Thanks for the reply and clarification. Yes, there is the hack to edit the.ini file and it does play 30 years ahead so you only have to get to play mode until 1970 to unlock everything. I agree there is the "Stars don't misbehave" and "Scripts shoot instantly" but there's a few problems with that. First, while starts might not misbehave, there are still relationships that have to be built in order for a movie to be successful. If the goal of sandbox mode is simply to build a movie and shoot it for releasing on the internet, this is less of a problem but still plays in as a factor (at least from my perspective).
I think the main point was that while there are workarounds, a true sandbox mode would let you do anything. I feel that the sandbox mode the Movies offers is still somewhat tied to the game mode. Maybe I'm wrong here but that's what I experience from using it. I don't feel like I can get really into using it as a tool (which I understand it was primarily built as a game) for machinima vs. a game that kinda lets me use it like a tool for making films.
Don't get me wrong, the game is great and fun. I see it's potential to have a bigger online community than The Sims. There just seems to be a lot of people saying the same thing I am and that is that sandbox mode is almost but not 100% a true sandbox (again, maybe my/our impression of a sandbox isn't the same as LH's).
I'm also interested in building tools for the game and was hoping to get some insight into capabilities and file formats (rather than completely going from scratch). Not looking for an SDK, but someone's insight (perhaps someone who worked on the game?) might help. I've worked on many tools before for The Sims (http://www.simstools.com/ and was potentially hoping to get some info to build something for The Movies.
While The Movies is a more mogul type game, similar to The Sims 2 but more focused on the actual movie making process (script -> pre-production -> filming -> post-production -> promotion -> release) it fails on the part of offering a true "sandbox". You can enter a sandbox type mode in the game and build your studio, create scripts and even start at almost any decade with up to 100,000 million dollars. The problem is that a) you have to unlock the game in play mode before you are allowed to begin your studio say at the year 2000 (where you have cool technologies like CGI to add your films) and b) the sandbox mode still isn't sandbox because your actors and directors are still Simmish. They need TLC, need to be able to work together, need trailers to keep themselves occupied, etc. Sandbox mode should be sandbox mode where the only output is interesting movies you can make and release on the net. I think LH has a fantastic community out there that can become even bigger than The Sims with it's releases but there need to be more tools that we can use and the mode has to shift from part-play/part-sandbox to a true "screw-around-and-blow-10-million-dollars-on-a-fil m" mode.
A few years ago I was writing my first book, a game programming book using DirectX. It was late one Saturday night and I was itching to install a new CD I had of Linux. It was a different distro than I was used to (can't remember the name now) but it had "extra" security features that I wanted to check out. I chose to run the "express" install and let it partition the drive for me. I had Windows installed on C: and my data was on C: and backed up on D: (a non-OS partition). Unfortunately I didn't have a CD backup so you can see where this is going. The install kicked off and asked me if it could automatically install and setup the partitions. I thought it was only going to be doing it across a single drive. My bad.
It then asked me if I wanted to use the security features on the format. So a couple hours later I had a clean hard drive with a new OS. Problem is that the format went across both physical drives I had. I tried various recoveries that I had on-hand. Sometime around 6AM I pronounced the drive dead. I took it to a data-recovery centre on Monday but since the format was so secure and had written over the data several times, there was no hope. I lost the book and had to rewrite it from my notes and what was in my head. Took 3 months for the rewrite after spending 6 writing it the first time. It's funny now but boy was I peeved when it happened.
Needless to say, BACKUP YOUR DATA and DON'T INSTALL AT 2AM ON A SATURDAY!:)
Apparently there are several other things missing like Canada, England, and the entire Western Hemisphere. Heck, it won't even zoom in past about 40,000 feet for most places. MSN Earth? Bah! My $12.99 WalMart globe does a better job than this (and then there's that Google thing too I suppose).
These are a few tips I've found on the net that I've picked up and try to follow.
Remember, your Inbox is your Inbox. It's not your To Do list. You don't use your paper inbox as a filing system, do you? (Okay, maybe you do. So how's that working for you, anyway?)
Block out time to "process" email. And when you do, "process" it. Don't spend more than a minute or two on an email--and don't start down the road of firing off two or three emails for everyone you get, or diving into a project after you get to email 13 ("oh, ya! I owe him a project plan!" or "I should blog about that..."). Put it on your To Do list, and keep processing your inbox. If you can't do that, there may be other kinds of help available.
Don't use your email as a filing system. And for heaven's sake, don't rescue a co-worker who is looking for something you happen to have tucked away in an email folder. Let them rescue YOU! If someone else owns a document/plan/conversation, let them store it for you. Chances are if you need it, someone else has it.
Ignore Incoming Email until you have time to process it. Can you imagine if snail mail was real-time? Would you wait by your house's mailbox, and open each piece of junk mail as it came in? Thank goodness it only comes in once a day! And even though you pick it up daily, I bet you process that "inbox" only a few times a week. Change your default view on Outlook to open to your Calendar and Task List, rather than your Inbox. Turn off the popup toast and reminder sound when email comes in. Don't respond immediately to each incoming email.
Pick up the phone once in a while. You'd be surprised at how much you can get done in a phone call rather than on email.
This is nice but so far the only source for this information is Slashdot and the link provided.
This link here is to Samsungs page on dead pixel policy (last updated 2004-06-18) and has no mention of this "new" policy. It still stands that they won't replace an in warranty monitor as follows:
For a 15" Monitor - 7 or more bad pixels
For 17" and 19" Monitors -10 or more bad pixels
For 21" - 24" Monitors - 17 or more bad pixels
A rack of servers can't beat good old META data
on
IBM vs. Content Chaos
·
· Score: 1
Trying to intelligently search for information in the universe is an age-old problem. How can my system be so smart to tell the difference between Pink the singer and pink the color (or colour if you prefer). Basically, it can't.
Nothing is smart enough to tell the difference because the content is contextual (hence the name). In a corporation like the one I'm at now (a class A railway) we have hundreds of terabytes of information flowing through our systems on a regular basis. Trying to track it, categorize it, and make sense of what's there is next to impossible. Yet we still keep trying.
I've been trying to architect the information gathering myself in a manual way using a distributed model. Rather than having one system (or hundreds of systems depending on how you look at it) go out and farm the information, have each system submit themselves (automated if such a way exists) to a central repository so that it makes sense. Like I said, any entity is the best thing to know about itself and how it should be classified.
The Trove system from SourceForge is such a beast. Any project submits themself to the trove for categorization. If you abstract that concept up a level, you get a general classification system that lets you not only search based on it, but also filter the information and allow something to be categorized in multiple dimensions. It's not just about one listing anymore, because Pink the singer could be listed under Rock, Pop and Female. You can't choose just one. The trove system as it is, isn't the most scalable in the world, but with a little work could be and could be generic enough to classify documents, objects, people, whatever. just a thought...
What a rip. Here I download it to try out the service. Install. Configure. Reboot.
"The iTunes Music Store is not available in your country yet. You will be able to browse music and listen to previews, but you won't be able to purchase music unless your billing address is in the United States"
Great. That's one program I'm now uninstalling. Too bad Apple, just lost a customer. Wish you had told me first about this.
Doesn't matter to me. I have monochromatic vision so I only see black, white and shades of gray. Makes it hard to play any game but especially if the clues are color coded (like blue keys in Doom).
This problem is the leading principal and primary downfall of a heirachial based system, file or otherwise. Information (not data) has to be classified. No matter how you think you can slice or dice the information up, someone will always come along and be able to shuffle your apples into different baskets. Taxonomy of systems is something you can write (and read) reams of tomes on. Take it from someone who has been down the road of "should I file this in folder a or folder b?" and "where should folder a be in the heiarchy?". The problem is that you're tied to a flat system with pretty much all file, mail and inbox managers you can think of. Someone needs to do something smart with how you organize information, not data, which is how Outlook, KMail, and pretty much every PIM, mail and information "organizer" works.
The solution? Unfortunately for a file system (sans symbolic links) or an inbox you're stuck with the traditional system of folders inside of folders. What needs to happen (and if anyone wants to engage me to build this I'm all for it) is to construct a system that allows dynamic categorization of information in a way that makes sense to the user, not the program. Two things have to happen to make this easy. First, the ability to create categories and sub-categories and sub-sub-categories til you're blue in the face. Create an upper level category of languages and split it down into C, C++, Perl, etc. Then create an upper level category of compilers and split it down into MSC, Borland, GCC, etc. until you get the "trees" of information you want. Second is when you file information, file it anyway you want (in one big location if that's your thing) but then categorize it in one or more areas and store that as META data with the object (e.g. a snippet of UNIX C code for email could go into C, UNIX, and email if you had those categories). Now when you do a search, return the result set from your location of the data but grouped by category and sorted whatever way works for you. Now you can filter by inclusion/exclusion of categories etc. and move information around without worrying about where it is.
Well, in a nutshell not the greatest revelation anyone had but at least it breaks the common mentality everyone has about putting object X in folder Z and having to know where it is to find it. Your mileage may vary.
It's not the years, it's the mileage
on
Ageism in IT?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I'm 37 and have been in IT for a dozen years or so, but programming for about 20. I'm in charge of providing standards, best practices and technical support and advice to 250+ developers.
It's not how many rings there are when they cut you open, it's how well you can navigate the technologies. I don't just people on how many languages they know or even what technology they are proficient in. For programmers, it's what their problem solving skills and adaptivity level is when the pressure is on or something challenging is presented.
Software skills cannot be measured by number of years. I know coders that are 17 years old that can dance circles around me while at the same time others in their age group that couldn't assemble their way out of a paper bag. The same for the old geeks like myself. There's good and bad everywhere, it's just a matter of being able to sift through the silicon jungle and do what you're best at.
This generally is where books are going IMHO. As an IT professional, books are invaluable in our research of new technologies, learning new tools, and general reference for our infrastructure and applications. While it's nice and cool to have dozens of books on the shelf that are easy to access, I'm shifting towards the online versions now.
We recently implemented a subscription service for the IS department at our company through a company called Books24x7 (http://www.books24x7.com). They offer personal bookshelves as well and it basically boils down to a few hundred dollars per user. That may seem like a lot but I currently have about 60 books in my bookshelf. Full text search across my bookshelf, or all the books they offer is available as well.
It's certainly a value added service. A lot of people seem to gripe and complain that they don't have the paper version in front of them but a good online service like Safari or any of the other competitors gives you just as much content and flexiblity without having to consume a lot of shelf space. Also I can access my books anywhere (home, office, etc.). Saves lugging home giant tomes of knowledge when I want to do some work on the road. It's not for everyone though, as some people just can't read books online, but for a reference library it really can't be beat.
I think the biggest problem with cases is the fact that everything you want to attach to the system spouts from connections on the mainboard. These cables (IDE, power, fan, etc.) are always either too short, too long or otherwise impossible to wrap around the other components in the system without slicing, dicing, twisting, bending and otherwise really mungling the cables.
There have been a few incentives I've seen to remedy this like taking the ribbon cables and turning them into wrapped cables so they don't take up as much space, however that still really doesn't fix the inherent problem. Connectivity from mainboard to peripheral.
What I would like to see is a case where the mainboard connections plug into a central unit (perhaps behind the mainboard itself) and each add-on (hard drive, CD-ROM, floppy, fan, etc.) would plug into their own connectors. If a case designer really wants to make something inventive, they would make an IDE plugin built into the case. Snap in the hard drive and poof. Its connected. Snap in the CD-ROM. Poof. Connected. No more wires and cables. Now THAT would be innovative!
Well this sucks. I just picked up a copy of the trilogy for my gf. She's been waiting for it for a long time now and here it is. All wrapped and under the tree. Then the next day I find out about the misframing. Yes kids, it's on the entire BTTF II and III films, not just select scenes. While I'm not a DVD afficiando, I do certainly appreciate watching a well produced DVD. Seeing all the example shots and taking a look at the film myself now proves that the misframing basically ruins the movie. Most of the gags are site gags and without the bottom or top of the frame, it's just not the same movie.
What really has me peeved is the fact that a) Universal knew about the problem as people in R2-R5 have been yelling about it without any resolution and b) you have to return the discs at your own expense to replace them. Sure, Universal is not going to spend whatever the cost would be to get everyone a copy but now to really enjoy the movie I'm going to have to shell out another $10US or something to get the updated discs.
And basically, even though they knew about it but might not admit it, there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it except eat up the cost of replacing the discs. Oh well, live and learn.
For those that enjoy tweaking and want to push your cars to the max, there's an entire site dedicated to car mods. You can find it here.
It includes mods like increasing the range of your racer to 120', run times of 20 minutes, chassis raising (and lowering) and all kinds of silly stuff. Also you can find conversions from racer to airplane and helicopter.
OS/2 may have the support cables pulled and IBM is pulling the sheet over it's head, but it's still in wide use in a lot of industries. It was a solid 32bit pre-emptive multi-tasking system for it's time (before Win95). The only other alternative at the time was real Unix systems but that was a huge cost for small businesses. OS/2 provided the reliability and stability that some businesses needed.
The majority of the current user base is banks. They have (or perhaps had?) a HUGE investment in OS/2. Most ATMs ran and are still running OS/2 for their operating system. The uptime is incredible so without support or the ability to continue the product, most businesses must get off of OS/2 asap. Of course we've known that it was a burning platform for years now but with such a large installed base and legacy applications running off it, who has the time or budget to move off.
We currently use OS/2 with our train control systems as well as a few other key safety systems. It's just as reliable as it was years ago and our plan to move to another platform doesn't manifest itself until the 2004-2005 timeframe.
SimsVille was a cross between The Sims and Sim City. It offered both a macroscopic view of a town where you could manage Sim life on a neighborhood level and a microscopic one where you could manage Sims and families (although not as granular as you can in The Sims). It died a horrible death sometime in 2001 after Maxis decided it conflicted with what they were already doing with The Sims, Sim City and the upcoming Sims Online. Apparently it was pretty much in a pre-release stage but who knows if anyone will ever see it.
There seems to be a general smattering of questions around how vague my Ask Slashdot submission was. Let me clarify by saying that I'm not looking for anyone to do the cost analysis for me, or even tell me what it would be. Obviously the numbers are based on what components we have or what software we're tied to. That's a complexity of it's own. And whatever technical challenges there are need to be raised as flags, but at a conceptual investigation stage nobody needs to know those details to get a 50,000 foot view of the world. What I am looking for is really the best way to determine these costs and if anyone has some experience in doing such a move from one platform to another and what are some of the "gotchas" to look out for when doing this type of study.
True, a system where users are only engaging email against an Exchange server means pretty much nothing in terms of swapping out Windows with Linux and serving up POP3, but even in that simple environment there are costs associated with support, maintenenace, upgrades, etc. If it costs $40 million dollars to replace a Microsoft technology with a Linux technology over 10 number of years, I'd rather stick with Microsquishy where the support is there and pay the $3 million/yr for it (or whatever those numbers are).
I think one of the key points that we're seeing from looking at this problem is the fact that we're seemingly tied to certain products, not necessarily the technologies. So depending on the product rather than the service is causing a lot of grief in any kind of cost reduction. One comment that stood out was that large corporations were tied to Windows not because of IIS but because of Exchange. This is only partially true as most large corporations are tied to a series of products rather than technologies. It's not as simple as Exchange vs POP3 but more like BizTalk vs ???, portal technologies, SAP, etc. There is no one single solution in a corporate environment for all services.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the reply and clarification. Yes, there is the hack to edit the .ini file and it does play 30 years ahead so you only have to get to play mode until 1970 to unlock everything. I agree there is the "Stars don't misbehave" and "Scripts shoot instantly" but there's a few problems with that. First, while starts might not misbehave, there are still relationships that have to be built in order for a movie to be successful. If the goal of sandbox mode is simply to build a movie and shoot it for releasing on the internet, this is less of a problem but still plays in as a factor (at least from my perspective).
I think the main point was that while there are workarounds, a true sandbox mode would let you do anything. I feel that the sandbox mode the Movies offers is still somewhat tied to the game mode. Maybe I'm wrong here but that's what I experience from using it. I don't feel like I can get really into using it as a tool (which I understand it was primarily built as a game) for machinima vs. a game that kinda lets me use it like a tool for making films.
Don't get me wrong, the game is great and fun. I see it's potential to have a bigger online community than The Sims. There just seems to be a lot of people saying the same thing I am and that is that sandbox mode is almost but not 100% a true sandbox (again, maybe my/our impression of a sandbox isn't the same as LH's).
I'm also interested in building tools for the game and was hoping to get some insight into capabilities and file formats (rather than completely going from scratch). Not looking for an SDK, but someone's insight (perhaps someone who worked on the game?) might help. I've worked on many tools before for The Sims (http://www.simstools.com/ and was potentially hoping to get some info to build something for The Movies.
Thanks!
While The Movies is a more mogul type game, similar to The Sims 2 but more focused on the actual movie making process (script -> pre-production -> filming -> post-production -> promotion -> release) it fails on the part of offering a true "sandbox". You can enter a sandbox type mode in the game and build your studio, create scripts and even start at almost any decade with up to 100,000 million dollars. The problem is that a) you have to unlock the game in play mode before you are allowed to begin your studio say at the year 2000 (where you have cool technologies like CGI to add your films) and b) the sandbox mode still isn't sandbox because your actors and directors are still Simmish. They need TLC, need to be able to work together, need trailers to keep themselves occupied, etc. Sandbox mode should be sandbox mode where the only output is interesting movies you can make and release on the net. I think LH has a fantastic community out there that can become even bigger than The Sims with it's releases but there need to be more tools that we can use and the mode has to shift from part-play/part-sandbox to a true "screw-around-and-blow-10-million-dollars-on-a-fil m" mode.
Sorry, Slim Whitman was real:t ml
http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/whitman_slim/bio.jh
- they managed to make it x86 compatible to run XP!
OR- they managed to recompile the XP source to make it run on their piece of EEPROM and make XP recognize 1TB RAM
- they have manage to break the way RAM is mis-sized in XP (516MB??)
- They use audio jacks to connect to 3 pin memory
- looking at the solar ram video, seems to me like they invented a "light powered mirror"
So to me, this just screams SCAM... or its a Mossad false front for black ops. PT Barnum was right.A few years ago I was writing my first book, a game programming book using DirectX. It was late one Saturday night and I was itching to install a new CD I had of Linux. It was a different distro than I was used to (can't remember the name now) but it had "extra" security features that I wanted to check out. I chose to run the "express" install and let it partition the drive for me. I had Windows installed on C: and my data was on C: and backed up on D: (a non-OS partition). Unfortunately I didn't have a CD backup so you can see where this is going. The install kicked off and asked me if it could automatically install and setup the partitions. I thought it was only going to be doing it across a single drive. My bad. It then asked me if I wanted to use the security features on the format. So a couple hours later I had a clean hard drive with a new OS. Problem is that the format went across both physical drives I had. I tried various recoveries that I had on-hand. Sometime around 6AM I pronounced the drive dead. I took it to a data-recovery centre on Monday but since the format was so secure and had written over the data several times, there was no hope. I lost the book and had to rewrite it from my notes and what was in my head. Took 3 months for the rewrite after spending 6 writing it the first time. It's funny now but boy was I peeved when it happened. Needless to say, BACKUP YOUR DATA and DON'T INSTALL AT 2AM ON A SATURDAY! :)
Apparently there are several other things missing like Canada, England, and the entire Western Hemisphere. Heck, it won't even zoom in past about 40,000 feet for most places. MSN Earth? Bah! My $12.99 WalMart globe does a better job than this (and then there's that Google thing too I suppose).
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http:
http://www.hackiis6.com/ was running Microsoft-IIS on Windows 2000 when last queried at 2-May-2005 10:52:28 GMT
My god, it's full of stars...
This link here is to Samsungs page on dead pixel policy (last updated 2004-06-18) and has no mention of this "new" policy. It still stands that they won't replace an in warranty monitor as follows:
Nothing is smart enough to tell the difference because the content is contextual (hence the name). In a corporation like the one I'm at now (a class A railway) we have hundreds of terabytes of information flowing through our systems on a regular basis. Trying to track it, categorize it, and make sense of what's there is next to impossible. Yet we still keep trying.
I've been trying to architect the information gathering myself in a manual way using a distributed model. Rather than having one system (or hundreds of systems depending on how you look at it) go out and farm the information, have each system submit themselves (automated if such a way exists) to a central repository so that it makes sense. Like I said, any entity is the best thing to know about itself and how it should be classified.
The Trove system from SourceForge is such a beast. Any project submits themself to the trove for categorization. If you abstract that concept up a level, you get a general classification system that lets you not only search based on it, but also filter the information and allow something to be categorized in multiple dimensions. It's not just about one listing anymore, because Pink the singer could be listed under Rock, Pop and Female. You can't choose just one. The trove system as it is, isn't the most scalable in the world, but with a little work could be and could be generic enough to classify documents, objects, people, whatever. just a thought...
"This prohibition does not apply to a mobile digital terminal installed in a law enforcement vehicle"
Doesn't anyone actually read what they're commenting on?
What a rip. Here I download it to try out the service. Install. Configure. Reboot.
"The iTunes Music Store is not available in your country yet. You will be able to browse music and listen to previews, but you won't be able to purchase music unless your billing address is in the United States"
Great. That's one program I'm now uninstalling. Too bad Apple, just lost a customer. Wish you had told me first about this.
Doesn't matter to me. I have monochromatic vision so I only see black, white and shades of gray. Makes it hard to play any game but especially if the clues are color coded (like blue keys in Doom).
Would be great if we can get this as a google language filter. Maybe some of the searches for SCO will make sense now.
This problem is the leading principal and primary downfall of a heirachial based system, file or otherwise. Information (not data) has to be classified. No matter how you think you can slice or dice the information up, someone will always come along and be able to shuffle your apples into different baskets. Taxonomy of systems is something you can write (and read) reams of tomes on. Take it from someone who has been down the road of "should I file this in folder a or folder b?" and "where should folder a be in the heiarchy?". The problem is that you're tied to a flat system with pretty much all file, mail and inbox managers you can think of. Someone needs to do something smart with how you organize information, not data, which is how Outlook, KMail, and pretty much every PIM, mail and information "organizer" works.
The solution? Unfortunately for a file system (sans symbolic links) or an inbox you're stuck with the traditional system of folders inside of folders. What needs to happen (and if anyone wants to engage me to build this I'm all for it) is to construct a system that allows dynamic categorization of information in a way that makes sense to the user, not the program. Two things have to happen to make this easy. First, the ability to create categories and sub-categories and sub-sub-categories til you're blue in the face. Create an upper level category of languages and split it down into C, C++, Perl, etc. Then create an upper level category of compilers and split it down into MSC, Borland, GCC, etc. until you get the "trees" of information you want. Second is when you file information, file it anyway you want (in one big location if that's your thing) but then categorize it in one or more areas and store that as META data with the object (e.g. a snippet of UNIX C code for email could go into C, UNIX, and email if you had those categories). Now when you do a search, return the result set from your location of the data but grouped by category and sorted whatever way works for you. Now you can filter by inclusion/exclusion of categories etc. and move information around without worrying about where it is.
Well, in a nutshell not the greatest revelation anyone had but at least it breaks the common mentality everyone has about putting object X in folder Z and having to know where it is to find it. Your mileage may vary.
I'm 37 and have been in IT for a dozen years or so, but programming for about 20. I'm in charge of providing standards, best practices and technical support and advice to 250+ developers.
It's not how many rings there are when they cut you open, it's how well you can navigate the technologies. I don't just people on how many languages they know or even what technology they are proficient in. For programmers, it's what their problem solving skills and adaptivity level is when the pressure is on or something challenging is presented.
Software skills cannot be measured by number of years. I know coders that are 17 years old that can dance circles around me while at the same time others in their age group that couldn't assemble their way out of a paper bag. The same for the old geeks like myself. There's good and bad everywhere, it's just a matter of being able to sift through the silicon jungle and do what you're best at.
This generally is where books are going IMHO. As an IT professional, books are invaluable in our research of new technologies, learning new tools, and general reference for our infrastructure and applications. While it's nice and cool to have dozens of books on the shelf that are easy to access, I'm shifting towards the online versions now.
We recently implemented a subscription service for the IS department at our company through a company called Books24x7 (http://www.books24x7.com). They offer personal bookshelves as well and it basically boils down to a few hundred dollars per user. That may seem like a lot but I currently have about 60 books in my bookshelf. Full text search across my bookshelf, or all the books they offer is available as well.
It's certainly a value added service. A lot of people seem to gripe and complain that they don't have the paper version in front of them but a good online service like Safari or any of the other competitors gives you just as much content and flexiblity without having to consume a lot of shelf space. Also I can access my books anywhere (home, office, etc.). Saves lugging home giant tomes of knowledge when I want to do some work on the road. It's not for everyone though, as some people just can't read books online, but for a reference library it really can't be beat.
So they take a copy of MAME and provide a port. That's 3000 games. 10 variations on each. Yup, I can see the math.
Sheesh!
I think the biggest problem with cases is the fact that everything you want to attach to the system spouts from connections on the mainboard. These cables (IDE, power, fan, etc.) are always either too short, too long or otherwise impossible to wrap around the other components in the system without slicing, dicing, twisting, bending and otherwise really mungling the cables.
There have been a few incentives I've seen to remedy this like taking the ribbon cables and turning them into wrapped cables so they don't take up as much space, however that still really doesn't fix the inherent problem. Connectivity from mainboard to peripheral.
What I would like to see is a case where the mainboard connections plug into a central unit (perhaps behind the mainboard itself) and each add-on (hard drive, CD-ROM, floppy, fan, etc.) would plug into their own connectors. If a case designer really wants to make something inventive, they would make an IDE plugin built into the case. Snap in the hard drive and poof. Its connected. Snap in the CD-ROM. Poof. Connected. No more wires and cables. Now THAT would be innovative!
Well this sucks. I just picked up a copy of the trilogy for my gf. She's been waiting for it for a long time now and here it is. All wrapped and under the tree. Then the next day I find out about the misframing. Yes kids, it's on the entire BTTF II and III films, not just select scenes. While I'm not a DVD afficiando, I do certainly appreciate watching a well produced DVD. Seeing all the example shots and taking a look at the film myself now proves that the misframing basically ruins the movie. Most of the gags are site gags and without the bottom or top of the frame, it's just not the same movie.
What really has me peeved is the fact that a) Universal knew about the problem as people in R2-R5 have been yelling about it without any resolution and b) you have to return the discs at your own expense to replace them. Sure, Universal is not going to spend whatever the cost would be to get everyone a copy but now to really enjoy the movie I'm going to have to shell out another $10US or something to get the updated discs.
And basically, even though they knew about it but might not admit it, there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it except eat up the cost of replacing the discs. Oh well, live and learn.
For those that enjoy tweaking and want to push your cars to the max, there's an entire site dedicated to car mods. You can find it here.
It includes mods like increasing the range of your racer to 120', run times of 20 minutes, chassis raising (and lowering) and all kinds of silly stuff. Also you can find conversions from racer to airplane and helicopter.
Enjoy!
OS/2 may have the support cables pulled and IBM is pulling the sheet over it's head, but it's still in wide use in a lot of industries. It was a solid 32bit pre-emptive multi-tasking system for it's time (before Win95). The only other alternative at the time was real Unix systems but that was a huge cost for small businesses. OS/2 provided the reliability and stability that some businesses needed.
The majority of the current user base is banks. They have (or perhaps had?) a HUGE investment in OS/2. Most ATMs ran and are still running OS/2 for their operating system. The uptime is incredible so without support or the ability to continue the product, most businesses must get off of OS/2 asap. Of course we've known that it was a burning platform for years now but with such a large installed base and legacy applications running off it, who has the time or budget to move off.
We currently use OS/2 with our train control systems as well as a few other key safety systems. It's just as reliable as it was years ago and our plan to move to another platform doesn't manifest itself until the 2004-2005 timeframe.
SimsVille was a cross between The Sims and Sim City. It offered both a macroscopic view of a town where you could manage Sim life on a neighborhood level and a microscopic one where you could manage Sims and families (although not as granular as you can in The Sims). It died a horrible death sometime in 2001 after Maxis decided it conflicted with what they were already doing with The Sims, Sim City and the upcoming Sims Online. Apparently it was pretty much in a pre-release stage but who knows if anyone will ever see it.
liB
There seems to be a general smattering of questions around how vague my Ask Slashdot submission was. Let me clarify by saying that I'm not looking for anyone to do the cost analysis for me, or even tell me what it would be. Obviously the numbers are based on what components we have or what software we're tied to. That's a complexity of it's own. And whatever technical challenges there are need to be raised as flags, but at a conceptual investigation stage nobody needs to know those details to get a 50,000 foot view of the world. What I am looking for is really the best way to determine these costs and if anyone has some experience in doing such a move from one platform to another and what are some of the "gotchas" to look out for when doing this type of study.
True, a system where users are only engaging email against an Exchange server means pretty much nothing in terms of swapping out Windows with Linux and serving up POP3, but even in that simple environment there are costs associated with support, maintenenace, upgrades, etc. If it costs $40 million dollars to replace a Microsoft technology with a Linux technology over 10 number of years, I'd rather stick with Microsquishy where the support is there and pay the $3 million/yr for it (or whatever those numbers are).
I think one of the key points that we're seeing from looking at this problem is the fact that we're seemingly tied to certain products, not necessarily the technologies. So depending on the product rather than the service is causing a lot of grief in any kind of cost reduction. One comment that stood out was that large corporations were tied to Windows not because of IIS but because of Exchange. This is only partially true as most large corporations are tied to a series of products rather than technologies. It's not as simple as Exchange vs POP3 but more like BizTalk vs ???, portal technologies, SAP, etc. There is no one single solution in a corporate environment for all services.
Thanks!