Anchorage Cable Speeds through GCI is 256k and costs $39.99 a month. You can double it to 512k for $10 more.
This is does not include basic cable which is $17/
Where I am moving to in mat-su Cable isn't available and they have the following price break down:
I should preface this by warning every one well in advance that I am one of the gun toting wild-eyed, survival oriented individualists. I am also married to a equality feminist, who is a least as strong willed as I am (probably more!), who has a lusty love of life and in countless ways reminds me any number of female Heinlein protagonists (except for her tendency to get lost.)
I am both a cynic and an optimist; I am alternately conservative and liberal; I am compassionate and cruel; and I am human.
The reason why Stranger made me bitter is in my youth I did not realize the Mike was an archetype for the potential human development. A small group of us who all read the book and theoretically agreed on the tenets (at my urging) formed a water brother group. It was truly a beautiful thing.
For about three months.
When two of the water brothers started dating exclusively, we all smiled tolerantly and were happy for their happiness.
When the relationship ended and they stopped talking the whole fragile chain of brotherhood evaporated as people choose sides and blame was cast.
We weren't mature enough, or evolved enough, or gullible enough or whatever term you wish to choose; but the simple fact that human nature is contrary to concept of water brothers. Which I think what Heinlein was trying to say.
We have the potential... but only if we change.
Both the Dune series and Stranger in Strange Land offer that glimpse into what humans may become, the archetype we can achieve, but mostly only in our dreams.
And that is why I think it is great book. Not because of a free love philosophy, or wild orgies, or a poking fun at established religion.
The gift of untapped human potential.
At my place of former employment the pager wandered through the whole IT staff and no one exempt except the two IT managers, who were allways on call and certainly did not shirk the duty (they got called frequently.)
The Good points: for each call you received 3 hours of overtime, but any calls you took in that time period were considered part of that call. Any additional calls after the 3 hours was an additional 3 hours. So if you recieved two calls an hour apart you got 3 hours of overtime. If you received two calls four hours apart you received six hours of overtime. If you got stuck or didn't know how to fix it you called the bosses. They always knew how to fix it. Literally
The Bad Points: No-one in the IT depatment was except. This included webmasters, database programmers, tech, and admins.
This was bad for two reasons. If something came up and they knew how two fix it, no problem. However 80% of the calls had to either be addressed by one of the techs or one of the admins. Since I was the 1)senior tech 2)lived nearby I answered a lot of thos calls... even when it wasn't my week.
the second way it was bad is that 2/3 of the staff was saleried. No overtime at all. Needless to say they were not chipper when their week rolled around.
I also had the joy/horror of living in a geek house.
4200 sq foot Swiss Chalet (mostly,) four bedrooms, three offices, four geeks, 1 non-geek girlfriend, 1 college almost-geek girlfriend (she's in another state nine months out of the year,) 11 computers, two switches, two cable modems (cheaper then doubling the bandwidth), and lots and lots of fun. However lots and lots of problems as well.
1. Geeks don't do dishes
2. Geeks appear incapable of putting away leftovers
3. If you play tag over my bedroom at 5 am and I don't have to be up until 7:00, I'll kill you or at least I will once I get some coffee.
4. Geeks are incapable of mowing the lawn even if it is clealy stated in the rental agreement.
I've since moved out and got married. But, the geek house lives on (less a couple of computers.)
Favorite quote
"The unit can be turned off by the wearer, thereby making the monitoring voluntary. It will not intrude on personal privacy except in applications applied to the tracking of criminals"
What precisely constitutes a criminal, and who determines when it gets turned on.
Scenario one:
You post a piece of code on a crypto-enthusiast site. 30 minutes later your implant is turned on (remember the on you got for being busted for pot being in the car) and 30 minutes after that the happy little NSA black van picks you up.
Scenario two:
You're walking downtown, scratching the still stinging itch from your implant. You didn't want it, but it was required before would hire you. After all you are on the helpdesk staff, and you have to be reachable at all times. Yes, you have a pager, and a satellite phone, but this is just the next logical progression. Besides it's for your safety... at least that's what the company literature said...
Scenario Three:
You move into this lovely little gated community, it's like a little slice of heaven. You meet all the neighbors, and ask they how they be soon unconcerned about their children and they breezily reply that they're all 'chipped'. Traceable, watched and safe. You fret a little bit and finally decide to do it, after the HeavenGate (tm) community you live in is offering to help offset the cost, and nothing is more important then little Jimmy's safety.
Then one day it happens, Jimmy doesn't come home. Frantic, you call the Gate Police, and they tell you not to worry, he's probably somewhere playing. They'll activate his chip and bring him home.
Hours pass. There is a knock at the door.
It's the gated police. But no Jimmy. Just a ziplock bag with the chip, and a ransom note.
After all what good does the chip do the kidnapper after he's used it to locate your children?
I agree that you could spend more time talking about what is wrong with the movie than movies actual running time. However you wanted one good thing about the movie... The "Tongue" on the female alien. I have never so before wanted to be a character in a horrifically bad sci-fi movie... but I sure did then.
I am also a big fan of the old IBM keyboards and much to my joy I discovered another company is now producing them! Keytronics got the original molds and specs and are reproducing them with the same feel and loveable "clik" that we all remember. Other than the addition of Windows keys they look and feel identical to my IBM (they sit side by side and get used equally.) I don't remember where we ordered them from, but here is info on the keyboard:
I've been Beta testing it since November, and I have to admit I'm impressed... but it was only more stable when compared to my NT and 98 stations.
It was much easier to set up then WinNT 4 or SuSe, didn't crash on install the way 98 does (it usually takes me 3+ reinstalls to complete an install of 98) I like the interface, I like the new Admin control layout, and I like that appears (to my eye) to run faster then NT.
However, I usually have at least one crash a week that requires a reboot, and three or four crashes a week (usually Netscape) that just require restarting the App.
Incidently (and this is in no way in disparagement of W2k) when Iomega says "We do not currently support beta OS's like w2k" what they are really saying is "Please, Please, For the love of God do not install this on your W2k machine yet!" 16 hours later I got the OS back... and now I know how to fix it, but still...
I've had great success running games I didn't expect to run (Descent 3 & Alien Crossfire) Not so great success running games I really wanted to run (Mechwarrior 3 & Carmageddon)
Applications that I expected to run (3d Studio Max 2.5) didn't... but I think that may have been due to a lack on OpenGL support.
However Photoshop runs great...
I just got the Final realease... we'll se how is does as a web server up against my Suse machine...
A rating system on the articles would let you get a drift of what articles we like...and which ones went over like a lead balloon. I think the filtering has helped some (I for one don't care what happens to Amiga or Apple... I'm glad you do... but I don't) but it would be nice to click on something and say "Yes! This was the most important article of my otherwise useless life!"
Or just rating them on a scale of one to ten would be fine.
I also agree with one of the questions about "more Tech news" i.e. lithography, and the wonders of new gee whiz stuff. I've watched news.com go from being a tech site to a site devoted to the tech industries business (i.e. who bought who this week, and who's being sued) and consequently no actual TECH news is reported anymore.
I'm not suggesting that Slashdot is headed that way, but I have noticed that the proportions of stories has changed.
Add to your list, being a devout christian (or any other faith I suppose) who studies/reads about it because:
1) Understanding what what goes on in their heads 2) In the hopes of helping them 3) "Know thy enemy" 4) Better then horror novels? 5) Curiosity (I forgot we're not supposed to ask questions)
To a large part I agree with you, however, what is the "BEST, UP-TO-THE-MINUTE" college out there?
I went to OIT, where almost all of the Faculty also worked in the industry 1/2 the year and taught the other 1/2. For example, my faculty advisor was on the team the invented/developed the PCMCIA standard and taught all the VLSI (chip design) courses...
It happens. Actually we've observed it happening about 30% of the upgrades we did on our workstations (500+)
However all hope is not lost. The install creates a directory c:\windows\ws2bakup
All your old TCP/IP bits(if you're lucky) are there.
You need to run the ws2backup.exe from windows, and then exit to dos and run it from dos.
(It puts back registery entries so you need to run it from windows, but tries to replace open DLL's which means you need to run it from DOS)
Sometimes, it will keep the Winsock2 and runs just fine... sometimes you have to reinstall Winsock2... and sometimes it didn't backup the files and you have to manually re-install everything.
You'll all be pleased to know that Smartfilter also automatically locks out Censorware.org for the reasons of: sex drugs extreme hatespeech crime worthless sales gambling personal jobs sports games humour alternate entertainment lifestyle opinion
Hmmm... not holding a grudge are they?
The one thing we have noticed is it only takes 8 or 9 attempts to download the new filter everytime they post an update. And then three weeks to re-unlock the sites that we need on a daily basis (It has regularly locked out our Corporate home page for the reasons of SEX... much to the annoyance of the VP's.)
And we won't even address the weasels in their Tech (un)support dept...
Slashdot Mirror
Anchorage Cable Speeds through GCI is 256k and costs $39.99 a month. You can double it to 512k for $10 more.
This is does not include basic cable which is $17/
Where I am moving to in mat-su Cable isn't available and they have the following price break down:
Speed Internet + Express DSL = Price*
128kbps $29.95 + $35.95 = $65.90
256kbps $59.90 + $35.95 = $95.85
384kbps $89.95 + $35.95 = $125.80
512kbps $119.80 + $35.95 = $146.75
768kbps $179.80 + $35.95 = $215.65
Isn't bad. Usually has a pretty clean, clear design. The employee directory works like a charm. However, the general search is pretty much useless,
http://www.state.ak.us
I am both a cynic and an optimist; I am alternately conservative and liberal; I am compassionate and cruel; and I am human.
The reason why Stranger made me bitter is in my youth I did not realize the Mike was an archetype for the potential human development. A small group of us who all read the book and theoretically agreed on the tenets (at my urging) formed a water brother group. It was truly a beautiful thing.
For about three months.
When two of the water brothers started dating exclusively, we all smiled tolerantly and were happy for their happiness.
When the relationship ended and they stopped talking the whole fragile chain of brotherhood evaporated as people choose sides and blame was cast.
We weren't mature enough, or evolved enough, or gullible enough or whatever term you wish to choose; but the simple fact that human nature is contrary to concept of water brothers. Which I think what Heinlein was trying to say.
We have the potential... but only if we change.
Both the Dune series and Stranger in Strange Land offer that glimpse into what humans may become, the archetype we can achieve, but mostly only in our dreams.
And that is why I think it is great book. Not because of a free love philosophy, or wild orgies, or a poking fun at established religion. The gift of untapped human potential.
The Good points: for each call you received 3 hours of overtime, but any calls you took in that time period were considered part of that call. Any additional calls after the 3 hours was an additional 3 hours. So if you recieved two calls an hour apart you got 3 hours of overtime. If you received two calls four hours apart you received six hours of overtime. If you got stuck or didn't know how to fix it you called the bosses. They always knew how to fix it. Literally
The Bad Points: No-one in the IT depatment was except. This included webmasters, database programmers, tech, and admins.
This was bad for two reasons. If something came up and they knew how two fix it, no problem. However 80% of the calls had to either be addressed by one of the techs or one of the admins. Since I was the 1)senior tech 2)lived nearby I answered a lot of thos calls... even when it wasn't my week.
the second way it was bad is that 2/3 of the staff was saleried. No overtime at all. Needless to say they were not chipper when their week rolled around.
I also had the joy/horror of living in a geek house. 4200 sq foot Swiss Chalet (mostly,) four bedrooms, three offices, four geeks, 1 non-geek girlfriend, 1 college almost-geek girlfriend (she's in another state nine months out of the year,) 11 computers, two switches, two cable modems (cheaper then doubling the bandwidth), and lots and lots of fun. However lots and lots of problems as well. 1. Geeks don't do dishes 2. Geeks appear incapable of putting away leftovers 3. If you play tag over my bedroom at 5 am and I don't have to be up until 7:00, I'll kill you or at least I will once I get some coffee. 4. Geeks are incapable of mowing the lawn even if it is clealy stated in the rental agreement. I've since moved out and got married. But, the geek house lives on (less a couple of computers.)
Scenario one:
You post a piece of code on a crypto-enthusiast site. 30 minutes later your implant is turned on (remember the on you got for being busted for pot being in the car) and 30 minutes after that the happy little NSA black van picks you up.
Scenario two:
You're walking downtown, scratching the still stinging itch from your implant. You didn't want it, but it was required before would hire you. After all you are on the helpdesk staff, and you have to be reachable at all times. Yes, you have a pager, and a satellite phone, but this is just the next logical progression. Besides it's for your safety... at least that's what the company literature said...
Scenario Three:
You move into this lovely little gated community, it's like a little slice of heaven. You meet all the neighbors, and ask they how they be soon unconcerned about their children and they breezily reply that they're all 'chipped'. Traceable, watched and safe. You fret a little bit and finally decide to do it, after the HeavenGate (tm) community you live in is offering to help offset the cost, and nothing is more important then little Jimmy's safety. Then one day it happens, Jimmy doesn't come home. Frantic, you call the Gate Police, and they tell you not to worry, he's probably somewhere playing. They'll activate his chip and bring him home. Hours pass. There is a knock at the door. It's the gated police. But no Jimmy. Just a ziplock bag with the chip, and a ransom note. After all what good does the chip do the kidnapper after he's used it to locate your children?
I agree that you could spend more time talking about what is wrong with the movie than movies actual running time. However you wanted one good thing about the movie... The "Tongue" on the female alien. I have never so before wanted to be a character in a horrifically bad sci-fi movie... but I sure did then.
I am also a big fan of the old IBM keyboards and much to my joy I discovered another company is now producing them!
Keytronics got the original molds and specs and are reproducing them with the same feel and loveable "clik" that we all remember. Other than the addition of Windows keys they look and feel identical to my IBM (they sit side by side and get used equally.)
I don't remember where we ordered them from, but here is info on the keyboard:
http://www.keytronic.com/products/kt2000.cfm
I've been Beta testing it since November, and I have to admit I'm impressed... but it was only more stable when compared to my NT and 98 stations.
It was much easier to set up then WinNT 4 or SuSe, didn't crash on install the way 98 does (it usually takes me 3+ reinstalls to complete an install of 98)
I like the interface, I like the new Admin control layout, and I like that appears (to my eye) to run faster then NT.
However, I usually have at least one crash a week that requires a reboot, and three or four crashes a week (usually Netscape) that just require restarting the App.
Incidently (and this is in no way in disparagement of W2k) when Iomega says "We do not currently support beta OS's like w2k" what they are really saying is "Please, Please, For the love of God do not install this on your W2k machine yet!"
16 hours later I got the OS back... and now I know how to fix it, but still...
I've had great success running games I didn't expect to run (Descent 3 & Alien Crossfire)
Not so great success running games I really wanted to run (Mechwarrior 3 & Carmageddon)
Applications that I expected to run (3d Studio Max 2.5) didn't... but I think that may have been due to a lack on OpenGL support.
However Photoshop runs great...
I just got the Final realease... we'll se how is does as a web server up against my Suse machine...
A rating system on the articles would let you get a drift of what articles we like...and which ones went over like a lead balloon.
I think the filtering has helped some (I for one don't care what happens to Amiga or Apple... I'm glad you do... but I don't) but it would be nice to click on something and say "Yes! This was the most important article of my otherwise useless life!"
Or just rating them on a scale of one to ten would be fine.
I also agree with one of the questions about "more Tech news" i.e. lithography, and the wonders of new gee whiz stuff.
I've watched news.com go from being a tech site to a site devoted to the tech industries business (i.e. who bought who this week, and who's being sued) and consequently no actual TECH news is reported anymore.
I'm not suggesting that Slashdot is headed that way, but I have noticed that the proportions of stories has changed.
Otherwise you guys are doing great!
Not to be to off topic... but who is Jimi ?
"What constitutes a "fascination" with Satanism?"
Add to your list, being a devout christian (or any other faith I suppose) who studies/reads about it because:
1) Understanding what what goes on in their heads
2) In the hopes of helping them
3) "Know thy enemy"
4) Better then horror novels?
5) Curiosity (I forgot we're not supposed to ask questions)
Sigh...
And your solution is...?
To a large part I agree with you, however, what is the "BEST, UP-TO-THE-MINUTE" college out there?
I went to OIT, where almost all of the Faculty also worked in the industry 1/2 the year and taught the other 1/2. For example, my faculty advisor was on the team the invented/developed the PCMCIA standard and taught all the VLSI (chip design) courses...
however... you can't get that online.
So what do you offer as an alternative?
It happens. Actually we've observed it happening about 30% of the upgrades we did on our workstations (500+)
However all hope is not lost. The install creates a directory c:\windows\ws2bakup
All your old TCP/IP bits(if you're lucky) are there.
You need to run the ws2backup.exe from windows, and then exit to dos and run it from dos.
(It puts back registery entries so you need to run it from windows, but tries to replace open DLL's which means you need to run it from DOS)
Sometimes, it will keep the Winsock2 and runs just fine... sometimes you have to reinstall Winsock2... and sometimes it didn't backup the files and you have to manually re-install everything.
Good Luck
In follow up you may want to look at the following books:
a sp?theisbn=026269218X
a sp?theisbn=0130137847
a sp?theisbn=0130137855
How to Build A Beowulf : A Guide to the Implementation and Application of PC Clusters;
Sterling, Thomas L. / Becker, Donald J. / et al.
http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.
High Performance Cluster Computing : Architectures and Systems, Volume I; Buyya, Rajkumar
http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.
High Performance Cluster Computing : Volume 2, Programming and Applications
http://www1.fatbrain.com/asp/bookinfo/bookinfo.
Whilst we're all busy drooling (or gnashing our teeth at site induced headaches)here are couple other cool chair/computing enviroment sites.
x .htm
http://innovate.bt.com/showcase/smartspace/inde
http://www.poetictech.com/aura/aura.html
Both of these are more along the lines of complete systems as opposed to just a comfy chair.
Pricey... but then again the Aura still cost half of what the spent on my VP's rosewood office furniture...
You'll all be pleased to know that Smartfilter also automatically locks out Censorware.org for the reasons of:
sex drugs extreme hatespeech crime worthless sales gambling personal jobs sports games humour
alternate entertainment lifestyle opinion
Hmmm... not holding a grudge are they?
The one thing we have noticed is it only takes 8 or 9 attempts to download the new filter everytime they post an update. And then three weeks to re-unlock the sites that we need on a daily basis
(It has regularly locked out our Corporate home page for the reasons of SEX... much to the annoyance of the VP's.)
And we won't even address the weasels in their Tech (un)support dept...