I didn't spend under a $1000 for my current setup. What I do worry about is who will still develop for the platform. Even now, I see certain games that are console only. Then again, I'm still playing NetHack decades later without having ascended. The important thing to me is that I am still proficient with what I need to do. In most cases the market will charge what people are willing to pay, so as long as I'm not being exhorted, I don't mind paying a bit more to have the flexibility I need.
Just because something is "Doable on an iPad" doesn't actually make it the best choice for doing something.
I can't imagine not having a PC. They are more flexible and more powerful than any console or tablet. I run a dual monitor setup that makes HD Video editing a breeze. I can also run two clients at the same time of my favorite MMORPG (Eve). I also run a firewire interface to record multiple tracks of audio at the same time, and I use an Axiom 49 keyboard for Midi sequencing and as a control surface for my DAW, Ardour. Speaking of Ardour, I run that on a second drive dedicated to music editing with Ubuntu. Dual booting to me gives me options I don't have with a locked down device.
Consoles, set top boxes, tablets just don't give me the freedom a PC gives. I actually sold my Xbox 360 a year ago because I am ejoying PC gaming again after building a new rig. I use a wired xbox controller on it for some games, but also use the keyboard/mouse combo for most stuff. I plan on getting a Logitech Wheel soon, because the xbox one was lacking to me. When my computer starts getting a little dated, I can either swap out the video card or add another one in a crossfire configuration to give me a few more years. Options... I like them.
I'm not against other devices. I love my Thunderbolt and I get production out of that every day. I've used Tablets, and while I preffer my laptop, I can see why they have become so mainstream. They are lightyears ahead of where tablets where 5 years ago. I just don't buy the PC's are going to be obsolete anymore. There are plenty of people who share my sentiment. Maybe the industry is trying to force change for changes sake, but I don't see there being a shortage in the market for PC's anytime soon. Maybe the landscape of who sells what will change, but I'm willing to bet money I will still be able to buy or build a PC 20 years from now.
I was thinking along the same lines. Seems 93,000 employees for 600,000 houses powered isn't that great of a ration. That's 1 person for 6 houses powered. With the cost of capital equipment and the ongoing maintenance of said equipment, the cost of solar power must be magnitudes higher than fossil fuels.
A) You don't need to nuke the whole country. Think if Washington, New York, Houston and LA were hit with 1 nuke each. We would collapse. Same thing with any other country. You hit population, finance, political and military centers, you will fold a country.
B) Nukes today are much more powerful than what we used in Japan. Maybe not as powerful as some tested in the 50's and 60's, but far more powerful than the relatively small ones used on Japan.
Honestly, 500 nukes should be more than enough for any situation. Heck, even 100 is enough. The problem is keeping those hundred nukes safe, spread out, and operational, which is most of the cost whether you have 500 or 5000 nukes.
"Our astronauts and their descendants are not permitted to have an Apollo 11-era moon rock to sell for their own enrichment and neither should a private citizen who acquired one in a less-noble manner,"
The way I see it, the guy saved it from being buried in some landfill somewhere. I'm sure none of that matters to the courts, but I can't see trying to slander the guy for wanting to keep what he found. Also, it doesn't sound like he's trying to cash in on it (at least not yet), but is rather fond of his "good luck charm".
I am in the IT department for a County Government. We could be actually talking about landing spaceships and launching satellites and we would get the same confused look as we do when talking about server and network upgrades.
Most legislators in our County just stay quiet to avoid asking dumb questions at public budget meetings. Then again, some do not, and do look at the very least sound ignorant to anything going on in the IT world.
Some of the comments by the City Council members remind me of these meetings. One time we were talking about virtualizing the data center, and one of the legislators blurted out "Well, what are you doing about EMF?" How I wish I had a tinfoil hat to give him.
I actually really enjoyed the Star Trek reboot. I know it flew in the face of years of back story, but it was as entertaining (if a bit campy) story as I've seen in the Star Trek universe. I think I'm learning to live with all my childhood shows, stories and heroes for that matter being brought back in different light as long as what comes of it is entertaining to me and my family. I guess it's better than it being faded out entirely. I still don't forgive Lucas for not seizing the opportunity to really update Star Wars with a really exciting prequel. To me that wasn't entertaining and painful to watch. Star Trek on the other hand proved to exceed my expectations, even though I knew it flew in the face of Gene Roddenberry's vision.
If the natural arc is to go from dominance to hasbeen, how do you explain IBM? Have they found some type of middle ground of the IT landscape that makes them immune to bubbles and fluctuations in the market? They seem to be doing well for themselves, and have been for a long time.
How is following the leader staying relevant? Especially with something this stupid... No URL bar? This is not going to go over well with IT Professionals at all. How am I supposed to easily get to the numerous devices on my private network? What about the hundreds of sites I have on the intranet? How about troubleshooting problems with php, it's quick and easy to glance at the URL bar to see if the right variables are being passed...
If anything, make the URL bar more accessible, not less.
It's not just the money. $100 isn't a bad price point for what should be a superior experience to a $20 player. My problem is the technology itself. I have a 2 year old Blu-ray player in my living room that needs constant updates to firmware to keep up with newer blu-rays. It's a pain to update because the USB port is in the back of the unit and it's not easy to access...
I just built a new computer and put blu-ray in it so my son can watch some of his movies that we purchased on blu ray, but again, scolded by the technology. I run a dual boot Windows/Ubuntu machine and on the windows I can only play certain titles because the software that came with the unit is a "lite" version. To play all titiles I need to fork over almost the same amount that the hardware itself cost. On Ubuntu, I haven't even attempted to use blu-ray playback. There are some major hurdles there.
Finally, I don't want to be forced into 15 minutes of advertisements upon inserting a blu-ray disc. I pay to own a copy of the movie.. I don't pay to be subjected to advertisements.
A DVD is much more universally accessible. I also have Netflix and a DVR... Maybe if the movie companies didn't make Blu-ray such a hard to access technology, it would probably have taken over... I only purchase blu-ray's now if they are part of a BluRay/DVD/Digital-copy combo pack. Otherwise it's DVD's (that I know will work on all my devices) or see if it's on netflix or I can DVR it.
Seeing the teacher has been trying this for 5 years, I wonder if any of his previous students became students at MIT, hence the connection? Not that one is needed, but would be an interesting side story.
I used to scoff at reformatting and reinstalling, but today it's a simple calculation. Will the fix take longer than either reverting from a snapshot or cloning from a template? Many may cringe at that as a solution, but the bottom line is time is money. It used to be that reinstalling, restoring from backup simply took too long, and it was better to fix the problem at the console if possible. Today, that isn't so with automatic snapshots of virtual machines, SAN replication, etc. I don't scoff at it though, it means we can spend more time being proactive rather than reactive.
Maybe instead of treating students like cattle, schools should become more interesting and figure out why kids are actually skipping school.
I did all the time, until I was old enough to drop out, get a GED and head to college. I never missed classes in College because I was able to determine for myself what interested me and what goals I wanted to achieve.
This was because I had moved into a new school district that didn't really evaluate my needs, and instead stuck be in classes that were beneath the level of work I was doing in my previous school. I went from doing algebra and trigonometry to doing long division.
I'm sure that's not why all students skip school. I sure some are getting bullied, some are on drugs, and others are overwhelmed with their homework. Whatever the case, GPS won't solve the problems.
Luckily I am fully protected. I have Antivirus 2009, 2010, and 2011 now running all at the same time in addition to AntiVirus Lab 2009 and AntiH4x0r Millenium edition which my ex wife gave me a copy of last week.
I've paid Amazon for 20-plus year old movies and books before. Why should buying a 20 year old game from Steam be any different?
I agree whole heartedly. While I enjoy a lot of the games today, there are still old titles that haunt my memory. Especially some of those I never finished.
Solar Winds... Planescape:Torment... Might and Magic series...
There are a ton of old games that are of high quality and worth playing again.
Apogee was built on Commander Keen and the Shareware model, especially theirs where you got part 1 of 3 free.
I ran a BBS back then that became one of the first Apogee Distribution sites, another innovation attributed to Apogee was getting thousands of BBS's across the country to essentially be mirror sites for their games. The system worked great because Apogee got the word out, and BBS SysOp's got cool games in their file transfer sections. I know all this seems like a moot point now with the Internet, but back then, if you wanted to deliver software without relying on brick and mortar stores, BBS's were the best way to do it.
I might have to load up a good game of Commander Keen, my son would love it I'm sure.
What surprises me is how emotional and "utterly disgusted" the professor was. Why? You are using standardised test provided by the publishers of the material. If you don't "know what the last 20 years was for", then change it. Make your own course material, with your own tests, and require students to show their work.
I understand this can undermine a colleges integrity, but I think it should. I think the students are absolutely wrong in this, and should be reprimanded, but on the other hand, I think this is symptomatic of the way Universities (especially the bigger ones) have a cattle mentality when it comes to students. Score one for the smaller institutions (although they aren't immune to this type of thing either).
Slashdot Mirror
Batman had super money. And a super chip on his shoulder. I guess that's not a super power, but well above ordinary joe that wants to help people.
It is time for a revolution... But which quacks shall I follow?
The only thing I do in my sleep usually wakes up my wife and leaves the sheets a mess.
I didn't spend under a $1000 for my current setup. What I do worry about is who will still develop for the platform. Even now, I see certain games that are console only. Then again, I'm still playing NetHack decades later without having ascended. The important thing to me is that I am still proficient with what I need to do. In most cases the market will charge what people are willing to pay, so as long as I'm not being exhorted, I don't mind paying a bit more to have the flexibility I need.
Just because something is "Doable on an iPad" doesn't actually make it the best choice for doing something.
I can't imagine not having a PC. They are more flexible and more powerful than any console or tablet. I run a dual monitor setup that makes HD Video editing a breeze. I can also run two clients at the same time of my favorite MMORPG (Eve). I also run a firewire interface to record multiple tracks of audio at the same time, and I use an Axiom 49 keyboard for Midi sequencing and as a control surface for my DAW, Ardour. Speaking of Ardour, I run that on a second drive dedicated to music editing with Ubuntu. Dual booting to me gives me options I don't have with a locked down device.
Consoles, set top boxes, tablets just don't give me the freedom a PC gives. I actually sold my Xbox 360 a year ago because I am ejoying PC gaming again after building a new rig. I use a wired xbox controller on it for some games, but also use the keyboard/mouse combo for most stuff. I plan on getting a Logitech Wheel soon, because the xbox one was lacking to me. When my computer starts getting a little dated, I can either swap out the video card or add another one in a crossfire configuration to give me a few more years. Options... I like them.
I'm not against other devices. I love my Thunderbolt and I get production out of that every day. I've used Tablets, and while I preffer my laptop, I can see why they have become so mainstream. They are lightyears ahead of where tablets where 5 years ago. I just don't buy the PC's are going to be obsolete anymore. There are plenty of people who share my sentiment. Maybe the industry is trying to force change for changes sake, but I don't see there being a shortage in the market for PC's anytime soon. Maybe the landscape of who sells what will change, but I'm willing to bet money I will still be able to buy or build a PC 20 years from now.
The thing is, if the Tea Party gets everything it wants, and the whole economy does come crashing down, they will still blame the Democrats.
I was thinking along the same lines. Seems 93,000 employees for 600,000 houses powered isn't that great of a ration. That's 1 person for 6 houses powered. With the cost of capital equipment and the ongoing maintenance of said equipment, the cost of solar power must be magnitudes higher than fossil fuels.
A) You don't need to nuke the whole country. Think if Washington, New York, Houston and LA were hit with 1 nuke each. We would collapse. Same thing with any other country. You hit population, finance, political and military centers, you will fold a country.
B) Nukes today are much more powerful than what we used in Japan. Maybe not as powerful as some tested in the 50's and 60's, but far more powerful than the relatively small ones used on Japan.
Honestly, 500 nukes should be more than enough for any situation. Heck, even 100 is enough. The problem is keeping those hundred nukes safe, spread out, and operational, which is most of the cost whether you have 500 or 5000 nukes.
"Our astronauts and their descendants are not permitted to have an Apollo 11-era moon rock to sell for their own enrichment and neither should a private citizen who acquired one in a less-noble manner,"
The way I see it, the guy saved it from being buried in some landfill somewhere. I'm sure none of that matters to the courts, but I can't see trying to slander the guy for wanting to keep what he found. Also, it doesn't sound like he's trying to cash in on it (at least not yet), but is rather fond of his "good luck charm".
I am in the IT department for a County Government. We could be actually talking about landing spaceships and launching satellites and we would get the same confused look as we do when talking about server and network upgrades.
Most legislators in our County just stay quiet to avoid asking dumb questions at public budget meetings. Then again, some do not, and do look at the very least sound ignorant to anything going on in the IT world.
Some of the comments by the City Council members remind me of these meetings. One time we were talking about virtualizing the data center, and one of the legislators blurted out "Well, what are you doing about EMF?" How I wish I had a tinfoil hat to give him.
I actually really enjoyed the Star Trek reboot. I know it flew in the face of years of back story, but it was as entertaining (if a bit campy) story as I've seen in the Star Trek universe. I think I'm learning to live with all my childhood shows, stories and heroes for that matter being brought back in different light as long as what comes of it is entertaining to me and my family. I guess it's better than it being faded out entirely. I still don't forgive Lucas for not seizing the opportunity to really update Star Wars with a really exciting prequel. To me that wasn't entertaining and painful to watch. Star Trek on the other hand proved to exceed my expectations, even though I knew it flew in the face of Gene Roddenberry's vision.
If the natural arc is to go from dominance to hasbeen, how do you explain IBM? Have they found some type of middle ground of the IT landscape that makes them immune to bubbles and fluctuations in the market? They seem to be doing well for themselves, and have been for a long time.
How is following the leader staying relevant? Especially with something this stupid... No URL bar? This is not going to go over well with IT Professionals at all. How am I supposed to easily get to the numerous devices on my private network? What about the hundreds of sites I have on the intranet? How about troubleshooting problems with php, it's quick and easy to glance at the URL bar to see if the right variables are being passed...
If anything, make the URL bar more accessible, not less.
It's not just the money. $100 isn't a bad price point for what should be a superior experience to a $20 player. My problem is the technology itself. I have a 2 year old Blu-ray player in my living room that needs constant updates to firmware to keep up with newer blu-rays. It's a pain to update because the USB port is in the back of the unit and it's not easy to access...
I just built a new computer and put blu-ray in it so my son can watch some of his movies that we purchased on blu ray, but again, scolded by the technology. I run a dual boot Windows/Ubuntu machine and on the windows I can only play certain titles because the software that came with the unit is a "lite" version. To play all titiles I need to fork over almost the same amount that the hardware itself cost. On Ubuntu, I haven't even attempted to use blu-ray playback. There are some major hurdles there.
Finally, I don't want to be forced into 15 minutes of advertisements upon inserting a blu-ray disc. I pay to own a copy of the movie.. I don't pay to be subjected to advertisements.
A DVD is much more universally accessible. I also have Netflix and a DVR... Maybe if the movie companies didn't make Blu-ray such a hard to access technology, it would probably have taken over... I only purchase blu-ray's now if they are part of a BluRay/DVD/Digital-copy combo pack. Otherwise it's DVD's (that I know will work on all my devices) or see if it's on netflix or I can DVR it.
Seeing the teacher has been trying this for 5 years, I wonder if any of his previous students became students at MIT, hence the connection? Not that one is needed, but would be an interesting side story.
I used to scoff at reformatting and reinstalling, but today it's a simple calculation. Will the fix take longer than either reverting from a snapshot or cloning from a template? Many may cringe at that as a solution, but the bottom line is time is money. It used to be that reinstalling, restoring from backup simply took too long, and it was better to fix the problem at the console if possible. Today, that isn't so with automatic snapshots of virtual machines, SAN replication, etc. I don't scoff at it though, it means we can spend more time being proactive rather than reactive.
Al Gore did it to stop manbearpig.
Maybe instead of treating students like cattle, schools should become more interesting and figure out why kids are actually skipping school.
I did all the time, until I was old enough to drop out, get a GED and head to college. I never missed classes in College because I was able to determine for myself what interested me and what goals I wanted to achieve.
This was because I had moved into a new school district that didn't really evaluate my needs, and instead stuck be in classes that were beneath the level of work I was doing in my previous school. I went from doing algebra and trigonometry to doing long division.
I'm sure that's not why all students skip school. I sure some are getting bullied, some are on drugs, and others are overwhelmed with their homework. Whatever the case, GPS won't solve the problems.
If you discover you're dating a vengeful psycho bitch, don't ever break up with her.
That's why I'm still married.
Luckily I am fully protected. I have Antivirus 2009, 2010, and 2011 now running all at the same time in addition to AntiVirus Lab 2009 and AntiH4x0r Millenium edition which my ex wife gave me a copy of last week.
No viruses will ever touch my machine.
Damn right they are correct. Worse than MW2 is Frogger!
I've paid Amazon for 20-plus year old movies and books before. Why should buying a 20 year old game from Steam be any different?
I agree whole heartedly. While I enjoy a lot of the games today, there are still old titles that haunt my memory. Especially some of those I never finished.
Solar Winds... Planescape:Torment... Might and Magic series...
There are a ton of old games that are of high quality and worth playing again.
Apogee was built on Commander Keen and the Shareware model, especially theirs where you got part 1 of 3 free.
I ran a BBS back then that became one of the first Apogee Distribution sites, another innovation attributed to Apogee was getting thousands of BBS's across the country to essentially be mirror sites for their games. The system worked great because Apogee got the word out, and BBS SysOp's got cool games in their file transfer sections. I know all this seems like a moot point now with the Internet, but back then, if you wanted to deliver software without relying on brick and mortar stores, BBS's were the best way to do it.
I might have to load up a good game of Commander Keen, my son would love it I'm sure.
"This is news?"
It has the words Linux, Microsoft, and Russia in it. News? This to Slashdot is like the Ark of the Covenant is to religion.
What surprises me is how emotional and "utterly disgusted" the professor was. Why? You are using standardised test provided by the publishers of the material. If you don't "know what the last 20 years was for", then change it. Make your own course material, with your own tests, and require students to show their work.
I understand this can undermine a colleges integrity, but I think it should. I think the students are absolutely wrong in this, and should be reprimanded, but on the other hand, I think this is symptomatic of the way Universities (especially the bigger ones) have a cattle mentality when it comes to students. Score one for the smaller institutions (although they aren't immune to this type of thing either).