I recall trying to read The TIme Machine in 5th grade. It didn't go so well.:) I really didn't understand it until I read it years later.
With that said, around that age I really enjoyed the obvious classics like Chronicles of Narnia and The Hobbit.
On the less common front, I was absolutely spellbound by a book called "Children of the Dust" by Louise Lawrence. It's a pretty harrowing story of the aftermath of a nuclear war, but wasn't so dark that it scarred me for life or anything.:)
I also really enjoyed the works of William Sleator. These days he's kind of billed as a bit of a young adult 'horror' author a-la R.L. Stine, but Sleator's stuff isn't really that horrory.
I particularly enjoyed "House of Stairs", "The Boy Who Reversed Himself", and "Interstellar Pig".
I might also suggest that you let your kids read those books that you now find dark and cynical. You didn't find them so at a younger age, as the books typically work on multiple levels. Even if you didn't get all the aspects of the stories, if they were good enough for you to read and enjoy at that age, they are probably good enough for your kids to read.
Of course, I bought my 2 Model M's used for $5 each at a local used computer store. Just had to clean them up.
For the one I use at work, I did buy the $15 USB adapter for it as the generic adapter I tried didn't work. Thankfully my home computer still has a PS2 port.
Re:nuttin' wrong with growin' your own
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I've gone through the exact same decision making process you are and made the same decision you did; build your own: 4U rackable box, 750W p/s, dual capable but single CPU Opteron MB w/4 GB RAM, 8 Ch SATA 2 (3 Gb/sec) LSI logic controller, 4x 1TB SATA II drives, 1 Intel Pro dual Gb NIC, OpenSuse 10.3, total $4,000. This box out performed commercially available solutions (closer to network/IO wire speed @ lower cost). This choice always surprises us with its performance and we have lots of options as far as growing the box over its life time.
I hate to say this but I think you overpaid somewhere. 2.5 years ago I built a fileserver for a company. It was an Athlon 64 3400+, Tyan MB, 2GB RAM, 2x750W PS, Adaptec HW SATA RAID, 2x80GB SATA drives [system] and 12x250GB SATA drives [data], in a Supermicro Tower case including the 3 internal enclosures that let me put 5 3.5" drives in 3 5.25" bays and it was only $2000...
I don't work for that company anymore, but it's still kickin' along quite nicely, though sadly running Win2k3. Admittedly, I'd hate to see the power bill for that sucker.:) But it was a huge improvement over the franken-server that was being used previously.
I can totally understand the temptation of dropping SPARC as a platform, as expensive as they are. But I'm curious about your company's reasoning for not using Solaris x86. With the exception of Oracle's poor support for running on Solaris x86 [late patches, slow releases], we've been quite happy running Solaris on a bunch of Sun X4100/4200's, and have a pile of X4450's on the way. They're really quite nice servers [for x86] and Solaris runs wonderfully on them.
Sadly, due to the above mentioned Oracle issues, plus the obscene penalty in Oracle licensing for the new Coolthreads servers, our management is driving a switch to running Oracle on Oracle Enterprise Linux. We'll at least still be using the Sun hardware. Everything else will be using Solaris x86 though...
Just to play devil's advocate, something along the lines of these suspects don't fall under the "We the people of the United States..." ergo have no protection under said Constitution. Just a thought I don't think that's a very effective argument. The preamble isn't saying that this constitution only applies to "We the people of the United States". It's saying that "We the people of the United States" think that this is how our government should be run, and that we think that the rights of people should be protected from the government.
As another post mentioned, the SysReq key does have its uses in Linux. In my case I've used it on hosting servers. It's great to be able to kill processes, sync the HDs and reboot semi-gracefully when the console is otherwise locked hard.
The clicky keyboard wins at 80WPM versus 73WPM. Although the secretary was probably wondering what I was doing typing like that, since she can hear all the clicks. No, the best part of typing with a clicky keyboard is that each keypress makes TWO clicks, so it sounds like you're typing twice as fast!
Add that to the fact that I do type approx 20-25% faster on a clicky keyboard and people walking by come into my cube wondering WTF I'm doing.
I don't think that it enormously fast (looking at the high scores...), but it is fast enough for the vast majority of the work I do. Well, I've run a few races. The lowest speed I've gotten in any of the races was 96wpm, and at the moment I'm in the top 20 with 105wpm.
This is on an IBM Model M keyboard. I think they are plenty fast.
And if you are already logged into your machine when they arrest you? Seems to me that full disk encryption is only useful when the computer is already turned OFF when they break down the door. Which is why I have my laptop configured to hibernate at the touch of a button. If the door breaks down, I hit the button. Once it is hibernated, you need the disk encryption password to get anything.
Of course, then there's my work laptop, which supposedly has whole-disk encryption, but boots up and never asks for any passwords. Not sure how that works.
Good luck trying to overthrow your corrupt government with those arms you're allowed to bear, Jim Bob. I dunno, a minority of Iraqi's seem to be giving us a hard time with AK47s and IEDs...
...Then I remember when the 540 MB hard drive seemed like a vast space for text and images on a 486 box....
Ah yes. I remember being insanely jealous when my girlfriend's father [now father-in-law] had TWO [yes TWO!] 540MB HDs installed in his computer. This was in 1994, so I'm sure it was quite expensive. I remember thinking at the time, "Wow! He's got a whole Gigabyte of storage!"
At the time, I was running on 2 x 40MB MFM HDs, venerable ST-251's in a 286 box. I ran those up to the time when I had a Pentium 90Mhz in around 1997.
A few months ago, I got a 2GB micro-SD card which is the same size as the fingernail on my pinkie. It cost me $20. I stared at it for about 10 minutes just thinking, "Holy shit, that's 2 Gigs!":)
I'm guessing they equated this search with looking through a suitcase, finding a suspicious envelope, which when opened contained child porn photos or film.... I have to ask. What constitutes a 'suspicious' envelope in a suitcase? Lets say I have a suitcase containing my clothes, and I have a letter-sized manila envelope laid on top of the clothes. Shy of a big "My kiddie porn" written in sharpie across the face of the envelope, what would make that envelope more suspicious than any other envelope? How is this determined?
I suppose if the envelope is sneaking around, glancing furtively and acting paranoid, I maybe could see describing it as 'suspicious'. Otherwise they are just opening random envelopes. Nothing suspicious about them at all.
I bought my first ever copy of Office a few months ago. Only because I got Office 2007 Ultimate [oooh, ultimate!] for $60. That's about a much as I'd ever be willing to spend on an office suite, and I will most likely be using that for the next decade.
I guess unless the subscription model is less than $6/yr, I won't be subscribing:)
Apple isn't really a "PC" manufacturer, they're more a "systems" company. Would you expect to be able to order a fan for an Ultra 45 or IntelliStation yourself? Yes, as a matter of fact I do. When we've got a Sun server/workstation that is out of warranty and has a broken part, I know I can look on the Sun website and at the very least get the part number even if Sun no longer sells that part themselves.
At the time this occurred, I could find no information on Apple's website regarding what the part number might be for that fan.
Then what is Apple charging so much for? That's my point. I'm not going to pay 3x as much for a computer just so the manufacturer can tell me to go fix it myself if there's a problem. I can get that from a cheap-ass Dell or eMachines system.
What motivation would I have for suggesting my mother buy an Apple? She lives in the boonies. I haven't checked, but I'd be surprised if there's an authorized Apple service dealer in her area. If there's a problem, is Apple going to tell her to drive 5 hours to Dallas to have them look at it? Where's the value for that money there?
So you download the service manual and find the part number... Plenty of places will sell you a replacement... No different than a lot of other manufacturers... And if they told you that they couldn't give you the cost over the phone then call somewhere else... Thanks for proving my point.
other things: no apple support. this is really good service. if you have computer problems apple is very good to you. I only have 1 personal experience with Apple's service. I worked for a small company [only 4 ppl in the office]. They had a 2-cpu G4 tower that was out of warranty. One of the internal fans had come out off its bearings and broke in half. It took me 30 seconds to remove that fan.
I called Apple, knowing the machine was out of warranty. All I wanted was the part number and price for a replacement part [just an 80mm fan, with an odd connector]. Apple support wouldn't give me the information. They told me to call an authorized Apple service place.
So I called the local Apple store and asked to speak with one of the techs. I asked how much it would cost me to buy a replacement fan. I was told that it wasn't a user serviceable part, and that they couldn't give me that information over the phone. They said I *HAD* to bring the computer into the store and have one of their Apple 'gurus' look at the computer.
What the hell kind of service is that? I don't have time to drive 25 miles to have some zit-faced dork look at the computer and tell me the fan is broken. I already know it's broken. Just fucking tell me how much the part will cost me.
With that kind of service, I'm not exactly inclined to spend 3x as much on a new Apple.
Surely they should use example.com (Documented in RFCs to never be a real domain). It has no MX and points to a simple web page that just says it's an example for documentation and gives a link to the relevant RFC.
And in what fantasy world do you live, where corporate idiots have actually ever heard of an RFC, let alone read one?:)
Just out of curiosity, short of building your on DVR or using a DVR provided by a cable or satellite provider, what "something else" would you use? Those were my main two considerations. I haven't yet seriously looked into any of the cable/dish DVRs, but I figure there's got to be one or two decent ones out there, even if most of them suck.
I've already got a Vista box with an HDTV tuner [over-the-air] which I can access via my Xbox360. At the moment we're only paying for basic cable anyway, so I'd only lose a couple channels. Otherwise I'd build out a nice MythTV box to plug directly into my TV.
Frankly though, the key is not 'what else would you use' but the fact that someone who has been a huge fan of Tivo is annoyed enough to begin thinking about looking at other options.
I don't WANT to use something other than a Tivo, but it's getting frustrating enough to possibly warrant the trouble of building and configuring a MythTv box. That's not a good sign for Tivo.
Now I suggest they spend some development time fixing their on-board software so that the interface on my Tivo [Series 2] isn't so f*cking slow! New features are nice, but when they keep adding more stuff to the point where it takes 30+ seconds to bring up the Live TV guide, or takes me almost 2 minute to navigate to a particular show in 'Now Playing' and get it started, it's time to step back and think about whether those extra features are worth making the product unusable for its primary purpose.
I'm a HUGE Tivo fan, but I've been seriously considering getting rid of the Tivo and using something else.
According to Wikipedia it starts on Wednesday January 23'rd and finishes on Sunday the 27'th, that's a very small time window. Thanks to them not thinking of time zones internationally (again!), I for one happen to be away from any kind of technology for exactly that period (plus a day) - that's not cool.
I'm in a slightly different, but equally annoying situation. My Xbox got the RROD. I sent it into the repair depot, and it just arrived there this weekend. I was told it would be 2-3 weeks before I get it [or another refurb] back. How am I supposed to download this free game if I don't have my console through no fault of my own?
So now I'm going to have to call MS Xbox support again, and try to get my free game after I get my console back. Grrr...
Sony says PS3 manufacturing costs are down below $400/unit now. Looks like the only company losing money on their console sales these days is Microsoft.... That's partially because they've removed functionality from the new units, such as the hardware PS2 emulation.
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I recall trying to read The TIme Machine in 5th grade. It didn't go so well. :) I really didn't understand it until I read it years later.
With that said, around that age I really enjoyed the obvious classics like Chronicles of Narnia and The Hobbit.
On the less common front, I was absolutely spellbound by a book called "Children of the Dust" by Louise Lawrence. It's a pretty harrowing story of the aftermath of a nuclear war, but wasn't so dark that it scarred me for life or anything. :)
I also really enjoyed the works of William Sleator. These days he's kind of billed as a bit of a young adult 'horror' author a-la R.L. Stine, but Sleator's stuff isn't really that horrory.
I particularly enjoyed "House of Stairs", "The Boy Who Reversed Himself", and "Interstellar Pig".
I might also suggest that you let your kids read those books that you now find dark and cynical. You didn't find them so at a younger age, as the books typically work on multiple levels. Even if you didn't get all the aspects of the stories, if they were good enough for you to read and enjoy at that age, they are probably good enough for your kids to read.
A new in the box late 90s Model M can be had for $70
May I ask where?
http://www.clickykeyboards.com/
Of course, I bought my 2 Model M's used for $5 each at a local used computer store. Just had to clean them up.
For the one I use at work, I did buy the $15 USB adapter for it as the generic adapter I tried didn't work. Thankfully my home computer still has a PS2 port.
I've gone through the exact same decision making process you are and made the same decision you did; build your own: 4U rackable box, 750W p/s, dual capable but single CPU Opteron MB w/4 GB RAM, 8 Ch SATA 2 (3 Gb/sec) LSI logic controller, 4x 1TB SATA II drives, 1 Intel Pro dual Gb NIC, OpenSuse 10.3, total $4,000. This box out performed commercially available solutions (closer to network/IO wire speed @ lower cost). This choice always surprises us with its performance and we have lots of options as far as growing the box over its life time.
I hate to say this but I think you overpaid somewhere. 2.5 years ago I built a fileserver for a company. It was an Athlon 64 3400+, Tyan MB, 2GB RAM, 2x750W PS, Adaptec HW SATA RAID, 2x80GB SATA drives [system] and 12x250GB SATA drives [data], in a Supermicro Tower case including the 3 internal enclosures that let me put 5 3.5" drives in 3 5.25" bays and it was only $2000...
I don't work for that company anymore, but it's still kickin' along quite nicely, though sadly running Win2k3. Admittedly, I'd hate to see the power bill for that sucker. :) But it was a huge improvement over the franken-server that was being used previously.
I can totally understand the temptation of dropping SPARC as a platform, as expensive as they are. But I'm curious about your company's reasoning for not using Solaris x86. With the exception of Oracle's poor support for running on Solaris x86 [late patches, slow releases], we've been quite happy running Solaris on a bunch of Sun X4100/4200's, and have a pile of X4450's on the way. They're really quite nice servers [for x86] and Solaris runs wonderfully on them.
Sadly, due to the above mentioned Oracle issues, plus the obscene penalty in Oracle licensing for the new Coolthreads servers, our management is driving a switch to running Oracle on Oracle Enterprise Linux. We'll at least still be using the Sun hardware. Everything else will be using Solaris x86 though...
That's the impression I get anyway.
As another post mentioned, the SysReq key does have its uses in Linux. In my case I've used it on hosting servers. It's great to be able to kill processes, sync the HDs and reboot semi-gracefully when the console is otherwise locked hard.
No, it wasn't clear in my post but I wasn't arguing against him.
As for coding. I don't code, so that's not an issue. I do think fast enough to SysAdmin at 96wpm, so it's a useful skill for my needs.
Sorry, I wasn't intending to try arguing against you. More against other posts which did argue that the clicky keyboards were slow.
Add that to the fact that I do type approx 20-25% faster on a clicky keyboard and people walking by come into my cube wondering WTF I'm doing.
I don't type all that fast, but I am rarely held up my typing speed.
I just scored 62 wpm here:
http://play.typeracer.com/
I don't think that it enormously fast (looking at the high scores...), but it is fast enough for the vast majority of the work I do. Well, I've run a few races. The lowest speed I've gotten in any of the races was 96wpm, and at the moment I'm in the top 20 with 105wpm.
This is on an IBM Model M keyboard. I think they are plenty fast.
is there any way that involuntary botnet participation could be even slightly legal?
Only insomuch as a few bits of rootkit code have yet to be legally declared a 'Soldier'.
You'd probably only be able to fight them on normal computer laws, and in a time of war, those would quickly be bypassed.
Of course, then there's my work laptop, which supposedly has whole-disk encryption, but boots up and never asks for any passwords. Not sure how that works.
...Then I remember when the 540 MB hard drive seemed like a vast space for text and images on a 486 box. ...
Ah yes. I remember being insanely jealous when my girlfriend's father [now father-in-law] had TWO [yes TWO!] 540MB HDs installed in his computer. This was in 1994, so I'm sure it was quite expensive. I remember thinking at the time, "Wow! He's got a whole Gigabyte of storage!"At the time, I was running on 2 x 40MB MFM HDs, venerable ST-251's in a 286 box. I ran those up to the time when I had a Pentium 90Mhz in around 1997.
A few months ago, I got a 2GB micro-SD card which is the same size as the fingernail on my pinkie. It cost me $20. I stared at it for about 10 minutes just thinking, "Holy shit, that's 2 Gigs!"
...I'm guessing they equated this search with looking through a suitcase, finding a suspicious envelope, which when opened contained child porn photos or film.
I suppose if the envelope is sneaking around, glancing furtively and acting paranoid, I maybe could see describing it as 'suspicious'. Otherwise they are just opening random envelopes. Nothing suspicious about them at all.
I bought my first ever copy of Office a few months ago. Only because I got Office 2007 Ultimate [oooh, ultimate!] for $60. That's about a much as I'd ever be willing to spend on an office suite, and I will most likely be using that for the next decade.
:)
I guess unless the subscription model is less than $6/yr, I won't be subscribing
At the time this occurred, I could find no information on Apple's website regarding what the part number might be for that fan.
Then what is Apple charging so much for? That's my point. I'm not going to pay 3x as much for a computer just so the manufacturer can tell me to go fix it myself if there's a problem. I can get that from a cheap-ass Dell or eMachines system.
What motivation would I have for suggesting my mother buy an Apple? She lives in the boonies. I haven't checked, but I'd be surprised if there's an authorized Apple service dealer in her area. If there's a problem, is Apple going to tell her to drive 5 hours to Dallas to have them look at it? Where's the value for that money there?
I called Apple, knowing the machine was out of warranty. All I wanted was the part number and price for a replacement part [just an 80mm fan, with an odd connector]. Apple support wouldn't give me the information. They told me to call an authorized Apple service place.
So I called the local Apple store and asked to speak with one of the techs. I asked how much it would cost me to buy a replacement fan. I was told that it wasn't a user serviceable part, and that they couldn't give me that information over the phone. They said I *HAD* to bring the computer into the store and have one of their Apple 'gurus' look at the computer.
What the hell kind of service is that? I don't have time to drive 25 miles to have some zit-faced dork look at the computer and tell me the fan is broken. I already know it's broken. Just fucking tell me how much the part will cost me.
With that kind of service, I'm not exactly inclined to spend 3x as much on a new Apple.
Surely they should use example.com (Documented in RFCs to never be a real domain). It has no MX and points to a simple web page that just says it's an example for documentation and gives a link to the relevant RFC.
And in what fantasy world do you live, where corporate idiots have actually ever heard of an RFC, let alone read one?I've already got a Vista box with an HDTV tuner [over-the-air] which I can access via my Xbox360. At the moment we're only paying for basic cable anyway, so I'd only lose a couple channels. Otherwise I'd build out a nice MythTV box to plug directly into my TV.
Frankly though, the key is not 'what else would you use' but the fact that someone who has been a huge fan of Tivo is annoyed enough to begin thinking about looking at other options.
I don't WANT to use something other than a Tivo, but it's getting frustrating enough to possibly warrant the trouble of building and configuring a MythTv box. That's not a good sign for Tivo.
Now I suggest they spend some development time fixing their on-board software so that the interface on my Tivo [Series 2] isn't so f*cking slow! New features are nice, but when they keep adding more stuff to the point where it takes 30+ seconds to bring up the Live TV guide, or takes me almost 2 minute to navigate to a particular show in 'Now Playing' and get it started, it's time to step back and think about whether those extra features are worth making the product unusable for its primary purpose.
I'm a HUGE Tivo fan, but I've been seriously considering getting rid of the Tivo and using something else.
According to Wikipedia it starts on Wednesday January 23'rd and finishes on Sunday the 27'th, that's a very small time window.
Thanks to them not thinking of time zones internationally (again!), I for one happen to be away from any kind of technology for exactly that period (plus a day) - that's not cool.
I'm in a slightly different, but equally annoying situation.
My Xbox got the RROD. I sent it into the repair depot, and it just arrived there this weekend. I was told it would be 2-3 weeks before I get it [or another refurb] back. How am I supposed to download this free game if I don't have my console through no fault of my own?
So now I'm going to have to call MS Xbox support again, and try to get my free game after I get my console back. Grrr...