Most of the reviews from people so far, bitching about it, seem to either be coming from system admins trying to learn perl (bitching that using it requires a knowledge of perl), or perl programmers bitching that it doesn't teach them system administration.
If you want to learn perl -- buy Learning Perl. If you want to learn system adminstration, get the Unix Systems Administration Handbook. They're both good entry level books in their field.
Perl for System Administrators was to me, more like the Cookbook -- it tells you about lots of things that you can do with the language, as 90% of the perl books out there seem to focus on text processing [eg, HTTP interfaces] Personally, I got it as a reference for work I'm doing with HTTP interfaces to LDAP. Most of the rest of the book either I don't need to worry about right now, or I've already done before, so is only useful if I want to find out why the way I did it was wrong.
This is a _very_ niche book, as you need to know both system administration and perl, and actually care about one of the chapters in the book. If you fit into that category, it'll probably be of immense help. I know it was to me.
Blah. You have the problem that when you try to use the pliers, you're gripping against the tool side. [Same problem with SOG, which made the list of toys].
If you search around, you can find them significantly cheaper, too. With a quick check, I found a place that seems to have everything 30% off or so (I've never ordered from them, so it's at your owk risk) -- http://www.wholesalehunter.com.
They don't have the TiNi one, but they do have about as complete of a line of Gerber tools as you can get, without the BYO stuff -- http://www.wholesalehunter.com/product/gerber/gerb home.htm
Personally, I normally carry the original SOG Power Pliers, [but I've changed out some of the blaces], as it has a great phillips for small screws, a Gerber MultiPlier 600 [better for larger phillips, such as when rack mounting stuff, and better pliers], a Latshaw PocketWrench II, and a Leatherman Micro on my keychain. If we're pulling cable, then I may also carry a Mini Mag Lite, and Gerber MultiLite [better scissors, as only my Leatherman Micro has scissors on it]
Oh...and I don't carry a pager as my cell phone does text paging. Unfortunately, I think the Palm IIIc is the heaviest/bulkiest thing I carry. But I don't keep those two on my belt.
Some machines are just naturally faster at doing some processes. Comparing a G4 to a P3 is like comparing Perl to FORTRAN. If I want to do numerical analysis and do some brute force estimates on an integral, I'd use FORTRAN. If I want to do some text manipulation, I'd use Perl.
Figure out what you want from a machine, and get the machine to fit. Sometimes, you need two machines -- one for doing real work, and one with a second button so you can play half life.
Not quite what I'd consider a club on the same scale, but I've been members of two chapters of the Perl Mongers, and they're still going. They're prone to fluctuations like all groups, but they're still out there for those of you looking to pal around and talk geek in person.
(But the closest that I knew to a club were computer gaming groups -- every month or two a bunch of us would drag out computers over to a friend's house, connect to his switch [parts of his ISP were still in his house] and try to kill each other in wargames, FPS, etc. Not as much geek talk going on there, but it happened once in a while.
Have you ever wondered why it's so hard to understand things written in English during the Middle Ages?
It was written in a language that was not the origin of today's modern English. It was written in Canturbury English. Today's english is based on London English, which was not particularly dominant at the time.
A few plague laters, and Middle English was a dead language. If something were to happen to the US -- say, some nuclear fallout which made the US no longer a superpower, and I'm sure that modern day, American English won't be so popular throughout the world, as there's no reason to teach some language from some now third world country to the kids growing up in what would then be the world's super powers.
Actually, it might make support easier in the long run, but not in the short run. Anyone out there who's worked at a helpdesk knows that if you mandate change, more people will call.
That's not to say that you can't set a policy that people are grandfathered if they're using something else, but that new people must use (whatever), or that you'll only support (whatever). If you force everyone to change in a short period, for the next couple of weeks, you'll get a flood of calls about it.
First, you'll get the simple, 'I need help configuring (whatever)', which isn't bad, but we all know that they majority will wait 'till the last day mandated for the change.
Next, you get the 'I need to pull my (email|history|preferences) into (whatever)' type calls. Depending on exactly what they want, and what they're going to/from, this may or may not be so easy.
And then, anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks in, you start getting the 'Where's (feature) that I had in (last product)?' along with the 'This is a technical question, and I called technical support, and I expect an answer' and 'What, it doesn't have it? Why they hell are you making me switch to (whatever), then, when it's clearly a piece of crap if it doesn't have (feature).'
If people are getting along fine with their product, let them keep using it. If they start having questions, then you politely inform them that you don't support that product, and if they want support, they'll need to more to (whatever).
If it's something that you just happen to know, because you really use (last product) yourself, you need to tell them that it's an unsupported product, but you just happen to know that answer, and so you might not be able to help them next time. [DO NOT let on that you know (last product) well, or you'll get people calling the help desk specifically asking for you]
Although I agree that I Netscape has a disproportionate number of links to their own banner ads, I'm guessing that IE has a few more than just one.
It's things like this which make me look towards the next generation of browsers-- I love iCab's ability to ignore images based on what path they have (eg, any path with '/ads/' in it, or on a machine named 'ads') or the image size (1x1 pixels, or the standard banner sizes).
How they handle cookies is nice, too, as you're allowed to reject or accept domains as a whole, while still prompting for all others.
For those people who don't have a Mac, you probably have one or two hold out friends with one, so have them grab a copy, and you'll see what I mean:
My whole reason for wanting flex time is commute...
if I sleep in by 30min more, it's more beneficial for me to not leave 'till 2hrs later than I normally would.
I work in DC, and if I leave before 7:30am or after 9:30am, my commute's about an hour or so. During the main rush 'hour', however, it easily adds 30min to my commute. That's an extra 30 min of stress that I've had before I've even thought about getting any work done, and like many people, I tend to be much more productive when I'm not stressed.
[Although, I also tend to be more productive when dumbasses aren't asking me stupid questions and distracting me, and I lose train of thought on my project, and go reading/. in the middle of the day....so before 9:30am [when 50% of the office bothers to show up] and after 5:30pm [when the slackers leave], I get most of my work done.]
Unfortunately with my job, I have no clue some nights when I'm going to get to leave as people forget to tell me about projects which have been planned for months, but my part suddenly has to be done by monday [and I'm told the friday before], so I can't depend on public transportation, as they only allow you to park at the metro lots for 24hrs, and they're a few months off from completing south side of the green line.
If also means that I can't carpool, as I can't onconvenience someone else if I might have to stay an extra hour or two on a semi-regular basis.
The Lexington Perl Mongers had a nice advantage, as we worked for different companies. Once in a while, Lexmark would bring out Nat Torkington (to talk? teach? not sure what the deal was), and we'd move our monthly meetings to concide with when he'd be in town.
We'd still have our planned speaker for meeting [talking about some random module / feature], but Nat also gave us a small talk about as to what was going on with Perl and showed us pictures of his kid, and all it cost us was keeping him in beer for the night.
If you increase your members, and they're varied [work for different companies, go to different schools, etc], you have a better chance of knowing when someone's going to be in the area anyway, and snagging them to come give a talk.
The problem with getting other kits is that you have to only make use of the grey or black parts to make sure they blend in right. [I've actually debated on buying another Dark Side kit just so I wouldn't have so many damned yellow and blue parts that I never use.
In messing about with another kit that I got late August, I mounted a catapult to the top of my AT-AT, and it fires after taking a few steps forward. [a worm gear kicks a block out of the way, which releases the arm to fire]
My problems right now, however, is that it slowly tears itself apart [after each firing, you need to retighten a few parts to make sure it's still solic], and the catapult partially obscures the light sensor, so I can't quite use it for an alarm system at work [damned flourescent crappy lighting]
I could care less about how fast the clock on the computer is -- it matters how much it can do. It's like that 'hard working' incompetant employee that every office seems to have -- they'll be there for 12hrs/day, and still not get shit done.
If a 400 Mhz machine can do something in 4 cycles that a 600Mhz machine takes 8 cycles to do, then technically, the 400Mhz machine is the 'faster' machine for that process. You start seeing that behavior on a few dozen/hundred instructions, and it makes real sense to get the lower clock speed chip.
I don't know where the rest of you grew up, but I know of a few people in my high school 10 years ago who didn't obtain their nintendo cartridges legally. (Oxon Hill High School, outside of Washington, DC)
These days, they're having problems with kids stealing other kids Pokemon cards. I'm guessing there's a few kids out there who are lifting a little cash from their parents to get it, too.
And the reason this happens is because unlike Malasia, if you give the kid a good spanking, you get brought up on child abuse charges, or your kid sues you for emotional trauma years later. But if you just let them steal, you're fine, as they're still a juvenile, and they'd just get sent up to Boy's Village for a little while.
Not even a full generation later, and you're not shocked to see some 5 year old mouthing off to his mom. If I did that to my mom, I knew that after we got home, I'd not be sitting so easy for the rest of the day.
Too many kids these say have no real adult supervision-- both parents work, and they're sent off to a daycare or have a babysitter watch after them 'till a parent gets off work. If they're lucky, they have an older brother who will beat them when they do something stupid. [of course, they could also get my brother, who would beat us for no particular reason]
I can't remember what the technical term is anymore, but when I worked for an ISP, we had a restriction put on our phones so that our long distance service could not be changed. Someone tried doing it while we had the lock, and Bell South called us to let us know about it.
I don't know if it's a special thing that Bell South offered, but I advise everyone to call their phone company, and see if they can get it, or something similar.
In talking to a Bell South manager once, he said that some long distance companies have been known in the past to sell their customers to other providers if they're not making enough calls to make it worthwhile to keep them as a customer.
(I don't know if it's true or not, so I won't give a name incase it was just a rumor, and not a solid fact)
There's a few benefits of dead trees, as much as I like to keep everything in a digital format --
it has its own sort of built in 'memory'--
If I look at the edge of my old camel book (the new edition I haven't quite beat down this far yet), not only can I see the slight discoloration from thumbing through certain sections more than others, but if I were to put the book on its spine, and let go, I know it's going to pop open to the function reference section.
Whenever I've started a new job, if I'm taking over something from someone who's left and they didn't take the reference books with them, at the very least, I can look through the manuals and see if they've folded down any corners, scribbled in the margins, highlighted a few lines, or stuck in a few post-its to bookmark something. With man pages, I'd have to look through their shell history, and see if I can find out what they found so interesting that it was worth consulting repeatedly.
Now, if they'd start making books from a more renewable material, and not from trees (cotton rag, hemp, even bamboo fibers, as they have a quicker growing time), and as they're now using soy based inks, I'd say that printed manuals and books definately have their benefits, even if you can't just grep for what you're looking for.
So if it's being released as a PDF, anyone know of a PDF reader for Palm OS?
The only reason to take the subway into work is so I can sync my palm before I leave, and catch up on the news, etc... it'd be nice if I could download books to it, too, without needing some other piece of hardware to carry with me.
There are some nice things, and some not so nice things about living in a well wired house.
First, look at the personalities in the house. Sure, it's nice to have people who share similar interests, but well, most of those people are freaks.
You also have to agree on the game of choice. Ours was Age of Empires / Age of Kings, but to make sure that we didn't stress out on it. [ie, I'm a sore loser], we'd play co-op if it was just the two of us from our apartment. If any of you have majorly agressive personalities, gaming may not be a good thing to do.
It's nice to have some public space, and some private space. Our setup wasn't actually a house, but 3 apartments really close together. One was connected via WaveLan, the other via 10bT run through some exhaust pipes in the complex.
This gave us a fair amout of privacy, when needed, and we still had the computer room set up for when we all got together [1 mac, 1 xterm, 1 wintel box, and a few assorted vaxes, sparcs & bsd boxes] and the hanging out/TV watching apartment with nice couches and the big TV [the married people in the network...go figure.]
For those of you who have had roommates, you know that there are good, and those that you wish to god you never knew. It's not so bad when you both relatively clean up after yourself. [note -- a dishwasher is VERY important], but if you keep coming back to half empty diet pepsi cans scattered all over the place [okay, so, he was legally blind, and nutrasweet kills your short term memory, so he probably just put 'em down, forgot he was drinking them, and then didn't see them there] it gets old really quickly.
Even really good friends can quickly get on each others nerves. One little personality quirk, and you'll start to hate each other.
Before you lay down the cash for hardware and cabling, you should really get to know the people you're going to be rooming with. If there isn't one main person who's in charge (ie, who owns the place), you'll have to decide what to do when there's a problem [just image -- the geek version of the Real World]
No matter how much how much technology you put in a house, you still can't overcome the roomie's obnoxious girlfriend, the roomie who can't aim when peeing standing up [speaking of which -- it's good to have one bathroom per person in the place.. 4bd/4ba apartments exist in some areas.], the roommate who constantly raids the fridge and never buys food, etc.
Apartment complexes give a nice advantage as they're modular-- so long as the 'anchor' [whomever has the outbound connection] in your setup stays, you can add/drop people as they move in/move out, etc. The only disadvantage is the lack of true 'public' space, if you're all of the computer-lab type mindset. It's also nice that when one person gets sick, they can quarentine them selves off, and not get the rest of you diseased. [even more important when we were 4 of the 6 people at an ISP, and the other two were the acountant, and the lawyer]
As I see it, there are two types of games out there-- those to make a profit, and those because the designer was having a bit of fun.
The problem is that companies are trying to get the most profit that they can. For a flight sim, they've got to get everything right, or some anal retentive bastard's going to bitch that the lever to control the landing gear's in the wrong place.
It's not so bad with fantasy games, where you can make up whatever you want, and well, that's just how it is. [which is why Halflife starts getting lame when you're on alien worlds -- it's so much cooler to see how well they got the human reactions and such]
Some games are fun in a more nostalgic way... I'll go back and play Quake once in a while, or Duke3d, when I'm in the FPS mood, but QuakeII....I don't think so. Sometimes, I'm in the mood for a good game of C&C or WarcraftII. [Although, after playing it for so much, I guess I have to admit that AOE and AOK aren't bad games, either]
You still get people working on text based muds....not for the profit, but for the fun of it. [okay, and I know a few that are just there to be fascist bastards, but that's another story] People still work on NetHack. I think I remember seeing on slashdot a while back mentioning Trade Wars. Hell, there's even a sequel to Dark Castle coming out.
Good games are still out there, even if they're not coming from the companies who can afford the multi million dollar ad campaigns.
There are many things that are considered a commodity-- a 'must have' item.
Let's assume the following numbers (which are completely fabricated, as I have no knowledge of the Ford company):
Company 'X' has 300,000 employees, making an average of $50k/year. Those people might each pay an average of 35% in state and federal taxes. They give each employee a $2k computer. It's like giving each employee a $3k raise, as that's what it'd have cost them to get that computer.
You wonder 'but didn't it just cost them $600k to do it?' Probably not. When you're buying in bulk like that, people cut you deals. On the order of 30-40%, but we'll be conservative, and say 25%. So it only costs them $450k [$1.5k per machine].
[I'd have looked at the possibility of taking it as an operating expense for the company, but salary qualifies, I think, so they'd have saved that money either way]
So, anyway, you've just made a person happy, without paying $3k/person, but only spending $1.5k/person. It makes sense to me.
Also quite possible, is that they're using the purchase of the computers as some sort of a bargaining chip, too: 'If we agree to buy X units from you, will you agree to buy Y units from us?', which results in big sales for them, and drives their stock price up while they're at it.
2 years ago, I was living in a nice little apartment complex in Lexington, KY. It wasn't too bad, and there were a few of us (5) geeks who all worked at an ISP (which conveniently, wasn't a local call).
The cable system there was a private system, just for the apartment complex, and they were having problems keeping the complex full. So, our suggestion to them was to set up a network for cable modems, or some other high speed access. We backed it up with various articles on how hotels and apartments were able to charge more if they had good connetivity, etc. They ignored us.
Within a year, the main cable company in town had their system up and running. Shortly after that, GTE was up with DSL. (and our complex was 19k feet from the switch...we just barely passed spec for ISDN.)
Many people have commented on the custom built scenario, which is the 'I know what I'm getting' argument, which I agree is a very good argument.
Sometimes, however, there are advantages to pre-assembled machines. Now, I consider there to be three main types of pre-built machines--
proprietary parts (eg Dell Optiplex, but not a Dell Dimension)
integrated motherboards (the dirt-cheap machines you find on PriceWatch)
individual parts (individual sound/video cards, etc.)
Now, the third one is much like a custom machine, but you don't assemble it yourself. You choose from parts the company has in stock, they assemble it, maybe do soem burn-in tests, and send it to you. The advantage is that you pay shipping once, and the markup tends to be slightly less, as there's one company involved to buy from, not 6-10. (Explorer Micro comes to mind as a company that does this....I've never bought from them before, they just tend to rank well on Pricewatch)
Naturally, the flaw with this is that you might not be able to get that one specific part (video card, whatever) you had your heart set on, if the company you choose doesn't stock it, so it's not quite as good as the custom approach, but you might be able to save enough money to put in a crap item, and trade it out yourself.
For the middle class of pre-built machines, there's the ones with integrated parts on the motherboard. Mostly, they're the type that use shared memory for video, have built in wussy sound, etc. Probably not really what you want for a box permenantly, but they're good cheap-now/upgrade-later boxes. [you need something right now, and can't blow much cash on it, but you'll later have the cash to replace out the MB, video, sound, etc.]
And we're left with the 'proprietary parts' machines, which well, are great, so long as they never break. If something goes wrong, you might get screwed in having to fork out $40 for a FDD that fits in that size, etc. If the MB goes, you're basically screwed [although, most under this type have a longer warrenty than the others...as minimum a year... so with an extended warrenty, this might be a good type of machine for that aunt you have who's completely computer illiterate, but insists on calling you up for her 'I can't get on the Internet' questions]
So, in summary, look at what you need for this individual box -- is it a server, and you need 99.9999% uptime? Well, you'll want all custom parts for it, no question, to make sure you have an easy access case, reliable HD, ECC memory, a good NIC, etc. Is it just some lame workstation? Well, maybe you'll be willing to cut a few corners [integrated MB, smaller HD], so you can upgrade your main box. Is it for someone else? Warrenties/Tech support are good, so they're not calling you constantly to come over and fix it when they load some stupid screensaver someone sent them in e-mail.
And on an slightly related note, if anyone knows of a source for the Elan Vital M5 case, (not the M5-R), mail me : oneiros$at$annoying.org [replacing $at$ as appropriate]
There was also a 'Jay & Silent Bob' comic (4 parter), which was put into a compilation trade paperback just before Dogma hit theatres.
(check your local comic shop -- it's $12 or so, but it'd explain some things not fully in the movies...like why the details around the scene in Chasing Amy, what happened to the chimp at the end of Mallrats, more background on Mooby, and where Silent Bob got the Mooby cap from, etc.)
It also pokes some fun as Neil Patrick Harris (and the claim that his job in Starship Troopers was to finance his "quasi-indie film" [porn movie]), and has a brief cameo by Mr. Rogers.
Also, last year, View Askew (with Oni Press), put out the 'Clerks Holiday Special, which explains what happened to Caitlin Bree. There was also an issue of the Clerks comic which explained more about Steve Dave and um...whoever his yes-man is. (unfortunately, I don't know what I did with that...I'm in the middle of packing).
And, for the references to 'Walt Flanagan's Dog', you'd have to find the back issue of Oni Double Feature that had the story. (which again, is probably already moved, so I can't look up the issue in question)
For more info on Kevin Smith's work, there's also News Askew, which mentions that "Clerks: the animated series" will debut on 07Feb2000.
Erm....when I had dealings with a computer store (I worked in Academic Computing in college, and the computer store was a devision of our department), we could get an 'Apple Extended Warranty'. From my recollection, you could even get it 11 months after you bought your hardware, so long as it wasn't out of warranty (much as you can with automobile warrenties)
I think it was somewhere in the range of 1-2% of the total price...can't remember exactly, as I never bought one.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the reviews from people so far, bitching about it, seem to either be coming from system admins trying to learn perl (bitching that using it requires a knowledge of perl), or perl programmers bitching that it doesn't teach them system administration.
If you want to learn perl -- buy Learning Perl. If you want to learn system adminstration, get the Unix Systems Administration Handbook. They're both good entry level books in their field.
Perl for System Administrators was to me, more like the Cookbook -- it tells you about lots of things that you can do with the language, as 90% of the perl books out there seem to focus on text processing [eg, HTTP interfaces] Personally, I got it as a reference for work I'm doing with HTTP interfaces to LDAP. Most of the rest of the book either I don't need to worry about right now, or I've already done before, so is only useful if I want to find out why the way I did it was wrong.
This is a _very_ niche book, as you need to know both system administration and perl, and actually care about one of the chapters in the book. If you fit into that category, it'll probably be of immense help. I know it was to me.
Blah. You have the problem that when you try to use the pliers, you're gripping against the tool side. [Same problem with SOG, which made the list of toys].
b home.htm
If you search around, you can find them significantly cheaper, too. With a quick check, I found a place that seems to have everything 30% off or so (I've never ordered from them, so it's at your owk risk) -- http://www.wholesalehunter.com.
They don't have the TiNi one, but they do have about as complete of a line of Gerber tools as you can get, without the BYO stuff -- http://www.wholesalehunter.com/product/gerber/ger
Personally, I normally carry the original SOG Power Pliers, [but I've changed out some of the blaces], as it has a great phillips for small screws, a Gerber MultiPlier 600 [better for larger phillips, such as when rack mounting stuff, and better pliers], a Latshaw PocketWrench II, and a Leatherman Micro on my keychain. If we're pulling cable, then I may also carry a Mini Mag Lite, and Gerber MultiLite [better scissors, as only my Leatherman Micro has scissors on it]
Oh...and I don't carry a pager as my cell phone does text paging. Unfortunately, I think the Palm IIIc is the heaviest/bulkiest thing I carry. But I don't keep those two on my belt.
one calculation isn't an acurate banchmark.
Some machines are just naturally faster at doing some processes. Comparing a G4 to a P3 is like comparing Perl to FORTRAN. If I want to do numerical analysis and do some brute force estimates on an integral, I'd use FORTRAN. If I want to do some text manipulation, I'd use Perl.
Figure out what you want from a machine, and get the machine to fit. Sometimes, you need two machines -- one for doing real work, and one with a second button so you can play half life.
Not quite what I'd consider a club on the same scale, but I've been members of two chapters of the Perl Mongers, and they're still going. They're prone to fluctuations like all groups, but they're still out there for those of you looking to pal around and talk geek in person.
(But the closest that I knew to a club were computer gaming groups -- every month or two a bunch of us would drag out computers over to a friend's house, connect to his switch [parts of his ISP were still in his house] and try to kill each other in wargames, FPS, etc. Not as much geek talk going on there, but it happened once in a while.
Have you ever wondered why it's so hard to understand things written in English during the Middle Ages?
It was written in a language that was not the origin of today's modern English. It was written in Canturbury English. Today's english is based on London English, which was not particularly dominant at the time.
A few plague laters, and Middle English was a dead language. If something were to happen to the US -- say, some nuclear fallout which made the US no longer a superpower, and I'm sure that modern day, American English won't be so popular throughout the world, as there's no reason to teach some language from some now third world country to the kids growing up in what would then be the world's super powers.
- Biohazar d
- Honda P3
They're both technically Heavyweights as the P3's a StompBot, however, I think that Biohazard's low center of gravity gives him a definate advantage.Actually, it might make support easier in the long run, but not in the short run. Anyone out there who's worked at a helpdesk knows that if you mandate change, more people will call.
That's not to say that you can't set a policy that people are grandfathered if they're using something else, but that new people must use (whatever), or that you'll only support (whatever). If you force everyone to change in a short period, for the next couple of weeks, you'll get a flood of calls about it.
First, you'll get the simple, 'I need help configuring (whatever)', which isn't bad, but we all know that they majority will wait 'till the last day mandated for the change.
Next, you get the 'I need to pull my (email|history|preferences) into (whatever)' type calls. Depending on exactly what they want, and what they're going to/from, this may or may not be so easy.
And then, anywhere from a few days to a couple weeks in, you start getting the 'Where's (feature) that I had in (last product)?' along with the 'This is a technical question, and I called technical support, and I expect an answer' and 'What, it doesn't have it? Why they hell are you making me switch to (whatever), then, when it's clearly a piece of crap if it doesn't have (feature).'
If people are getting along fine with their product, let them keep using it. If they start having questions, then you politely inform them that you don't support that product, and if they want support, they'll need to more to (whatever).
If it's something that you just happen to know, because you really use (last product) yourself, you need to tell them that it's an unsupported product, but you just happen to know that answer, and so you might not be able to help them next time. [DO NOT let on that you know (last product) well, or you'll get people calling the help desk specifically asking for you]
Although I agree that I Netscape has a disproportionate number of links to their own banner ads, I'm guessing that IE has a few more than just one.
It's things like this which make me look towards the next generation of browsers-- I love iCab's ability to ignore images based on what path they have (eg, any path with '/ads/' in it, or on a machine named 'ads') or the image size (1x1 pixels, or the standard banner sizes).
How they handle cookies is nice, too, as you're allowed to reject or accept domains as a whole, while still prompting for all others.
For those people who don't have a Mac, you probably have one or two hold out friends with one, so have them grab a copy, and you'll see what I mean:
http://www.icab.de/
[oh...and it's under 2megs, too....although they're still working on CSS support]
All I see from Netscape is a much needed update for a buggy product; it's not a significant break through, even if it was a complete code re-write..
My whole reason for wanting flex time is commute...
/. in the middle of the day....so before 9:30am [when 50% of the office bothers to show up] and after 5:30pm [when the slackers leave], I get most of my work done.]
if I sleep in by 30min more, it's more beneficial for me to not leave 'till 2hrs later than I normally would.
I work in DC, and if I leave before 7:30am or after 9:30am, my commute's about an hour or so. During the main rush 'hour', however, it easily adds 30min to my commute. That's an extra 30 min of stress that I've had before I've even thought about getting any work done, and like many people, I tend to be much more productive when I'm not stressed.
[Although, I also tend to be more productive when dumbasses aren't asking me stupid questions and distracting me, and I lose train of thought on my project, and go reading
Unfortunately with my job, I have no clue some nights when I'm going to get to leave as people forget to tell me about projects which have been planned for months, but my part suddenly has to be done by monday [and I'm told the friday before], so I can't depend on public transportation, as they only allow you to park at the metro lots for 24hrs, and they're a few months off from completing south side of the green line.
If also means that I can't carpool, as I can't onconvenience someone else if I might have to stay an extra hour or two on a semi-regular basis.
The Lexington Perl Mongers had a nice advantage, as we worked for different companies. Once in a while, Lexmark would bring out Nat Torkington (to talk? teach? not sure what the deal was), and we'd move our monthly meetings to concide with when he'd be in town.
We'd still have our planned speaker for meeting [talking about some random module / feature], but Nat also gave us a small talk about as to what was going on with Perl and showed us pictures of his kid, and all it cost us was keeping him in beer for the night.
If you increase your members, and they're varied [work for different companies, go to different schools, etc], you have a better chance of knowing when someone's going to be in the area anyway, and snagging them to come give a talk.
The problem with getting other kits is that you have to only make use of the grey or black parts to make sure they blend in right. [I've actually debated on buying another Dark Side kit just so I wouldn't have so many damned yellow and blue parts that I never use.
In messing about with another kit that I got late August, I mounted a catapult to the top of my AT-AT, and it fires after taking a few steps forward. [a worm gear kicks a block out of the way, which releases the arm to fire]
My problems right now, however, is that it slowly tears itself apart [after each firing, you need to retighten a few parts to make sure it's still solic], and the catapult partially obscures the light sensor, so I can't quite use it for an alarm system at work [damned flourescent crappy lighting]
I could care less about how fast the clock on the computer is -- it matters how much it can do. It's like that 'hard working' incompetant employee that every office seems to have -- they'll be there for 12hrs/day, and still not get shit done.
If a 400 Mhz machine can do something in 4 cycles that a 600Mhz machine takes 8 cycles to do, then technically, the 400Mhz machine is the 'faster' machine for that process. You start seeing that behavior on a few dozen/hundred instructions, and it makes real sense to get the lower clock speed chip.
I don't know where the rest of you grew up, but I know of a few people in my high school 10 years ago who didn't obtain their nintendo cartridges legally. (Oxon Hill High School, outside of Washington, DC)
These days, they're having problems with kids stealing other kids Pokemon cards. I'm guessing there's a few kids out there who are lifting a little cash from their parents to get it, too.
And the reason this happens is because unlike Malasia, if you give the kid a good spanking, you get brought up on child abuse charges, or your kid sues you for emotional trauma years later. But if you just let them steal, you're fine, as they're still a juvenile, and they'd just get sent up to Boy's Village for a little while.
Not even a full generation later, and you're not shocked to see some 5 year old mouthing off to his mom. If I did that to my mom, I knew that after we got home, I'd not be sitting so easy for the rest of the day.
Too many kids these say have no real adult supervision-- both parents work, and they're sent off to a daycare or have a babysitter watch after them 'till a parent gets off work. If they're lucky, they have an older brother who will beat them when they do something stupid. [of course, they could also get my brother, who would beat us for no particular reason]
I can't remember what the technical term is anymore, but when I worked for an ISP, we had a restriction put on our phones so that our long distance service could not be changed. Someone tried doing it while we had the lock, and Bell South called us to let us know about it.
I don't know if it's a special thing that Bell South offered, but I advise everyone to call their phone company, and see if they can get it, or something similar.
In talking to a Bell South manager once, he said that some long distance companies have been known in the past to sell their customers to other providers if they're not making enough calls to make it worthwhile to keep them as a customer.
(I don't know if it's true or not, so I won't give a name incase it was just a rumor, and not a solid fact)
There's a few benefits of dead trees, as much as I like to keep everything in a digital format --
it has its own sort of built in 'memory'--
If I look at the edge of my old camel book (the new edition I haven't quite beat down this far yet), not only can I see the slight discoloration from thumbing through certain sections more than others, but if I were to put the book on its spine, and let go, I know it's going to pop open to the function reference section.
Whenever I've started a new job, if I'm taking over something from someone who's left and they didn't take the reference books with them, at the very least, I can look through the manuals and see if they've folded down any corners, scribbled in the margins, highlighted a few lines, or stuck in a few post-its to bookmark something. With man pages, I'd have to look through their shell history, and see if I can find out what they found so interesting that it was worth consulting repeatedly.
Now, if they'd start making books from a more renewable material, and not from trees (cotton rag, hemp, even bamboo fibers, as they have a quicker growing time), and as they're now using soy based inks, I'd say that printed manuals and books definately have their benefits, even if you can't just grep for what you're looking for.
So if it's being released as a PDF, anyone know of a PDF reader for Palm OS?
The only reason to take the subway into work is so I can sync my palm before I leave, and catch up on the news, etc... it'd be nice if I could download books to it, too, without needing some other piece of hardware to carry with me.
There are some nice things, and some not so nice things about living in a well wired house.
First, look at the personalities in the house. Sure, it's nice to have people who share similar interests, but well, most of those people are freaks.
You also have to agree on the game of choice. Ours was Age of Empires / Age of Kings, but to make sure that we didn't stress out on it. [ie, I'm a sore loser], we'd play co-op if it was just the two of us from our apartment. If any of you have majorly agressive personalities, gaming may not be a good thing to do.
It's nice to have some public space, and some private space. Our setup wasn't actually a house, but 3 apartments really close together. One was connected via WaveLan, the other via 10bT run through some exhaust pipes in the complex.
This gave us a fair amout of privacy, when needed, and we still had the computer room set up for when we all got together [1 mac, 1 xterm, 1 wintel box, and a few assorted vaxes, sparcs & bsd boxes] and the hanging out/TV watching apartment with nice couches and the big TV [the married people in the network...go figure.]
For those of you who have had roommates, you know that there are good, and those that you wish to god you never knew. It's not so bad when you both relatively clean up after yourself. [note -- a dishwasher is VERY important], but if you keep coming back to half empty diet pepsi cans scattered all over the place [okay, so, he was legally blind, and nutrasweet kills your short term memory, so he probably just put 'em down, forgot he was drinking them, and then didn't see them there] it gets old really quickly.
Even really good friends can quickly get on each others nerves. One little personality quirk, and you'll start to hate each other.
Before you lay down the cash for hardware and cabling, you should really get to know the people you're going to be rooming with. If there isn't one main person who's in charge (ie, who owns the place), you'll have to decide what to do when there's a problem [just image -- the geek version of the Real World]
No matter how much how much technology you put in a house, you still can't overcome the roomie's obnoxious girlfriend, the roomie who can't aim when peeing standing up [speaking of which -- it's good to have one bathroom per person in the place.. 4bd/4ba apartments exist in some areas.], the roommate who constantly raids the fridge and never buys food, etc.
Apartment complexes give a nice advantage as they're modular-- so long as the 'anchor' [whomever has the outbound connection] in your setup stays, you can add/drop people as they move in/move out, etc. The only disadvantage is the lack of true 'public' space, if you're all of the computer-lab type mindset. It's also nice that when one person gets sick, they can quarentine them selves off, and not get the rest of you diseased. [even more important when we were 4 of the 6 people at an ISP, and the other two were the acountant, and the lawyer]
As I see it, there are two types of games out there-- those to make a profit, and those because the designer was having a bit of fun.
The problem is that companies are trying to get the most profit that they can. For a flight sim, they've got to get everything right, or some anal retentive bastard's going to bitch that the lever to control the landing gear's in the wrong place.
It's not so bad with fantasy games, where you can make up whatever you want, and well, that's just how it is. [which is why Halflife starts getting lame when you're on alien worlds -- it's so much cooler to see how well they got the human reactions and such]
Some games are fun in a more nostalgic way... I'll go back and play Quake once in a while, or Duke3d, when I'm in the FPS mood, but QuakeII....I don't think so. Sometimes, I'm in the mood for a good game of C&C or WarcraftII. [Although, after playing it for so much, I guess I have to admit that AOE and AOK aren't bad games, either]
You still get people working on text based muds....not for the profit, but for the fun of it. [okay, and I know a few that are just there to be fascist bastards, but that's another story] People still work on NetHack. I think I remember seeing on slashdot a while back mentioning Trade Wars. Hell, there's even a sequel to Dark Castle coming out.
Good games are still out there, even if they're not coming from the companies who can afford the multi million dollar ad campaigns.
There are many things that are considered a commodity-- a 'must have' item.
Let's assume the following numbers (which are completely fabricated, as I have no knowledge of the Ford company):
Company 'X' has 300,000 employees, making an average of $50k/year. Those people might each pay an average of 35% in state and federal taxes. They give each employee a $2k computer. It's like giving each employee a $3k raise, as that's what it'd have cost them to get that computer.
You wonder 'but didn't it just cost them $600k to do it?' Probably not. When you're buying in bulk like that, people cut you deals. On the order of 30-40%, but we'll be conservative, and say 25%.
So it only costs them $450k [$1.5k per machine].
[I'd have looked at the possibility of taking it as an operating expense for the company, but salary qualifies, I think, so they'd have saved that money either way]
So, anyway, you've just made a person happy, without paying $3k/person, but only spending $1.5k/person. It makes sense to me.
Also quite possible, is that they're using the purchase of the computers as some sort of a bargaining chip, too: 'If we agree to buy X units from you, will you agree to buy Y units from us?', which results in big sales for them, and drives their stock price up while they're at it.
2 years ago, I was living in a nice little apartment complex in Lexington, KY. It wasn't too bad, and there were a few of us (5) geeks who all worked at an ISP (which conveniently, wasn't a local call).
The cable system there was a private system, just for the apartment complex, and they were having problems keeping the complex full. So, our suggestion to them was to set up a network for cable modems, or some other high speed access. We backed it up with various articles on how hotels and apartments were able to charge more if they had good connetivity, etc. They ignored us.
Within a year, the main cable company in town had their system up and running. Shortly after that, GTE was up with DSL. (and our complex was 19k feet from the switch...we just barely passed spec for ISDN.)
Needless to say, none of us live there anymore.
Sometimes, however, there are advantages to pre-assembled machines. Now, I consider there to be three main types of pre-built machines--
- proprietary parts (eg Dell Optiplex, but not a Dell Dimension)
- integrated motherboards (the dirt-cheap machines you find on PriceWatch)
- individual parts (individual sound/video cards, etc.)
Now, the third one is much like a custom machine, but you don't assemble it yourself. You choose from parts the company has in stock, they assemble it, maybe do soem burn-in tests, and send it to you. The advantage is that you pay shipping once, and the markup tends to be slightly less, as there's one company involved to buy from, not 6-10. (Explorer Micro comes to mind as a company that does this....I've never bought from them before, they just tend to rank well on Pricewatch)Naturally, the flaw with this is that you might not be able to get that one specific part (video card, whatever) you had your heart set on, if the company you choose doesn't stock it, so it's not quite as good as the custom approach, but you might be able to save enough money to put in a crap item, and trade it out yourself.
For the middle class of pre-built machines, there's the ones with integrated parts on the motherboard. Mostly, they're the type that use shared memory for video, have built in wussy sound, etc. Probably not really what you want for a box permenantly, but they're good cheap-now/upgrade-later boxes. [you need something right now, and can't blow much cash on it, but you'll later have the cash to replace out the MB, video, sound, etc.]
And we're left with the 'proprietary parts' machines, which well, are great, so long as they never break. If something goes wrong, you might get screwed in having to fork out $40 for a FDD that fits in that size, etc. If the MB goes, you're basically screwed [although, most under this type have a longer warrenty than the others...as minimum a year... so with an extended warrenty, this might be a good type of machine for that aunt you have who's completely computer illiterate, but insists on calling you up for her 'I can't get on the Internet' questions]
So, in summary, look at what you need for this individual box -- is it a server, and you need 99.9999% uptime? Well, you'll want all custom parts for it, no question, to make sure you have an easy access case, reliable HD, ECC memory, a good NIC, etc. Is it just some lame workstation? Well, maybe you'll be willing to cut a few corners [integrated MB, smaller HD], so you can upgrade your main box. Is it for someone else? Warrenties/Tech support are good, so they're not calling you constantly to come over and fix it when they load some stupid screensaver someone sent them in e-mail.
And on an slightly related note, if anyone knows of a source for the Elan Vital M5 case, (not the M5-R), mail me : oneiros$at$annoying.org [replacing $at$ as appropriate]
Look at what the connection prices are for an OC3 of connectivity, and $25k setup, $40k/month isn't really that much.
We'll assume I2 is much like a Tier1 provider on the currect system the rest of us are stuck with.
here's a few prices (from boardwatch.com) (the highest bandwidth listed from each backbone)
UUNET : 155Mbps = $179k/month
C&W : 21Mbps = $20.8k/month
GTE : 45Mbps = $55k/month
Sprint 155Mbps = 160k/month
I mean, you can't just hook people up, even if you are non-profit, without having some staffing, routers, utility & housing costs, etc.
There was also a 'Jay & Silent Bob' comic (4 parter), which was put into a compilation trade paperback just before Dogma hit theatres.
(check your local comic shop -- it's $12 or so, but it'd explain some things not fully in the movies...like why the details around the scene in Chasing Amy, what happened to the chimp at the end of Mallrats, more background on Mooby, and where Silent Bob got the Mooby cap from, etc.)
It also pokes some fun as Neil Patrick Harris (and the claim that his job in Starship Troopers was to finance his "quasi-indie film" [porn movie]), and has a brief cameo by Mr. Rogers.
Also, last year, View Askew (with Oni Press), put out the 'Clerks Holiday Special, which explains what happened to Caitlin Bree. There was also an issue of the Clerks comic which explained more about Steve Dave and um...whoever his yes-man is. (unfortunately, I don't know what I did with that...I'm in the middle of packing).
And, for the references to 'Walt Flanagan's Dog', you'd have to find the back issue of Oni Double Feature that had the story. (which again, is probably already moved, so I can't look up the issue in question)
For more info on Kevin Smith's work, there's also News Askew, which mentions that "Clerks: the animated series" will debut on 07Feb2000.
Because, after all, the millenium is more than a year away.
(yes, I did read the article at wired, and I'm still saying this)
Erm....when I had dealings with a computer store (I worked in Academic Computing in college, and the computer store was a devision of our department), we could get an 'Apple Extended Warranty'. From my recollection, you could even get it 11 months after you bought your hardware, so long as it wasn't out of warranty (much as you can with automobile warrenties)
I think it was somewhere in the range of 1-2% of the total price...can't remember exactly, as I never bought one.