Well, I can't help but think back to my own high-school experiences. The guy who was 'the network admin' for the school was also 1. a teacher (one of the lower-level science classes and two computer classes), and 2. coach of one of the school's many athletic teams.
Point being, how many schools even have a full-time, dedicated admin? Granted, I graduated in '97 so I hope things have improved, but in terms of cost, many schools seem to look for 'jack/jill-of-many-trades' teachers. These might know enough to restart the computer as common M$ 'fail-recovery protocol,' but lack of experience, knowledge, and general DESIRE to be 'in the know' like us hobbyists, tend keep them away from Linux...
-the msn.com site isn't loading properly. Maybe this will help- *full refresh* Still no? Well, maybe this time *full refresh* This time? *full refresh* *calls out to friends* Hey, MSN isn't displaying correctly under Opera. Could you try it to see if you get the same result? How about after a full refresh? Any of your other friends having the same problem...?
Why did we need to turn Faramir in to an exact clone of his brother, Boromir, rather than leave him the way he was written as the ultimately stronger of the two? OK, so not a lot happens with them, that translates well to the screen, in the book. Even so, do we really need cliche'd holywood crap?
This points to something that has kinda gotten to me throughout the both movies thusfar, actually. In many ways, the presentation of 'big bad-ass characters' has been, well... too 'humanized.' Aragorn has more self-doubt (and more doubt concerning himself and Arwen), Elrond gets just... petty, at times, Frodo is too scared (he -stabs- at the Witch King on Weathertop, dammit, that takes balls), Faramir too much like Boromir, King Theoden too 'wussy' (though the alternative presentation of his 'dottard' state being a semi-possession was 'refreshingly different'), etc.
To be short, much of the Lord of the Rings is about characters who are 'beyond the normal mortal.' Aragorn kicks ass, because he's a descendant of Numenor (and has remnants of elven blood kicking around in him), he's been around for -much- longer than he looks (slower aging). King Theoden doesn't magically throw off his age, he stands up straight and proud once more, says 'It's time to go kick some ass', and goes and does it. Many of the characters in Lord of the Rings kick ass in the books, because they're 'better than the average human.' In the movies, Peter Jackson brings then 'down a notch' to make them more 'human,' more easy to relate with for Joe Average. While it makes things more 'consumer friendly' in the movie marketplace, it ends up detracting for those who are more... I dunno, 'practiced' in reading, writing, visualizing, etc. "fantasy." I'm one person with my own views, but dammit, I like characters who are "more kick-ass than thou" now and then. It means more to me for Frodo cry out 'Elbereth!' and take a stab at the Witch King, than for me to 'understand' him as he cowers in fear. True, in the same circumstance I'd most likely do the latter, but dammit, I can always hope that I can be better, that I can be defiant in the face of something that could eat my soul for an appetizer.
Rohan: Rohan in general was far too 'wussified' for me. They -did- have a number of well-trained, well-equipped soldiers, they weren't just 'taking it in the nads' from the skirmishes to the west, Helm's Deep had been manned, provisioned and fortified by a clan-chief in that region, and most of all, they didn't need no help from no elves, dammit.
In regard to the previous point and this one, take the example of Theoden: Movie Theoden: "I'm a possessed dottard." "Oooh, I feel better..." Gandalf & Aragorn: "Good, now go kick Saruman's ass, he's been asking for it." Theoden: "Ummmm, no. Helm's Deep is good, we'll be safe there." At Helm's Deep: (to the crowd) "They'll break on this fortress like water!" (to Aragorn in private) "My people suck." "Umm... retreat!" (repeat 2 times) Later, Aragorn: "Come on, dammit, let's go kick some ass together." Theoden: "Well, gonna die anyway... why not?" Book Theoden: "I'm a dottard." "Ooh, I feel better..." Gandalf & Aragorn: "Good, now go kick Saruman's ass, he's been asking for it." Theoden: "Huzzah! Women, children and old farts to the mountains, everyone else follow me!" On the road: "Y'know, many thousand against us, I bet we'd do better in Helm's Deep, let's go there." At Helm's Deep: "Show 'em what you're made of, we're Rohan, dammit!" Later, to Aragorn: "I'm king and all, but dammit, I wanna -fight-. Yeah, we may die, but I'm gonna go out and kick some ass in the morning. You wanna come with?" Aragorn: "Schweet..."
The trend seems to have gone towards 'the flawed hero,' in fantasy, sci-fi movies/books/etc. The Lord of the Rings was written before the flawed hero was the 'in thing' to feature. The movies have been visually stunning and all around good, but I can't help but feel almost 'let down' by the portrayal of the characters themselves. I don't care if I don't have Numenorian blood, I don't care if I'm not an elf or dwarf, or similiarly, I don't care if I'm from Krypton, so long as there is someone who is one of the above, even if only in a story, then I can look up to hope of something better, even if that something will never be in my own reach...
Wow, I just hope some of the people I knew in rural GA don't get their hands on one of these... I can just imagine the next Darwin award starting with 'Hey fellahs, watch this!' and one of these...
Well, according to this, their parent company Singapore Technologies filed bankruptcy in late '97, and rather then try reorganizing under Chap. 11, they just liquidated the company..
Served a 2 year mission for my church back in '98, so I removed my old Western Digital 2.6G HD completely and put it in a drawer while I was gone (-after- making CD backups of critical stuff along the philosophy of CYA, mind you). Came back, and all the data was just fine (in fact, that same drive is chugging away in a Linux box now). Old Micropolis 1G SCSI drive from a (failed) BBS box, hadn't been powered up since '96... until 1 month ago. Spun up just fine, and everything I've read so far has been fine, in terms of data integrity.
For current drives though, I'd say "No way." The advances in drive storage size come from pressing more and more data into smaller spaces, meaning magnetic drift in time will affect them much more adversely than even older drives. Smaller and more compact also means the internal mechanisms need to be more precise, narrower tolerances for more points of failure. Older drives were more robust in many ways. 350M SCSI Seagate, read head came off one arm, wires shorting out on the platter. Took it apart, removed the platter, and the damn drive served without flaw for 3 more years in the home server until the box was retired. Try -that- with a drive nowadays...
Rotating backups on tape (with a tape cleaning & replacement schedule), off-location backup rotation, and 'hard medium' backup (CD-R, DVD-R, -not- R/W) of crit. files on a monthly/quarterly basis, and you can be covered for just about anything...
Having worked with a company that maps out fiber runs for major telco companies, I'll chip in my.02.
First off, laying fiber is -expensive-, in the thousands of dollars/mile. So when runs were mapped out, even if they planned on actually -using- only 2 strands of fiber, they would go ahead and lay a bundle 'for future use,' because it'd be more cost-effective than laying new fiber in the future. And we're talking usually a bundle of at least 8, and that's for a low traffic area (ie, on the far west side of Salt Lake Valley, with only 2 buildings spliced into the particular loop I mapped, no residential, and very sparse commercial). In downtown areas, a bundle of 16 is on the slim side.
Secondly, most of you probably don't know how difficult is it to work fiber optic. You don't just 'tap in,' you splice into a specific strand that has to be active on the telco end (most buildings are connected to a loop at two separate points, for redundancy in case one 'loop to building' leg gets severed), and you have to have the optic hardware, which is certainly not cheap. For fiber optic splices, things must be -precisely- done, ends ground and capped within very narrow tolerances for error. And if you think Joe Sixpack has trouble with CAT5...
And so, you have the price of laying it (which is why there's so much dark fiber in the first place, it was laid when the future actually looked bright), the price of hardware, the price of labor and expertise to tap into even an existing loop...
Yeah, the average consumer is likely to NEVER see him/herself with a fiber hookup, no matter how much 'dark fiber' there is...
Have to provide tech support for the rest of the company. I mean, it's all well and fine if I run Linux 80% of the time at work, but if I absolutely stopped using Win, I wouldn't be able to support the rest of the company as well.
There are the general Win 'solutions', but there's a big difference between the generalities, and the odd little 'quirks' you don't really know what to do with unless you have to deal with them yourself. In my running Linux around 80% of the time at work, in some ways I feel my ability to support other users has slipped a little from where it was.
Then, there's Dreamweaver. I assist the main web developer, and he uses Dreamweaver since it's what he knows (not the most 'techie' person), and it's what he can be the most productive with. Being only part time with the web development, it's not exactly in the budget to get a Mac for me. So, I run with a Mandrake/'98 dual boot on an old Pentium II 450, flip over to Win for web development when I need it, and get along just fine.
B'damned if I don't feel somehow 'unclean' every time I have to boot over to 'the dark side' though... The more I run Enlightenment for my WM, the more I dislike the GUI from Redmond...
Had a roommate who got one of these penscanners. They did passable for reading black text on a white background, but God help you if you have to scan colored text on white, or black text from an even slightly (say, a light gray) colored background. If you're going to pull text out of 'traditional' books, you should do just fine, but I think you'd do better to grab a small flatbed scanner if you wanted something more generally usable.
"I do what the voices in my head tell me to... and they don't like you..."
I've been seeing things like this for many months now. However, it's the options on this one that sets it a bit apart, customizations of motors, etc. Wish it could be without all the damn 'entertainment branding' tho.
Still, in my mind, a car just isn't cool as a pocket tank. Oh yeah, time to mod one of these puppies for Warhammer 40K...
"I'm not really a sysadmin, I just play one at work..."
Here's a speculation, for those of the/. community who are security consultants. This concept is presented solely as a hypothetical scenario, the author takes no responsibility for use of concepts brought up in this post.
Suppose someone were to develop a DDOS 'client', just something running in the background, that would send packets to a site (ie. riaa.org) at a specified rate (say, per second), for a certain length of time (say, 24 hours). Point the client to a common news site (ahem), have it occassionally spider for a combination of terms (ie. RIAA, MPAA, DMCA, lawyers, etc) to initialize the client to an 'active' mode. Release the client to the public domain... (Names used in this example are purely for demonstratory purposes, brought up only for the reason that they are fresh on the minds of the readers.)
For security consultants, imagine the implications that would arise from this scenario, were such a hypothetical client to exist...
"Don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out."
Just a shot of reality, Solaris 9 x86 will be available, but licensed only 'for use on systems shipped by Sun.' There is talk between Sun and 'the community' for future licensing, but this is how it stands now.
Check out this link. Look at the picture under 'Special Umbrella Dish Covers.' I remember seeing this idea -waaay- back when satellite was 'the only way to go' (still is, some would argue).
Nothing says "I -am- manager of this IT dept." quite like a tie made of chainmail. Delightfully anachronistic, and can double as a flail to be used on those who aren't being 'team players.';)
See this one for an example. (Not mine, not me, just a random example).
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I can't help but think back to my own high-school experiences. The guy who was 'the network admin' for the school was also 1. a teacher (one of the lower-level science classes and two computer classes), and 2. coach of one of the school's many athletic teams.
Point being, how many schools even have a full-time, dedicated admin? Granted, I graduated in '97 so I hope things have improved, but in terms of cost, many schools seem to look for 'jack/jill-of-many-trades' teachers. These might know enough to restart the computer as common M$ 'fail-recovery protocol,' but lack of experience, knowledge, and general DESIRE to be 'in the know' like us hobbyists, tend keep them away from Linux...
If you think you get funny looks NOW-
"Ummm, what are you doing to the server?"
"Why, sprinkling blood on the motherboard. The server requires a sacrifice to stay healthy and running!"
-the msn.com site isn't loading properly. Maybe this will help- *full refresh* Still no? Well, maybe this time *full refresh* This time? *full refresh* *calls out to friends* Hey, MSN isn't displaying correctly under Opera. Could you try it to see if you get the same result? How about after a full refresh? Any of your other friends having the same problem...?
"C'mon baby, I'm O pos, we were meant for each other!"
Only when I can get my Bond fix of 'shaken, not stirred,' would I drink from the bar monkey...
What a dim outlook on life you have. Perhaps you need to spend some time in the Ministry of Love...
This points to something that has kinda gotten to me throughout the both movies thusfar, actually. In many ways, the presentation of 'big bad-ass characters' has been, well... too 'humanized.' Aragorn has more self-doubt (and more doubt concerning himself and Arwen), Elrond gets just... petty, at times, Frodo is too scared (he -stabs- at the Witch King on Weathertop, dammit, that takes balls), Faramir too much like Boromir, King Theoden too 'wussy' (though the alternative presentation of his 'dottard' state being a semi-possession was 'refreshingly different'), etc.
To be short, much of the Lord of the Rings is about characters who are 'beyond the normal mortal.' Aragorn kicks ass, because he's a descendant of Numenor (and has remnants of elven blood kicking around in him), he's been around for -much- longer than he looks (slower aging). King Theoden doesn't magically throw off his age, he stands up straight and proud once more, says 'It's time to go kick some ass', and goes and does it. Many of the characters in Lord of the Rings kick ass in the books, because they're 'better than the average human.' In the movies, Peter Jackson brings then 'down a notch' to make them more 'human,' more easy to relate with for Joe Average. While it makes things more 'consumer friendly' in the movie marketplace, it ends up detracting for those who are more... I dunno, 'practiced' in reading, writing, visualizing, etc. "fantasy." I'm one person with my own views, but dammit, I like characters who are "more kick-ass than thou" now and then. It means more to me for Frodo cry out 'Elbereth!' and take a stab at the Witch King, than for me to 'understand' him as he cowers in fear. True, in the same circumstance I'd most likely do the latter, but dammit, I can always hope that I can be better, that I can be defiant in the face of something that could eat my soul for an appetizer.
Rohan: Rohan in general was far too 'wussified' for me. They -did- have a number of well-trained, well-equipped soldiers, they weren't just 'taking it in the nads' from the skirmishes to the west, Helm's Deep had been manned, provisioned and fortified by a clan-chief in that region, and most of all, they didn't need no help from no elves, dammit.
In regard to the previous point and this one, take the example of Theoden:
Movie Theoden: "I'm a possessed dottard." "Oooh, I feel better..." Gandalf & Aragorn: "Good, now go kick Saruman's ass, he's been asking for it." Theoden: "Ummmm, no. Helm's Deep is good, we'll be safe there." At Helm's Deep: (to the crowd) "They'll break on this fortress like water!" (to Aragorn in private) "My people suck." "Umm... retreat!" (repeat 2 times) Later, Aragorn: "Come on, dammit, let's go kick some ass together." Theoden: "Well, gonna die anyway... why not?"
Book Theoden: "I'm a dottard." "Ooh, I feel better..." Gandalf & Aragorn: "Good, now go kick Saruman's ass, he's been asking for it." Theoden: "Huzzah! Women, children and old farts to the mountains, everyone else follow me!" On the road: "Y'know, many thousand against us, I bet we'd do better in Helm's Deep, let's go there." At Helm's Deep: "Show 'em what you're made of, we're Rohan, dammit!" Later, to Aragorn: "I'm king and all, but dammit, I wanna -fight-. Yeah, we may die, but I'm gonna go out and kick some ass in the morning. You wanna come with?" Aragorn: "Schweet..."
The trend seems to have gone towards 'the flawed hero,' in fantasy, sci-fi movies/books/etc. The Lord of the Rings was written before the flawed hero was the 'in thing' to feature. The movies have been visually stunning and all around good, but I can't help but feel almost 'let down' by the portrayal of the characters themselves. I don't care if I don't have Numenorian blood, I don't care if I'm not an elf or dwarf, or similiarly, I don't care if I'm from Krypton, so long as there is someone who is one of the above, even if only in a story, then I can look up to hope of something better, even if that something will never be in my own reach...
Wow, I just hope some of the people I knew in rural GA don't get their hands on one of these... I can just imagine the next Darwin award starting with 'Hey fellahs, watch this!' and one of these...
Well, according to this, their parent company Singapore Technologies filed bankruptcy in late '97, and rather then try reorganizing under Chap. 11, they just liquidated the company..
For current drives though, I'd say "No way." The advances in drive storage size come from pressing more and more data into smaller spaces, meaning magnetic drift in time will affect them much more adversely than even older drives. Smaller and more compact also means the internal mechanisms need to be more precise, narrower tolerances for more points of failure. Older drives were more robust in many ways. 350M SCSI Seagate, read head came off one arm, wires shorting out on the platter. Took it apart, removed the platter, and the damn drive served without flaw for 3 more years in the home server until the box was retired. Try -that- with a drive nowadays...
Rotating backups on tape (with a tape cleaning & replacement schedule), off-location backup rotation, and 'hard medium' backup (CD-R, DVD-R, -not- R/W) of crit. files on a monthly/quarterly basis, and you can be covered for just about anything...
First off, laying fiber is -expensive-, in the thousands of dollars/mile. So when runs were mapped out, even if they planned on actually -using- only 2 strands of fiber, they would go ahead and lay a bundle 'for future use,' because it'd be more cost-effective than laying new fiber in the future. And we're talking usually a bundle of at least 8, and that's for a low traffic area (ie, on the far west side of Salt Lake Valley, with only 2 buildings spliced into the particular loop I mapped, no residential, and very sparse commercial). In downtown areas, a bundle of 16 is on the slim side.
Secondly, most of you probably don't know how difficult is it to work fiber optic. You don't just 'tap in,' you splice into a specific strand that has to be active on the telco end (most buildings are connected to a loop at two separate points, for redundancy in case one 'loop to building' leg gets severed), and you have to have the optic hardware, which is certainly not cheap. For fiber optic splices, things must be -precisely- done, ends ground and capped within very narrow tolerances for error. And if you think Joe Sixpack has trouble with CAT5...
And so, you have the price of laying it (which is why there's so much dark fiber in the first place, it was laid when the future actually looked bright), the price of hardware, the price of labor and expertise to tap into even an existing loop...
Yeah, the average consumer is likely to NEVER see him/herself with a fiber hookup, no matter how much 'dark fiber' there is...
323. ... [150 points]
324. Profit! [25 points, B.A.s in Marketing for the team with both this and item 323]
There are the general Win 'solutions', but there's a big difference between the generalities, and the odd little 'quirks' you don't really know what to do with unless you have to deal with them yourself. In my running Linux around 80% of the time at work, in some ways I feel my ability to support other users has slipped a little from where it was.
Then, there's Dreamweaver. I assist the main web developer, and he uses Dreamweaver since it's what he knows (not the most 'techie' person), and it's what he can be the most productive with. Being only part time with the web development, it's not exactly in the budget to get a Mac for me. So, I run with a Mandrake/'98 dual boot on an old Pentium II 450, flip over to Win for web development when I need it, and get along just fine.
B'damned if I don't feel somehow 'unclean' every time I have to boot over to 'the dark side' though... The more I run Enlightenment for my WM, the more I dislike the GUI from Redmond...
Wow, that could get messy really quickly...
Danged if I don't find the phrase 'action' oxymoronic when applied to the UN...
Your mind is like a parachute. If it doesn't work, you're screwed.
"I do what the voices in my head tell me to... and they don't like you..."
Still, in my mind, a car just isn't cool as a pocket tank. Oh yeah, time to mod one of these puppies for Warhammer 40K...
"I'm not really a sysadmin, I just play one at work..."
'Don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out.'
Suppose someone were to develop a DDOS 'client', just something running in the background, that would send packets to a site (ie. riaa.org) at a specified rate (say, per second), for a certain length of time (say, 24 hours). Point the client to a common news site (ahem), have it occassionally spider for a combination of terms (ie. RIAA, MPAA, DMCA, lawyers, etc) to initialize the client to an 'active' mode. Release the client to the public domain... (Names used in this example are purely for demonstratory purposes, brought up only for the reason that they are fresh on the minds of the readers.)
For security consultants, imagine the implications that would arise from this scenario, were such a hypothetical client to exist...
"Don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out."
Very true, just making the statement that you can't just go out and expect to snag it for your homebrewed system for a while yet...
Try here for further info...
Check out this link. Look at the picture under 'Special Umbrella Dish Covers.' I remember seeing this idea -waaay- back when satellite was 'the only way to go' (still is, some would argue).
(hint: read a little, then check out what kind of file they use for the logo at the top left is...
Great. First, laws are passed to limit guns. Now they're being passed to limit GNUs...
And to think, abductees in America seem to only get anal probes...
See this one for an example. (Not mine, not me, just a random example).
"Carpe vitam globis!"