons into new fields any time I can. I buy music not because it's "what I liked last year" but because I've been given a lead on it by a friend and downloaded a LEGAL MP3, Ogg or WMA from the band's own website and I like their stuff. If I don't like their stuff then I can delete the file, not buy the album and then no-one loses.
The RIAA needs to realize their business model is flawed. They're not going to survive much more than a few more years unless the member companies of the RIAA change their thinking on what opportunities new technologies represent. Honestly I think we're just seeing the last dying gasps of a business model that's bleeding from fatal wounds but hasn't stopped moving yet.
Of course, here on
For much the same reason you get a degree; to get your foot in the door when you're looking for a job.
A certification won't guarantee you a spot in the company, but it DOES increase your chances.
Take my workplace for example. We're a large company and a relatively large division of that company. When a job is posted as available, incoming resumes and applications go first through Human Resources. Now, every application gets "vetted" by the HR people, and quite frankly they know next to nothing about what constitutes a good IT guy.
Now, when the resume or application has "run the gauntlet" then we'll get to see them. That's when we can choose our candidates.
The problem with this? Well, at some point the HR people decided that industry certifications were a requirement for this job. Apparently they don't listen when we say otherwise. As a result the certification at least gets your resume in front of the manager, but does not necessarily get you hired.
FYI, once the resume hits us, we pretty much ignore the certifications part and look at the meat (work experience and so forth). To my mind, good work experience is much better than certifications.
Having said that, there are ways to shortcut this system, but they're rare and usually involve a reference from an employee already working there.
So, it depends on the type of company you want to work with. Small companies typically don't care too much about certs. Consulting companies usually require them. Big companies don't really care, but you're not going to even get their attention unless you have at least one certification at the top of your resume.
Honestly though, for the cost of most certs these days you may as well just get one. Hell, if you self-study you can get an MCP with a single test (about $100)... that at least gets your "in".
The BBC has long held with the idea that the content they produced should be as available as possible, at least to the British people. This is interesting in that it marks a step away from the idea of being UK-only focused (at least potentially).
Now, as an ex pat myself I still find myself drawn to BBC programming; partly becuase I still find the English accents more "comfortable" than American for certain types of TV, but mostly because I find the general quality of writing and acting tends to be better. US TV is awfully focused on "How can we sell something to the public using the ruse of a drama", while the BBC has always subscribed to the notion "Let's entertain our people with good drama." This leads to a lot of good quality American TV shows that eventually pander too much to advertisers and/or "consumer advocate groups" and as such tend to eventually target at the lowest common denominator of the audience. This is why subsequent seasons of many TV shows seem to become progressively worse than the last.
This isn't really just an American phenomenon; I see this in some British TV shows as well, but in general it seems more prevalent in the US. Perhaps that because there are more hours of TV produced, more channels or something... I haven't really performed any sort of analysis; just my observations.
Getting back on topic though I have to say that I enjoy BBC content and would gladly pay an annual fee (like the license fee) for unlimited and unfettered access to this content. To me it would be better value than most of the crap I get on my satellite TV and never watch... and BBC America doesn't really count because many of the shows pre-date my moving to this country (10 years ago), and those that are more recent are often repeated incessantly and thus lose some of their "luster". A subscription to content would allow me to grab content on my broadband connection as I want to see it, then dump it to the hard drive of my MythTV box for viewing on the family television. Better than crowding around a monitor and just as comfortable as sitting watching regular TV.
I can't be the only person out there to be able to count the number of programs they actually watch on American TV on the fingers of one hand... not to mention being able to put my finger on what I consider quality TV because it is so different from all the other chaff on TV.
I'll probably get lost amongst the chatter here, but I have to weigh in as I've been both a manager and a technical guy for most of my career. I've had more time as a techie simply because I prefer that line to the management track.
Basically, a good manager does not have to be good at the job of his employees. In fact, more often than not it's preferable that he's not. The reason for this is that managers (good managers at any rate) need to deal with stuff that technical guys find wearing or even bullshit. Stuff like project planning, resource allocation, and generally playing the "politics game". If you're a technical guy in a management position, there's an almost natural tendency to presume that you're better than your employees. That leads to a presumption that you know the answer when they do not, and thus that you can do their job better than they can. It then irrevocably leads to a manager who micro-manages his employees. This makes him a lousy manager.
I personally went into the management job and knew this was a risk. As a result I made a conscious effort to seperate myself from the technology even to the point that I requested my rights to the system be taken away (I was granted admin privileges when I started). This forced me to go to my employees and look to them for solutions. As such, when we had a problem I usually sat down with them, explained the problem and asked them to give me a BRIEF overview of their proposed solution. I always told them to avoid technical details as I didn't need them. Then I usually asked for a timeline for a fix and walked away. I could then go back to the manager / business owner / department head who reported the problem and give them my take on the problem and give them a timeline (usually plus a few hours or days depending upon the extent of the problem). I never told them who was working the problem or how it was going to get fixed. That's how a manager works. This way I showed trust in my employees abilities, kept the heat off their back and set the expectations of the reporter that the problem was being diligently worked on and thus would be fixed.
I'd say 80% of my job was "public-relations" based. To me, my technical knowledge was somewhat of a liability. I ended up looking at solutions to problems and sometimes over-analyzing the solution my employees had come up with. I had my own ideas about solutions more often than not but had to keep them to myself. I couldn't test or implement because I had no access, and if I were to try then I would be showing my employees that I didn't trust their judgement. This undermines the entire department and thus turns you again into a bad manager.
Eventually I quit. Not because I wasn't wanted in the position (I had great working relationships with my employees that I enjoyed and still stay in touch with some of them), but because I had found my "geek-karma" to be a liability to my direction as a manager. I wasn't comfortable being the "general", I found I much preferred being "in the trenches". Besides, honestly I find that I can be much more flexible with my schedule as a techie than I ever could as a manager. Even though I have the occasional evening and weekend work I need to do, I prefer it over the constant 11 and 12 hour days I needed to get all my stuff done as a manager, the interminable meetings and the absolute hard-and-fast requirement that I be in the office between the hours of 8am and 5pm every day... even if I'd been there until 2am dealing with paperwork.
And as for those who comment that a manager will take your "thunder" as a "hot-shot", think about this. When you f**k up, a good manager will also take the hit. I can't count the number of times I had a screw up in my ranks that I had to go to my management and say, "A member of my group dropped the ball. They're diligently working on a solution and I will take full responsibility for it." I got on the wrong side of a few upper managers because I refused to state who on my group screwed up. I always told them I would deal with it in
Trust me, any version is not by my personal choice
Which then brings up the problem of application compatibility. As I mentioned in one of my other posts (though not specifically), many of our "custom" or at least "not-off-the-shelf" applications are only certified for Windows 2000 SP3, and have either never been tested or never certified on anything newer. This leads to the problem of the vendor leading the customer down a dark and dangerous path, but unfortunately corporate politics plays too much into this.
We aren't allowed to run un-certified applications due to business requirements (we're governed by worldwide and federal regulations which are sometimes contradictory), and thus to upgrade the operating system would be to essentially "un-certify" these applications. It isn't really as cut and dried as even I like.
Personally, I run XP SP2 on my laptop (with permission). The only reason I get away with that is because I'm in IT and therefore don't have to run the business applications that are not certified for this platform. If I do... well that's what VM's are for
Unfortunately, again comes the Corporate politics. We tried to implement something like this, but all it took was one manager with a valid beef and a loud enough voice and all of a sudden we found ourselves back to basics.
:)
The problem with these kind of "ideal world" configurations is that there's nearly always one application that is overlooked. With almost 300 "custom applications" in our environment today THAT WE KNOW ABOUT (and probably twice that many we don't), hitting the nail on the head first time is impossible.
While events like the last few days serve to improve things via reactionary methods, unfortunately they usually don't extend to "rehashing old failed ideas", at least as management looks at it. If I can repackage it with a different name, maybe
Oh no, the actual patching method was pretty simple, automated and realistically only ate up a total of about 4 or 5 of those hours. The problems came when it came to controlled reboots, reboot schedules, application and server interdependencies and so forth. Also, the politics of dealing with servers in remote locations and having to call on-call staff in the middle of the night to power-cycle a box because McAfee hung the server on shutdown. That's what causes time... and is common across platforms.
In this case, no. Although we can't pinpoint it, it looks as though this worm actually came in on an infected laptop. There's almost nothing that can realistically be done to prevent this unless we also want to force everyone to use desktops. I know a lot of managers (and IT people... myself included) who often work from coffee shops on wireless connections when we need to. It people like myself can be expected to be conscientious about using at least a software firewall; managers and project managers? Well, I'll leave that to you to fill in that blank :)
Myself I ended up at work 20 hours on Monday this week patching servers. Given that we have about 500 servers in our environment with one person doing the patching this wasn't so bad.
We ended up with a lot of problem because of this worm... less because it actually caused problems with the machines but more because we could see machines constantly trying to infect one another. It wasn't pretty. Our workstations were most at risk, being the largest installed base but also running Windows 2000 SP3 (not SP4 unfortunately). No patch has been generally released for SP3 WS's, but a custom patch IS available from Microsoft if you request it. Due to other factors in play, we have elected to upgrade to SP4 and install the appropriate hotfixes. This is not going to be pretty over about 10,000 workstations.
See, what some people miss when they say that any infection may be due to bad administration is simply that we're dealing with huge numbers of machines, both servers and workstations that are potentially vulnerable. Due to application compatibility and tested standardized platforms we often don't even get the option to keep stuff up to date. The only reason we even have Windows 2003 servers in place today is because we forced the issue with our Corporate guys when we implemented Active Directory; we informed them that we had a need for functionality not provided by Windows 2000 AD (which was true). There is a project currently under way to test Windows XP for rollout, but honestly chances are that Vista will be shipping by the time we even reach 50% rollout mark.
So, why the rant? Well, it must be understood that jumping on the latest patches is not always an option in the corporate environment. Also, jumping on the operating system bandwagon is rarely an option because there's a lot of regression testing that has to be done. Hell, there are some instances where we're having to push the application vendors to support Windows 2003 Servers in our Citrix environment because they've never tested it. Welcome to the realities of Corporate IT.
Are there solutions? Sure! However, none of them are acceptable to most corporations. Linux is not an option, neither is OSX. In both cases we come back to the legacy support issue. Citrix to share the applications? Great... but you're only redirecting the problem to the server farms, not eliminating it. Real world Corporate IT is not as black and white as people would like it to be, myself included.
This virus gained traction because most corporations work this way. It wasn't helped by the fact that McAfee and Symantec both waited two days after the virus was discovered to release a signature update that recognized it.
One positive thing though; this virus is forcing the management to finally listen to my department's complaints that we need to be more proactive about patch management, and this time stuff might get done. We've got a long way to go, but this should be the start of something better.
Hmm... apparently, my dear you are not British. Figure it out, it's not that hard. Last I checked this was a multinational as well as multicultural web site; I refuse to change my mode of speech to "Uhmerikuhn" on this board because I speak a little differently from the masses.