I must have had a brain fart when I moderated the above post. I intended to mark it as Interesting but I marked it Redundant by mistake. I am posting to remove my error.
Someone (Stalin??) said that Chess is gymnastics for the mind. I have no doubt that it improves the 'muscle' even if the strategy and tactics are not useful in RL.
The author of BRE is currently operating a fairly popular site at
www.swirve.com
The most BRE-like game there is:
games.swirve.com/utopia/
It has about 50,000 players in kingdoms of 25 each. It is similar in flavour to BRE with a kingdom forum, thieves (spies), etc.
His first attempt to bring BRE to the web is at:
games.swirve.com/earth/
The Earth2025 game evolved in to something different than BREE with more emphasis on infividual play in some games and alliances in others but it is still quite popular.
One of the problems for a second cable company is the "Make Ready" charges. Cable wires must be forty inches from the lowest power line or transformer. (Some areas permit twelve inches from a grounded transformer) They must also maintain a twelve inch seperation from any other wires (other cable lines or telephone)
If there is room on the pole for the new wire, there is no charge for make-ready for that pole. However, if there is no room, the new company must pay for the replacement of the pole.
Prior to construction, the company must pay the owners of the poles 100% of the cost of making room for the new system. If you are the second cable company on the pole, your make ready costs are often many multiples of the costs for the first guy.
I browse at 3 and very seldom burrow down. I laughed out loud when I read it and decided to read the replies. It looks like it was moderated back up. I hope it makes it to 5.:)
All backup software sucks. I sometimes hold forth the position that it is cheaper to do without backups and when the hard drive on a server crashes- re-type everything in manually.:)
I developed an affection for Palindrome but Cheyenne bought them and then stopped development on it. We would still be using it for our own servers but it won't work after y2k.:(
About 20% of our customer support time is spent troubleshooting backup problems. I can't recall ever getting a solution to a problem from a supplier support technician. (Well, once with Dell)
Arcserve is a swearword around our shop. It is the Microsoft Windows of backup software in my book.
REMOVE DOS is one of the Novell Server commands. When memory was scarce it was used to free up memory for cache buffers. Nowadays it is sometimes used by a technician who wants to reboot the server. If you DOWN the server and EXIT, you will be returned to DOS. If you REMOVE DOS first, the machine reboots when you exit Novell.
One of the objections from the cable companies is the "Must Carry" rules. All local TV stations must be carried on the cable system. If they take up 27Mhz on the cable then it won't take long to use up all the bandwith with stations that people can get without cable.
A typical recently rebuilt cable system is probably goes to about 650Mhz although there are still a lot of 300Mhz systems in North America.
A 300Mhz system can carry about 36 6Mhz channels above 50Mhz. (Below 50 is used for upstream transmission and there is a hole for the FM band)
I haven't looked into this so I may be guessing wrong but it seems to me that if we can squeeze four compressed channels into one 6Mhz slot, we should be able to deliver pretty good digital TV using less than 27 Mhz.
The broadcasters will support anything which will cause hardship for the Cable Companies. If we expect the Broadcasters and the Cable Companies to solve the "problem" we will be waiting a long time.
A few years ago, I moved with my family to Halifax, Nova Scotia. I got a computer and modem at home for my youngest son who was not at all pleased about the move. Halifax, at that time had a very high bbs per household density and he quickly found a few home bbs's several of which were running BRE. Both my sons and myself played on the same BBS running inter-bbs registered league. My son later operated a bbs from our home which ran BRE Tradewars and several other games.
In Echelon's Utopia web game, A "Kingdom" is made up of 25 players. Each kingdom has an elected Regent. The kingdom regent has the power to moderate the kingdom's private discussion forum. The regent gets a small bonus in food production and income. He can also declare war, peace, etc.
In the BBS game of BRE, each BBS could have 25 players. The Sysop had the power to moderate the discussion forums. His bonus was that he didn't get busy signals when he wanted to manage his lands.
I think these games help build character, much in the same way as hockey or baseball.
In both the web and the bbs game by these authors, diplomacy becomes an important skill. I have seen swaggering, "Destroy all before us" types turned into wise leaders with good diplomatic skills.
The public discussion area outside the Utopia game has a similar flavour to the BBS discussion boards in days of old.
Some of the things that BBS's provided us are still alive.
For admin level passwords I first create a "random" alphanumeric password and then create a mnemonic phrase using method I got from one of those "How to improve your memory" books I read long ago. To remember numbers you can use sounds. 1 T or D sound. 2 N 3 M 4 R 5 L 6 Soft G or ch 7 Hard G or K 8 F 9 P or B 10 S
It took a while to get comfortable with it but it was long ago and the pain is forgotten. The mnemonic for my (now closed) bank account from 15 years ago is "mouse cheese malls" which translates to 3060350. Double letters which make a single sound count are a single number. For letters, I use words. There doesn't seem to be a problem remembering which words are for numbers and which are for letters.
When I have to assign medium level passwords to others, I give them a phrase and they use the first letter of each word sometimes followed by a number. i.e. Why did the chicken cross the road...wdtcctr22.
It can be implemented easier in Europe because they commonly have more houses served from each power transformer. In North America (Canada, at least) there are often only four or five households served by each step-down transformer on the pole. The signal would have to be injected at the secondary side of the transformer since I can't imagine high speed data passing through a big ol' iron-core transformer optimized for 60 Hz.
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I must have had a brain fart when I moderated the above post. I intended to mark it as Interesting but I marked it Redundant by mistake. I am posting to remove my error.
Someone (Stalin??) said that Chess is gymnastics for the mind. I have no doubt that it improves the 'muscle' even if the strategy and tactics are not useful in RL.
The author of BRE is currently operating a fairly popular site at
www.swirve.com
The most BRE-like game there is:
games.swirve.com/utopia/
It has about 50,000 players in kingdoms of 25 each. It is similar in flavour to BRE with a kingdom forum, thieves (spies), etc.
His first attempt to bring BRE to the web is at:
games.swirve.com/earth/
The Earth2025 game evolved in to something different than BREE with more emphasis on infividual play in some games and alliances in others but it is still quite popular.
One of the problems for a second cable company is the "Make Ready" charges. Cable wires must be forty inches from the lowest power line or transformer. (Some areas permit twelve inches from a grounded transformer) They must also maintain a twelve inch seperation from any other wires (other cable lines or telephone)
If there is room on the pole for the new wire, there is no charge for make-ready for that pole. However, if there is no room, the new company must pay for the replacement of the pole.
Prior to construction, the company must pay the owners of the poles 100% of the cost of making room for the new system. If you are the second cable company on the pole, your make ready costs are often many multiples of the costs for the first guy.
Great post!
:)
I browse at 3 and very seldom burrow down. I laughed out loud when I read it and decided to read the replies. It looks like it was moderated back up. I hope it makes it to 5.
All backup software sucks. I sometimes hold forth the position that it is cheaper to do without backups and when the hard drive on a server crashes- re-type everything in manually. :)
:(
I developed an affection for Palindrome but Cheyenne bought them and then stopped development on it. We would still be using it for our own servers but it won't work after y2k.
About 20% of our customer support time is spent troubleshooting backup problems. I can't recall ever getting a solution to a problem from a supplier support technician. (Well, once with Dell)
Arcserve is a swearword around our shop. It is the Microsoft Windows of backup software in my book.
REMOVE DOS is one of the Novell Server commands. When memory was scarce it was used to free up memory for cache buffers. Nowadays it is sometimes used by a technician who wants to reboot the server. If you DOWN the server and EXIT, you will be returned to DOS. If you REMOVE DOS first, the machine reboots when you exit Novell.
One of the objections from the cable companies is the "Must Carry" rules. All local TV stations must be carried on the cable system. If they take up 27Mhz on the cable then it won't take long to use up all the bandwith with stations that people can get without cable.
A typical recently rebuilt cable system is probably goes to about 650Mhz although there are still a lot of 300Mhz systems in North America.
A 300Mhz system can carry about 36 6Mhz channels above 50Mhz. (Below 50 is used for upstream transmission and there is a hole for the FM band)
I haven't looked into this so I may be guessing wrong but it seems to me that if we can squeeze four compressed channels into one 6Mhz slot, we should be able to deliver pretty good digital TV using less than 27 Mhz.
The broadcasters will support anything which will cause hardship for the Cable Companies. If we expect the Broadcasters and the Cable Companies to solve the "problem" we will be waiting a long time.
A few years ago, I moved with my family to Halifax, Nova Scotia. I got a computer and modem at home for my youngest son who was not at all pleased about the move. Halifax, at that time had a very high bbs per household density and he quickly found a few home bbs's several of which were running BRE. Both my sons and myself played on the same BBS running inter-bbs registered league. My son later operated a bbs from our home which ran BRE Tradewars and several other games.
In Echelon's Utopia web game, A "Kingdom" is made up of 25 players. Each kingdom has an elected Regent. The kingdom regent has the power to moderate the kingdom's private discussion forum. The regent gets a small bonus in food production and income. He can also declare war, peace, etc.
In the BBS game of BRE, each BBS could have 25 players. The Sysop had the power to moderate the discussion forums. His bonus was that he didn't get busy signals when he wanted to manage his lands.
I think these games help build character, much in the same way as hockey or baseball.
In both the web and the bbs game by these authors, diplomacy becomes an important skill. I have seen swaggering, "Destroy all before us" types turned into wise leaders with good diplomatic skills.
The public discussion area outside the Utopia game has a similar flavour to the BBS discussion boards in days of old.
Some of the things that BBS's provided us are still alive.
For admin level passwords I first create a "random" alphanumeric password and then create a mnemonic phrase using method I got from one of those "How to improve your memory" books I read long ago. To remember numbers you can use sounds.
1 T or D sound.
2 N
3 M
4 R
5 L
6 Soft G or ch
7 Hard G or K
8 F
9 P or B
10 S
It took a while to get comfortable with it but it was long ago and the pain is forgotten. The mnemonic for my (now closed) bank account from 15 years ago is "mouse cheese malls" which translates to 3060350. Double letters which make a single sound count are a single number. For letters, I use words. There doesn't seem to be a problem remembering which words are for numbers and which are for letters.
When I have to assign medium level passwords to others, I give them a phrase and they use the first letter of each word sometimes followed by a number. i.e. Why did the chicken cross the road...wdtcctr22.
It can be implemented easier in Europe because they commonly have more houses served from each power transformer. In North America (Canada, at least) there are often only four or five households served by each step-down transformer on the pole. The signal would have to be injected at the secondary side of the transformer since I can't imagine high speed data passing through a big ol' iron-core transformer optimized for 60 Hz.