I had the same thing happen to me. My Athlon 800 chip and Abit K7A mobo died. When I replaced them I had to re-register WinXP with Microsoft via phone.
I provided some details about my re-registration, promised that what I was saying was true, and got a new registration number. It was fairly straightforward. As long as you're legit you should be OK.
That being said it was pretty humiliating having my veracity challenged by some phone-monkey and the experience has influenced me against M$.
The Globe and Mail has been runnign a series on this subject. A comparison of the systems can be found here while a rebuttal can be found here. While the rebuttal is significant the tone of the first article is that there are many positives and negatives to both systems and that solutions to the problems north and south of the border are going to be a little complex. Incidentally, the first article also talks about the French system approaching a crisis state.
That being said there are some interesting figures to note. US health care spending is $4055 per capita (from this Newsweek article in the "Data Bank" about 1/3 of the way down). In Canada it's about $3068.58 (The 2000 Grand Total/a 2000 population of about 31,000,000). Converted to USD that's about $1927.98 US. If we use purchasing power parity of about 80% that's still $2454.86 US. The Canadian system costs just over half of the US system and everyone is covered. That being said the extra money in the US system goes into much faster response time to help people.
Make of it what you will but both systems need to be looked at and neither contains a universal truth.
They've already got that sort of thing for analog signals.
I've got an ASUS 6800 Deluxe with TV-in and it - sort of - won't record anything that has macrovision protection. Copy-controls of broadcast content is already here, but since it's analog it's probably OK to talk about it...
"You're on a first name basis with lucidity, chum. I have to call him Mr. Lucidity, which is no good when you're in a pinch."
J:)
I kinda liked it - but Dick's been done better
on
Review: Impostor
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I've always liked Sinise and he was a producer for this, but it just doesn't compare to Blade Runner or Total Recall.
That being said I liked the ending. It twisted more than normal and it wasn't the usual ending. It was padded and no secondary characters were developed. I did enjoy Sinise's performance as well as D'Onofrio's. Sinise was unrelenting in his desparation and D'Onofrio was unforgiving in his tracking.
Unfortunately, I just saw Beautiful Mind last night and it just blew me away. As a result I can't say this was a good movie.
I hafta say that I just finished watching Strange Brew and I enjoyed just as much if not more. It's held up well.:)
That sounds plausible, but I checked and there are films with fewer votes that are on the top 250(like Seventh Seal). I can only guess that there is some intervention in the list by IMDB staff.
One of the best films I've seen is the Red Violin. It's rated at 7.9 on IMDB with about 3500 votes. This should be enough to put it into the top 250 but for some reason lower rated movies make it instead. Anyway I'm just bitter about the whole thing....
Although I'm not a big Linux guy this link - http://www.funet.fi/pub/OS/Linux/ - was still up from the earliest archived linux post from Thorvalds. It just refers you to a more updated link but still....
Capitalism works. It's just cyclical. The Marxist utopians always wait until the bottoming of an economic cycle (hence his "sinking ship" metaphor") to wave their red flags and proclaim capitalism dead. And yet, the cycle continues and we'll be on our way up again soon.
Actually, The Marxist Utopians were crying foul while we were still booming. Just look at all the anti-globalization protests. They had plenty to say while corporations were making record profits and the Dow rapidly approached 10000. Based on my reading of the interview I'd say this is what Merten is getting at.
Ask post-war Korea and Japan about how fast an economy can be rebuilt (within a generation!). You just have to have the culture to do it.
Post-war Korea and Japan were corrupt. Up until the late 80's Korea was a military dictatorship while Japan has had - essentially - one party rule for the past 50 years. In both countries establishing businesses involves much in the way of backroom deals and payoffs. Their favourable trade arrangements came from their proximity to the PRC and USSR and their alignment with the West.
And as for their economies as a whole; they have grown because they've managed to secure access to foreign markets (basically in the US) while retaining high import barriers. Not exactly a free trade situation.
As for the capitalism's promise to better the Third World, no such promise existed.
Actually, in the case of the former Soviet Union, that is exactly what was promised. For years the propaganda that had streamed into the USSR was that they'd be better off if they were a capitalist democracy. Well, now they are a capitalist democracy now and they aren't better off. Their economy - such as it was - was going down the toilet anyway. They made the change to avoid that and it hasn't saved them. It could be argued that the promise of better times under capitalism was merely propaganda to defeat an enemy. That the explanation that best fits the facts.
Similar promises were made to most third world countries - ostensibly to keep them in the US sphere of influence. Just look at the promises made by the IMF. These countries are corrupt and privatizing infrastructure just aggravates that problem. It could be argued that cultures like these aren't meant for capitalism.
In any case the promises was made but never realized.
Capitalism promises that if you create a fair market, lower barriers to entry, and allow people to innovate and work hard, you'll prosper.
A. Barriers to entry for foreign competitors can help as long as you can secure access to their markets - see the example of Korea and Japan.
B. The move over the last few decades has been to increase barriers to entry, not lower them. Just try and export a good accross a border if you're a small potato. Like increased safety rules (not a bad thing but still a barrier to entry) the current climate favours large corporations and not the individual innovators.
Stop the whining about Arnold being "too old", he is in better shape even now at 55 then 99.9% of you twenty year olds out there
Hmmm, I wonder if all those 'roids he's admitted to taking are going to have some nasty long term affect. I wonder if they already have and we just don't know about it. I could just see him as Prez: Don't smoke dope, just take steroids and pump iron.
This reminds me of the old joke:
Engineers think the equations approximate reality. Scientists think reality approximates the equations. Mathematicians never make the connection.
It seems that there would have to be some outer linkage and any outer linkage would be a target for hacking.
Security would probably be laxer on the secured network since intruders would be a rarity. Compared to the rapid pace of cracking on the net, anyway.
Intruders would come forarmed with battle experience from the wide, wild net.
When someone finally broke in (it would be inevitable) The government systems and all its secrets would be at the cracker's feet.
Mind you, any unauthorized use of cracking tools (such as war dialers) will soon be considered acts of terrorism. That will soon get you arrested in secret, tried in secret by a military tribunal, convicted on hearsay evidence, and executed. No Appeal.
The Phantom Premise caused me concern in that I found it hard to reconcile what I was seeing with what I understood the SW universe to be.
The clips in the Episode II trailer (send in the clones for anyone who remembers an RPG game called Paranoia) make me think that Lucas could bring the story back.
Maybe it's just wistful thinking, but scenes of Ewan McGregor with a beard looking older and wiser and Hayden Christianson - who won't be shouting "Yippeee" - looking to do a servicable job as Anakin make me think that Lucas could get it right this time. And finally to see the explanation of the Clone Wars. Children growing into Storm Troopers. Finally we will see how Palpatine seized power.
I had high hopes for the first one too, I hope I won't be disappointed again.
I've just finished working on an IBM RAC (Rapid Application Center) project. It was filled with elements similar to extreme programming, it used function counts, it seriously defined scope and development cycles. I've developed ideas about the method both in it's theory and it's method.
In Theory:
- All your resources are available to you when you need them for the length of time you need them.
- The client is with you all the time so that they are available to comment on the direction development is going.
- An enormous amount of time is spent in analysis to make sure the project goes in the right direction.
- Every task is estimated and ranked and put into a timed, development iteration schedule. If time runs short for a specific iteration then lower ranked features are "descoped."
The idea is that you have a fixed budget and a fixed end date and that based on these the one degree of freedom is the scope of the project. Therefore if anything changes it is the number of features.
In Practice the theory is adhered to closely but other factors enter into the project like:
- Scope Creep. This involves features that were ranked lower in the requirements and were descoped but become necessary for the end product to be useful or features that weren't caught by the requirements process but are necessary for the end product to be useful.
- Requirements Interpretation. They were nailed down, or so we thought.
- Budget. If the estimate comes in for 4 developers and a lead for 3 months but the budget only allows for 2 developers and a lead then there's an issue.
- Resources. If the client can't or won't provide the resources you need to extract the inputs you need from other systems then your schedule will be thrown for a loop.
- Client Participation. Asking 100% of you client's time in the project is an enormous request. And not always do-able.
How could it have been improved?
- The client could have provided the resources we needed. We were extracting information from some host databases and had a hard time figuring out what fields, rows and tables we needed.
- Our BA's could have done a more thorough job on the requirements. There were things that were missed or weren't defined accurately enough. We developed integer benchmark times when two decimal places were required.
- Our client could have sat with us to make sure what we were doing was what he wanted (which was what was originally agreed to). Nothing quite like having the client say that a particular feature was not quite what he wanted.
- Us developers? Well, there are always things that could have been done quicker in hindsight. I did some java-scripting that - in retrospect - could have been a hell-of-a-lot more efficient. I aim to correct that when I get a momemt.
- The function estimates were off and that caused some late nights and freaking out. It really is an art form.
Overall, the model was nice but our lack of adherence to it caused us unnecesary grief. While the client got a product he could use the process would have been more satisfactory and less painful if we hadn't strayed.
The lesson is that theory is all fine and dandy but it doesn't work if you don't follow it.
Brin is fantastic. Especially his Uplift books. Read Sundiver if you have the chance. Herbert and Pratchett are also pretty fantastic. The Dune series was probably one of the broadest concepts in SF. I always viewed Herbert as the Tolkien of SF (Thinking, of course, of SF and Fantasy as two different things).
It seems that most of my favourites these days have last names that begin with the letter 'B'; Brin, Bear, Barns, Brust, Bujold.
The Shrek DVD has at least one story development scene (Story boarding for an alternative beginning) and it would suggest that their process is similar to what you described above. The DVD is very good btw.
What may set Pixar apart (besides excellent tech and animators) is an a-class production team. I've heard mixed things about Monster Inc. so I'll see tonight whether or not they've kept their production values.
There are several features of the new Civ that remind me of the original:
- Units to create tile improvements instead of the Public Works used in Civ II
- Full City screens detailing everything in one place
- Similar unit movement as in the first game (ie no linking units together into one force)
- No Zoom on the isometric view like the second had
- Critical message fly by like in the first rather than accumulate in a message queue like in the second
It seems to me that Sid discarded much of what was put into the second. Too bad, I liked a lot of those changes. That being said it's a very beautiful game.
I work for a bank. I come to work in shorts and sweatshirts. I have stress balls that I use as projectiles - with the company logo no less! I have a bust of Elvis with a baseball cap sitting on top of my shelving unit - when people are looking for me I just say 'go to 15, go to the west side and look for Elvis.' But this is all extraneous.
But when push comes to shove I'm there to do a job. Because it's a techie job it has incredible heights. At its best it's like they're paying me to do crosswords all day. And even at its worst I'm in a supportive atmosphere where getting things done is a team effort. This all happens in an established, conservative organization with 50,000+ people.
The moral: It's not the size or nature of the tech company, it's the work and the people around you. You can find good and bad working situations in any milieu.
And through my job I can now say - with a little exageration - that I could land the space shuttle only using stored procedures.:)
The further someone is from the protection of Earth's atmosphere the more they are exposed to Solar radiation. One of the big problems with brewing beer is to keep the yeast the same - not have it mutating on you.
It seems to me that brewing in space without complete shielding would leave the process defenceless against producing a truly vile beer.
I'd be more impressed if they did some distilling. Moon moonshine would be an accomplishment and the process is dangerous/more daring.:)
Well, imdb has an Entry for the movie. Updated as of July 13 and indicating release in 2002. The information looks pretty tentative - so much vaporware at this point.
That being said I find it interesting that this rumour is at more than one site.
You know, my mom might not have thrown out my little McDonalds Tron frisbees.....
I like the plot summary: "An ambitious hacker transports himself into cyberspace to pull off the ultimate hack."
Re:Hoots mon on the Celtic Fringe...
on
Reviews:Shrek
·
· Score: 1
The accent was pseudo Scottish. He makes a more valiant attempt - and a crueller one - in the role of the father in "So I Married an Axe Murderer."
Imagine the following with a Scottish accent: "Would ya look at the size of that kid's head! It's the size of a planetoid and it has it's own weather system! Looks like an orange on a toothpick!" and "I'm not kidding, that boy's head is like Sputnik; spherical but quite pointy at parts! Aye, now that was offsides, now wasn't it? He'll be crying himself to sleep tonight, on his huge pillow."
Slashdot Mirror
I had the same thing happen to me. My Athlon 800 chip and Abit K7A mobo died. When I replaced them I had to re-register WinXP with Microsoft via phone.
I provided some details about my re-registration, promised that what I was saying was true, and got a new registration number. It was fairly straightforward. As long as you're legit you should be OK.
That being said it was pretty humiliating having my veracity challenged by some phone-monkey and the experience has influenced me against M$.
anyway.....
J
The Globe and Mail has been runnign a series on this subject. A comparison of the systems can be found here while a rebuttal can be found here. While the rebuttal is significant the tone of the first article is that there are many positives and negatives to both systems and that solutions to the problems north and south of the border are going to be a little complex. Incidentally, the first article also talks about the French system approaching a crisis state.
That being said there are some interesting figures to note. US health care spending is $4055 per capita (from this Newsweek article in the "Data Bank" about 1/3 of the way down). In Canada it's about $3068.58 (The 2000 Grand Total/a 2000 population of about 31,000,000). Converted to USD that's about $1927.98 US. If we use purchasing power parity of about 80% that's still $2454.86 US. The Canadian system costs just over half of the US system and everyone is covered. That being said the extra money in the US system goes into much faster response time to help people.
Make of it what you will but both systems need to be looked at and neither contains a universal truth.
IMHO, as per.
J:)
I've found that my 6800 will randomly ignore the macrovision. Just try restarting a couple of times and see what happens.
That being said I'm sure some of my luck came from starting the transfer on a commercial rather than the show proper.
IMHO, as per
J:)
They've already got that sort of thing for analog signals.
I've got an ASUS 6800 Deluxe with TV-in and it - sort of - won't record anything that has macrovision protection. Copy-controls of broadcast content is already here, but since it's analog it's probably OK to talk about it...
IMHO, as per
J:)
But I loved the metaphors....
"You're on a first name basis with lucidity, chum. I have to call him Mr. Lucidity, which is no good when you're in a pinch."
J:)
I've always liked Sinise and he was a producer for this, but it just doesn't compare to Blade Runner or Total Recall.
That being said I liked the ending. It twisted more than normal and it wasn't the usual ending. It was padded and no secondary characters were developed. I did enjoy Sinise's performance as well as D'Onofrio's. Sinise was unrelenting in his desparation and D'Onofrio was unforgiving in his tracking.
Unfortunately, I just saw Beautiful Mind last night and it just blew me away. As a result I can't say this was a good movie.
I hafta say that I just finished watching Strange Brew and I enjoyed just as much if not more. It's held up well.:)
IMHO, as per
J:)
That sounds plausible, but I checked and there are films with fewer votes that are on the top 250(like Seventh Seal). I can only guess that there is some intervention in the list by IMDB staff.
IMHO, as per
J:)
I like the plan here better, myself.
J:)
One of the best films I've seen is the Red Violin. It's rated at 7.9 on IMDB with about 3500 votes. This should be enough to put it into the top 250 but for some reason lower rated movies make it instead. Anyway I'm just bitter about the whole thing....
So don't trust their ratings!!!!!
IMHO, as per
J:)
Although I'm not a big Linux guy this link - http://www.funet.fi/pub/OS/Linux/ - was still up from the earliest archived linux post from Thorvalds. It just refers you to a more updated link but still....
IMHO, as per
J:)
Actually, The Marxist Utopians were crying foul while we were still booming. Just look at all the anti-globalization protests. They had plenty to say while corporations were making record profits and the Dow rapidly approached 10000. Based on my reading of the interview I'd say this is what Merten is getting at.
Ask post-war Korea and Japan about how fast an economy can be rebuilt (within a generation!). You just have to have the culture to do it.
Post-war Korea and Japan were corrupt. Up until the late 80's Korea was a military dictatorship while Japan has had - essentially - one party rule for the past 50 years. In both countries establishing businesses involves much in the way of backroom deals and payoffs. Their favourable trade arrangements came from their proximity to the PRC and USSR and their alignment with the West.
And as for their economies as a whole; they have grown because they've managed to secure access to foreign markets (basically in the US) while retaining high import barriers. Not exactly a free trade situation.
As for the capitalism's promise to better the Third World, no such promise existed.
Actually, in the case of the former Soviet Union, that is exactly what was promised. For years the propaganda that had streamed into the USSR was that they'd be better off if they were a capitalist democracy. Well, now they are a capitalist democracy now and they aren't better off. Their economy - such as it was - was going down the toilet anyway. They made the change to avoid that and it hasn't saved them. It could be argued that the promise of better times under capitalism was merely propaganda to defeat an enemy. That the explanation that best fits the facts.
Similar promises were made to most third world countries - ostensibly to keep them in the US sphere of influence. Just look at the promises made by the IMF. These countries are corrupt and privatizing infrastructure just aggravates that problem. It could be argued that cultures like these aren't meant for capitalism.
In any case the promises was made but never realized.
Capitalism promises that if you create a fair market, lower barriers to entry, and allow people to innovate and work hard, you'll prosper.
A. Barriers to entry for foreign competitors can help as long as you can secure access to their markets - see the example of Korea and Japan.
B. The move over the last few decades has been to increase barriers to entry, not lower them. Just try and export a good accross a border if you're a small potato. Like increased safety rules (not a bad thing but still a barrier to entry) the current climate favours large corporations and not the individual innovators.
IMHO, as per
J:)
Hmmm, I wonder if all those 'roids he's admitted to taking are going to have some nasty long term affect. I wonder if they already have and we just don't know about it. I could just see him as Prez: Don't smoke dope, just take steroids and pump iron.
IMHO, as per
J:)
This reminds me of the old joke:
Engineers think the equations approximate reality. Scientists think reality approximates the equations. Mathematicians never make the connection.
J:)
It seems that there would have to be some outer linkage and any outer linkage would be a target for hacking.
Security would probably be laxer on the secured network since intruders would be a rarity. Compared to the rapid pace of cracking on the net, anyway.
Intruders would come forarmed with battle experience from the wide, wild net.
When someone finally broke in (it would be inevitable) The government systems and all its secrets would be at the cracker's feet.
Mind you, any unauthorized use of cracking tools (such as war dialers) will soon be considered acts of terrorism. That will soon get you arrested in secret, tried in secret by a military tribunal, convicted on hearsay evidence, and executed. No Appeal.
but maybe I'm being pessimistic.:)
IMHO, as per
J:)
The Phantom Premise caused me concern in that I found it hard to reconcile what I was seeing with what I understood the SW universe to be.
The clips in the Episode II trailer (send in the clones for anyone who remembers an RPG game called Paranoia) make me think that Lucas could bring the story back.
Maybe it's just wistful thinking, but scenes of Ewan McGregor with a beard looking older and wiser and Hayden Christianson - who won't be shouting "Yippeee" - looking to do a servicable job as Anakin make me think that Lucas could get it right this time. And finally to see the explanation of the Clone Wars. Children growing into Storm Troopers. Finally we will see how Palpatine seized power.
I had high hopes for the first one too, I hope I won't be disappointed again.
IMHO, as per,
J:)
I've just finished working on an IBM RAC (Rapid Application Center) project. It was filled with elements similar to extreme programming, it used function counts, it seriously defined scope and development cycles. I've developed ideas about the method both in it's theory and it's method.
In Theory:
- All your resources are available to you when you need them for the length of time you need them.
- The client is with you all the time so that they are available to comment on the direction development is going.
- An enormous amount of time is spent in analysis to make sure the project goes in the right direction.
- Every task is estimated and ranked and put into a timed, development iteration schedule. If time runs short for a specific iteration then lower ranked features are "descoped."
The idea is that you have a fixed budget and a fixed end date and that based on these the one degree of freedom is the scope of the project. Therefore if anything changes it is the number of features.
In Practice the theory is adhered to closely but other factors enter into the project like:
- Scope Creep. This involves features that were ranked lower in the requirements and were descoped but become necessary for the end product to be useful or features that weren't caught by the requirements process but are necessary for the end product to be useful.
- Requirements Interpretation. They were nailed down, or so we thought.
- Budget. If the estimate comes in for 4 developers and a lead for 3 months but the budget only allows for 2 developers and a lead then there's an issue.
- Resources. If the client can't or won't provide the resources you need to extract the inputs you need from other systems then your schedule will be thrown for a loop.
- Client Participation. Asking 100% of you client's time in the project is an enormous request. And not always do-able.
How could it have been improved?
- The client could have provided the resources we needed. We were extracting information from some host databases and had a hard time figuring out what fields, rows and tables we needed.
- Our BA's could have done a more thorough job on the requirements. There were things that were missed or weren't defined accurately enough. We developed integer benchmark times when two decimal places were required.
- Our client could have sat with us to make sure what we were doing was what he wanted (which was what was originally agreed to). Nothing quite like having the client say that a particular feature was not quite what he wanted.
- Us developers? Well, there are always things that could have been done quicker in hindsight. I did some java-scripting that - in retrospect - could have been a hell-of-a-lot more efficient. I aim to correct that when I get a momemt.
- The function estimates were off and that caused some late nights and freaking out. It really is an art form.
Overall, the model was nice but our lack of adherence to it caused us unnecesary grief. While the client got a product he could use the process would have been more satisfactory and less painful if we hadn't strayed.
The lesson is that theory is all fine and dandy but it doesn't work if you don't follow it.
IMHO, as per
J:)
Brin is fantastic. Especially his Uplift books. Read Sundiver if you have the chance. Herbert and Pratchett are also pretty fantastic. The Dune series was probably one of the broadest concepts in SF. I always viewed Herbert as the Tolkien of SF (Thinking, of course, of SF and Fantasy as two different things).
It seems that most of my favourites these days have last names that begin with the letter 'B'; Brin, Bear, Barns, Brust, Bujold.
IMHO, as per
J:)
The Shrek DVD has at least one story development scene (Story boarding for an alternative beginning) and it would suggest that their process is similar to what you described above. The DVD is very good btw.
What may set Pixar apart (besides excellent tech and animators) is an a-class production team. I've heard mixed things about Monster Inc. so I'll see tonight whether or not they've kept their production values.
IMHO, as per
J:)
I just tried it. It's not too bad but I've got a lot of real estate.
thx.
There are several features of the new Civ that remind me of the original:
- Units to create tile improvements instead of the Public Works used in Civ II
- Full City screens detailing everything in one place
- Similar unit movement as in the first game (ie no linking units together into one force)
- No Zoom on the isometric view like the second had
- Critical message fly by like in the first rather than accumulate in a message queue like in the second
It seems to me that Sid discarded much of what was put into the second. Too bad, I liked a lot of those changes. That being said it's a very beautiful game.
IMHO, as per
J:)
I work for a bank. I come to work in shorts and sweatshirts. I have stress balls that I use as projectiles - with the company logo no less! I have a bust of Elvis with a baseball cap sitting on top of my shelving unit - when people are looking for me I just say 'go to 15, go to the west side and look for Elvis.' But this is all extraneous.
But when push comes to shove I'm there to do a job. Because it's a techie job it has incredible heights. At its best it's like they're paying me to do crosswords all day. And even at its worst I'm in a supportive atmosphere where getting things done is a team effort. This all happens in an established, conservative organization with 50,000+ people.
The moral: It's not the size or nature of the tech company, it's the work and the people around you. You can find good and bad working situations in any milieu.
And through my job I can now say - with a little exageration - that I could land the space shuttle only using stored procedures.:)
IMHO, as per
J:)
The further someone is from the protection of Earth's atmosphere the more they are exposed to Solar radiation. One of the big problems with brewing beer is to keep the yeast the same - not have it mutating on you.
It seems to me that brewing in space without complete shielding would leave the process defenceless against producing a truly vile beer.
I'd be more impressed if they did some distilling. Moon moonshine would be an accomplishment and the process is dangerous/more daring.:)
IMHO, as per
J:)
Well, imdb has an Entry for the movie. Updated as of July 13 and indicating release in 2002. The information looks pretty tentative - so much vaporware at this point.
That being said I find it interesting that this rumour is at more than one site.
You know, my mom might not have thrown out my little McDonalds Tron frisbees.....
I like the plot summary: "An ambitious hacker transports himself into cyberspace to pull off the ultimate hack."
J:)
You've seen the show now get The Book
J:)
The accent was pseudo Scottish. He makes a more valiant attempt - and a crueller one - in the role of the father in "So I Married an Axe Murderer."
Imagine the following with a Scottish accent: "Would ya look at the size of that kid's head! It's the size of a planetoid and it has it's own weather system! Looks like an orange on a toothpick!" and "I'm not kidding, that boy's head is like Sputnik; spherical but quite pointy at parts! Aye, now that was offsides, now wasn't it? He'll be crying himself to sleep tonight, on his huge pillow."