While I am not exactly happy with some of the practices of the HD industry, i would like to mention that many hard drives since the ST508 MFM/RLL days have had bad sectors "out of the box" Once upon a time you had to low level format the drive and enter in the map of sectors manually (usually found on a sticker on the drive). Now they have just auto-sensed it and automated the mapping process. However, those drives didn't have the high error rate you see today, it was usually only a few kb out of a 20-60mb drive.
It's just like last nite's South Park, where the kids were producing TV shows. Some kid came up with "Animals Close-up with a wide-angle lens." When that became old he released "Animals Close-up with a wide angle lens.. with hats" and everyone praised it for being a totally new and exciting show.
One word of warning when using Wireless devices such as keyboard and mouse. Be careful when using them in an area where more than one person may have wireless devices.
In my college we had a case where a student was "magically" seeing someone typing on her computer, when in reality it was a girl about 50 feet down the hall who's wireless keyboard signal was being picked up by this girl's wireless keyboard receiver. (Of course, how that signal made it thru about 7 cinder block dorm room walls is still beyond me!)
On a related note, you also have to worry about the security issues - a case like the above demonstrates how easy it would be to sniff a wireless keyboard signal and find out what you are typing.
My first MP3 was of an Anime song, which supports the theory that MP3's encourage some CD sales! I had downloaded some low-quality tracks from an Anime CD, which led me to order the CD only a couple weeks later! (And helped get me into true japanese anime, compared to dubbed anime - i found the japanese music to be far superior)
Maybe this one could make it into a slashdot poll....
What was your favorite BBS software, either from a user or sysop perspective? I personally frequented many PCBoard and Telegard BBS's, as well as being sysop of a PCBoard BBS, but there are others that i can't remember the names of the software of...
The one thing i miss most about my BBS days are the sense of a Local Community. It was always great to have everyone from the BBS's get together once a month to meet face to face, it really personalized the whole experience, and you got to know people beyond just what you knew about them online. Some of my best friends to this day are friends from my area that I met on a local BBS and we stay in touch to this very day. (One i just saw this week for the first time since the BBS days disappeared) Email and IM have been instrumental for me in keeping those BBS friendships alive over the years as people have moved and gone to school, etc.
Even with Fidonet, our local net 2613 was like it's own small community, with everyone from my area contributing to it, plus our local net had the bandwidth advantage of being able to download from the fidonet backbone via the internet from a local university.:) I also loved FidoNet because i could for example read the STTNG echo and get all of the upcoming episode lists for Star Trek and impress my friends:)
One way one of my co-workers played a similar prank on me was to change my mouse settings. They reversed my mouse buttons and turned sticky keys on, so that when i clicked the mouse it would act like i was dragging.
I would definitely have to say almost any sound in the original Castle Wolfenstein is one of the most recognizeable. I heard a MOD/IT/S3M years ago that was literally a small melody with all the sounds from Wolf3D spread throughout it at different speeds/pitches - anyone know where i might be able to find that? One of the coolest remixes of game SFX i have ever heard. (Last time i had heard it was back in the mid 90's when i downloaded it from a BBS on my 486)
Star Control I/II definitely had one of the most unique set of sounds and Soundtracks. I still have days where the hyperspace theme runs thru my head...
First of all, use software that is more secure that microsoft's.
Secondly, and more seriously, email providers should have virus scanning on their servers, so even if someone out there is infected, their virus messages are cleaned before the users see it, which will help keep the infection from spreading.
Finally, all end users should be following safe computing practices. This includes making sure that you have up to date virus protection as well as being smart about your email, such as not opening mysterious messages/attachments.
One great puzzle game that I have fallen in love with is Deadly Rooms of Death (DROD) (can be found at http://www.drod.net). It features simple gameplay with some challenging puzzles. It is one of those games i can spend an hour on, leave it, then come back to it after some sleep and figure out another puzzle. Definitely one of my more favorite games out there. I was able to pick up the game for the first time and start playing and learning the game without any problem.
Another set of great games, like drod, that i have loved over the years are the games in the Kroz series, as well as the ZZT games, they featured simple gameplay that anyone could learn quickly, yet offer enough of a challenge for the experienced gamer.
I have had a similar experience. I used to use a set of alkalines that i bought to run an mp3 player, and after every charge my play time was less and less. (Now i can barely keep them playing an hour)
One interesting thing to note that side-steps this issue a bit is that the VPN client that comes with Windows XP automatically disconnects when you switch users. (i.e. user1 logs in, connects to vpn. When user2 comes along and attempts to do a fast user switch, user1's VPN is disconnected.)
Same here, i don't think anybody ever made a more reliable drive than the old ST-225, so many people i know never had a single failure with that drive. about a decade ago i used to use a ST-225 and an ST-277R (65mb RLL Drive).
I've had pretty good luck in the past with the seagate IDE drives as well.
Western Digital: I've owned several western digital drives over the past decade, and none of them have ever failed me. At my workplace, I've found old WD drives in Pentium I PC's that have been in service for 6+ years without a single problem.
Maxtor: I've been plagued with problems from maxtor drives over the years. From one original Maxtor i've bought (and it's RMA replacements), i had 2 that had spindle motors that became abnormally loud, one catastrophically fail (IDE Auto-detect had problems even detecting what the drive was), and then the last one i had started failing (with SMART warning, at least) about 5 days after my warranty period ended.
Seagate: I've never used any of the newer seagate offerings, but my older seagate drives lasted for years before i replaced them with higher capacity drives.
Quantum: Most of the quantum drives (standard 3.5" form factor) i have encountered at my workplace have performed reliabily over the years, recently however we've started seeing a bunch of them failing, but considering most of them are 4+ years old, it's not a bad track record. I recently had a quantum bigfoot die last fall, but even that was close to 4 years old also. (Just what exactly prompted quantum to make this strange hybrid form factor bigfoot anyways?)
IBM: The older drives were great, and I used to love their service, i would contact their support and they would do an advanced RMA with no problem. However on my most recent experience with them in Fall '02 getting an RMA on a drive less than a year old, they told me they couldn't Advance RMA me a drive, i would have to use standard RMA, which including shipping times, would take almost a month, which was quite unacceptable. Not to mention how their newer drives had a problem with failures.
One of the other big offenders when it comes to spam is Exchange if the admin doesn't turn off anonymous LDAP. With anonymous LDAP, a harvester can easily harvest a list of every email address on that server.
I've seen a few PC's affected by New.net, although it was really hard to trace, as the PC could access network neighborhood but couldn't access anything else. When we finally noticed it and removed it, the PC worked like normal again...
We used to have no problems with Dell, but in recent weeks when we have called, it sounds like they're outsourcing their Tech Support to India now, and sometimes the people on the phones can barely speak understandable english... Last time I tried calling i got someone who told me i was in the wrong calling queue somehow (but i had pressed all the correct numbers), and told me this only AFTER she got all of my customer information. She said she'd transfer me to the right department, but i just ended up back at the main menu. We used to be able to call up and say "Our ZIP drive went bad, we replaced it with a ZIP from another Dell and it worked fine" and they would send us a new one, now they're making us jump thru 10 hoops to get replacement parts, and we don't even bother with their phone support anymore, we just email since when we try to call, we also usually have been put on hold for at least 45 minutes... Dell's Support used to be pretty good, and now it's just terrible. Oh yeah, and i forgot to mention once when I called and asked for a replacement zip drive, they send a replacement CDROM instead...
Where I am working now, the college is totally closed until after new years, so our department has time off, the only reason we need to come in is for an emergency (like network failure or server problems)...
My school just bought a new sun blade 100 to replace an old SparcStation LX (yes, i know, it's ancient)that we were using as a computer science server. (It used to be a file server a number of years ago for a bunch of IPC workstations that have long since been taken out of commission) We just recieved it, and I like the upgradibility options compared to an Ultra 5 we just bought too, since in order to add a 2nd HD to the ultra, we had to remove the floppy, while with the blade we could keep the floppy. The little tray for the HD's pulled out easily, and the cables were just the right size and neatly labeled, keeping with Sun's standard practices. The only thing I notice however is that the CDROM is on the same channel as the primary HD... I'm assuming they assume that the CDROM won't be used much, or else that would slow the system down. If the CDROM is used sparsely, then it does make sense, since it will keep the HD's on seperate channels.
Another nice feature I like is that the Blade comes with USB Keyboard and mouse, compared to the sun interface for keyboard/mouse for other systems. Now only if they could ship a keyboard that has a "normal" backspace key! (they still put the backquote where the normal backspace would go)
The default Solaris configuration that comes with the system leaves much to be desired (especially partition-wise), so we're going to be formatting it and re-installing solaris from scratch with our own partition scheme. We ordered our Blade with 256mb of ram also (they normally ship with 128)
Overall, it appears to be nice, although I haven't been able to use it for very long, so i can't make any substantial evaluations of it.
I do agree with that idea that it would be easier to go from C++ to Java, but i also found it somewhat difficult to make the switch. For basic programs (Hello world) it was easy, but when trying to deal with more advanced data structures i found java more cumbersome. At my school we start with C++ (intro programming), then add a tiny bit of C to it (data scructures), then Assembly. Only after all that do we touch on Java and straight C.
Also, I think it's better to teach C++ first since you learn all of the harder things first that Java doesn't make you worry about, such as pointer arithmetic, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
While I am not exactly happy with some of the practices of the HD industry, i would like to mention that many hard drives since the ST508 MFM/RLL days have had bad sectors "out of the box" Once upon a time you had to low level format the drive and enter in the map of sectors manually (usually found on a sticker on the drive). Now they have just auto-sensed it and automated the mapping process. However, those drives didn't have the high error rate you see today, it was usually only a few kb out of a 20-60mb drive.
It's just like last nite's South Park, where the kids were producing TV shows. Some kid came up with "Animals Close-up with a wide-angle lens." When that became old he released "Animals Close-up with a wide angle lens.. with hats" and everyone praised it for being a totally new and exciting show.
One word of warning when using Wireless devices such as keyboard and mouse. Be careful when using them in an area where more than one person may have wireless devices.
In my college we had a case where a student was "magically" seeing someone typing on her computer, when in reality it was a girl about 50 feet down the hall who's wireless keyboard signal was being picked up by this girl's wireless keyboard receiver. (Of course, how that signal made it thru about 7 cinder block dorm room walls is still beyond me!)
On a related note, you also have to worry about the security issues - a case like the above demonstrates how easy it would be to sniff a wireless keyboard signal and find out what you are typing.
My first MP3 was of an Anime song, which supports the theory that MP3's encourage some CD sales! I had downloaded some low-quality tracks from an Anime CD, which led me to order the CD only a couple weeks later! (And helped get me into true japanese anime, compared to dubbed anime - i found the japanese music to be far superior)
Maybe this one could make it into a slashdot poll....
What was your favorite BBS software, either from a user or sysop perspective? I personally frequented many PCBoard and Telegard BBS's, as well as being sysop of a PCBoard BBS, but there are others that i can't remember the names of the software of...
The one thing i miss most about my BBS days are the sense of a Local Community. It was always great to have everyone from the BBS's get together once a month to meet face to face, it really personalized the whole experience, and you got to know people beyond just what you knew about them online. Some of my best friends to this day are friends from my area that I met on a local BBS and we stay in touch to this very day. (One i just saw this week for the first time since the BBS days disappeared) Email and IM have been instrumental for me in keeping those BBS friendships alive over the years as people have moved and gone to school, etc.
:) I also loved FidoNet because i could for example read the STTNG echo and get all of the upcoming episode lists for Star Trek and impress my friends :)
Even with Fidonet, our local net 2613 was like it's own small community, with everyone from my area contributing to it, plus our local net had the bandwidth advantage of being able to download from the fidonet backbone via the internet from a local university.
Looks like it's been slashdotted...
Just great, now i can count on getting the latest virus/worm of the week in my BIOS now.
One way one of my co-workers played a similar prank on me was to change my mouse settings. They reversed my mouse buttons and turned sticky keys on, so that when i clicked the mouse it would act like i was dragging.
I would definitely have to say almost any sound in the original Castle Wolfenstein is one of the most recognizeable. I heard a MOD/IT/S3M years ago that was literally a small melody with all the sounds from Wolf3D spread throughout it at different speeds/pitches - anyone know where i might be able to find that? One of the coolest remixes of game SFX i have ever heard. (Last time i had heard it was back in the mid 90's when i downloaded it from a BBS on my 486)
Star Control I/II definitely had one of the most unique set of sounds and Soundtracks. I still have days where the hyperspace theme runs thru my head...
First of all, use software that is more secure that microsoft's.
Secondly, and more seriously, email providers should have virus scanning on their servers, so even if someone out there is infected, their virus messages are cleaned before the users see it, which will help keep the infection from spreading.
Finally, all end users should be following safe computing practices. This includes making sure that you have up to date virus protection as well as being smart about your email, such as not opening mysterious messages/attachments.
One great puzzle game that I have fallen in love with is Deadly Rooms of Death (DROD) (can be found at http://www.drod.net). It features simple gameplay with some challenging puzzles. It is one of those games i can spend an hour on, leave it, then come back to it after some sleep and figure out another puzzle. Definitely one of my more favorite games out there. I was able to pick up the game for the first time and start playing and learning the game without any problem.
Another set of great games, like drod, that i have loved over the years are the games in the Kroz series, as well as the ZZT games, they featured simple gameplay that anyone could learn quickly, yet offer enough of a challenge for the experienced gamer.
I have had a similar experience. I used to use a set of alkalines that i bought to run an mp3 player, and after every charge my play time was less and less. (Now i can barely keep them playing an hour)
One interesting thing to note that side-steps this issue a bit is that the VPN client that comes with Windows XP automatically disconnects when you switch users. (i.e. user1 logs in, connects to vpn. When user2 comes along and attempts to do a fast user switch, user1's VPN is disconnected.)
Same here, i don't think anybody ever made a more reliable drive than the old ST-225, so many people i know never had a single failure with that drive. about a decade ago i used to use a ST-225 and an ST-277R (65mb RLL Drive).
I've had pretty good luck in the past with the seagate IDE drives as well.
Western Digital: I've owned several western digital drives over the past decade, and none of them have ever failed me. At my workplace, I've found old WD drives in Pentium I PC's that have been in service for 6+ years without a single problem.
Maxtor: I've been plagued with problems from maxtor drives over the years. From one original Maxtor i've bought (and it's RMA replacements), i had 2 that had spindle motors that became abnormally loud, one catastrophically fail (IDE Auto-detect had problems even detecting what the drive was), and then the last one i had started failing (with SMART warning, at least) about 5 days after my warranty period ended.
Seagate: I've never used any of the newer seagate offerings, but my older seagate drives lasted for years before i replaced them with higher capacity drives.
Quantum: Most of the quantum drives (standard 3.5" form factor) i have encountered at my workplace have performed reliabily over the years, recently however we've started seeing a bunch of them failing, but considering most of them are 4+ years old, it's not a bad track record. I recently had a quantum bigfoot die last fall, but even that was close to 4 years old also. (Just what exactly prompted quantum to make this strange hybrid form factor bigfoot anyways?)
IBM: The older drives were great, and I used to love their service, i would contact their support and they would do an advanced RMA with no problem. However on my most recent experience with them in Fall '02 getting an RMA on a drive less than a year old, they told me they couldn't Advance RMA me a drive, i would have to use standard RMA, which including shipping times, would take almost a month, which was quite unacceptable. Not to mention how their newer drives had a problem with failures.
One of the other big offenders when it comes to spam is Exchange if the admin doesn't turn off anonymous LDAP. With anonymous LDAP, a harvester can easily harvest a list of every email address on that server.
I've seen a few PC's affected by New.net, although it was really hard to trace, as the PC could access network neighborhood but couldn't access anything else. When we finally noticed it and removed it, the PC worked like normal again...
We used to have no problems with Dell, but in recent weeks when we have called, it sounds like they're outsourcing their Tech Support to India now, and sometimes the people on the phones can barely speak understandable english... Last time I tried calling i got someone who told me i was in the wrong calling queue somehow (but i had pressed all the correct numbers), and told me this only AFTER she got all of my customer information. She said she'd transfer me to the right department, but i just ended up back at the main menu. We used to be able to call up and say "Our ZIP drive went bad, we replaced it with a ZIP from another Dell and it worked fine" and they would send us a new one, now they're making us jump thru 10 hoops to get replacement parts, and we don't even bother with their phone support anymore, we just email since when we try to call, we also usually have been put on hold for at least 45 minutes... Dell's Support used to be pretty good, and now it's just terrible. Oh yeah, and i forgot to mention once when I called and asked for a replacement zip drive, they send a replacement CDROM instead...
WarGames is my all-time favorite movie! :) Too bad many people i know have never heard of it :(
Where I am working now, the college is totally closed until after new years, so our department has time off, the only reason we need to come in is for an emergency (like network failure or server problems)...
Dr. Who can be found at 8am EST on BBC America, if you have that channel on your cable/satellite
My school just bought a new sun blade 100 to replace an old SparcStation LX (yes, i know, it's ancient)that we were using as a computer science server. (It used to be a file server a number of years ago for a bunch of IPC workstations that have long since been taken out of commission) We just recieved it, and I like the upgradibility options compared to an Ultra 5 we just bought too, since in order to add a 2nd HD to the ultra, we had to remove the floppy, while with the blade we could keep the floppy. The little tray for the HD's pulled out easily, and the cables were just the right size and neatly labeled, keeping with Sun's standard practices. The only thing I notice however is that the CDROM is on the same channel as the primary HD... I'm assuming they assume that the CDROM won't be used much, or else that would slow the system down. If the CDROM is used sparsely, then it does make sense, since it will keep the HD's on seperate channels.
Another nice feature I like is that the Blade comes with USB Keyboard and mouse, compared to the sun interface for keyboard/mouse for other systems. Now only if they could ship a keyboard that has a "normal" backspace key! (they still put the backquote where the normal backspace would go)
The default Solaris configuration that comes with the system leaves much to be desired (especially partition-wise), so we're going to be formatting it and re-installing solaris from scratch with our own partition scheme. We ordered our Blade with 256mb of ram also (they normally ship with 128)
Overall, it appears to be nice, although I haven't been able to use it for very long, so i can't make any substantial evaluations of it.
I do agree with that idea that it would be easier to go from C++ to Java, but i also found it somewhat difficult to make the switch. For basic programs (Hello world) it was easy, but when trying to deal with more advanced data structures i found java more cumbersome. At my school we start with C++ (intro programming), then add a tiny bit of C to it (data scructures), then Assembly. Only after all that do we touch on Java and straight C.
Also, I think it's better to teach C++ first since you learn all of the harder things first that Java doesn't make you worry about, such as pointer arithmetic, etc.
Paul