How about external FW/USB2 drives for ~$1/GB? It's perhaps not quite as economical as DVD-R, but as far I know, it's still quite a bit cheaper to do backups to external fixed disk than it would be to go tape/DLT or similar.
If you are doing long-term archiving (like saving one tape per week permanently, for example), then HD backup is probably not for you -- but if you just want to keep your stuff from going bye bye, grab a couple external drives and use them in rotation.
My PC is just about 2 years old now, but an Athlon 2200, 1GB DDR266 ram, 7200RPM 8M cache drives, and a GF4600 really do just fine. Even Doom3 and HL2 didn't really beat the system as badly as I had figured -- if I can play those two OK, why the hell would I bother upgrading for anything else?:) I'd like a DX9-capable vid card, but it's hard to justify another couple hundred bucks, especially considering I put well under $1000 into it originally...
I figure in another year, my system will be showing its age, and I'll be able to put together an PCI-E + SLI system for decent money...rar!
85 by its self is not a problem if you know to keep good following distances.
Sorry, the retards around here (N.C.) can't figure out the concept of safe following distances at 10MPH -- let alone 55 or 65 or (gasp!) 85.
As a somewhat conscientious driver, I admit I'm really at a loss on what to do. Increase my following distance, and some assclown (in a 3-ton SUV, generally) will just merge in front of me -- if there is enough room to fit a car, by golly, it must mean it's a good idea! Keep close enough to the car in front of me to prevent that, and we're talking some scary driving at 55, to say nothing of 75 or 85.
Perhaps its time for police to start enforcing safe following laws instead of snagging people for ridiculous "construction zone" violations -- IMHO, it's a lot safer to do 80 MPH on an empty highway (even with orange cones on the side) than to do 65 MPH, 10 feet off my bumper.
"...the process allows Wikipedia to approach the truth asymptotically..."
This is perhaps the most compelling point made in the article, to me. Of course, the cynic's read into that statement is that Wikipedia will never get to the truth (see Asymptote). In some ways though, that's really a pretty undeniable truth about the Wikipedia system -- even if it is True today, some jackass can come in and make it Not True tomorrow. Even if it's Not True for only five minutes, if someone looks at it during that time and assumes it to be correct, the wiki has failed in some sense.
Don't get me wrong, I really love Wikipedia, but I think some of the points raised a very much deserving of further discussion -- if you can make a crofty old coot like this guy happy, it's probably going to be a pretty damn good [encylo|wiki]pedia.
...so when a mother discovered her nine-year-old playing online poker...
Perhaps said parent should have been supervising their child's internet usage? You know, there are only about five hundred million worse things an unsupervised child could be doing on the internet. This mother should be happy it was just neopets. Perhaps she'll learn a lesson here, but my [cynical] guess is that she'll just continue to blame other people/companies for her lack of parenting skills.
I am the IT manager/network admin of hundreds of computers
Fair enough -- I guess I'm a bit cynical after reading posts such as yours, but made by people who only run two windows boxes -- or none at all;)
And I definitely will not argue with your points about Windows vs. Linux; I was mainly concerned with the difference between Win2k and XP. I work with Windows as a home user and in a small business context, so I know I am basing my opinions on a different set of criteria than you as a "big business" user/admin. But, I have not seen the disparity in stability between 2k and XP you mention, which is why I replied in the first place.
On what are you basing this assertion? I'm still on 2k because of several (hard) crashes in the first few weeks testing XP Pro (SP1). Plus I don't have to spend three hours making XP look non-assy.
North Korea has an incredible amount of artillery aimed at South Korea
Yup. I've read that current estimates are that the North could fire upwards of 1 million shells in the first 24 hours of a conflict -- if even 10% of those are aimed at populated locations, the death toll would be simply staggering.
That is why we can attack Iraq but not North Korea.
This has absolutely nothing to do with why we can or cannot attack Iraq -- but somehow, "logic" like this does seem to hold up in political circles.
Come to think of it, I wish someone had asked him how they plan to compete against AllOfMP3.com.
I don't think it's possible, at least not by any US-based company. And even if the prices were the same, the US companies lose due to the DRM here. I'm wondering how long it'll be before the US tries to strongarm Russia into "reform" of their copyright/royalty systems. This may be one of the vestiges of the "good old days" that will come back to bite us in the ass, not unlike the current prescription drug pricing situation facing the US.
If 99.99% of their business comes from other sources (as TFA says), then giving up that piddly amount of revenue in order not to be associated with 148 of the most worthless humans on earth should be a slam dunk. Well, at least if they're looking past their next quarter's projections, which admittedly may be a stretch.
I had high hopes for B&W, but frankly it was just another micromanagement festival -- been there, done that too many times. I did really like throwing villagers and slapping my monkey around, though.
Perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on him, but TFA makes him out to be some kind of visionary making truly revolutionary games -- which as far as I can tell, he ain't.
Is that swiss francs? If so, the exchange rate has gone to the crapper since I visited (admittedly, 10 years ago), or Apple gouges the Swiss mercilessly.
Apple always seems to do this on their low-end machines as a cost-savings measure, and yes, it is somewhat annoying. BUT, if you really need more than 2GB of RAM, you may as well just spend a little extra money and get one of the dual G5 desktops, where you can get 4 or 8GB. Let's be honest, I can't imagine most home users are going to be craving 2GB+ of memory in their ~$1500 iMac.
I'd be willing to bet the FSB thing is also a cost saving measure, and perhaps a way to better differentiate their "pro" desktop line from the iMacs.
The prices of Macs rarely fall -- older models are just replaced by newer ones at the same price point. This isn't 100% true of course, but it's a lot more likely in my experience than Apple lowering prices across the board.
Typically, if a company really needs me to be available 24x7 (or even just the occasional after-hours job), they have paid for my internet access, as well as either a pager or cellphone. Some have been employer-provided, some have been the "buy and expense" variety. Either is acceptable IMHO.
I think it would be reasonable as a cost-cutting measure to provide a monthly internet connection allowance suitable for dial-up (if that's all you really need to be connected), and allow you to apply that to whatever connection you choose.
But if your CIO really thinks you should "do what it takes" to be a good little corporobot, I'd suggest that (s)he is an asshat, and you'd probably do best in the long run finding another place to work.
Prerelease? (was: Re:Undocumented API calls)
on
Hacking Quartz
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I've heard that, generally speaking, some API calls are inserted into production libraries before they're truly meant to be used. Seems like this could potentially be such a case. But I do agree that in almost all cases, APIs should be as open as possible -- plenty of good ideas have come out of independent shops as a result of having good tools (APIs) available and well documented.
When I was in college, Nationsbank (now part of Bank of America, IIRC) tried to charge $3.00 for every time you went to see a (human) teller. They pretty much got laughed out of town on that one (as the bank next door quickly put up a sign advertising truly free checking for students), but they stuck with their guns for at least a few months. I can only imagine the sort of PHB that would come up with that gem of an idea...
That's funny, I was thinking the giant and huge drawback was that they were affiliated with Real;) There's a good example of a company that lost my business for life because they're too cheap to let you find the free version of their player in under 15 clicks...
Slashdot Mirror
How about some solution to that?
How about external FW/USB2 drives for ~$1/GB? It's perhaps not quite as economical as DVD-R, but as far I know, it's still quite a bit cheaper to do backups to external fixed disk than it would be to go tape/DLT or similar.
If you are doing long-term archiving (like saving one tape per week permanently, for example), then HD backup is probably not for you -- but if you just want to keep your stuff from going bye bye, grab a couple external drives and use them in rotation.
My PC is just about 2 years old now, but an Athlon 2200, 1GB DDR266 ram, 7200RPM 8M cache drives, and a GF4600 really do just fine. Even Doom3 and HL2 didn't really beat the system as badly as I had figured -- if I can play those two OK, why the hell would I bother upgrading for anything else? :) I'd like a DX9-capable vid card, but it's hard to justify another couple hundred bucks, especially considering I put well under $1000 into it originally...
I figure in another year, my system will be showing its age, and I'll be able to put together an PCI-E + SLI system for decent money...rar!
85 by its self is not a problem if you know to keep good following distances.
Sorry, the retards around here (N.C.) can't figure out the concept of safe following distances at 10MPH -- let alone 55 or 65 or (gasp!) 85.
As a somewhat conscientious driver, I admit I'm really at a loss on what to do. Increase my following distance, and some assclown (in a 3-ton SUV, generally) will just merge in front of me -- if there is enough room to fit a car, by golly, it must mean it's a good idea! Keep close enough to the car in front of me to prevent that, and we're talking some scary driving at 55, to say nothing of 75 or 85.
Perhaps its time for police to start enforcing safe following laws instead of snagging people for ridiculous "construction zone" violations -- IMHO, it's a lot safer to do 80 MPH on an empty highway (even with orange cones on the side) than to do 65 MPH, 10 feet off my bumper.
Let's hope AdAware picks up those signatures real quick! :)
"...the process allows Wikipedia to approach the truth asymptotically..."
This is perhaps the most compelling point made in the article, to me. Of course, the cynic's read into that statement is that Wikipedia will never get to the truth (see Asymptote). In some ways though, that's really a pretty undeniable truth about the Wikipedia system -- even if it is True today, some jackass can come in and make it Not True tomorrow. Even if it's Not True for only five minutes, if someone looks at it during that time and assumes it to be correct, the wiki has failed in some sense.
Don't get me wrong, I really love Wikipedia, but I think some of the points raised a very much deserving of further discussion -- if you can make a crofty old coot like this guy happy, it's probably going to be a pretty damn good [encylo|wiki]pedia.
The Centris used the 68040LC processor (with no floating point unit); the Quadra used the full-fledged '040.
...so when a mother discovered her nine-year-old playing online poker...
Perhaps said parent should have been supervising their child's internet usage? You know, there are only about five hundred million worse things an unsupervised child could be doing on the internet. This mother should be happy it was just neopets. Perhaps she'll learn a lesson here, but my [cynical] guess is that she'll just continue to blame other people/companies for her lack of parenting skills.
I'd probably get calls that their "e" was missing and they couldn't connect to the internet.
:)
I just made the firefox shortcut have the IE icon -- problem solved
I am the IT manager/network admin of hundreds of computers
;)
Fair enough -- I guess I'm a bit cynical after reading posts such as yours, but made by people who only run two windows boxes -- or none at all
And I definitely will not argue with your points about Windows vs. Linux; I was mainly concerned with the difference between Win2k and XP. I work with Windows as a home user and in a small business context, so I know I am basing my opinions on a different set of criteria than you as a "big business" user/admin. But, I have not seen the disparity in stability between 2k and XP you mention, which is why I replied in the first place.
XP is 1000 times as stable as 2000
On what are you basing this assertion? I'm still on 2k because of several (hard) crashes in the first few weeks testing XP Pro (SP1). Plus I don't have to spend three hours making XP look non-assy.
North Korea has an incredible amount of artillery aimed at South Korea
Yup. I've read that current estimates are that the North could fire upwards of 1 million shells in the first 24 hours of a conflict -- if even 10% of those are aimed at populated locations, the death toll would be simply staggering.
That is why we can attack Iraq but not North Korea.
This has absolutely nothing to do with why we can or cannot attack Iraq -- but somehow, "logic" like this does seem to hold up in political circles.
Come to think of it, I wish someone had asked him how they plan to compete against AllOfMP3.com.
I don't think it's possible, at least not by any US-based company. And even if the prices were the same, the US companies lose due to the DRM here. I'm wondering how long it'll be before the US tries to strongarm Russia into "reform" of their copyright/royalty systems. This may be one of the vestiges of the "good old days" that will come back to bite us in the ass, not unlike the current prescription drug pricing situation facing the US.
Windows 3.1
Although I'm joking, it wouldn't really surprise me...
If 99.99% of their business comes from other sources (as TFA says), then giving up that piddly amount of revenue in order not to be associated with 148 of the most worthless humans on earth should be a slam dunk. Well, at least if they're looking past their next quarter's projections, which admittedly may be a stretch.
I had high hopes for B&W, but frankly it was just another micromanagement festival -- been there, done that too many times. I did really like throwing villagers and slapping my monkey around, though.
Perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on him, but TFA makes him out to be some kind of visionary making truly revolutionary games -- which as far as I can tell, he ain't.
The original iMac was $1299.
Is that swiss francs? If so, the exchange rate has gone to the crapper since I visited (admittedly, 10 years ago), or Apple gouges the Swiss mercilessly.
Apple always seems to do this on their low-end machines as a cost-savings measure, and yes, it is somewhat annoying. BUT, if you really need more than 2GB of RAM, you may as well just spend a little extra money and get one of the dual G5 desktops, where you can get 4 or 8GB. Let's be honest, I can't imagine most home users are going to be craving 2GB+ of memory in their ~$1500 iMac.
I'd be willing to bet the FSB thing is also a cost saving measure, and perhaps a way to better differentiate their "pro" desktop line from the iMacs.
The prices of Macs rarely fall -- older models are just replaced by newer ones at the same price point. This isn't 100% true of course, but it's a lot more likely in my experience than Apple lowering prices across the board.
I'm betting that playing Doom 3 on the "minimum required" system will be the easiest way to force people to upgrade their hardware.
Hell, I have 1 GB RAM and a GF4600, and I'm fully expecting the performance to be bad enough to force an upgrade on my part...
I believe the name of the movie is "The Core" -- IMDB listing
Typically, if a company really needs me to be available 24x7 (or even just the occasional after-hours job), they have paid for my internet access, as well as either a pager or cellphone. Some have been employer-provided, some have been the "buy and expense" variety. Either is acceptable IMHO.
I think it would be reasonable as a cost-cutting measure to provide a monthly internet connection allowance suitable for dial-up (if that's all you really need to be connected), and allow you to apply that to whatever connection you choose.
But if your CIO really thinks you should "do what it takes" to be a good little corporobot, I'd suggest that (s)he is an asshat, and you'd probably do best in the long run finding another place to work.
I've heard that, generally speaking, some API calls are inserted into production libraries before they're truly meant to be used. Seems like this could potentially be such a case. But I do agree that in almost all cases, APIs should be as open as possible -- plenty of good ideas have come out of independent shops as a result of having good tools (APIs) available and well documented.
When I was in college, Nationsbank (now part of Bank of America, IIRC) tried to charge $3.00 for every time you went to see a (human) teller. They pretty much got laughed out of town on that one (as the bank next door quickly put up a sign advertising truly free checking for students), but they stuck with their guns for at least a few months. I can only imagine the sort of PHB that would come up with that gem of an idea...
the giant and huge drawback of Rhapsody...
;) There's a good example of a company that lost my business for life because they're too cheap to let you find the free version of their player in under 15 clicks...
That's funny, I was thinking the giant and huge drawback was that they were affiliated with Real