It is strickly a moral issue. Although social conservatives would like people to believe otherwise. The biggest problem is that teens are not taught responsible drinking at home. Legislating responsible beheviour has never worked.
Online/web layout has its own bugs. And you still can't zoom the text as large as you like. IIRC 500% is the max. At best it is a cheap hack. It does not address the fundamental problem: WYSIWYG is a bad idea.
In any decent sized city there should be atleast one local shop that prints digital pictures. As far as the major chains are concerned it is not worth sending the job to a physically closer lab. It is usually more cost effective to setup one large distrobution center. Most of the shipping cost is handing the package to the shipping company, not how far the package will travel.
You mention a laptop with DVD player. An easier solution is simply a DVD player. Creating a DVD or VCD with a sequence of still images is very easy. With the correct indexing it is easy to go forward and back between images. Google for it.
Another simple solution is to have your digital pictures printed out and delivered. There are many shops that do this. It is inexpensive. The big advantage is that there is nothing to break. Also no staff need special training (ditto for a dvd player). There is also an added bonus in that your father can easily display photos that he likes.
It is actually a horribly awkward user interface metaphor
I agree. It became very appearent when I tried to setup a word processor for a nearly blind user. It would be very nice if I could configure a word processor to display text two inches high, but print at 12pt. Useing the zoom feature is pointless as horizontal scroll bars are frustrateing to use. The magnifier as found in Windows and MacOS is useless. It was obviously designed by people with good sight not blind users. I did attempt Latex but this user had difficulty useing it. In the end a large handheld magnifying glass was the best option. Pretty sad really.
Computers are amazingly powerfull and yet most apps are limited to poorly mimicing paper. WYSIWYG is a very bad idea. Computer screens are oriented the wrong way. The fonts that are easy to read on a computer screen are not the same fonts that are easy to read on paper. To top it off what you see is rarely what you get.
The sad part is that we are stuck in this rut of bad UI. Any focus group study is highly biased as most users will prefer interfaces that they are familiar with. And any company that dares to challenge the incombent UI will be shouted down with the phantom of "users retraining."
The article implies that Iceland is switching to hydrogen and geothermal due to all the environmental reasons. This simply isn't the case. Iceland is switching away from fossil fuels as they have none. The move away from oil is an economic decision. Oil is very expensive in Iceland as it is all imported. By contrast geothermal is practically free. Watch for Iceland to become a major exporter of hydrogen.
Apple, IBM, Visicalc, etc - it's just as arguable to say that any one of them "could have been someone else".
Yes it really could have been someone else. There were so many players in th 1980s that any one of those companies could have vanished and the computer industry would still be, more or less, what it is today.
If you aren't going with HP/Dell/IBM your local shop is as good as any. Often it is better. As far as price goes the few bucks saved through mail order just isn't worth it. If a part fails it is faster and easier to walk into a local shop for a replacement then wait for parts to be shipped back and forth. If the local shop values your bussiness they will give you a temporary replacement while your dead part is shipped back to the supplier. Ofcourse you are going to have to develop such as relationship. Order complete systems from one supplier instead of parts from different places. Have the local shop assemble the systems. That way if there is a problem it is the local shops problem not yours.
Years ago a tech ordered 30 systems worth of parts for workstations. There was a problem: the video card was huge and did no clear some of the components on mainboard. The suppliers didn't care. It was not their problem. While trying to save a few bucks the tech cost the company close to $1000 in restocking and shipping fees, as well as a lot of time.
More recently I was quoted a price for a couple of rackmount systems. When the supplier tried to build the system they ran into a problem with case and the cpu heatsinks. It was not my problem. The supplier had to fix the problem, and they did it on their dime. If I did not have a good working relationship with this supplier the order would probably have been canceled. (At which point I would have taken my bussiness elsewhere.)
Ofcourse if you are a home user it if different. Local shops don't give a damn who you are and you shouldn't care about them.
"fantasy" you mean that more experienced characters can walk through a mob that would once have killed them ten times over
That is one aspect of fantasy and it is an element that is missing from Cyberpunk2020. I would not say that adding this element to cyberpunk is impossible. It is just very hard.
I agree that in cyberpunk life is supposed to be cheap. It is central to the theme. The game mechanics should reflect that with a deadly combat system. From a theme point of view I like the Cyberpunk2020 combat system. The system does a nice job of reflecting the confusion and dirtiness of the world itself. The problem is that there is a very fine balance between the sense of dread combat should give cyberpunk, and a system where players are able to progress to badass status. While some players prefer the deadly (realistic) systems, most do not. Most players want to play characters that will be able to achieve bad ass status and not get taken down by the lowly street punk.
There are other fantasy aspects that are missing from Cyberpunk2020 and other present-day and future game worlds. These elements are not required for a good RPG. A good gaming group can work with anything. But these elements make it easier for the average group to have a good time. In fantasy worlds player characters are fundamentally different from the world around them. Characters are tougher then the average NPC and lowly enemies. It is easy for a player to suspend their disbelief when characters survive the sword and arrow wounds from low power enemies. In modern and future worlds it is hard to believe that a character will survive a wound from a high power firearm shot by the lowest street punk. It is just as hard to believe that the street punk won't have a nice insta-kill handgun. After all the firearm is the great leveler. In cyberpunk games in particular the high tech (magic) is ubiquious. The game would lose a large part of its feel if the average NPC did not have access to enchancements. In (good) fantasy worlds access to magic is controlled and usually limited to characters, important NPCs, and some monters. Characters have to gain experience before they get access to the fireball spell. In fantasy most enemies are monsters with different powers and weaknesses. These monsters are easily classified from easy to hard which helps the GM. In the modern/future game worlds the enemies are similar to the player characters making it hard to achieve the balance between enemies who are tough but not impossible.
These fantasy elements could not be added to Cyberpunk 2020. It would lose much of the desperate fell of cyberpunk. This is not to say that a good GM can't work around these issues or that players can't have a great time developing their characters over many long campaigns. It may be a cliche but it is true: A good GM and a good group of players don't need any rules or even source books. However fantasy worlds are easier to work with as there are fewer issues to begin with.
After reading the above some would (rightfully) accuse me of simply prefering sword and sorcery fantasy worlds. In truth I have long tired of sword and sorcery, but I have yet to find a modern-day or future game world that is both easy and fun to play.
Cyberypunk2020 has a great back story. The world is dark and dangerous. The writers did a good job of capturing the feel of William Gibson's early cyberpunk works (Neuromancer and related short stories), elements of Blade Runner, and bits of Max Headroom. The world had most of the elements needed for a good RPG. Characters have to struggle against staggering opposition, but characters had the potential to become minor gods. There was one missing element that I will discuss below.
The mechanics of the game were not very good. I never had a chance to see the original rules, but I did have the v2 rules. I was told that the v2 rules were a major improvement, which does not bode well for original. The rules were combersome and as I recall some parts felt tact on. I will freely admit that I only played the game briefly. Perhaps experience made the mechanics work more smoothly. There was a "port" of Cyberpunk 2020 to GURPS.
GURPS is well refined set of game mechanics. However I am not sure it was an improvement. In all RPGs the game mechanics have a large effect on the style or feel of the game. The mechanics must be crafted to reflect the game world or the game won't work. All games I saw based on GURPS felt like GURPS. Some element of the game world was lost.
Despite the problems I don't think that Cyberpunk 2020 v2 mechanics were that bad. There are worse systems. As a game I think that Cyberpunk was only missing one element that prevented it from being a great game: Cyberpunk 2020 was not a fantasy RPG. Nearly all RPGs set in present-day and future worlds suffer from the same problem. It is hard to be a hero when anyone can pick up a Desert Eagle or equivalent and take the hero down.
The Cyberpunk 2020 game world was special. It captured the essence of the bleak cyberpunk dystopia. As a game Cyberpunk 2020 was not that special.
That was my first impression but after thinking about it I changed my mind. Most users are only going to have a few SD cards. Usually just the one they have in their camera and maybe a spare. For these users having an integrated usb reader is very convinient especially if you are on the road and want to transfer pictures to a friend's computer. With regards to cost as you pointed out USB readers are pretty cheap. It probably costs next to nothing to add the USB bit. (A quick check of a local shop shows SanDisk SD cards are just slighly more expensive then similar USB drives.) I would guess that there will be a higher markup for the convinience factor, then the cost of adding the USB.
If these USB/SD cards become popular I predict that some camera maker will drop the USB interface from their cameras.
Don't discount the convinience factor. For a few bucks extra I would by a device like this. If only so that I didn't have to remember to bring the card reader.
It Canada it is legal for a company to intercept all computer use, and network and phone traffic. However private communications recieve special protection under the Privacy Act limiting what the company can do with that information. The Privacy Act also requires that the company protect any personal information from disclosure. Courts have shown that employees have a limited expectation of privacy.
In this case the bank can use the information it obtained to fire the employees. However the bank could not publish the messages for all to read.
In North America the billing model depends on the power requirements of the company. Smaller companies are metered just like homes. Even rather large companies can be metered.
I dislike Windows, but most of what you wrote is wrong.
The Windows GUI can be turned off, along with many of the other services that you won't need in a cluster. It is not even that hard. The MS knowledge base is a mess, but the information is there. There are many performance tweaks for the NT kernel that don't require a recompile. It should be noted that most Linux clusters use unmodified, or lightly modified kernels. Most admins feel that the slight performance gain (if any) is not worth the maintanance. While a Linux license could cost $0 most clusters pay more. The cluster owners want the maintanance that comes with a commercial Linux distro. The Windows licenses are actually not that expensive, and MS is also more then willing to negotiate a better price. Linux would probably cost less, but not that much less.
Finally there are some nice tools for Windows that allow you to manage a large cluster. Tools that are more sophisticated then ssh or distributed ssh. Tools similar to the ones that RedHat and Suse are busilly writing because the equivalent Linux tools are pretty basic.
There are many reasons why Linux is perfect for clusters. But none of the reasons you list are valid.
I agree with most of your points, but I believe two of the issues have been addressed. Part of the design critiria is that the parachute can be deployed in a spin, and at full throttle.
A true geek/nerd is interested in knowledge of all types
Sadly these geeks are in short supply.
I am dismayed by the number of people who think that university is a place to learn facts and job skills. It isn't. A university is a place to learn about learning. The more learning one attempts, the more one will learn about learning.
Of the handfull comments yours one of the few with good points. I just thought I would point that out.
Your argument is well taken. I think that there is some truth to it. I don't think that a proper education would have precluded the types of pressure Ms. Ellsworth may have needed.
For the record I didn't mean to suggest that Ms. Ellsworth would have benefitted from a CS degree. (Many respondents to my original post seem to think that this is the case.) There are many fields of study includeing non techinal ones. May be she would have found a love for Sumerian Architechture?
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It is not uncommon for an ISP to shy away from adult content. Likewise it is not uncommon for an ISP to setup a sister company that only hosts pr0n.
It is strickly a moral issue. Although social conservatives would like people to believe otherwise. The biggest problem is that teens are not taught responsible drinking at home. Legislating responsible beheviour has never worked.
no. ATA/xxx is the IDE interface speed.
ow wow thanks I never noticed that feature....
Online/web layout has its own bugs. And you still can't zoom the text as large as you like. IIRC 500% is the max. At best it is a cheap hack. It does not address the fundamental problem: WYSIWYG is a bad idea.
In any decent sized city there should be atleast one local shop that prints digital pictures. As far as the major chains are concerned it is not worth sending the job to a physically closer lab. It is usually more cost effective to setup one large distrobution center. Most of the shipping cost is handing the package to the shipping company, not how far the package will travel.
good question. Apple was one of the first to ship a computer with a portrait mode monitor. I think there was a monitor that rotated as well.
You mention a laptop with DVD player. An easier solution is simply a DVD player. Creating a DVD or VCD with a sequence of still images is very easy. With the correct indexing it is easy to go forward and back between images. Google for it.
Another simple solution is to have your digital pictures printed out and delivered. There are many shops that do this. It is inexpensive. The big advantage is that there is nothing to break. Also no staff need special training (ditto for a dvd player). There is also an added bonus in that your father can easily display photos that he likes.
It is actually a horribly awkward user interface metaphor
I agree. It became very appearent when I tried to setup a word processor for a nearly blind user. It would be very nice if I could configure a word processor to display text two inches high, but print at 12pt. Useing the zoom feature is pointless as horizontal scroll bars are frustrateing to use. The magnifier as found in Windows and MacOS is useless. It was obviously designed by people with good sight not blind users. I did attempt Latex but this user had difficulty useing it. In the end a large handheld magnifying glass was the best option. Pretty sad really.
Computers are amazingly powerfull and yet most apps are limited to poorly mimicing paper. WYSIWYG is a very bad idea. Computer screens are oriented the wrong way. The fonts that are easy to read on a computer screen are not the same fonts that are easy to read on paper. To top it off what you see is rarely what you get.
The sad part is that we are stuck in this rut of bad UI. Any focus group study is highly biased as most users will prefer interfaces that they are familiar with. And any company that dares to challenge the incombent UI will be shouted down with the phantom of "users retraining."
The article implies that Iceland is switching to hydrogen and geothermal due to all the environmental reasons. This simply isn't the case. Iceland is switching away from fossil fuels as they have none. The move away from oil is an economic decision. Oil is very expensive in Iceland as it is all imported. By contrast geothermal is practically free. Watch for Iceland to become a major exporter of hydrogen.
I use bonnie to test disk IO. It is a good reliable way to put the filesystem under load, and may help you determine if the scheduler is a problem.
Apple, IBM, Visicalc, etc - it's just as arguable to say that any one of them "could have been someone else".
Yes it really could have been someone else. There were so many players in th 1980s that any one of those companies could have vanished and the computer industry would still be, more or less, what it is today.
If you aren't going with HP/Dell/IBM your local shop is as good as any. Often it is better. As far as price goes the few bucks saved through mail order just isn't worth it. If a part fails it is faster and easier to walk into a local shop for a replacement then wait for parts to be shipped back and forth. If the local shop values your bussiness they will give you a temporary replacement while your dead part is shipped back to the supplier. Ofcourse you are going to have to develop such as relationship. Order complete systems from one supplier instead of parts from different places. Have the local shop assemble the systems. That way if there is a problem it is the local shops problem not yours.
Years ago a tech ordered 30 systems worth of parts for workstations. There was a problem: the video card was huge and did no clear some of the components on mainboard. The suppliers didn't care. It was not their problem. While trying to save a few bucks the tech cost the company close to $1000 in restocking and shipping fees, as well as a lot of time.
More recently I was quoted a price for a couple of rackmount systems. When the supplier tried to build the system they ran into a problem with case and the cpu heatsinks. It was not my problem. The supplier had to fix the problem, and they did it on their dime. If I did not have a good working relationship with this supplier the order would probably have been canceled. (At which point I would have taken my bussiness elsewhere.)
Ofcourse if you are a home user it if different. Local shops don't give a damn who you are and you shouldn't care about them.
I stand corrected. Google shows a few attempts by players to convert Cyberpunk2020 to GURPS. That is what I must have been thinking of.
"fantasy" you mean that more experienced characters can walk through a mob that would once have killed them ten times over
That is one aspect of fantasy and it is an element that is missing from Cyberpunk2020. I would not say that adding this element to cyberpunk is impossible. It is just very hard.
I agree that in cyberpunk life is supposed to be cheap. It is central to the theme. The game mechanics should reflect that with a deadly combat system. From a theme point of view I like the Cyberpunk2020 combat system. The system does a nice job of reflecting the confusion and dirtiness of the world itself. The problem is that there is a very fine balance between the sense of dread combat should give cyberpunk, and a system where players are able to progress to badass status. While some players prefer the deadly (realistic) systems, most do not. Most players want to play characters that will be able to achieve bad ass status and not get taken down by the lowly street punk.
There are other fantasy aspects that are missing from Cyberpunk2020 and other present-day and future game worlds. These elements are not required for a good RPG. A good gaming group can work with anything. But these elements make it easier for the average group to have a good time. In fantasy worlds player characters are fundamentally different from the world around them. Characters are tougher then the average NPC and lowly enemies. It is easy for a player to suspend their disbelief when characters survive the sword and arrow wounds from low power enemies. In modern and future worlds it is hard to believe that a character will survive a wound from a high power firearm shot by the lowest street punk. It is just as hard to believe that the street punk won't have a nice insta-kill handgun. After all the firearm is the great leveler. In cyberpunk games in particular the high tech (magic) is ubiquious. The game would lose a large part of its feel if the average NPC did not have access to enchancements. In (good) fantasy worlds access to magic is controlled and usually limited to characters, important NPCs, and some monters. Characters have to gain experience before they get access to the fireball spell. In fantasy most enemies are monsters with different powers and weaknesses. These monsters are easily classified from easy to hard which helps the GM. In the modern/future game worlds the enemies are similar to the player characters making it hard to achieve the balance between enemies who are tough but not impossible.
These fantasy elements could not be added to Cyberpunk 2020. It would lose much of the desperate fell of cyberpunk. This is not to say that a good GM can't work around these issues or that players can't have a great time developing their characters over many long campaigns. It may be a cliche but it is true: A good GM and a good group of players don't need any rules or even source books. However fantasy worlds are easier to work with as there are fewer issues to begin with.
After reading the above some would (rightfully) accuse me of simply prefering sword and sorcery fantasy worlds. In truth I have long tired of sword and sorcery, but I have yet to find a modern-day or future game world that is both easy and fun to play.
Cyberypunk2020 has a great back story. The world is dark and dangerous. The writers did a good job of capturing the feel of William Gibson's early cyberpunk works (Neuromancer and related short stories), elements of Blade Runner, and bits of Max Headroom. The world had most of the elements needed for a good RPG. Characters have to struggle against staggering opposition, but characters had the potential to become minor gods. There was one missing element that I will discuss below.
The mechanics of the game were not very good. I never had a chance to see the original rules, but I did have the v2 rules. I was told that the v2 rules were a major improvement, which does not bode well for original. The rules were combersome and as I recall some parts felt tact on. I will freely admit that I only played the game briefly. Perhaps experience made the mechanics work more smoothly. There was a "port" of Cyberpunk 2020 to GURPS.
GURPS is well refined set of game mechanics. However I am not sure it was an improvement. In all RPGs the game mechanics have a large effect on the style or feel of the game. The mechanics must be crafted to reflect the game world or the game won't work. All games I saw based on GURPS felt like GURPS. Some element of the game world was lost.
Despite the problems I don't think that Cyberpunk 2020 v2 mechanics were that bad. There are worse systems. As a game I think that Cyberpunk was only missing one element that prevented it from being a great game: Cyberpunk 2020 was not a fantasy RPG. Nearly all RPGs set in present-day and future worlds suffer from the same problem. It is hard to be a hero when anyone can pick up a Desert Eagle or equivalent and take the hero down.
The Cyberpunk 2020 game world was special. It captured the essence of the bleak cyberpunk dystopia. As a game Cyberpunk 2020 was not that special.
That was my first impression but after thinking about it I changed my mind. Most users are only going to have a few SD cards. Usually just the one they have in their camera and maybe a spare. For these users having an integrated usb reader is very convinient especially if you are on the road and want to transfer pictures to a friend's computer. With regards to cost as you pointed out USB readers are pretty cheap. It probably costs next to nothing to add the USB bit. (A quick check of a local shop shows SanDisk SD cards are just slighly more expensive then similar USB drives.) I would guess that there will be a higher markup for the convinience factor, then the cost of adding the USB.
If these USB/SD cards become popular I predict that some camera maker will drop the USB interface from their cameras.
Don't discount the convinience factor. For a few bucks extra I would by a device like this. If only so that I didn't have to remember to bring the card reader.
It Canada it is legal for a company to intercept all computer use, and network and phone traffic. However private communications recieve special protection under the Privacy Act limiting what the company can do with that information. The Privacy Act also requires that the company protect any personal information from disclosure. Courts have shown that employees have a limited expectation of privacy.
In this case the bank can use the information it obtained to fire the employees. However the bank could not publish the messages for all to read.
In North America the billing model depends on the power requirements of the company. Smaller companies are metered just like homes. Even rather large companies can be metered.
I dislike Windows, but most of what you wrote is wrong.
The Windows GUI can be turned off, along with many of the other services that you won't need in a cluster. It is not even that hard. The MS knowledge base is a mess, but the information is there. There are many performance tweaks for the NT kernel that don't require a recompile. It should be noted that most Linux clusters use unmodified, or lightly modified kernels. Most admins feel that the slight performance gain (if any) is not worth the maintanance. While a Linux license could cost $0 most clusters pay more. The cluster owners want the maintanance that comes with a commercial Linux distro. The Windows licenses are actually not that expensive, and MS is also more then willing to negotiate a better price. Linux would probably cost less, but not that much less.
Finally there are some nice tools for Windows that allow you to manage a large cluster. Tools that are more sophisticated then ssh or distributed ssh. Tools similar to the ones that RedHat and Suse are busilly writing because the equivalent Linux tools are pretty basic.
There are many reasons why Linux is perfect for clusters. But none of the reasons you list are valid.
I looked at the easynews site. You are probably paying more for electricity then you are gaining in "free" gigs.
I agree with most of your points, but I believe two of the issues have been addressed. Part of the design critiria is that the parachute can be deployed in a spin, and at full throttle.
A true geek/nerd is interested in knowledge of all types
Sadly these geeks are in short supply.
I am dismayed by the number of people who think that university is a place to learn facts and job skills. It isn't. A university is a place to learn about learning. The more learning one attempts, the more one will learn about learning.
Of the handfull comments yours one of the few with good points. I just thought I would point that out.
Your argument is well taken. I think that there is some truth to it. I don't think that a proper education would have precluded the types of pressure Ms. Ellsworth may have needed.
For the record I didn't mean to suggest that Ms. Ellsworth would have benefitted from a CS degree. (Many respondents to my original post seem to think that this is the case.) There are many fields of study includeing non techinal ones. May be she would have found a love for Sumerian Architechture?
We are on the same page. I don't think a college education is an achievement either. It is what one does next that matters.