step 1. Stand up from that evil, malicious computer in your public library of deception and hatred.
step 2. Walk over to the other side of the library... you know, where those funny rectangular objects are all stacked together with the funny pieces of paper stuck between them.
step 3. Read as much sexually explicit material as you want. Read as much racially ignited material as you want. Child? You can still read it. Pervert? Go right on ahead, read away.
step 4. Realize that the medium does not change the standard. "Books with sex pictures and flag burnings are ok, but sex pictures and racists on the internet are not acceptable!"
step 5. Enjoy Canada. I'm sure you'll fit in quite nicely.
For 1 week. But I beat it, so why play it again? It took them 2 years to develop a game that I conquered in 1 week? I paid $50 for 1 week of entertainment? Ok, I played almost 15 hours, but that still translates to $3.34 per hour.
I'm sorry, but MMORPGs are a far better value for the customer, and make more money for the developers and producers. Although the Diablos and Pac-Mans and Contras and Unreals will survive, the MMORPGs are better, deeper, more meaningful games.
As a long-time EQ player (level 56 monk as main character, started June 2000), I'm going to have to disagree with your comparison of Diablo II and EverQuest.
EQ has been improved upon, balanced, debugged, secured, nerfed, and un-nerfed ever since its release. When it was first released, it was fun but unbalanced, buggy as hell, hacked inside out, and overcrowded. If you say EQ is balanced, you'd be right... but ask the players who played as Rogues before high damage weapons and strong armor became available for them. Ask them if they felt balanced compared to the Druids who solo'd their way to 50 in a matter of weeks, or if they felt balanced compared to the Necros who used their specialized spells and pets to solo monsters that other classes STILL can't solo at level 60.
The "wow! it's so huge!" factor wears off of EQ. It lasts for a good while, though. Long enough that you decide its worth the $10/month to keep on playing. Its not until you cancel your account and tally up 1 1/2 years of monthly payments, software (and expansion) purchases, and time invested (over 100 days on my main character alone, others I know have over 300 days on a single character), that you realize its just a big "press button, get cheeze" experiment which happens to have some REALLY nice environments and monsters and character abilities for the first 30 or so levels.
Level 30 takes twice as long to get through as any other normally scaled increase (they all take longer, but 30 is twice what it should be). Most people would quit at this point, but they've become immersed enough to see those shiny new toys that are "only 20 more levels". Yah, I forgot to mention that levels 35, 40, and 45 are also designated "hell levels" like 30.
Oh, but you want to see the dragons? You want to go on a dragon hunt with 30 of your friends? That sounds fun, right? Wrong. First you have to go get a whole bunch of additional armor and gear to improve your resistances for the type of breath the dragon has. If you don't, you die. If none of your 29 buddies does, you all die. Preparation is key, and it takes a LONG TIME and a pretty good amount of cash. Then you all have to schedule a time to kill the dragon, since everybody has their own life... hopefully, the dragon will actually BE THERE when you've scheduled your raid, although there's a good possibility that some other group will kill the dragon about 2 hours before you get there (did I mention the most accessible dragons only spawn once a week?). But lets assume the dragon is up... it will now take your designated "raid leader" approximately 3 hours to orchestrate all of the individual players into cohesive groups and organized with signaling through designated channels of communication that will transform all 30 of you into a single, well-oiled machine. During these 3 hours, people will crack jokes, get pissed off at others not paying attention, curse the fact that this is a waste of time. Finally when everything is placed, you bum-rush the dragon and have a 5-10 minute long fight which you MIGHT win if you're experienced. If you have never done this before, you will fail and have to start the 3 hours of prep over again, this time including a corpse retrieval from under the dragon's feet. Its a great adrenaline rush, but nothing different than what I can get by jogging for 30 minutes. And I don't have to prep for 3 hours when I go jogging.
So what's the point of EQ? Simple, figure out the system. Just like any complex system, it will take you about a year to figure out all the parameters, interfaces, levels, customizations, content and context, characters, and MOB AI. This is the draw for ALL of these types of games, and they are forced to make the system more and more complex in order to retain their customers.
So what happens once you lose that sense of newbieness? You realize that it really wasn't a magical realm and the other players weren't really your friends and the game wasn't really all that much fun.
Gimme Diablo II any day of the week. Sit down, kill a ton of monsters for 30 minutes, and quit. Sweet instant gratification, and no monthly charge!
person tried Win2k... liked it. Bought 2 copies for home use. Was happy with purchase. Sees no reason to upgrade to XP. Cost is a major factor when "NEED" is not a big deal. Cost is not so much a factor when you "NEED" something more reliable (he didn't mind the price of win2k cuz he thought it was worth it).
Although, I'd have to say that instead of "XP pro being nothing more than XP home with a few more add-ons" would better be described as follows: "XP Home nothing more than XP Pro with all the good stuff ripped out."
Also, if they're banking on businesses as the cash cow for XP, they're going to be in for a rather expensive wake-up call. Hell, I could be considered a MS ass-kisser by most people who post to/. and I absolutely LOATHE the idea of upgrading any of my clients to XP, and will actually recommend AGAINST it. (fyi, it has nothing to do with some lameass "boycott" website that looks strangely similar to/.)
128-bit hashed local file and directory encryption. "transparent" because its based on the user's access token that they receive when logging onto their PC. In other words, if you log on as a certain user, and encrypt a file, then you will be able to access that file at any time as long as you are logged on as that user. Log on as a different user, and try to access the encrypted file, and you'll be denied access.
The mechanism for encrypting files is simply a checkbox in an "advanced" menu. Only 2 button clicks deep, but far enough out of the way that most people won't accidentally enable encryption. Also, you can't encrypt files that have been compressed natively... Of course, the work around is that you use winzip or pkzip or winrar to compress your files, then encrypt them with the built-in encryption.
This is only local encryption! If you want encryption over a network, you've still got to use IPSec, Kerberos, VPN, etc.
All of these features are available in Windows 2000 and XP. In fact, just about every worth-while feature in XP is also found in 2000. Oh yah, you get to use WPA in XP! Another reason to upgrade to 2000 instead of XP if you're going to use Windows.
Although I will agree with you that 2000 to XP is mostly fluff, you're entirely off-base with your assumption of NT 4.0 to 2000/XP. Security is provided if you'll configure it on all 3 platforms, and Active Directory is a paradigm shift that improves functionality and scalability in 2000/XP. In short, you're making a large mistake by staying with NT 4.0 when 2000 has so much more to offer. XP and.NET will be bad news for licensing... you should get in on 2000 while there's still time. But hey, you've already made up your mind what you're going to do. Have fun with linux.
Agreed. The entire problem that the company in the article faced was NOT caused by their software selection or their NOS. It was caused because they did not employ an internal DIT-styled position or internal technical consultant. They have nobody in that company to explain the situation from a 3rd-person perspective. Its just a bunch of execs listening to MS FUD on one side and RedHat FUD on the other side.
Won't go with AD because the PDC/BDC model wasn't effective? Yah, that makes a ton of since... MS isn't actually trying to IMPROVE their scalability. They just want you to buy into a new technology. Bah, those stingy execs need to get a clue and hire some more knowledgable (and costly) IT people. The tiny increase in salary will get them a tremendous boost in productivity and save them a ton of money in the long run.
Eventually, RedHat will screw them over and they'll move on to another outsourced consulting company.
If you can't figure out how to "USE" a PC after somebody else has installed and configured all your software for you, then you don't deserve to be on the internet. Surfing the net is a privilege, not a right.
yes. If you think you "need" the internet in your kitchen instead of just going to your living room or bedroom or wherever your desktop PC is located, then a laptop will be purchased.
I think the article is great. I think it makes perfect sense to admins who are concerned with saving costs.
Of course, I'd probably be fired if I suggested that any of my company's clients "share" workstations. Since most of them are in the business industry, they use their desktop or notebook to help portray their "executive" image. Somehow, I just can't see too many of our clients giving up their laptop for a dummy terminal.
And lets not forget that usually businesses bring visitors through their offices... lots of those visitors are potential customers or partners. NONE of those potential customers or partners is going to appreciate the technical marvel and efficiency of running p75s all around the office. It hurts your image to leave that crap laying around in plain sight, which is why most business managers who want to be viewed as "cutting technology leaders" are so interested in having nice shiny new PCs all around the office. It helps them make more money, and that's what they're all about.
You can argue this til the cows come home, but you might as well be arguing with a brick wall. I've seen the point of view that business execs use, and they certainly aren't successful because they're stupid. On the same level, when's the last time you ever saw a manager show up at work who wasn't dressed to impress? They want P4s, spotless datacenters, and the newest Windows on their desktops. Do they mind if their network admin puts Linux on the servers? nope, because they EXPECT servers to look foreign to them (usually). Enough rambling, I hope I've at least made some of you techno-freaks realize that technology is only a means to an end, nothing more.
I'm sorry, but you're spouting pure crap at this point.
The government used to REQUIRE people to pay their fines by coming down to their location. While at this government building, you run into processes that check the validity of your payment before they mark off the payment as "paid". Usually, this process is a person who looks at how much you owe, and compares it to how much you are supposed to pay. If its not enough cash, they'll make other arrangements with you, or cart you off to jail if your payment is overdue.
Now see, it would be MUCH cheaper for the government to simply NOT PAY SOMEBODY to stand there, and put a sign up that says, "If you're here to pay your fine, just toss the amount into this box with all the other payments, and sign your name on this paper." Of course, nobody in their right mind would think of this as an adequate process for payment validation. If you're stupid enough to implement payments like this, nobody would want to prosecute any potential lawsuit, because its obvious you're going to lose.
Throw technology into the mix, and some morons think everything changes. IT DOESN'T! You still have the responsibility of making sure that somebody who pays their bill is paying the correct amount. If they try to pay the incorrect amount, it shouldn't accept it as a valid amount. JUST LIKE THE TECHNIQUE WITHOUT THEM NEW-FANGLED COMPUTER INTERNET THINGIES!
I think there's a huge market for technical to non-technical translations, but most people are too dumb to even realize what that is, or why its driven out of necessity more than they realize.
The parent thread for this reply should prove there is necessity. So to cnelzie, I have this to say: What you are saying sucks, and you should get a clue. Fucking lawyers, geez.
"This is fucking cool," he says. "This is better than 3G"--the high-speed network cell phone companies are hyping. "That's not even half the speed of what we're getting. And it works."
Its so true, but its also so ghetto. 3G, once implemented, will have multiple metropolis coverage instantaneously. I've heard about the air-port technology for public places... how does this differ from that idea?
Uhm, when you build a server, you don't use pricewatch.com to find your components. Also, you have no idea whether its a rackmount server or a standalone. It could be a 3U rackmount, or even a 1U rackmount... small components cost a bit more than a clunky ATX form factor. Go build a server or 200, then come back and troll.
IIRC, the only items that you can install on Windows that are dependent on IIS are distinctly labeled as a Server or a Service.
If you can find an application that is dependent on IIS and is not labeled as either of these, please reply.
Stupid users are a blight for both Windows and Linux users: On the Windows side, they don't understand that they have access to more of their PC than is necessary. On the Linux side, they won't take the time to configure their user account for additional privileges and label the system as "hard to learn".
The rest of your post was pretty incoherent, I think I'll just let it mean whatever you meant it to mean... or something.
They've only got until the end of the year to screw up anything else. If they aren't win2k certified by Dec 31, they're not MCSEs anymore. And for those of you who say that the win2k certification can't be THAT much harder than nt4, I have this to say to you: Don't knock it if you don't have it. Or more precisely, don't knock it if you can't take the time to get it yourself.
The sky ain't falling. You see, I live in a world where consumers actually have a clue. So if they are willing to buy a product that compromises their privacy for additional functionality, then they'll weigh the consequences and make a decision about whether or not the product is worth their time and loss of privacy.
Just because a company decides to tag all consumer devices, doesn't mean that its going to sell. Is someone going to MAKE you buy this product... or are you just whining because you "want it, just without the tracking." Then go make one without the tracking device, you bunch of whiny babies. If enough people agree with you, you'll be rich.
And here I thought/. tried to PROMOTE ingenuity. Guess I was mistaken, heh.
Seriously... if they try, they'll break it. If they have a signal amplifier, they can sniff their way in from the comfort of their home, not "sitting in a car outside the company gates for 24 hours" as we've been led to believe.
Connectionless-oriented networks will ALWAYS be more susceptible to attack for this reason; POE. One point of entry from any connection-oriented LAN (router) means that hackers have only one way to touch your network, assuming a decent NAT is setup, or a correctly configured firewall... and also assuming each user on the network doesn't have a static external IP address.
But if you're using a wireless LAN, none of those precautions matter. Once the encryption is broken, you've lost the benefits that a single POE can provide. Now they don't have to pass the NAT and get through the firewall... they can just slink in from some poweruser's account who decided "password" would be sufficient to authenticate him to the server. Hey, we shouldn't be too rough on the guy, at least he didn't leave it blank like some other users I've seen.
Of course, if you don't know how to setup a wireless LAN and don't even bother installing encryption, and decide DHCP will make everything so much easier, then all the hacker has to do is set himself to grab an available IP off the network, and we're back to guessing any user's password.
No, they still can't gain root access this way, but they can still do a ton of damage to company data that the user had access to.
Any company that values their data will keep building network infrastructures and pulling drops of CAT5 through the ceilings and walls.
I can't wait to see how Intel's internal wireless LAN works. It should be a good test.
Maybe the state wants to know what you're doing. After all, they're liable for you while you're at school. Go tell the sysadmin to change your password if you think someone else has it, and then just memorize it. If you want to hack or download pr0n, go to the frickin library or wait til you get home. You're in school to learn, not to screw around on the internet in your new lab all day.
And don't worry about the key logger. All they can do is spot checks or keyword alerts. If your school is 500 or more students, you're just another number. I'd be very surprised if they were wasting the storage space to log your keystrokes.
No, you can't type in "THIS COM OBJECT WONT WORK WITH YOUR DATABASE! WTF?", but with a little bit of effort, you can find EVERY error. It gets easier as you get used to it.
If all else fails, just call up MS and explain your error. I'm sure they'll be more than happy to explain all the "ins and outs" of your error, including causes and resolutions. No, you don't get their source code, but its their software. They support it, but they don't want you to hose it up.
Ok, somehow along the line, people have made some mistaken assumptions about the major NOSs out there. Everyone assumes that all sysadmins are a bunch of developers. This just isn't the case.
You want to know why I think Linux has done so well as a web server and not quite been fully accepted as a file server et al? IMO, its because web developers, coders, and "nerds" all have at least a small bit of experience with CLIs and basic programming principles. However, even though these people CAN be great administrators, they're usually quite cost prohibitive and/or developing stand-alone or web-embedded apps, scripts, etc. They're a minority; an elite level; driven to learn more; unable to just play admin for a mere 25-100 users.
However, there is entirely too much technology in the world for those people, the cream of the crop, to administer everything! So here comes your generic NTA-level Administrator. He doesn't understand what every DLL file is used for; doesn't have the faintest notion of what root means, and for all intents... really doesn't know what anybody would use a perl script for.
However, this level person has a different skill-set: Managing users, troubleshooting network problems, flying through wizards that he has memorized, and restructuring directories through his GUI. He knows most administrative functions, and performs them well. He has basic management abilities, and gives his opinions and consultations to his superiors freely, while explaining what he wants in a language they can understand. He does everything that is required to keep his workstations up and running, 24/7.
What is the difference between these 2 people? Well, I'd say that the first person's raw talent and efficiency is compensated by the second person's raw effectiveness and personability.
The short version of this mini-rant is... Developer=CS=Linux while Administrator=CIS=NT. They're most definitely not mutually exclusive, but experience has shown me which groups prefer which operating systems.
THAT is the reason that I think Linux "makes a great webserver"(as well as mail server, less Exchange), while "Windows is preferred in the mid-sized corporate environment"(where most admins just don't know enough about Linux).
And? That was also when serpents were winged, and one of the most beautiful creatures on the earth. Back before God condemned all of them to live their life on the ground, hated by all men, and forced to crawl on their bellies. Hey, it wasn't the serpent's fault that Satan decided to take the form of a serpent to tempt Adam and Eve. But God still punished all serpents... Why? To teach Adam and Eve the immediate repurcussions of their sin, along with the initiation of the first sacrifice of a snow-white lamb, one of the most innocent creatures in the world. They're all lessons to learn that are more important than the creature that is being used as the canvas.
"And Cain knew his wife." That's nice, but where the hell did she come from
From the many many children of Adam and Eve? Some people have 12 children in about 20 years of reproductive life, wouldn't it be safe to say that if Adam really lived to be 900+ years old that he could've had at least 500 children?
The "sons of God" copulated with the "daughters of men," and has sons who became "the mighty men of old, men of renown."
Thank you for proving my assumption. Stop taking everything so literally. Sons of God is a common reference to upstanding men all through the Bible, and daughters of men can be translated however you want, but it still means women. Actually, since the King James version of the Bible was translated during times where sex was bad, it seems like a very politically correct way of them saying, "Adam and Eve's children multiplied with each other."
"There were giants in the earth in those days."
Once again, a matter of translation. I'm betting the house that its a reference to dinosaurs... you know, before they invented Latin and derived all these words that we take for granted today. It didn't say giant men, that was taken care of back at "the mighty men of old, men of renown."
"God repents. Gen.6:6-7"
God was very sad that his creation had turned so wicked. It doesn't give details, but does say that every heard was selfish, and continually thinking evil thoughts. Not a nice place to live, I guess. Most people say "God failed, he's supposed to be perfect but created imperfect beings!" No, there were still a few righteous people on the world, as there have been before and after. This time it was Noah and his family. And God protected them since they believed, and gave them a new home without all the wicked people. He made humans special; He gave them the ability to worship Him or not worship Him. He gave something that he created the right to say "I don't want you involved in my life." Its a very normal base need for us as well. We definitely care more for the woman that loves us when she could have another, and we don't respect the man that is told she MUST love him.
Noah, the just and righteous. Gen.7:1
Noah, the drunk and naked. Gen.9:20-21
Yes, he is just and righteous and was a drunk who liked to get naked. Everybody has bad habits and makes mistakes. But God ignores those and looks at the heart. Lesson: Stop trying to be perfect; you can't. Instead, try to show compassion and empathy and generally be a nice person.
Lot [the just and righteous (2 Pet.2:7-8)] offers his daughters to a crowd of angel rapers. Gen.19:8
I don't see any contradictions here. Are you saying that he should have told a rowdy crowd to "get bent" and offered nothing? Or should he have offered the messengers from God as they wished? His faith was stronger than bloodlines. He was committed, and was trying to mediate with a mob. Additionally, the angels blinded and confused the mob when they became violent, which means that if they had accepted Lot's offer of his daughters, the angels more than likely would have not accepted it.
"Jacob goes in unto Leah by mistake. Gen.29:23, 25"
Translated: Sometimes you do alot of work and get screwed when you ask for payment, no pun intended.
As for the issues with Moses... If you don't believe the Bible in the first place, then how can you argue that God is not the most powerful in the "series of exchanges" between Moses and the Pharoah? Additionally, the Frog was one of the egyptian gods, so God was trying to teach yet another lesson to Pharoah. Also, after the egyptian mages performed their "trick", the Pharoah realized that the frogs from Moses were no trick, but the real thing. So he called Moses and pleaded with him to have his God take the frogs away! Quite a humiliating position to be in, having to ask a follower of another God to take all the mini-gods away because they were being such a nuisance.
God didn't TRY to kill Moses. He was THINKING about killing Moses, because Moses was not following one of the commands that God gave him, which was to circumcise all his children, so they could be known as children of God. (Additionally, they would have far fewer diseases and irritations to deal with in that climate, during a time when bathing was not one of the top priorities, saving his children the irritation of a bad scratch, and helping them maintain their fertility.) Moses' wife stepped in, circumcised their child, and therefore God was no longer upset.
Moses' referral to his uncircumcised lips means he stuttered. No, they didn't have the word stutter back then, but its quite obvious since right after that, God appoints his brother Aaron to do all the literal speaking for him.
If you've managed to reach this far, I can refute all the other examples you cite in each subtopic, but really don't have the time right now since its 2am and stuff. In the meantime, refute my refutations here and I'll counter-refute your refute of my refutations in the morning.
Nothing's stopping you from doing a better job. You go write an OS and then deal with morons who think that YOU should have written all the printer drivers for every printer ever created in the world, instead of the manufacturer. You go tell that mom-and-pop organization to hire you to scrap their windows-based computing and then install every application that is comparable to the ones they were previously using, on a Linux environment. You provide them all the training that they need to unlearn windows and learn Linux (and all those other apps). None of this is particularly complicated, but somehow it escapes 90% of every/. poster's mind that their time could be worth more if they were implementing Linux in the real world, instead of bashing Windows in the virtual one.
Performance on a decent server shouldn't be relative, since most terminal sessions require so few resources to run. As for performance, YOU'RE RUNNING THE SESSION OFF A SERVER INSTEAD OF A LOCAL PC! The only thing slowing it down could be a slow protocol or slow network connection. I'm sure the NSA can afford a few high-end servers and some gigabit ethernet drops.
Additionally, I'm sure there are alot of functional government machines that are probably pentium 200s or slower, with other crap hardware components. In those cases, they will notice a large improvement in performance when acting as a dumb terminal.
Of course, this is all assuming they're using the "locked down" server-based model for their top SEEKRIT data, and their "open" local client model for their other data. And I'm just not buying that, even with high encryption from client NIC to server NIC.
Slashdot Mirror
step 1. Stand up from that evil, malicious computer in your public library of deception and hatred.
step 2. Walk over to the other side of the library... you know, where those funny rectangular objects are all stacked together with the funny pieces of paper stuck between them.
step 3. Read as much sexually explicit material as you want. Read as much racially ignited material as you want. Child? You can still read it. Pervert? Go right on ahead, read away.
step 4. Realize that the medium does not change the standard. "Books with sex pictures and flag burnings are ok, but sex pictures and racists on the internet are not acceptable!"
step 5. Enjoy Canada. I'm sure you'll fit in quite nicely.
For 1 week. But I beat it, so why play it again? It took them 2 years to develop a game that I conquered in 1 week? I paid $50 for 1 week of entertainment? Ok, I played almost 15 hours, but that still translates to $3.34 per hour.
I'm sorry, but MMORPGs are a far better value for the customer, and make more money for the developers and producers. Although the Diablos and Pac-Mans and Contras and Unreals will survive, the MMORPGs are better, deeper, more meaningful games.
As a long-time EQ player (level 56 monk as main character, started June 2000), I'm going to have to disagree with your comparison of Diablo II and EverQuest.
EQ has been improved upon, balanced, debugged, secured, nerfed, and un-nerfed ever since its release. When it was first released, it was fun but unbalanced, buggy as hell, hacked inside out, and overcrowded. If you say EQ is balanced, you'd be right... but ask the players who played as Rogues before high damage weapons and strong armor became available for them. Ask them if they felt balanced compared to the Druids who solo'd their way to 50 in a matter of weeks, or if they felt balanced compared to the Necros who used their specialized spells and pets to solo monsters that other classes STILL can't solo at level 60.
The "wow! it's so huge!" factor wears off of EQ. It lasts for a good while, though. Long enough that you decide its worth the $10/month to keep on playing. Its not until you cancel your account and tally up 1 1/2 years of monthly payments, software (and expansion) purchases, and time invested (over 100 days on my main character alone, others I know have over 300 days on a single character), that you realize its just a big "press button, get cheeze" experiment which happens to have some REALLY nice environments and monsters and character abilities for the first 30 or so levels.
Level 30 takes twice as long to get through as any other normally scaled increase (they all take longer, but 30 is twice what it should be). Most people would quit at this point, but they've become immersed enough to see those shiny new toys that are "only 20 more levels". Yah, I forgot to mention that levels 35, 40, and 45 are also designated "hell levels" like 30.
Oh, but you want to see the dragons? You want to go on a dragon hunt with 30 of your friends? That sounds fun, right? Wrong. First you have to go get a whole bunch of additional armor and gear to improve your resistances for the type of breath the dragon has. If you don't, you die. If none of your 29 buddies does, you all die. Preparation is key, and it takes a LONG TIME and a pretty good amount of cash. Then you all have to schedule a time to kill the dragon, since everybody has their own life... hopefully, the dragon will actually BE THERE when you've scheduled your raid, although there's a good possibility that some other group will kill the dragon about 2 hours before you get there (did I mention the most accessible dragons only spawn once a week?). But lets assume the dragon is up... it will now take your designated "raid leader" approximately 3 hours to orchestrate all of the individual players into cohesive groups and organized with signaling through designated channels of communication that will transform all 30 of you into a single, well-oiled machine. During these 3 hours, people will crack jokes, get pissed off at others not paying attention, curse the fact that this is a waste of time. Finally when everything is placed, you bum-rush the dragon and have a 5-10 minute long fight which you MIGHT win if you're experienced. If you have never done this before, you will fail and have to start the 3 hours of prep over again, this time including a corpse retrieval from under the dragon's feet. Its a great adrenaline rush, but nothing different than what I can get by jogging for 30 minutes. And I don't have to prep for 3 hours when I go jogging.
So what's the point of EQ? Simple, figure out the system. Just like any complex system, it will take you about a year to figure out all the parameters, interfaces, levels, customizations, content and context, characters, and MOB AI. This is the draw for ALL of these types of games, and they are forced to make the system more and more complex in order to retain their customers.
So what happens once you lose that sense of newbieness? You realize that it really wasn't a magical realm and the other players weren't really your friends and the game wasn't really all that much fun.
Gimme Diablo II any day of the week. Sit down, kill a ton of monsters for 30 minutes, and quit. Sweet instant gratification, and no monthly charge!
person tried Win2k... liked it. Bought 2 copies for home use. Was happy with purchase. Sees no reason to upgrade to XP. Cost is a major factor when "NEED" is not a big deal. Cost is not so much a factor when you "NEED" something more reliable (he didn't mind the price of win2k cuz he thought it was worth it).
/. and I absolutely LOATHE the idea of upgrading any of my clients to XP, and will actually recommend AGAINST it. (fyi, it has nothing to do with some lameass "boycott" website that looks strangely similar to /.)
Although, I'd have to say that instead of "XP pro being nothing more than XP home with a few more add-ons" would better be described as follows: "XP Home nothing more than XP Pro with all the good stuff ripped out."
Also, if they're banking on businesses as the cash cow for XP, they're going to be in for a rather expensive wake-up call. Hell, I could be considered a MS ass-kisser by most people who post to
128-bit hashed local file and directory encryption. "transparent" because its based on the user's access token that they receive when logging onto their PC. In other words, if you log on as a certain user, and encrypt a file, then you will be able to access that file at any time as long as you are logged on as that user. Log on as a different user, and try to access the encrypted file, and you'll be denied access.
The mechanism for encrypting files is simply a checkbox in an "advanced" menu. Only 2 button clicks deep, but far enough out of the way that most people won't accidentally enable encryption. Also, you can't encrypt files that have been compressed natively... Of course, the work around is that you use winzip or pkzip or winrar to compress your files, then encrypt them with the built-in encryption.
This is only local encryption! If you want encryption over a network, you've still got to use IPSec, Kerberos, VPN, etc.
All of these features are available in Windows 2000 and XP. In fact, just about every worth-while feature in XP is also found in 2000. Oh yah, you get to use WPA in XP! Another reason to upgrade to 2000 instead of XP if you're going to use Windows.
Although I will agree with you that 2000 to XP is mostly fluff, you're entirely off-base with your assumption of NT 4.0 to 2000/XP. Security is provided if you'll configure it on all 3 platforms, and Active Directory is a paradigm shift that improves functionality and scalability in 2000/XP. In short, you're making a large mistake by staying with NT 4.0 when 2000 has so much more to offer. XP and .NET will be bad news for licensing... you should get in on 2000 while there's still time. But hey, you've already made up your mind what you're going to do. Have fun with linux.
Agreed. The entire problem that the company in the article faced was NOT caused by their software selection or their NOS. It was caused because they did not employ an internal DIT-styled position or internal technical consultant. They have nobody in that company to explain the situation from a 3rd-person perspective. Its just a bunch of execs listening to MS FUD on one side and RedHat FUD on the other side.
Won't go with AD because the PDC/BDC model wasn't effective? Yah, that makes a ton of since... MS isn't actually trying to IMPROVE their scalability. They just want you to buy into a new technology. Bah, those stingy execs need to get a clue and hire some more knowledgable (and costly) IT people. The tiny increase in salary will get them a tremendous boost in productivity and save them a ton of money in the long run.
Eventually, RedHat will screw them over and they'll move on to another outsourced consulting company.
If you can't figure out how to "USE" a PC after somebody else has installed and configured all your software for you, then you don't deserve to be on the internet. Surfing the net is a privilege, not a right.
your grandmother also could probably care less about having the internet in HER kitchen.
yes. If you think you "need" the internet in your kitchen instead of just going to your living room or bedroom or wherever your desktop PC is located, then a laptop will be purchased.
I think the article is great. I think it makes perfect sense to admins who are concerned with saving costs.
Of course, I'd probably be fired if I suggested that any of my company's clients "share" workstations. Since most of them are in the business industry, they use their desktop or notebook to help portray their "executive" image. Somehow, I just can't see too many of our clients giving up their laptop for a dummy terminal.
And lets not forget that usually businesses bring visitors through their offices... lots of those visitors are potential customers or partners. NONE of those potential customers or partners is going to appreciate the technical marvel and efficiency of running p75s all around the office. It hurts your image to leave that crap laying around in plain sight, which is why most business managers who want to be viewed as "cutting technology leaders" are so interested in having nice shiny new PCs all around the office. It helps them make more money, and that's what they're all about.
You can argue this til the cows come home, but you might as well be arguing with a brick wall. I've seen the point of view that business execs use, and they certainly aren't successful because they're stupid. On the same level, when's the last time you ever saw a manager show up at work who wasn't dressed to impress? They want P4s, spotless datacenters, and the newest Windows on their desktops. Do they mind if their network admin puts Linux on the servers? nope, because they EXPECT servers to look foreign to them (usually). Enough rambling, I hope I've at least made some of you techno-freaks realize that technology is only a means to an end, nothing more.
I'm sorry, but you're spouting pure crap at this point.
The government used to REQUIRE people to pay their fines by coming down to their location. While at this government building, you run into processes that check the validity of your payment before they mark off the payment as "paid". Usually, this process is a person who looks at how much you owe, and compares it to how much you are supposed to pay. If its not enough cash, they'll make other arrangements with you, or cart you off to jail if your payment is overdue.
Now see, it would be MUCH cheaper for the government to simply NOT PAY SOMEBODY to stand there, and put a sign up that says, "If you're here to pay your fine, just toss the amount into this box with all the other payments, and sign your name on this paper." Of course, nobody in their right mind would think of this as an adequate process for payment validation. If you're stupid enough to implement payments like this, nobody would want to prosecute any potential lawsuit, because its obvious you're going to lose.
Throw technology into the mix, and some morons think everything changes. IT DOESN'T! You still have the responsibility of making sure that somebody who pays their bill is paying the correct amount. If they try to pay the incorrect amount, it shouldn't accept it as a valid amount. JUST LIKE THE TECHNIQUE WITHOUT THEM NEW-FANGLED COMPUTER INTERNET THINGIES!
I think there's a huge market for technical to non-technical translations, but most people are too dumb to even realize what that is, or why its driven out of necessity more than they realize.
The parent thread for this reply should prove there is necessity. So to cnelzie, I have this to say: What you are saying sucks, and you should get a clue. Fucking lawyers, geez.
"This is fucking cool," he says. "This is better than 3G"--the high-speed network cell phone companies are hyping. "That's not even half the speed of what we're getting. And it works."
Its so true, but its also so ghetto. 3G, once implemented, will have multiple metropolis coverage instantaneously. I've heard about the air-port technology for public places... how does this differ from that idea?
Uhm, when you build a server, you don't use pricewatch.com to find your components. Also, you have no idea whether its a rackmount server or a standalone. It could be a 3U rackmount, or even a 1U rackmount... small components cost a bit more than a clunky ATX form factor. Go build a server or 200, then come back and troll.
IIRC, the only items that you can install on Windows that are dependent on IIS are distinctly labeled as a Server or a Service.
If you can find an application that is dependent on IIS and is not labeled as either of these, please reply.
Stupid users are a blight for both Windows and Linux users: On the Windows side, they don't understand that they have access to more of their PC than is necessary. On the Linux side, they won't take the time to configure their user account for additional privileges and label the system as "hard to learn".
The rest of your post was pretty incoherent, I think I'll just let it mean whatever you meant it to mean... or something.
Meorah
They've only got until the end of the year to screw up anything else. If they aren't win2k certified by Dec 31, they're not MCSEs anymore. And for those of you who say that the win2k certification can't be THAT much harder than nt4, I have this to say to you: Don't knock it if you don't have it. Or more precisely, don't knock it if you can't take the time to get it yourself.
The sky ain't falling. You see, I live in a world where consumers actually have a clue. So if they are willing to buy a product that compromises their privacy for additional functionality, then they'll weigh the consequences and make a decision about whether or not the product is worth their time and loss of privacy.
/. tried to PROMOTE ingenuity. Guess I was mistaken, heh.
Just because a company decides to tag all consumer devices, doesn't mean that its going to sell. Is someone going to MAKE you buy this product... or are you just whining because you "want it, just without the tracking." Then go make one without the tracking device, you bunch of whiny babies. If enough people agree with you, you'll be rich.
And here I thought
Protector of Capitalist views,
Seriously... if they try, they'll break it. If they have a signal amplifier, they can sniff their way in from the comfort of their home, not "sitting in a car outside the company gates for 24 hours" as we've been led to believe.
Connectionless-oriented networks will ALWAYS be more susceptible to attack for this reason; POE. One point of entry from any connection-oriented LAN (router) means that hackers have only one way to touch your network, assuming a decent NAT is setup, or a correctly configured firewall... and also assuming each user on the network doesn't have a static external IP address.
But if you're using a wireless LAN, none of those precautions matter. Once the encryption is broken, you've lost the benefits that a single POE can provide. Now they don't have to pass the NAT and get through the firewall... they can just slink in from some poweruser's account who decided "password" would be sufficient to authenticate him to the server. Hey, we shouldn't be too rough on the guy, at least he didn't leave it blank like some other users I've seen.
Of course, if you don't know how to setup a wireless LAN and don't even bother installing encryption, and decide DHCP will make everything so much easier, then all the hacker has to do is set himself to grab an available IP off the network, and we're back to guessing any user's password.
No, they still can't gain root access this way, but they can still do a ton of damage to company data that the user had access to.
Any company that values their data will keep building network infrastructures and pulling drops of CAT5 through the ceilings and walls.
I can't wait to see how Intel's internal wireless LAN works. It should be a good test.
Protector of Capitalist views,
Maybe the state wants to know what you're doing. After all, they're liable for you while you're at school. Go tell the sysadmin to change your password if you think someone else has it, and then just memorize it. If you want to hack or download pr0n, go to the frickin library or wait til you get home. You're in school to learn, not to screw around on the internet in your new lab all day.
And don't worry about the key logger. All they can do is spot checks or keyword alerts. If your school is 500 or more students, you're just another number. I'd be very surprised if they were wasting the storage space to log your keystrokes.
Protector of Capitalist views,
Technet and Knowledge Base.
No, you can't type in "THIS COM OBJECT WONT WORK WITH YOUR DATABASE! WTF?", but with a little bit of effort, you can find EVERY error. It gets easier as you get used to it.
If all else fails, just call up MS and explain your error. I'm sure they'll be more than happy to explain all the "ins and outs" of your error, including causes and resolutions. No, you don't get their source code, but its their software. They support it, but they don't want you to hose it up.
Protector of Capitalist views,
Ok, somehow along the line, people have made some mistaken assumptions about the major NOSs out there. Everyone assumes that all sysadmins are a bunch of developers. This just isn't the case.
You want to know why I think Linux has done so well as a web server and not quite been fully accepted as a file server et al? IMO, its because web developers, coders, and "nerds" all have at least a small bit of experience with CLIs and basic programming principles. However, even though these people CAN be great administrators, they're usually quite cost prohibitive and/or developing stand-alone or web-embedded apps, scripts, etc. They're a minority; an elite level; driven to learn more; unable to just play admin for a mere 25-100 users.
However, there is entirely too much technology in the world for those people, the cream of the crop, to administer everything! So here comes your generic NTA-level Administrator. He doesn't understand what every DLL file is used for; doesn't have the faintest notion of what root means, and for all intents... really doesn't know what anybody would use a perl script for.
However, this level person has a different skill-set: Managing users, troubleshooting network problems, flying through wizards that he has memorized, and restructuring directories through his GUI. He knows most administrative functions, and performs them well. He has basic management abilities, and gives his opinions and consultations to his superiors freely, while explaining what he wants in a language they can understand. He does everything that is required to keep his workstations up and running, 24/7.
What is the difference between these 2 people? Well, I'd say that the first person's raw talent and efficiency is compensated by the second person's raw effectiveness and personability.
The short version of this mini-rant is... Developer=CS=Linux while Administrator=CIS=NT. They're most definitely not mutually exclusive, but experience has shown me which groups prefer which operating systems.
THAT is the reason that I think Linux "makes a great webserver"(as well as mail server, less Exchange), while "Windows is preferred in the mid-sized corporate environment"(where most admins just don't know enough about Linux).
Protector of Capitalist views,
God's clever, talking serpent. Gen.3:1
And? That was also when serpents were winged, and one of the most beautiful creatures on the earth. Back before God condemned all of them to live their life on the ground, hated by all men, and forced to crawl on their bellies. Hey, it wasn't the serpent's fault that Satan decided to take the form of a serpent to tempt Adam and Eve. But God still punished all serpents... Why? To teach Adam and Eve the immediate repurcussions of their sin, along with the initiation of the first sacrifice of a snow-white lamb, one of the most innocent creatures in the world. They're all lessons to learn that are more important than the creature that is being used as the canvas.
"And Cain knew his wife." That's nice, but where the hell did she come from
From the many many children of Adam and Eve? Some people have 12 children in about 20 years of reproductive life, wouldn't it be safe to say that if Adam really lived to be 900+ years old that he could've had at least 500 children?
The "sons of God" copulated with the "daughters of men," and has sons who became "the mighty men of old, men of renown."
Thank you for proving my assumption. Stop taking everything so literally. Sons of God is a common reference to upstanding men all through the Bible, and daughters of men can be translated however you want, but it still means women. Actually, since the King James version of the Bible was translated during times where sex was bad, it seems like a very politically correct way of them saying, "Adam and Eve's children multiplied with each other."
"There were giants in the earth in those days."
Once again, a matter of translation. I'm betting the house that its a reference to dinosaurs... you know, before they invented Latin and derived all these words that we take for granted today. It didn't say giant men, that was taken care of back at "the mighty men of old, men of renown."
"God repents. Gen.6:6-7"
God was very sad that his creation had turned so wicked. It doesn't give details, but does say that every heard was selfish, and continually thinking evil thoughts. Not a nice place to live, I guess. Most people say "God failed, he's supposed to be perfect but created imperfect beings!" No, there were still a few righteous people on the world, as there have been before and after. This time it was Noah and his family. And God protected them since they believed, and gave them a new home without all the wicked people. He made humans special; He gave them the ability to worship Him or not worship Him. He gave something that he created the right to say "I don't want you involved in my life." Its a very normal base need for us as well. We definitely care more for the woman that loves us when she could have another, and we don't respect the man that is told she MUST love him.
Noah, the just and righteous. Gen.7:1
Noah, the drunk and naked. Gen.9:20-21
Yes, he is just and righteous and was a drunk who liked to get naked. Everybody has bad habits and makes mistakes. But God ignores those and looks at the heart. Lesson: Stop trying to be perfect; you can't. Instead, try to show compassion and empathy and generally be a nice person.
Lot [the just and righteous (2 Pet.2:7-8)] offers his daughters to a crowd of angel rapers. Gen.19:8
I don't see any contradictions here. Are you saying that he should have told a rowdy crowd to "get bent" and offered nothing? Or should he have offered the messengers from God as they wished? His faith was stronger than bloodlines. He was committed, and was trying to mediate with a mob. Additionally, the angels blinded and confused the mob when they became violent, which means that if they had accepted Lot's offer of his daughters, the angels more than likely would have not accepted it.
"Jacob goes in unto Leah by mistake. Gen.29:23, 25"
Translated: Sometimes you do alot of work and get screwed when you ask for payment, no pun intended.
As for the issues with Moses... If you don't believe the Bible in the first place, then how can you argue that God is not the most powerful in the "series of exchanges" between Moses and the Pharoah? Additionally, the Frog was one of the egyptian gods, so God was trying to teach yet another lesson to Pharoah. Also, after the egyptian mages performed their "trick", the Pharoah realized that the frogs from Moses were no trick, but the real thing. So he called Moses and pleaded with him to have his God take the frogs away! Quite a humiliating position to be in, having to ask a follower of another God to take all the mini-gods away because they were being such a nuisance.
God didn't TRY to kill Moses. He was THINKING about killing Moses, because Moses was not following one of the commands that God gave him, which was to circumcise all his children, so they could be known as children of God. (Additionally, they would have far fewer diseases and irritations to deal with in that climate, during a time when bathing was not one of the top priorities, saving his children the irritation of a bad scratch, and helping them maintain their fertility.) Moses' wife stepped in, circumcised their child, and therefore God was no longer upset.
Moses' referral to his uncircumcised lips means he stuttered. No, they didn't have the word stutter back then, but its quite obvious since right after that, God appoints his brother Aaron to do all the literal speaking for him.
If you've managed to reach this far, I can refute all the other examples you cite in each subtopic, but really don't have the time right now since its 2am and stuff. In the meantime, refute my refutations here and I'll counter-refute your refute of my refutations in the morning.
Protector of Capitalist views,
Nothing's stopping you from doing a better job. You go write an OS and then deal with morons who think that YOU should have written all the printer drivers for every printer ever created in the world, instead of the manufacturer. You go tell that mom-and-pop organization to hire you to scrap their windows-based computing and then install every application that is comparable to the ones they were previously using, on a Linux environment. You provide them all the training that they need to unlearn windows and learn Linux (and all those other apps). None of this is particularly complicated, but somehow it escapes 90% of every /. poster's mind that their time could be worth more if they were implementing Linux in the real world, instead of bashing Windows in the virtual one.
Protector of Capitalist views,
They can do whatever the hell they want. Mostly because no one can stop them... but to you and me, "because its a matter of national security."
Protector of Capitalist views,
Performance on a decent server shouldn't be relative, since most terminal sessions require so few resources to run. As for performance, YOU'RE RUNNING THE SESSION OFF A SERVER INSTEAD OF A LOCAL PC! The only thing slowing it down could be a slow protocol or slow network connection. I'm sure the NSA can afford a few high-end servers and some gigabit ethernet drops.
Additionally, I'm sure there are alot of functional government machines that are probably pentium 200s or slower, with other crap hardware components. In those cases, they will notice a large improvement in performance when acting as a dumb terminal.
Of course, this is all assuming they're using the "locked down" server-based model for their top SEEKRIT data, and their "open" local client model for their other data. And I'm just not buying that, even with high encryption from client NIC to server NIC.
Protector of Capitalist views,