I haven't had a single issue with my 360, and I've had it for roughly a year and a half now.
It only gets 3-4 hours of use during the week, and maybe 5-6 more on the weekend, so that might have something to do with it. Yeah, well mine worked great for about 13 months. As with you, it wasn't heavily used. Suddenly a couple weeks ago it started locking up while I was trying out some demo arcade games. Two days lated, RROD.:( The unit is on an open stereo rack with no front, sides or back, so there's plenty of airflow.
It just arrived at the repair center this morning, according to UPS, so I've got another 2-3 weeks before I get it [or a refurb] back. At this point, I'm tempted to wait until it comes back, then sell the Xbox, HD-DVD player and all my games and HD-DVD movies, and just get a PS3. The only Xbox exclusives I even have are Halo3 and PGR3, and frankly I can live without them. Xbox live is great, but if this thing is likely to keep failing then when the 3yr warranty is over, I'll be screwed. I'm not too interested in that.
I haven't decided yet, but it is at least to the point where I'm considering that.
Say you have a need to add another fax board(or whatever) to the virtualized x86 server, to find that they stuck some mission critical Virtual Environment on the Server and It CAN'T come down for another 2 weeks.
Aside from another poster's excellent point about not virtualizing servers that require specialized hardware, you're missing another point of the virtualized servers.
In the case of VMWare ESX server, you'd use VMotion to solve this problem. Say you have a cluster of 3 or 4 physical servers running some number of VMs. Hopefully you're not dumb enough to have all those servers running anywhere near 100%.:) If you need to do work on a physical server [say hardware replacement, firmware upgrade, etc], you put that server into maintenance mode. VMWare will automatically and **transparently** migrate the running VMs onto the remaining servers. You can then power off the physical server, do whatever you need to do, and power it back on. When it comes back up, take it out of maintenance mode, and VMWare will automatically start migrating VMs back onto it to balance the load.
Nobody will notice the fact that their mission critical server just moved from one box to another. Worst case, if your servers were already a bit too heavily loaded, some applications will slow down a bit while you're doing maintenance, but a temporary slow down is a lot better than having an application completely down every time you have to upgrade firmware or replace a stick of RAM.
As an added bonus, if you so choose, VMotion can automatically balance the VMs at all times, so if one particular VM is suddenly requiring a large amount of resources, VMotion can migrate it to a less heavily loaded box, or migrate other less needy VMs to another box to free resources for the VM that needs it. This is great for handling short-term usage fluctuations, or can even be scripted to adjust for known, regular usage peaks.
That's not to say there aren't downsides to virtualization, but the situation you described isn't one of them.
Correction: 1%. 700 out of 70,000. Thank you for the correction.
Just more proof that I'm terrible at math. I took a placement test last year, at age 32, for the local college. I basically aced the writing/grammar portions of the test. Then they told me I had to take remedial algebra classes.:) I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I speak and write every day, but even simple things like percentages don't come up too frequently in my day.
The *really* sad part? I actually checked my number on a calculator! Ouch...
... As TFA stated only about 10% of the people pulled over actually committed anything, they know that... I wonder if they've done any control on this. Have they done a test where they pick out random people for those same extra checks, to determine if their 'facial profiling' is actually useful, or if 10% of the people in an airport are just guilty of something anyway, meaning the same percentage of people would be charged with something if they just picked people at random?
Even worse are the numbers they gave for Sea-Tac specifically. Only 1.8% of the people they referred for a second screening [11 out of 600] were arrested for something, and not necessarily terrorism. For the overall number they mention arrests for drugs and outstanding warrants. I'd bet good money that the low percentage at Sea-Tac is easily matched, if not exceeded, by random screening.
Yes, they are too cheap; besides, door intercom systems are subject to vandalism. Wow, is crime that rampant in Finland? It's not like a lot of areas in the US are crime-free but with the possible exception of the uber-slums [with which I have no experience], I've never seen an apartment complex that has a gated system and no way of contacting the resident.
Ok, I have to ask, are the Finnish apartment developers or the construction companies just too cheap to install doorbells? Or do the Finn's just not want to associate with people who can't afford or choose not to own a cell phone?
Seriously, what's the reasoning behind not having doorbells?
But why would the anti-spam software companies want that? If they succeed in actually eliminating spam, they'd also go out of business.
you assume that all anti-spam filters are proprietary, open source filters exist and can be modified to your desire- that in its self should force anti-spam companies to adapt otherwise they got replaced by free as in gnu software. it is in their best interests to at least attempt to beat FLOSS and FLOSS has a lot going for it- if someone finds a better way to code for the project- good for them they just made it better and now anti-spam companies have to step up their efforts to do the same. I'm not talking about the quality of their filters. Certainly the anti-spam companies do want to make the best filters they can. What they don't want to do is actually *eliminate* spam. They have no economic interest in stopping the spammers from sending the spam.
If you want to stop spam, you need to take away the economic incentive. We've already seen how many spam filtering / blocking programs produced in the past 5 years? But yet the spam problem just keeps growing as the number of "solutions" grows. This tells us that the spammers are more than willing to work on ways to circumvent these reactive techniques, so that they can continue to make money off their deeds.
Once we can stop spam from being profitable, we will finally see it go away. But no sooner. But why would the anti-spam software companies want that? If they succeed in actually eliminating spam, they'd also go out of business. It may be profitable for the spammers, but I suspect it's even more profitable for the anti-spam companies.
I too like my Xbox360, although there's a few limitations in it I could do without.
I couldn't live without my MS Intellimouse Optical though. 7+ years old and still going strong.
With that said, Vista really blows. I picked up a computer this weekend for my daughter[Sweet $299 deal at Fry's with a 20" WS LCD:) ]. It came with Vista Home Premium. I know the computer isn't the fastest thing around, but it's got > 2Ghz processor and 2GB of RAM [upgraded]. Why, when I try to change settings, for instance the parental controls [just testing it, she's only 2, doesn't really need it yet], does the machine become unresponsive for 2+ minutes? That's just not acceptable. So now I'm fighting myself to just blow it away and put XP on it. That's just sad. I might wait to see if SP1 fixes anything. If not, I'm going to XP. And no, I can't just install Linux on it until all the Blue's Clues, Dora and Backyardigans games work in Linux...
The biggest issue I had with the Lefthand solution is that they sell it an an open solution; you, supposedly, can pick anyone's hardware and use Lefthand's software to implement your storage cluster. Only not so much.
Lefthand certifies exactly three systems. The Prolient SL320s, the IBM System x3650 and a box they OEM from somewhere. Let's see... The prolient hold 12 drives, the ibm box hold 6 drives and Lefthand's OEM box holds 4. The density sucks. A lot.
Yes, yes. 6 drives/rack unit is really good. I agree. Just don't start the sales meeting telling me that you have an open software solution then try to sell me an HP box I don't want. Not only that, but in our testing, we've found LeftHand to be slower than EqualLogic, and the interface isn't nearly as good. In addition, they continue to spout the 'open hardware' aspect, but they don't even support adding more than the default 2 NICs per box, which we have an issue with. Heck we weren't even thrilled with the 3 NICs on EqualLogic, but at least it's more than 2, and has 3 more failover NICs. What's the point in having a server with extra PCIe/PCI-X slots if you're not even allowed to use them? Sheesh.
True, EqualLogic doesn't have the network RAID aspect, but I'm not sure its necessary to be spending that much on further locally redundant storage when we'll be replicating offsite in addition to archival backups. At least for our needs. YMMV
And finally, I found the LeftHand salespeople to be a bit more slimy, and too quick to badmouth the competition. The EqualLogic sales guys were friendly, and while certainly not fond of the LeftHand product, were in no way badmouthing them, and were happy to reasonably discuss the issues brought up by the LH sales people without attempting to slam their competitors product.
This is just my recent experience with these two companies anyway. Still not sure we're going with EqualLogic for our needs, but it seems to be a good product. I hope their buyout by Dell doesn't hurt their culture or their product.
I don't watch NASCAR, but the automobiles are technologically sophisticated. They cost $125,000 to build, and because there's so much money in it, are the result of the most expensive, top-notch engineering you can find in racing..
That's because it costs $125,000 to fix an American car so it doesn't blow up on the first lap.:)
Just had to take that shot.
I can't stand watching NASCAR. The only racing I care anything for is Moto GP and AMA Superbikes. Those are some crazy mofos!
Most likely the $2 charge was just a test to see if they could make the card work. It probably wasn't for a physical object to ship to them, but some cheap download software ("Top 100 bland clipart collection!") or ebook or something. Well I've looked at the site. They don't have software downloads but they do have a $2.00 USB cable. Don't know about shipping costs.
I called the company. It sounded like some Chinese lady working out of her house. I had some trouble understanding her, but she said they had like 1000 fraudulent order attempts in the month of September, and that nothing was actually shipped. You have to create an account to place an order, so I tried to see if she could get that information. I know it was probably false if it was a test charge, but there's a chance the guy was dumb enough to put his own address for shipping. Or maybe they have an IP logged. I don't think she quite understood what I was trying to accomplish though. She just kept telling me not to worry, that I wouldn't have to pay the charge. She also kept saying 'You have to be careful with your credit cards'. Well duh, as if I have any control of a card mailed to be before get gets delivered.
Makes me wonder, with as much money as is probably lost by all parties in stuff like this, why don't the CC companies send the new cards in some slightly more secure or traceable way? At least with some sort of tracking, they could say, 'ok, it got as far as a transfer station in crapstown, USA, but never got to the next step,' and have some clue of where to start looking for the morons that are doing this stuff.
Interesting timing on this article. Just last night, my wife and I got a call from Discover, asking if we had attempted to use our Discover card recently. It just so happens that the ONLY thing this card is [well, was] used for, was the recurring monthly cost of XM Radio. Other than that, we don't use the card at all.
It turns out that at 9:24PM EDT last night, someone tried to buy $986 worth of crap at a Walmart in Jacksboro, TN. I live in Dallas. So it was definitely not myself or my wife. Thankfully, the charge was declined. Someone had also made a whopping $2.51 purchase at some online computer store which I had never heard of. I don't know what kind of nothing they bought, but that usually wouldn't even cover shipping.
What we think happened is this. Our current cards are set to expire at the end of this month. We both still have our cards, so most likely, someone snagged my replacement card out of the mail. Discover says they did send out replacement cards, but we never got them. I'm still trying to figure out where the cards were mailed from, to see if it was somewhere near TN.
I'm guessing this thief isn't too bright. I'm think they weren't able to actually activate the card, which is why it was declined at Walmart. It may have gone through at the computer site because the card number is the same as my active card, and perhaps they don't ask for the 3 digit verification number on the back.
At this point, I'm working with the Walmart in question to have them save their security tapes on all the registers at that time. I'm also trying to get in touch with the online computer store to see if they have records on where the item was shipped. I'll give that info to the fraud group at Discover and hope for the best.
Even though it hasn't actually cost me any money, I want to nail that punk to a tree. Now we have to deal with having our account closed and switched to a new account. We take reasonable precautions to keep ourselves, safe, but you just can't protect mail you haven't even received yet.
Or they figure that if you're using Google to search for search engines, you probably already know about Google... Or they figure that if you're using Google to search for search engines, they'd rather you go somewhere else because you're wasting their bandwidth.:)
I guess it wouldn't be very sportsman-like to nominate myself. Of course, it would also be a horrible lie, since I'm a pretty mediocre SysAdmin at best.:)
Plus, if you go to the Wayback Machine archive from November 1998 And click on the comments for the first link [The PPC Light storgy], the first post is by a user named xgray who has a user ID of 96047...
Not sure if my research is accurate or not, but that's what makes me think I must have signed up in 1998.
Same here - no recollection of how, when, or why I ended up on Slashdot. I know it was no later than '99, possibly '98. Never heard of Chips and Dip. Apparently I held off on registering an account. I'm pretty sure you signed up in 1998. I did some research and found a post from Feb 2, 1999 that was a user with a 90,000ish ID. So I'm pretty sure I [and obviously you] signed up in 1998. We mustn't have waited too long because the information I found suggested that user accounts were only started in August of 1998 or so. [Is this true or is my research bogus?]
As with many, I had been reading Slashdot before the user accounts existed. Wish I hadn't waited to create mine. As a result, I now tend to sign up for accounts wherever I can, just in case.:)
How timely! I am planning to take a trip into Arizona or Colorado this winter *just* to see the unadultered night sky. I'm not entirely sure where to begin -- just drive randomly until i'm in complete darkness? Word of mouth? Any suggestions on how I can finally see the stars for once in my life?! Someone else mentioned Big Bend National Park here in Texas. I'd also highly recommend going to one of the Star Parties at the McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, TX. It's just a few hours outside Big Bend [or several hours from El Paso]. It's in the middle of nowhere, and it's incredibly dark. The star visibility is wonderful.
That's probably why I never bothered making an ID until much later. Bah... It couldn't have been all that much later, with an ID in the 25,000's. Mine is in the 42,000's and I'm absolutely certain that I created mine in 1998. At the very least I know it is before Feb 2, 1999, since there's a post on that date from someone with an ID in the 90,000's. As far as I can find online [please correct me if this data is incorrect], Slashdot didn't even start having user accounts until around August 1998. So at most you [and I] waited a couple months before creating an account.
Wish I had created an account when they were first implemented. I didn't think it would become a source of geek pride to have a low Slashdot ID. Oh well... These days I have a tendency to create an account as early as I can on new websites, just in case.:)
XP Pro is available retail until June 30, 2008 now.
Interestingly, it's 9:37pm EST and the page says it was updated on September 28th; must be done overseas? Nope, but most servers are set to use GMT [or should be], so as far as the server is concerned, it's tomorrow.:)
Maybe like in Britain they'll come equipped with loudspeakers so that the all-seeing overlords can chastise you to discontinue your deviant and/or naughty thoughts. That'll nip those perversions right in the bud! If they're really industrious they could automate that part as well, with pre-recorded messages by someone with a suitably authoritative-sounding voice (I nominate James Earl Jones).
I don't know about you, but a James Earl Jones voice coming out of nowhere to tell me I had better not do that illegal thing I'm about to do would scare the crap out of me and probably result in me deciding to be elsewhere.:)
Schools used to have "computer literacy" classes. They're largely redundant now, since the kids are usually more computer literate than anyone who could teach them. They weren't terribly useful then either. I had a computer literacy class in 7th grade [86-87]. The only thing we were really taught was how to load games [and programs] from the floppy drive on a Commodore 64. I didn't have a C64 at home, so I don't even remember how to do that.
The rest of the semester was spent playing the collection of games which the teacher had and whatever the students brought in. Oh we did learn that the teacher had been teaching at that school since it had opened in the 60's. I have no idea what she taught back then.
Can't say anything taught in that class really helped anyone with computers.
Slashdot Mirror
It only gets 3-4 hours of use during the week, and maybe 5-6 more on the weekend, so that might have something to do with it. Yeah, well mine worked great for about 13 months. As with you, it wasn't heavily used. Suddenly a couple weeks ago it started locking up while I was trying out some demo arcade games. Two days lated, RROD.
It just arrived at the repair center this morning, according to UPS, so I've got another 2-3 weeks before I get it [or a refurb] back. At this point, I'm tempted to wait until it comes back, then sell the Xbox, HD-DVD player and all my games and HD-DVD movies, and just get a PS3. The only Xbox exclusives I even have are Halo3 and PGR3, and frankly I can live without them. Xbox live is great, but if this thing is likely to keep failing then when the 3yr warranty is over, I'll be screwed. I'm not too interested in that.
I haven't decided yet, but it is at least to the point where I'm considering that.
Say you have a need to add another fax board(or whatever) to the virtualized x86 server, to find that they stuck some mission critical Virtual Environment on the Server and It CAN'T come down for another 2 weeks.
:) If you need to do work on a physical server [say hardware replacement, firmware upgrade, etc], you put that server into maintenance mode. VMWare will automatically and **transparently** migrate the running VMs onto the remaining servers. You can then power off the physical server, do whatever you need to do, and power it back on. When it comes back up, take it out of maintenance mode, and VMWare will automatically start migrating VMs back onto it to balance the load.
Aside from another poster's excellent point about not virtualizing servers that require specialized hardware, you're missing another point of the virtualized servers.
In the case of VMWare ESX server, you'd use VMotion to solve this problem. Say you have a cluster of 3 or 4 physical servers running some number of VMs. Hopefully you're not dumb enough to have all those servers running anywhere near 100%.
Nobody will notice the fact that their mission critical server just moved from one box to another. Worst case, if your servers were already a bit too heavily loaded, some applications will slow down a bit while you're doing maintenance, but a temporary slow down is a lot better than having an application completely down every time you have to upgrade firmware or replace a stick of RAM.
As an added bonus, if you so choose, VMotion can automatically balance the VMs at all times, so if one particular VM is suddenly requiring a large amount of resources, VMotion can migrate it to a less heavily loaded box, or migrate other less needy VMs to another box to free resources for the VM that needs it. This is great for handling short-term usage fluctuations, or can even be scripted to adjust for known, regular usage peaks.
That's not to say there aren't downsides to virtualization, but the situation you described isn't one of them.
Just more proof that I'm terrible at math. I took a placement test last year, at age 32, for the local college. I basically aced the writing/grammar portions of the test. Then they told me I had to take remedial algebra classes.
The *really* sad part? I actually checked my number on a calculator! Ouch...
Even worse are the numbers they gave for Sea-Tac specifically. Only 1.8% of the people they referred for a second screening [11 out of 600] were arrested for something, and not necessarily terrorism. For the overall number they mention arrests for drugs and outstanding warrants. I'd bet good money that the low percentage at Sea-Tac is easily matched, if not exceeded, by random screening.
Again someone is missing my point. I'm sure the anti-spam companies work very hard to have the best filtering algorithms they can.
What they aren't doing is going out of their way in an attempt to stop the spammers from actually sending the spam in the first place.
Ok, I have to ask, are the Finnish apartment developers or the construction companies just too cheap to install doorbells?
Or do the Finn's just not want to associate with people who can't afford or choose not to own a cell phone?
Seriously, what's the reasoning behind not having doorbells?
you assume that all anti-spam filters are proprietary, open source filters exist and can be modified to your desire- that in its self should force anti-spam companies to adapt otherwise they got replaced by free as in gnu software. it is in their best interests to at least attempt to beat FLOSS and FLOSS has a lot going for it- if someone finds a better way to code for the project- good for them they just made it better and now anti-spam companies have to step up their efforts to do the same. I'm not talking about the quality of their filters. Certainly the anti-spam companies do want to make the best filters they can. What they don't want to do is actually *eliminate* spam. They have no economic interest in stopping the spammers from sending the spam.
Once we can stop spam from being profitable, we will finally see it go away. But no sooner. But why would the anti-spam software companies want that? If they succeed in actually eliminating spam, they'd also go out of business. It may be profitable for the spammers, but I suspect it's even more profitable for the anti-spam companies.
I too like my Xbox360, although there's a few limitations in it I could do without.
:) ]. It came with Vista Home Premium. I know the computer isn't the fastest thing around, but it's got > 2Ghz processor and 2GB of RAM [upgraded]. Why, when I try to change settings, for instance the parental controls [just testing it, she's only 2, doesn't really need it yet], does the machine become unresponsive for 2+ minutes? That's just not acceptable. So now I'm fighting myself to just blow it away and put XP on it. That's just sad. I might wait to see if SP1 fixes anything. If not, I'm going to XP.
I couldn't live without my MS Intellimouse Optical though. 7+ years old and still going strong.
With that said, Vista really blows. I picked up a computer this weekend for my daughter[Sweet $299 deal at Fry's with a 20" WS LCD
And no, I can't just install Linux on it until all the Blue's Clues, Dora and Backyardigans games work in Linux...
Lefthand certifies exactly three systems. The Prolient SL320s, the IBM System x3650 and a box they OEM from somewhere. Let's see... The prolient hold 12 drives, the ibm box hold 6 drives and Lefthand's OEM box holds 4. The density sucks. A lot.
Yes, yes. 6 drives/rack unit is really good. I agree. Just don't start the sales meeting telling me that you have an open software solution then try to sell me an HP box I don't want. Not only that, but in our testing, we've found LeftHand to be slower than EqualLogic, and the interface isn't nearly as good. In addition, they continue to spout the 'open hardware' aspect, but they don't even support adding more than the default 2 NICs per box, which we have an issue with. Heck we weren't even thrilled with the 3 NICs on EqualLogic, but at least it's more than 2, and has 3 more failover NICs. What's the point in having a server with extra PCIe/PCI-X slots if you're not even allowed to use them? Sheesh.
True, EqualLogic doesn't have the network RAID aspect, but I'm not sure its necessary to be spending that much on further locally redundant storage when we'll be replicating offsite in addition to archival backups. At least for our needs. YMMV
And finally, I found the LeftHand salespeople to be a bit more slimy, and too quick to badmouth the competition. The EqualLogic sales guys were friendly, and while certainly not fond of the LeftHand product, were in no way badmouthing them, and were happy to reasonably discuss the issues brought up by the LH sales people without attempting to slam their competitors product.
This is just my recent experience with these two companies anyway. Still not sure we're going with EqualLogic for our needs, but it seems to be a good product. I hope their buyout by Dell doesn't hurt their culture or their product.
I don't watch NASCAR, but the automobiles are technologically sophisticated. They cost $125,000 to build, and because there's so much money in it, are the result of the most expensive, top-notch engineering you can find in racing..
That's because it costs $125,000 to fix an American car so it doesn't blow up on the first lap.Just had to take that shot.
I can't stand watching NASCAR. The only racing I care anything for is Moto GP and AMA Superbikes. Those are some crazy mofos!
I called the company. It sounded like some Chinese lady working out of her house. I had some trouble understanding her, but she said they had like 1000 fraudulent order attempts in the month of September, and that nothing was actually shipped.
You have to create an account to place an order, so I tried to see if she could get that information. I know it was probably false if it was a test charge, but there's a chance the guy was dumb enough to put his own address for shipping. Or maybe they have an IP logged. I don't think she quite understood what I was trying to accomplish though. She just kept telling me not to worry, that I wouldn't have to pay the charge. She also kept saying 'You have to be careful with your credit cards'. Well duh, as if I have any control of a card mailed to be before get gets delivered.
Makes me wonder, with as much money as is probably lost by all parties in stuff like this, why don't the CC companies send the new cards in some slightly more secure or traceable way? At least with some sort of tracking, they could say, 'ok, it got as far as a transfer station in crapstown, USA, but never got to the next step,' and have some clue of where to start looking for the morons that are doing this stuff.
Interesting timing on this article. Just last night, my wife and I got a call from Discover, asking if we had attempted to use our Discover card recently. It just so happens that the ONLY thing this card is [well, was] used for, was the recurring monthly cost of XM Radio. Other than that, we don't use the card at all.
It turns out that at 9:24PM EDT last night, someone tried to buy $986 worth of crap at a Walmart in Jacksboro, TN. I live in Dallas. So it was definitely not myself or my wife. Thankfully, the charge was declined. Someone had also made a whopping $2.51 purchase at some online computer store which I had never heard of. I don't know what kind of nothing they bought, but that usually wouldn't even cover shipping.
What we think happened is this. Our current cards are set to expire at the end of this month. We both still have our cards, so most likely, someone snagged my replacement card out of the mail. Discover says they did send out replacement cards, but we never got them. I'm still trying to figure out where the cards were mailed from, to see if it was somewhere near TN.
I'm guessing this thief isn't too bright. I'm think they weren't able to actually activate the card, which is why it was declined at Walmart. It may have gone through at the computer site because the card number is the same as my active card, and perhaps they don't ask for the 3 digit verification number on the back.
At this point, I'm working with the Walmart in question to have them save their security tapes on all the registers at that time. I'm also trying to get in touch with the online computer store to see if they have records on where the item was shipped. I'll give that info to the fraud group at Discover and hope for the best.
Even though it hasn't actually cost me any money, I want to nail that punk to a tree. Now we have to deal with having our account closed and switched to a new account. We take reasonable precautions to keep ourselves, safe, but you just can't protect mail you haven't even received yet.
Sorry, I just had to take that shot...
I have a DEC Alpha LX164 533Mhz which I only stopped using as my firewall because it was using too much power. Cool box though.
I guess it wouldn't be very sportsman-like to nominate myself. Of course, it would also be a horrible lie, since I'm a pretty mediocre SysAdmin at best. :)
Equally off topic:
I'm kind of partial to, "I think so Brain, but where are we going to find a duck and a rubber hose at this hour?"
(Score:1)
by wiredog (43288) on 03:52 PM May 26th, 1999
And I probably posted that comment within a day or two of registering.
That can't be right. There's a post from Feb 2nd, 1999 from a user ID 95056.Plus, if you go to the Wayback Machine archive from November 1998 And click on the comments for the first link [The PPC Light storgy], the first post is by a user named xgray who has a user ID of 96047...
Not sure if my research is accurate or not, but that's what makes me think I must have signed up in 1998.
As with many, I had been reading Slashdot before the user accounts existed. Wish I hadn't waited to create mine. As a result, I now tend to sign up for accounts wherever I can, just in case.
Wish I had created an account when they were first implemented. I didn't think it would become a source of geek pride to have a low Slashdot ID. Oh well... These days I have a tendency to create an account as early as I can on new websites, just in case.
Interestingly, it's 9:37pm EST and the page says it was updated on September 28th; must be done overseas? Nope, but most servers are set to use GMT [or should be], so as far as the server is concerned, it's tomorrow.
Maybe like in Britain they'll come equipped with loudspeakers so that the all-seeing overlords can chastise you to discontinue your deviant and/or naughty thoughts. That'll nip those perversions right in the bud! If they're really industrious they could automate that part as well, with pre-recorded messages by someone with a suitably authoritative-sounding voice (I nominate James Earl Jones).
I don't know about you, but a James Earl Jones voice coming out of nowhere to tell me I had better not do that illegal thing I'm about to do would scare the crap out of me and probably result in me deciding to be elsewhere.The rest of the semester was spent playing the collection of games which the teacher had and whatever the students brought in. Oh we did learn that the teacher had been teaching at that school since it had opened in the 60's. I have no idea what she taught back then.
Can't say anything taught in that class really helped anyone with computers.