if you are running over a line as expensive as a 20mbit, and buying it for capacity... why bother doing something bottom dollar like buying a cable.
Its like spending a fortune on a sportscar and then changing your oil. Why bother? Unless you think its a slight to your madskills or something and thats something for the shrink, not slashdot.
you get jobs at places like LUG's, special interest groups, monthly chat-and-drink meet ups, hobby meetings, the library, etc.
there is always room for "qualified" drones to fill out rosters with "acceptable risk" employees, ones that are likely to output a consistient boring amount every year and follow the rules - but the bulk of real work in most IT shops is consultants, people who are too weird or far out or unemployable to get in the normal way but are willing work outside the box or long long hours at home to make stuff "really work."... Don't expect medical benefits and alot of luxuries that Well Branded Workers (tm) get, but there is plenty of room to work.
Just don't be overconfident of your abilities and maybe work as hard on your social and interpersonal skills because thats what catches up most of the skilled sneak-in workers and consultants. Wearing clean clothes helps too.
I had "10mbit" service on Cogeco in windsor, ontario...
It was my third and fastest Cogeco line at different locations.
Network Node saturation was unbelievable - in those days Limewire and a couple of other sketchy apps were the de rigeur and most people, particularily in the sketchy university and college areas (its like drunken party central there) - the p2p direct connect apps were typical set to 0 0 (full speed) everywhere and as a result anything from loading web pages to IMAP just plain didn't work.
The segment the 10mbit line was on was less saturated in comparison.
This was 2003/2004 - I could run an FTP to certain sites and get a nice even 10mbits.
However, Torrent or especially emule was OBVIOUSLY being messed with. On DSL with Bell or anyone else I was used to get ting a good solid 200-300KB/s sustained, and I definitely knew how to tweak my client for max performance.
On Coegeco I was never able to get more than 50-100KB/s and connections would drop constantly. Telnetting to the ports on remote clients would just disappear into thin air. Average upload speeds were under 1KB/s vs. a normal 4-5KB/s or more.
This didn't make sense, I was able to get far higher connection rates on 1mbit DSL lines and what really boggles my mind is that I actually get better sustained rates right now on rural radio packet infrastructure which is capped at 80KB/10KB. Thats totally non-sensical. The line i'm on now, with a small rural former telco (government protected at that, despite that they can't provide service even close to what the government requires for that protection - they just lobbied out the competition with exclusive zone rights and then said "oh, we'll upgrade the equipment in the next 10 years...)...
Anyways, Cogeco was expensive and it really stunk, at least in Windsor.
I've been on 6 different cable providers, and all of them sent me HUGE over-use bills (Videotron in montreal once sent me a bill for over $500 in 1999, for using I think 5gb of download) but cogeco by far takes the cake.
Normally now I use a DSL provider that uses some of the bell network, so far I haven't run into obvious problems with download speeds, latency, etc.
I do really wish P2P applications would start more aggressively routing on local WAN's over distant links and do a better persistent costing analysis over different routes.
Then again, all that the major move to Torrent has done is created limited content, hollywood-like homogenization of content on the network. Foreign content I used to find easily on Emule is now on foreign language sites and difficult to get sources on. Rare music is just plain gone unless your on a private site, and even then each tracker seems to cater to very specific tastes. Old stuff? Good luck. Then I go to the DVD store and notice all the rare/fringe stuff is gone.
I guess both of these factors - the changing ISP climate and the homogonization of media - are turning us into more alike, fall into step consumers. I've even started reading people magazine. Fluff about celebrities really fills the time between boring news stories.
as an owner of a core2duo machine... (macbook)... I can barely run Vista.
I'm not worried about running the NEXT operating system. I mean, who... but the cutting edge hardware-wise can run a brand new MS OS anyways? Think about the PC you owned when XP was released. Can it run Vista? Doubt it. Not without a new Video card, at least.
i quit IT and went into the restaurant business. No IRC'ing from work, no being lazy as hell, no annoying men in suits except customers and you can spit in their food.
No more buying expensive gadgets and rent becomes tough... even in a bad neighborhood...
but i've now worked the grill, fast food assembly and traditional line cook. Likely i'll do chef's school this year.
It takes ALL the fun out of food... just like IT work takes the fun out of computers FOREVER...
But its hard work and at the end of the day its satisfying.
I liked it, alot. I'm a hardcore KDE user. It seemed to be ripped in MAJOR ways from KDE as opposed to OS X...
My hardware wasn't enough, and it lagged up my games.
It also crashed. Alot.
Install was thankfully handsfree... but took forever.
Many, many popups.
Doing major deletes and copies failed miserably. Security system is way too intense for most users - even me, with 9 years of IT consulting experience found it way too labour intensive to set permissions and whatnot with 3+ vista installs on top of each other, 2 XP installs and 4 drives worth of torrent dirs created with different users.
But... at the same time, it is beautiful, has AWESOME software with it (gallery! amazing. mediaplayer does its job FINALLY (for syncing, not for playing.) and once you make it look like Windows 2000 it looks great = ) hah.
But... overall... still a bit much for my 2003-era (though top of the line) PC... no m-audio drivers yet, and it caused hard-boots and major system errors that resulted in ninja-foo (corrupted system files) at least 6 times in under 12 hours. We're talking NT4.0 kind of stuff.
But hey... its RTM... it can't be release to manufacturer quality stuff, right?
I don't usually run an OS until SP1 or so, but I had to try it. I liked it, I really really liked it. I ran KDE for a long time on my laptop (until I broke it.) and I loved it too... just having really nice apps and really nice integrated OS.. I will definitely need to patch out the popups though.
Oh about security... I managed to get a trojan despite OneCare and the security and all the f*cking popups within 6 minutes of installing the software (installing Alcohol20% off torrent.)... But hey... thats what you get for piracy.
OneCare seems like a neat idea... but it doesn't get much and it has ALOT of bugs.
theres not alot of stuff all in one place, but if you're looking for information on harm erowid is a sorta ok place to start. the anti-drug sites are not great places either.
alot of what i learned has been peiced together from web forums, bit peices from various websites and more from hearing it straight from doctors after spending alot of quality time in psych wards and rehab centers.
the biggest problem with amphetamines is that they damage your brain's dopamine transport mechanism, and additionally alter the ability for tyrosine to be converted in your brain into various neurotransmitters in an efficient manner. on top of that the acidification of your blood (mostly with meth, adderal is a type of meth) causes all sorts of bad shit to happen to your kidneys and arteries as well as drying out your mouth resulting in awful damage to your teeth. I just underwent about $2300 in dental work not because of meth, but because my psych drugs dry out my mucus membranes and dried out my teeth badly enough that my formerly perfect dental situation deteriorated to all of my upper teeth needing at least one and sometimes two holes per tooth drilled. That is typical of long term adderal use as well, just from the drying factor. fun times. the "holes in your brain" isn't the part you need to worry about that they blather on about on TV. Its the decrease in motivation due to less dopamine being delivered and less overall activity happening between the very receptors you are boosting by taking the drug in the first place for.
theres lots of new players out there too. i'm bipolar+etc. and part of how I discovered this was that I started to go wacko when I was taking speed to be able to work 100+ hour weeks. unfortunately I just about nuked my brain in the process, but thats another story completely. now I need to very carefully control my dopamine levels with several different medications, but thats life as I know it.
But I did this at one time, taking amphetamine and methamphetamine as well as ritalin, modafinil, adderal and any number of other substances at work in order to be able to work longer and care less about doing other people's bidding. Don't forget the flipside, the taking B-vitamins to deal with the burnout, tyrosine to fix the receptor loss, benzodiazepines to deal with fact that you can't really sleep properly anymore. counselling to deal with the psychosis and the weird mental states you get into from the fact that your brain can't cope with being up for many days straight.
The slant of this post was that there is something inherently UNFAIR about this, that "we" need to test against people doing this. There isn't a big worry because the people doing this all end up at one time or another like me, running on borrowed time means massive burnout. I aged biochemically about 10-15 years in the space of 3 years. Mileage may vary, but its not a smooth move. Ironically taking amphetamines to study isn't even a great strategy. Just going to class and paying attention is a better plan. Being on amphetamines reduces memory retention so much that its not worth the effort.
The big issue here, to me - is that people feel the need to self improve just so they can put out like whores for other people. Learn to live cheap and work less. Why do people feel the need to work harder and longer? I'm not sure why I did it, most of the money I was making was just going into the very drugs I was taking just to make more money for more drugs. Now I live on almost nothing and what unhappiness I have is mostly from the things lacking from my life from when that lifestyle caught up to me. Living on borrowed time catches up to a person. And when your employer finds out you're not just an eccentric hard working savant and really you're tricked out on speed you find out just how little they really care about you.
regardless of having trolled in the past timecop is a pretty smart f*ck who has developed piles of great software, done some ingenious security work and more linux-related shiznit than you will ever do.
sometimes people with side-hobbies actually do also have jobs. just because his side hobby is trolling doesn't mean he doesn't have hardcore madsk1llz too.
This has none of the markings of a troll, and since i've idled with timecop for the biggest part of a decade I know damn well he knows the difference between a decent doc and not.
this is a totally valid complaint and I too am sick to death of this kind of crap. I idle in a darkside linux channel (not too hard to figure out which) and more actual tech support of a wide array of products goes on there than happens in most of the support channels I have ever visited. On top of that being an Asterisk user I know that the f*cking docs are a nightmare and the wiki on voip info is just a disasterous mess of goo that really never answers any questions and all and just leads you in circles unless the very specific peice of information you are looking for has been answered.
Saying "THE SOFTWARE IS FREE SO STOP BITCHING" is bullshit. Trying to create a viable alternative requires making it a VIABLE ALTERNATIVE. It will never be better than free worthless garbage akin to AOL cds being good coasters out of the mail.
A huge part of the reason my fight for linux / OSS in the workplace was always so dismal is that my l33t research skills allowed me to sit down in front of google and find obscure settings and apply them in arcane ways to text files editable by vim, and go onto IRC and deal with 3 days worth of BS to find some stupid setting that isn't in the documentation or the source code for something, but this is pointless especially on something like linux-ha. its fucking CLUSTERING. who uses this except for enterprise stuff or really really megalomaniac home users? This is a project that NEEDS GOOD DUCMENTATION AND SUPPORT BECAUSE ITS TARGET AUDIENCE REQUIRES IT.
I remember once having some music critiqued and the question always is, is this being made for your own consumption only, or is it for public consumption? and if its for public consumption then do a decent job of packaging it or else its pointless to bother. Same goes for software.
Im sick to death of linux snobs. I hate going to user groups, I hate most linux irc channels or even reading the cocky pretentious working of most linux-oriented websites. Even slashdot is arrogant as hell. For something that is supposed to be the hard working underdog it sure as hell has developed a fan base that sucks. The irony is that you meet the people doing the real work and development and whatnot and they are usually really normal, dedicated people who have no use for the typical linux user either.
Timecop has always been a firm critic of linux's failings and has always taken alot of flak for this. I think this is important. Linux users are so arrogant to sit back and say oh don't knock us because we're FREE and what else are you going to use... microsoft?? its like workers for a big 3 auto company harrasing people who drive hondas to work because they can't afford the gas to drive even discounted american cars to work. When things about the product are shit, fix them, don't use "product pride" to try and drum through and ignore them. Thats total bullshit, thats the kind of crap that produces poor culture and poor product and will in the end result in more and more market erosion.
Alot of linux's market share is people who prefer to have an exact working solution and were willing to engineer it themself to fit and put in the extra time, or places where the solution just had to fit, or it had to be done at a low cost and there were no other options. It just really isn't an option out of that market and until some of this "well don't whine because its FREE" bullshit gets dealt with and people just grow up
why are people so obsessed with rewarding single people with success of organizations?
Why is it steve jobs that is responsible for all the success of apple?
why was it hitler that was responsible for nazi germany?
Why do humans always have to make everything about one person?
This is retarded. Companies are people and teams. Not people. Countries are people. Not presidents. Parties. Committees. As soon as people stop making decisions this way maybe we'll start making some progress.
Well, everyone I know doesn't bother using email anymore.
99% of the casual users I used to regularily correspond either don't like me anymore or have done what I suspect a great portion of people have done.
1) Installed a MSN client or other client which allows them to sit as "away" or "offline"
2) Regularily do not respond to MSN messages
3) Do not check email and agressively tag things as spam causing even legitimate emaillers to drop into the Junk Mail folder. Then they check it once in a year and by then its been deleted or they are too "busy"
I used to hear the line "I dont log into MSN anymore because all the people with no lives would MSN me as soon as I logged in EVERY SINGLE TIME. etc.
The Internet had alot of promise for bringing people together in new ways and fostering a new "safer" level of friendship. Personally I have moved all over central Canada in the last 10 years and have put down roots for only a couple of years at a time. As a result I have friends all over Canada. Even so, none of my moves were traumatic because I always had MSN or ICQ or good old email to keep in touch with people. It was great. I used to spend 1-2 hours a day only chatting and on top of that i'd spend the rest of the day with the window at least running (as I was in IT).
In the last year I moved to rural ontario to live with my parents and work in a warehouse, after my life basically fell apart. Strangely enough, i'm not sure if it was because I was misssing MSN "primetime" because I was working nights or early mornings but there is never anyone but my couple of geekier friends online. Its rare that I have a real conversation online anymore. But thats just how it is I guess.
I know alot of people have just given up though. Several of my friends have been hit by spam or spyware or MSN viruses and just not gotten their computers fixed for a year. a YEAR. I can't even imagine that. I used to log into MSN via wifi used to run the RF gun system at work on my PDA just to keep connected. (you know you use IRC too much when you IRC on your PDA. Try it sometime, its not fun)
Personally I have never really been bothered by spyware or viruses because I have good personal habits. Spam is a bit more of a problem but since I started working from the other way back (identifying good messages out of the junk rather than vice-versa) things have been pretty good. I use a linux box at my house that uses fetchmail/gotmail to concentrate all my mail into my personal domain at my buddy's rack server then (I want to change this soon) use isbg.py connected to a very aggressive spamassassin w/SARE rules setup that polls in the background using cron and move the definitely spam into a SPAM directory with subject rewrites. Then outlook at work loads up the dir and puts the mailing lists into their dirs (I dont have a mailbox on a shell I control so don't say procmail to me, I would if I could) and then copy any email to a "questionable" mailbox. The spamchecker runs on this as well, so after 15 minutes its empty. Anything in my addressbook gets left in the inbox. Super whitelist. My life is good but I do have to check the questionable on a regular basis.
But the problem with that setup is that most users are too convinced they are too stupid to set it up.
A little side rant here, im in a new job where they are all so afraid of my supposed "advanced IT skills" that i've been leashed and prevented from doing my job or using any tools. I tried to explain that my only real skills are not being afraid of any problem and knowing that I can break it down into smaller problems and then its just a matter of being organized, documenting well and knowing how to use google. P.S. I've found answering "what would you do if..." questions in interviews with "i'd ask on #linuxwarez then hit google" doesn't go over well, even if its true. Im really pretty dumb.
But yeah, people think they're dumb. And people hate people
I gave up on password security after working for a health management company that had name/same name as login and password on the SQL servers on real IP's. "they were behind the firewall!" BUT THE FIREWALL IS FORWARDING ALL THE PACKETS TO THE SQL PORTS!
The best part was after sending a note around on the new policy of 12 digit case sensitive alpha numeric mkpwd (or mkpasswd i forget which one is which) that were FORCED on the user. The 2nd point on the note was that "PASSWORDS ARE NOT TO BE STUCK ONTO MONITORS USING YELLOW STICKIT NOTES."
I found 42 examples of where the note was posted on the bulletin board the password was changed back to flully or dave or whatever typical passwords they usually used, and then that was on the monitor with a message like "Darlene, look at my case files, my password is DAVE" -- even though she can look at them from her user account and thus TRACK CHANGES FOR COURT LIABILITY... no, instead the password goes on the monitor.
The real kicker was that they worked with a major canadian bank and as such had a Lotus Notes over SHIVA connection into the bank core network. The bank was furious that our insecure network was allowed to connect to their with Shiva being run on the same windows 98 or ME (not my idea to install that, believe me) machines that were running with no admin kits, no policies, no proces watchers or anything else resembling security -- and when I arrived no updated antivirus and no patching.
No wonder, especially since the bank used ultra-hard to remember 6 digit capital-letter + numeric passwords. Once again the 50-something women couldn't remember those so they were on the monitor to.
When they finally did get rooted (and massively I might add, the best was the windows NT 4.0 SP2 unpatched server which had a IP in the external range and an internal IP with routing turned on and telnet with a guest account enabled.) it was because of "evil hackers intent on disrupting legitimate commerce"
In reality the problem is consultants who want to get things rolled out as quickly as possible. The next problem are managers who are more worried about the whining of their staff in regards to the ENSLAVEMENT of having to remember 10+ digit alpha numeric passwords (I have trained myself to do it in 8 looks.) and not be able to run their solitaire web games at lunch and things like that.
The next problem is that even with passwords being there there are countless machines where people just go around the password mechanism using exploits.
Personally I dictate anyone using my personal mailserver, etc. use 12-byte alpha-numeric case-sensitive passwords generated with whatever that app is mkpwd or mkpasswd, I usually hae to type it twice to get the one I want. They work really well and take forever to brute force.
I've tried playing with other mechanisms like finger print ID (at a old venture place I worked at they spent 2 years messing with this) and smart cards and the like. Nothign has really been satisfactory especially when you add any degree of road warrior (which is the place where security of IP and passwords is really important) the solutions are generally worthless as it is VERY expensive and inefficient to give authentication validation hardware to even a road warrior to carry with them.
Also in teh end many of the security validation tools work using internally a hash that is effectively a password anyways. Use the scene in star wars return of the jedi as an example when they are breaking into the power station for the shield. Enough blaster will open anything. Inside most fancy locks is a acuator which if given power will open the door. Thus a however expensive panel with fancy computer inputs and strong passwords can just be torn out and a battery with two wires used from k-mart in its place. Keep this in mind.
Additionally, if you've ever seen the output of dsniff running on mirror channel traffic on a master switch in a large IT shop the passwords just scr
this app isn't "pro quality". Its tinker grade at best, alot of the bargain bin software at your local music store is better at being amateur grade than this product is.
1) Lack of good low latency options for the MIDI, etc.
2) Where's the vocoder? the pitch matching? the multipass filters? the FFT-based filter? the automatic noise reduction based on a noise sample?
3 examples (of many) of why this isn't *PRO* software. I already saw many posts "WOW! FINALLY ANOTHER REASON I CAN GO 100% TO LINUX!!!!"
This release and any number of previous sound software releases suggest that but I dont see anything from 1 hr of reading on the website about this package that suggests it even competes with Samplitude releases from 1995 or Sound Forge in 1995 in terms of even single channel editing.
Windows and Mac still and always will rule for "pro" sound editing, unless protools, samplitude, propellerheads or any number of other companies port to windows.
this game is a real addiction to me, and now I am pretty much done but it feels kind of like... oh. ok, that ending sucked. Just like freespace.
I liked dungeon keeper(s) and this is MUCH more polished. Just the number of bodymapped actions each character can do, and the little tiny jokes you only see zoomed right in.
The interface is ok, just a couple of major annoyances. I didn't have any problem jumping right into the game and dealing with complex shit without the tutorial.
The biggest problem is when you get totally EATEN by a huge wave attack and you are back down to like 20 men with 0 in the bank. THat can get dicey, when they are so busy collecting body bags they all die of loyalty... and you can't make any cash... and then the bond types pick off the head scratchers one by one.
If you have no idea what that meant, play it and find out.
Okay, I read the book (it only took an hour or less). I lived in the neighborhood the story describes for several years and am dating a korean girl. This made it a bit more interesting at first.
This should have been 3 times as long. The plot is barely coherent at times, although the critical events are covered it is not as verbose as one might have liked. The characters are barely developed -- they are introduced and disappear.
I found it to be more like a side-story xfiles episode, only with about 30 minutes of content. When I read a book I expect at least a 3 hour movie of development and content.
okay, so I downloaded it, blatantly pirating of course, and tried it out.
Having grown up on a farm, I noticed there were many concepts totally missing.
I.e. manure management (and the ability to use manure as fertilizer), custom cropping, equipment RENTAL, pig farrowing, etc.
The next problem is that the game is so damn limited in terms of what you can buy and what you can do it is repetitive in under an hour. Wow! I can get a slightly bigger tractor! and 4 different leisure activity items which can't even be used!
The game is too limited to be fun.
Sim Farm was funner.
You just know this is exemplifying the trends the corporations are pushing in farming - you need to own $500K worth of equipment to even start, you need to be a million in debt to the bank, and lots of chemicals and fertilizers are the best solution to crops!
whats wrong with describing modern usary as jewing? makes perfect sense in the historical context.
Besides that point, I call people niggers all the time. Slang is great, gets the point across. Political Correctness is stupid. People should be able to say whatever they want. If you let stupid pride lead your way you have bigger problems than getting cranky because you got called a kike or a nigger.
Even then, whats the point of micropayments? As far as I remember the smaller the individual payment usually translates into a higher overall charge when all the payments are assembled vs. bulk rates. i.e. phone plans, buying cereal, etc. Even renting nigger slaves costs more than to just buy them outright.
Slashdot Mirror
if you are running over a line as expensive as a 20mbit, and buying it for capacity ... why bother doing something bottom dollar like buying a cable.
Its like spending a fortune on a sportscar and then changing your oil. Why bother? Unless you think its a slight to your madskills or something and thats something for the shrink, not slashdot.
or make a jaw-dropping investment with such potential for failure it will bring us back to the electronic stone age.
what does Intel have that Ford didn't before?
NETWORK NETWORK NETWORK.
you get jobs at places like LUG's, special interest groups, monthly chat-and-drink meet ups, hobby meetings, the library, etc.
there is always room for "qualified" drones to fill out rosters with "acceptable risk" employees, ones that are likely to output a consistient boring amount every year and follow the rules - but the bulk of real work in most IT shops is consultants, people who are too weird or far out or unemployable to get in the normal way but are willing work outside the box or long long hours at home to make stuff "really work." ... Don't expect medical benefits and alot of luxuries that Well Branded Workers (tm) get, but there is plenty of room to work.
Just don't be overconfident of your abilities and maybe work as hard on your social and interpersonal skills because thats what catches up most of the skilled sneak-in workers and consultants. Wearing clean clothes helps too.
I have a solution.
Clone dinosaurs. Bury them. Use the oil they turn into.
Cryogenic freezing in the meantime powered by the sun.
Over-seen by Skynet.
YAY.
I remember this when it was called the Newton
I had "10mbit" service on Cogeco in windsor, ontario...
...
It was my third and fastest Cogeco line at different locations.
Network Node saturation was unbelievable - in those days Limewire and a couple of other sketchy apps were the de rigeur and most people, particularily in the sketchy university and college areas (its like drunken party central there) - the p2p direct connect apps were typical set to 0 0 (full speed) everywhere and as a result anything from loading web pages to IMAP just plain didn't work.
The segment the 10mbit line was on was less saturated in comparison.
This was 2003/2004 - I could run an FTP to certain sites and get a nice even 10mbits.
However, Torrent or especially emule was OBVIOUSLY being messed with. On DSL with Bell or anyone else I was used to get ting a good solid 200-300KB/s sustained, and I definitely knew how to tweak my client for max performance.
On Coegeco I was never able to get more than 50-100KB/s and connections would drop constantly. Telnetting to the ports on remote clients would just disappear into thin air. Average upload speeds were under 1KB/s vs. a normal 4-5KB/s or more.
This didn't make sense, I was able to get far higher connection rates on 1mbit DSL lines and what really boggles my mind is that I actually get better sustained rates right now on rural radio packet infrastructure which is capped at 80KB/10KB. Thats totally non-sensical. The line i'm on now, with a small rural former telco (government protected at that, despite that they can't provide service even close to what the government requires for that protection - they just lobbied out the competition with exclusive zone rights and then said "oh, we'll upgrade the equipment in the next 10 years...)
Anyways, Cogeco was expensive and it really stunk, at least in Windsor.
I've been on 6 different cable providers, and all of them sent me HUGE over-use bills (Videotron in montreal once sent me a bill for over $500 in 1999, for using I think 5gb of download) but cogeco by far takes the cake.
Normally now I use a DSL provider that uses some of the bell network, so far I haven't run into obvious problems with download speeds, latency, etc.
I do really wish P2P applications would start more aggressively routing on local WAN's over distant links and do a better persistent costing analysis over different routes.
Then again, all that the major move to Torrent has done is created limited content, hollywood-like homogenization of content on the network. Foreign content I used to find easily on Emule is now on foreign language sites and difficult to get sources on. Rare music is just plain gone unless your on a private site, and even then each tracker seems to cater to very specific tastes. Old stuff? Good luck. Then I go to the DVD store and notice all the rare/fringe stuff is gone.
I guess both of these factors - the changing ISP climate and the homogonization of media - are turning us into more alike, fall into step consumers. I've even started reading people magazine. Fluff about celebrities really fills the time between boring news stories.
as an owner of a core2duo machine ... (macbook) ... I can barely run Vista.
... but the cutting edge hardware-wise can run a brand new MS OS anyways? Think about the PC you owned when XP was released. Can it run Vista? Doubt it. Not without a new Video card, at least.
I'm not worried about running the NEXT operating system. I mean, who
i quit IT and went into the restaurant business. No IRC'ing from work, no being lazy as hell, no annoying men in suits except customers and you can spit in their food.
... even in a bad neighborhood...
... just like IT work takes the fun out of computers FOREVER ...
No more buying expensive gadgets and rent becomes tough
but i've now worked the grill, fast food assembly and traditional line cook. Likely i'll do chef's school this year.
It takes ALL the fun out of food
But its hard work and at the end of the day its satisfying.
I liked it, alot. I'm a hardcore KDE user. It seemed to be ripped in MAJOR ways from KDE as opposed to OS X ...
... at the same time, it is beautiful, has AWESOME software with it (gallery! amazing. mediaplayer does its job FINALLY (for syncing, not for playing.) and once you make it look like Windows 2000 it looks great = ) hah.
... overall ... still a bit much for my 2003-era (though top of the line) PC ... no m-audio drivers yet, and it caused hard-boots and major system errors that resulted in ninja-foo (corrupted system files) at least 6 times in under 12 hours. We're talking NT4.0 kind of stuff.
... it can't be release to manufacturer quality stuff, right?
... just having really nice apps and really nice integrated OS.. I will definitely need to patch out the popups though.
... I managed to get a trojan despite OneCare and the security and all the f*cking popups within 6 minutes of installing the software (installing Alcohol20% off torrent.) ... But hey ... thats what you get for piracy.
My hardware wasn't enough, and it lagged up my games.
It also crashed. Alot.
Install was thankfully handsfree... but took forever.
Many, many popups.
Doing major deletes and copies failed miserably. Security system is way too intense for most users - even me, with 9 years of IT consulting experience found it way too labour intensive to set permissions and whatnot with 3+ vista installs on top of each other, 2 XP installs and 4 drives worth of torrent dirs created with different users.
But
But
But hey... its RTM
I don't usually run an OS until SP1 or so, but I had to try it. I liked it, I really really liked it. I ran KDE for a long time on my laptop (until I broke it.) and I loved it too
Oh about security
OneCare seems like a neat idea... but it doesn't get much and it has ALOT of bugs.
theres not alot of stuff all in one place, but if you're looking for information on harm erowid is a sorta ok place to start. the anti-drug sites are not great places either.
alot of what i learned has been peiced together from web forums, bit peices from various websites and more from hearing it straight from doctors after spending alot of quality time in psych wards and rehab centers.
the biggest problem with amphetamines is that they damage your brain's dopamine transport mechanism, and additionally alter the ability for tyrosine to be converted in your brain into various neurotransmitters in an efficient manner. on top of that the acidification of your blood (mostly with meth, adderal is a type of meth) causes all sorts of bad shit to happen to your kidneys and arteries as well as drying out your mouth resulting in awful damage to your teeth. I just underwent about $2300 in dental work not because of meth, but because my psych drugs dry out my mucus membranes and dried out my teeth badly enough that my formerly perfect dental situation deteriorated to all of my upper teeth needing at least one and sometimes two holes per tooth drilled. That is typical of long term adderal use as well, just from the drying factor. fun times. the "holes in your brain" isn't the part you need to worry about that they blather on about on TV. Its the decrease in motivation due to less dopamine being delivered and less overall activity happening between the very receptors you are boosting by taking the drug in the first place for.
theres lots of new players out there too. i'm bipolar+etc. and part of how I discovered this was that I started to go wacko when I was taking speed to be able to work 100+ hour weeks. unfortunately I just about nuked my brain in the process, but thats another story completely. now I need to very carefully control my dopamine levels with several different medications, but thats life as I know it.
But I did this at one time, taking amphetamine and methamphetamine as well as ritalin, modafinil, adderal and any number of other substances at work in order to be able to work longer and care less about doing other people's bidding. Don't forget the flipside, the taking B-vitamins to deal with the burnout, tyrosine to fix the receptor loss, benzodiazepines to deal with fact that you can't really sleep properly anymore. counselling to deal with the psychosis and the weird mental states you get into from the fact that your brain can't cope with being up for many days straight.
The slant of this post was that there is something inherently UNFAIR about this, that "we" need to test against people doing this. There isn't a big worry because the people doing this all end up at one time or another like me, running on borrowed time means massive burnout. I aged biochemically about 10-15 years in the space of 3 years. Mileage may vary, but its not a smooth move. Ironically taking amphetamines to study isn't even a great strategy. Just going to class and paying attention is a better plan. Being on amphetamines reduces memory retention so much that its not worth the effort.
The big issue here, to me - is that people feel the need to self improve just so they can put out like whores for other people. Learn to live cheap and work less. Why do people feel the need to work harder and longer? I'm not sure why I did it, most of the money I was making was just going into the very drugs I was taking just to make more money for more drugs. Now I live on almost nothing and what unhappiness I have is mostly from the things lacking from my life from when that lifestyle caught up to me. Living on borrowed time catches up to a person. And when your employer finds out you're not just an eccentric hard working savant and really you're tricked out on speed you find out just how little they really care about you.
Being a snotty pretentious linux fag is far worse than being a troll.
Trolls make people think. Linux fags make people puke.
regardless of having trolled in the past timecop is a pretty smart f*ck who has developed piles of great software, done some ingenious security work and more linux-related shiznit than you will ever do.
... microsoft?? its like workers for a big 3 auto company harrasing people who drive hondas to work because they can't afford the gas to drive even discounted american cars to work. When things about the product are shit, fix them, don't use "product pride" to try and drum through and ignore them. Thats total bullshit, thats the kind of crap that produces poor culture and poor product and will in the end result in more and more market erosion.
sometimes people with side-hobbies actually do also have jobs. just because his side hobby is trolling doesn't mean he doesn't have hardcore madsk1llz too.
This has none of the markings of a troll, and since i've idled with timecop for the biggest part of a decade I know damn well he knows the difference between a decent doc and not.
this is a totally valid complaint and I too am sick to death of this kind of crap. I idle in a darkside linux channel (not too hard to figure out which) and more actual tech support of a wide array of products goes on there than happens in most of the support channels I have ever visited. On top of that being an Asterisk user I know that the f*cking docs are a nightmare and the wiki on voip info is just a disasterous mess of goo that really never answers any questions and all and just leads you in circles unless the very specific peice of information you are looking for has been answered.
Saying "THE SOFTWARE IS FREE SO STOP BITCHING" is bullshit. Trying to create a viable alternative requires making it a VIABLE ALTERNATIVE. It will never be better than free worthless garbage akin to AOL cds being good coasters out of the mail.
A huge part of the reason my fight for linux / OSS in the workplace was always so dismal is that my l33t research skills allowed me to sit down in front of google and find obscure settings and apply them in arcane ways to text files editable by vim, and go onto IRC and deal with 3 days worth of BS to find some stupid setting that isn't in the documentation or the source code for something, but this is pointless especially on something like linux-ha. its fucking CLUSTERING. who uses this except for enterprise stuff or really really megalomaniac home users? This is a project that NEEDS GOOD DUCMENTATION AND SUPPORT BECAUSE ITS TARGET AUDIENCE REQUIRES IT.
I remember once having some music critiqued and the question always is, is this being made for your own consumption only, or is it for public consumption? and if its for public consumption then do a decent job of packaging it or else its pointless to bother. Same goes for software.
Im sick to death of linux snobs. I hate going to user groups, I hate most linux irc channels or even reading the cocky pretentious working of most linux-oriented websites. Even slashdot is arrogant as hell. For something that is supposed to be the hard working underdog it sure as hell has developed a fan base that sucks. The irony is that you meet the people doing the real work and development and whatnot and they are usually really normal, dedicated people who have no use for the typical linux user either.
Timecop has always been a firm critic of linux's failings and has always taken alot of flak for this. I think this is important. Linux users are so arrogant to sit back and say oh don't knock us because we're FREE and what else are you going to use
Alot of linux's market share is people who prefer to have an exact working solution and were willing to engineer it themself to fit and put in the extra time, or places where the solution just had to fit, or it had to be done at a low cost and there were no other options. It just really isn't an option out of that market and until some of this "well don't whine because its FREE" bullshit gets dealt with and people just grow up
why are people so obsessed with rewarding single people with success of organizations?
Why is it steve jobs that is responsible for all the success of apple?
why was it hitler that was responsible for nazi germany?
Why do humans always have to make everything about one person?
This is retarded. Companies are people and teams. Not people. Countries are people. Not presidents. Parties. Committees. As soon as people stop making decisions this way maybe we'll start making some progress.
use open source, and google instead of manuals and calling in. use older hardware and buy must have shit on ebay.
Better yet tell them it can't be done, do it like I said and pay yourself the extra cash in "contracting fees".
Well, everyone I know doesn't bother using email anymore.
..." questions in interviews with "i'd ask on #linuxwarez then hit google" doesn't go over well, even if its true. Im really pretty dumb.
99% of the casual users I used to regularily correspond either don't like me anymore or have done what I suspect a great portion of people have done.
1) Installed a MSN client or other client which allows them to sit as "away" or "offline"
2) Regularily do not respond to MSN messages
3) Do not check email and agressively tag things as spam causing even legitimate emaillers to drop into the Junk Mail folder. Then they check it once in a year and by then its been deleted or they are too "busy"
I used to hear the line "I dont log into MSN anymore because all the people with no lives would MSN me as soon as I logged in EVERY SINGLE TIME. etc.
The Internet had alot of promise for bringing people together in new ways and fostering a new "safer" level of friendship. Personally I have moved all over central Canada in the last 10 years and have put down roots for only a couple of years at a time. As a result I have friends all over Canada. Even so, none of my moves were traumatic because I always had MSN or ICQ or good old email to keep in touch with people. It was great. I used to spend 1-2 hours a day only chatting and on top of that i'd spend the rest of the day with the window at least running (as I was in IT).
In the last year I moved to rural ontario to live with my parents and work in a warehouse, after my life basically fell apart. Strangely enough, i'm not sure if it was because I was misssing MSN "primetime" because I was working nights or early mornings but there is never anyone but my couple of geekier friends online. Its rare that I have a real conversation online anymore. But thats just how it is I guess.
I know alot of people have just given up though. Several of my friends have been hit by spam or spyware or MSN viruses and just not gotten their computers fixed for a year. a YEAR. I can't even imagine that. I used to log into MSN via wifi used to run the RF gun system at work on my PDA just to keep connected. (you know you use IRC too much when you IRC on your PDA. Try it sometime, its not fun)
Personally I have never really been bothered by spyware or viruses because I have good personal habits. Spam is a bit more of a problem but since I started working from the other way back (identifying good messages out of the junk rather than vice-versa) things have been pretty good. I use a linux box at my house that uses fetchmail/gotmail to concentrate all my mail into my personal domain at my buddy's rack server then (I want to change this soon) use isbg.py connected to a very aggressive spamassassin w/SARE rules setup that polls in the background using cron and move the definitely spam into a SPAM directory with subject rewrites. Then outlook at work loads up the dir and puts the mailing lists into their dirs (I dont have a mailbox on a shell I control so don't say procmail to me, I would if I could) and then copy any email to a "questionable" mailbox. The spamchecker runs on this as well, so after 15 minutes its empty. Anything in my addressbook gets left in the inbox. Super whitelist. My life is good but I do have to check the questionable on a regular basis.
But the problem with that setup is that most users are too convinced they are too stupid to set it up.
A little side rant here, im in a new job where they are all so afraid of my supposed "advanced IT skills" that i've been leashed and prevented from doing my job or using any tools. I tried to explain that my only real skills are not being afraid of any problem and knowing that I can break it down into smaller problems and then its just a matter of being organized, documenting well and knowing how to use google. P.S. I've found answering "what would you do if
But yeah, people think they're dumb. And people hate people
I gave up on password security after working for a health management company that had name/same name as login and password on the SQL servers on real IP's. "they were behind the firewall!" BUT THE FIREWALL IS FORWARDING ALL THE PACKETS TO THE SQL PORTS!
... no, instead the password goes on the monitor.
The best part was after sending a note around on the new policy of 12 digit case sensitive alpha numeric mkpwd (or mkpasswd i forget which one is which) that were FORCED on the user. The 2nd point on the note was that "PASSWORDS ARE NOT TO BE STUCK ONTO MONITORS USING YELLOW STICKIT NOTES."
I found 42 examples of where the note was posted on the bulletin board the password was changed back to flully or dave or whatever typical passwords they usually used, and then that was on the monitor with a message like "Darlene, look at my case files, my password is DAVE" -- even though she can look at them from her user account and thus TRACK CHANGES FOR COURT LIABILITY
The real kicker was that they worked with a major canadian bank and as such had a Lotus Notes over SHIVA connection into the bank core network. The bank was furious that our insecure network was allowed to connect to their with Shiva being run on the same windows 98 or ME (not my idea to install that, believe me) machines that were running with no admin kits, no policies, no proces watchers or anything else resembling security -- and when I arrived no updated antivirus and no patching.
No wonder, especially since the bank used ultra-hard to remember 6 digit capital-letter + numeric passwords. Once again the 50-something women couldn't remember those so they were on the monitor to.
When they finally did get rooted (and massively I might add, the best was the windows NT 4.0 SP2 unpatched server which had a IP in the external range and an internal IP with routing turned on and telnet with a guest account enabled.) it was because of "evil hackers intent on disrupting legitimate commerce"
In reality the problem is consultants who want to get things rolled out as quickly as possible. The next problem are managers who are more worried about the whining of their staff in regards to the ENSLAVEMENT of having to remember 10+ digit alpha numeric passwords (I have trained myself to do it in 8 looks.) and not be able to run their solitaire web games at lunch and things like that.
The next problem is that even with passwords being there there are countless machines where people just go around the password mechanism using exploits.
Personally I dictate anyone using my personal mailserver, etc. use 12-byte alpha-numeric case-sensitive passwords generated with whatever that app is mkpwd or mkpasswd, I usually hae to type it twice to get the one I want. They work really well and take forever to brute force.
I've tried playing with other mechanisms like finger print ID (at a old venture place I worked at they spent 2 years messing with this) and smart cards and the like. Nothign has really been satisfactory especially when you add any degree of road warrior (which is the place where security of IP and passwords is really important) the solutions are generally worthless as it is VERY expensive and inefficient to give authentication validation hardware to even a road warrior to carry with them.
Also in teh end many of the security validation tools work using internally a hash that is effectively a password anyways. Use the scene in star wars return of the jedi as an example when they are breaking into the power station for the shield. Enough blaster will open anything. Inside most fancy locks is a acuator which if given power will open the door. Thus a however expensive panel with fancy computer inputs and strong passwords can just be torn out and a battery with two wires used from k-mart in its place. Keep this in mind.
Additionally, if you've ever seen the output of dsniff running on mirror channel traffic on a master switch in a large IT shop the passwords just scr
this app isn't "pro quality". Its tinker grade at best, alot of the bargain bin software at your local music store is better at being amateur grade than this product is.
1) Lack of good low latency options for the MIDI, etc.
2) Where's the vocoder? the pitch matching? the multipass filters? the FFT-based filter? the automatic noise reduction based on a noise sample?
3 examples (of many) of why this isn't *PRO* software. I already saw many posts "WOW! FINALLY ANOTHER REASON I CAN GO 100% TO LINUX!!!!"
This release and any number of previous sound software releases suggest that but I dont see anything from 1 hr of reading on the website about this package that suggests it even competes with Samplitude releases from 1995 or Sound Forge in 1995 in terms of even single channel editing.
Windows and Mac still and always will rule for "pro" sound editing, unless protools, samplitude, propellerheads or any number of other companies port to windows.
this game is a real addiction to me, and now I am pretty much done but it feels kind of like ... oh. ok, that ending sucked. Just like freespace.
... and you can't make any cash ... and then the bond types pick off the head scratchers one by one.
I liked dungeon keeper(s) and this is MUCH more polished. Just the number of bodymapped actions each character can do, and the little tiny jokes you only see zoomed right in.
The interface is ok, just a couple of major annoyances. I didn't have any problem jumping right into the game and dealing with complex shit without the tutorial.
The biggest problem is when you get totally EATEN by a huge wave attack and you are back down to like 20 men with 0 in the bank. THat can get dicey, when they are so busy collecting body bags they all die of loyalty
If you have no idea what that meant, play it and find out.
I have a 24" samsung. I use my Xbox to watch videos. They look good. Games look good. I use svideo. No progressive scan, no bullshit. Works great.
Okay, I read the book (it only took an hour or less). I lived in the neighborhood the story describes for several years and am dating a korean girl. This made it a bit more interesting at first.
This should have been 3 times as long. The plot is barely coherent at times, although the critical events are covered it is not as verbose as one might have liked. The characters are barely developed -- they are introduced and disappear.
I found it to be more like a side-story xfiles episode, only with about 30 minutes of content. When I read a book I expect at least a 3 hour movie of development and content.
5/10.
ragemaxis
okay, so I downloaded it, blatantly pirating of course, and tried it out.
Having grown up on a farm, I noticed there were many concepts totally missing.
I.e. manure management (and the ability to use manure as fertilizer), custom cropping, equipment RENTAL, pig farrowing, etc.
The next problem is that the game is so damn limited in terms of what you can buy and what you can do it is repetitive in under an hour. Wow! I can get a slightly bigger tractor! and 4 different leisure activity items which can't even be used!
The game is too limited to be fun.
Sim Farm was funner.
You just know this is exemplifying the trends the corporations are pushing in farming - you need to own $500K worth of equipment to even start, you need to be a million in debt to the bank, and lots of chemicals and fertilizers are the best solution to crops!
whats wrong with describing modern usary as jewing? makes perfect sense in the historical context.
Besides that point, I call people niggers all the time. Slang is great, gets the point across. Political Correctness is stupid. People should be able to say whatever they want. If you let stupid pride lead your way you have bigger problems than getting cranky because you got called a kike or a nigger.
Even then, whats the point of micropayments? As far as I remember the smaller the individual payment usually translates into a higher overall charge when all the payments are assembled vs. bulk rates. i.e. phone plans, buying cereal, etc. Even renting nigger slaves costs more than to just buy them outright.
is there anything microsoft could ever do that wouldn't be chastized by the slashdot community?
who CARES about backwards compatibility. If you want to run the latest software why do you need to run old applications.
A substantial number of my clients are still running Windows NT 4.0, I know of 3 Windows NT 3.x boxes.
I'd rather have optimization and security than application compatibility with the past.
a.out ?
no, performers wearing stupid headsets look lame, and people who listen to popular music like that should be shot.