In my limited testing with it this morning... I think it is very promising... but I won't quite be switching from Safari on Snow Leopard just yet.
My main gripe? Scrolling smoothness. It's a small thing... but the jarring scrolling of Chrome is enough to keep me on Safari.
Other than that I really like the tab tear off system (much better than Safari since you can _reattach_ tabs back into the main window) and the integrated search / location bar (which seems to be able to read my mind...).
Other than that they are very similar... can anyone spot big differences somewhere? I mean, these days, most browsers are the same. I used to use Firefox for the plugins... but now Firefox, Safari and Chrome all pretty much include the stuff I was using plugins for... so I go with Safari for how well integrated it is with OS X.
I am glad Google is building a good browser... it will keep everyone on their toes (especially since Microsoft has pretty much bowed out of the next-gen browser market with their unwillingness to implement standards in a timely fashion).
I don't know a single person with an iPhone that doesn't have at least a dozen extra Apps. Even my wife (whom isn't terribly tech savvy...) browses the App Store weekly and grabs new and interesting stuff (usually having to do with gossip mag type junk... but whatever).
You keep claiming that Wolf3d on the iPhone sucked... but what you need to realize is that you're in the minority in thinking that. Go look around the web at all of the reviews... maybe you didn't spend enough time choosing one of the several options for movement that suited you best...
This isn't a reality distortion field... the game is really fun... and I have a lot of faith that this port of Doom will be the same.
Quiet SLRs are also desirable because they are often used in noise sensitive situations.... like weddings. You don't want a ridiculously loud camera going off while people are saying their vows...
But, like you mention, this does bring up a good point about artificial sound on DSLRs.... there will be a major uprising if the government tries to force that one through. I mean, lots of us won't like our toy digital cameras making sounds... but start impacting photography professionals and you'll have riots in the streets.
"I'm amazed the official photo was done with a consumer grade camera, I figured they'd use something a little more presidential."
Are you serious? Do you actually know anything about the 5D Mark II? It is most definitely _not_ consumer grade!
21.1 Megapixels Full Frame Sensor Digic 4 Image Processor 1920x1080 HD Video Capture Over $3000!
I'm not at all sure why you think it's consumer grade.... you must be thinking it's part of their "Rebel" line since it has the EOS in the name..... but that is just not the case.
Sure it doesn't cost as much (and missing a couple of features) as a 1Ds MarkIII... but that camera also has the older Digic 3 chip in it. The 5D MarkII is brand new... and pretty much as state of the art as it gets.
Both of these companies actually shut down for close to two weeks around Christmas / New Year. It's called "winter shutdown".
If you have the leave (which everyone does) you can use it... otherwise you have to take time off without pay (or work something out with your manager). Note that I've never heard of anyone having to take time off without pay.
So basically they realize that everyone is going to take off... so they might as well just shut the place down.
Again... these are research laboratories though... I don't really see this happening in the "normal" customer driven world...
I've worked for two consecutive companies with 9/80. At the first it was optional (but most people did it) at the second (current one) it is pretty much mandatory.
Let me tell you.... it's awesome.
Having a 3-day weekend every other week outweighs any perceived negatives. It gives you the ability to leave on a trip on a Thursday night... spend 3 days somewhere and still make it back for work without taking any vacation.
To answer your questions:
- I was wondering how this has been implemented in other companies.
For both of my companies you work 9 hours a day except the friday you work you only work 8 hours. Then you get every other friday off.
- Is your system flexible?
At the first company it was... you could choose which friday you wanted to start your 9/80 schedule on... so half of the people were gone every other friday.
At my current job it's not... everyone has the same friday off. I see the benefits of both. Personally, I really enjoyed fridays at my previous job... when (at least) half the people were gone I could get a lot of work done.
Both places I worked for have been flexible in your start time in the morning... meaning I can go in early and still get off early to get stuff done... which leads to:
- Do you find time to get personal stuff done during the week?
Yes. If I really need to get something done after work then I'll go in early. If I'm there by 7:00 then I can get off around 4:00 to 4:30... leaving plenty of time.
- Is Friday good for anything other than catching up on lost sleep?
Yes. You can use it for weekend trips like I mentioned above. Also, it's a great time to catch up around the house (mending fences, etc.). Finally, it's also a great day to get grocery shopping (and similar) done because most people are working...
I use the day a lot of different ways... and I do often sleep in a bit... but never sleep the day away!
- And perhaps most important, do your managers respect the off-Fridays, or do they pull people in on a regular basis to handle 'crises?'"
Has never happened to me. Like I said.. at my current job the friday off is mandatory. They actually turn out the lights and turn down the air-conditioning, etc. They really expect no one to be there.
But... I know my jobs are normal (I'm a research scientist at laboratories) so YMMV.
In conclusion... it can only be a good thing... go for it!
The three that I get the most "how did you do that?" type comments on is:
1. Alt + . (period) to auto-fill the last used argument. For instance:
mkdir somedir cd Alt+.
Will automatically put somedir where you pressed Alt+. . This works on OSX as well but you have to make sure to select to use the "option key as meta key" in preferences.
This little tool provides programmable contextual completion capability to Bash. By default it comes with a bunch of useful capabilities. The one that seems to wow most of my coworkers is the ability to do TAB completion for files on remote machines when using scp... if you have passwordless ssh setup of course.
3. Ctrl + R. Why do so few people know that you can do a recursive search of your history using in Bash? I go completely nuts sitting there watching people hit the Up key a thousand times to get back to some command they typed an hour ago.... just use Ctrl+R and start typing a piece of the command you issued (it doesn't even have to be the beginning). It will immediately begin matching and if you want to continue searching you can type more characters or press Ctrl+R to keep searching backwards...
Anyway... these are just a couple that come to mind....
Just what monopoly does Apple have that they are unfairly competing in? They surely don't have a monopoly on phones... even smart phones.
There is no antitrust issue here until the _only_ viable phone you can buy runs OSX with Safari. As long as there are plenty of competitors in this space... you are free to go somewhere else with your dollars.
I'm not saying this is a good decision by Apple... but it is _their_ decision to make and the government has no say in it.
BTW: This has been the case for Mac laptops (especially the Macbooks) for the last few years... they have all had mini-DVI ports on them that needed a dongle to output VGA.
Even the Macbook Pro only had a DVI port on it and needed a dongle to output VGA (which it came with).
My whole group at work uses nothing but Mac Laptops... it is pretty funny when someone forgets their dongle... but there's always someone around that has one (I carry two actually, just in case I leave one somewhere while on a business trip).
Anyway... my point is that this isn't a new situation...
I, for one, am one of the people that invested in HD-DVD and hoped it would win out (I thought it was superior technology).... but the same week that Toshiba gave up the ghost... I went out and bought a PS3 and have never looked back.
People need to get over it. Bluray + PS3 = Really Good Platform. The PS3 just does so much more than just playing movies or games... I don't see how anyone with an HDTV and sound system gets by without one...
Anyway... I agree with the GP. I popped in Iron Man last night (rented) and it asked me if I wanted to download the BD-Live stuff. I didn't care so I just clicked "No" and we were able to watch the movie without issue.
BTW - What is the BFD about this movie? I waited to see it from Netflix like usual... but I was really anticipating a great movie from all the hype it got when it was released. Both my wife and I agreed that it was a mediocre movie at best. It had a lot of ridiculous plot elements and quite a few instances of bad acting. The camera work felt cliche and the dialog was uninspired. I just don't get it. I had a friend of mine say that he liked Iron Man more than the Dark Knight... but I don't think they're even in the same league...
"Until then, supercomputing will continue to be a curiosity that us mainstream programmers and users can only dream about."
I'm not so sure that's a bad thing... most applications don't need the power of a super computer...
At the same time, I agree that I wish that desktop development tools made it easier to do threading for multi-core machines. Every new computer comes with more than one core... but the development tools (languages, compilers, IDE's, debuggers) simply aren't helping the everyday joe programmer out there make use of them...
"he really big HPCs can tolerate the really big software development efforts because the runtime saved by the specialized OS may more than discount the extra development effort."
The thing is... that might be true for a very select number of projects... and that number of projects is actually smaller than most people think.
Yes, my code can run up to 3 or 4 thousand processors nicely... to get some really high fidelity engineering simulations... _but_ most people are running in the 64 to 128 processor range day to day and only very rarely need the kind of fidelity that comes from half a petaflop or more.
And therein lies the rub: While "potato-flop" computing sounds great... there really just aren't compelling reasons to move to it. The best justification is in analyzing natural phenomenon such as the weather. For engineering simulation (which is what LANL is all about) there are so many sources of error, that running these high fidelity simulations actually doesn't mean anything. A lot of the time the codes that "really make use of the supercomputer" are complete pieces of crap that take _many_ shortcuts in order to make sure that they execute efficiently on these oddball architectures.
I don't mean to sound all down on it... afterall this really is how I make my living. I just mean that from the outside looking in it's hard to see that Flops != good.
The specialization of the hardware / software combo is what I was referring to.
Have you ever coded for one of these special architectures? It really is a bitch. Yes, Redstorm is even worse (special OS that doesn't even allow dynamic linking!)... but the non-generality of the cell-processors is going to kill the real world impact of Roadrunner.
ASCII Purple was one of the previous machines at LANL that was a "one-off" build from IBM. It was a complete disaster. Porting code to the machine took much longer than usual and any person who could show that they were successfully running _anything_ on the machine got a pat on the back. I had the luxury of porting some software to it... good god, just thinking about it makes me want to blow my brains out...
I can't believe they've gone down that same path again.
I write massively parallel scientific code that runs on these supercomputers for a living... and this is what I've been preaching all along.
The thing about RoadRunner and others (such as Red Storm at Sandia) is that they are special pieces of hardware that run highly specialized operating systems. I can say from experience that these are an _enormous_ pain in the ass to code for... and reaching anything near the theoretical computing limit on these machines with real world engineering applications is essentially impossible... not too mention all of the extra time it costs you in just getting your application to compile on the machine and debug it...
My "day-to-day" supercomputer is a 2048 processor machine made up of generic Intel cores all running a slightly modified version of Suse Linux. This is a great machine for development _and_ for execution. My users have no trouble using my software and the machine... because it's just Linux.
When looking at a supercomputer I always think in terms of utility... not in terms of Flops. It's for this reason that I think the guys down at the Texas Advanced Computing Center got it right when they built Ranger ( http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/resources/hpcsystems/#constellation ). It's about a half a petaflop... but guess what? It runs Linux! And is actually made up of a bunch of Opteron cores... the machine itself is also a huge, awesome looking beast (I've been inside it... the 2 huge Infiniband switches are really something to see). I haven't used it myself (yet), but I have friends working at TACC and everyone really likes the machine a lot. It definitely strikes that chord between ultra-powerful and ultra-useful.
At Quakecon you register all of your stuff before you come in the door... and you get an official (and detailed) piece of paper with everything you are bringing in (ie, Samsung 3245 monitor, silver logitech keyboard, black Microsoft laser mouse, etc.).
If you are leaving with any hardware you have to show your paper stating that you brought it in.
You have to combine this with "someone" standing at the door checking the sheets... and going through people's bags so they can't just walk out. This doesn't have to be a security guard, it could just be a volunteer. At Quakecon they have a combination of both real (off-duty) Cops and Volunteers.
Finally, as others have mentioned... make sure there is only _one_ way in and out of the area with hardware in it. Lock all other doors and put up signs saying that there will be penalties for opening any non-official doors.
In the end, if someone really wants to steal someone's shit... they will do it. Ultimately, people have to watch their own stuff (and their friends, etc.).
I've been to quite a few LAN parties both big (over 3,000 people at Quakecon) and small (down to 10 and around 100 or so) and really haven't had issues. A friend of mine did get his crappy mouse swiped at Quakecon in the middle of the night... but that was one incident in 6 years of going there.
Good luck on the LAN party! They are a lot of effort, but the payoff is huge. The one piece of advice I would give is to not go overboard on the "extras". Let people focus on the gaming... I've seen too many medium sized LAN parties that try to have a bunch of other activities going on (DDR tourneys, scavenger hunts, etc.)... and it really detracts from just playing games. Further, it helps to state up front that there are a number of games that are for suggested play, and keep that number low. What you are aiming for is 4 or 5 highly trafficked games so the servers stay full...
Agreed... I use https for all of my Google stuff. I can't believe people do it any other way. The 3 main apps I use with it are:
GMail Calendar Google Docs
I can't believe that people actually use GMail and Google Docs _without_ using https! That is a lot of personal junk flowing over unencrypted pipes.
I have to agree with my sibling poster... why doesn't Google encrypt all services that can carry sensitive information by default? Just doesn't make sense.
BTW: Even Google Gears (used for offline google docs for one) can use https.
however that makes the notebook weigh more in the reviews (where the brick is conveniently not part of the review).
It also makes it weight more in _reality_. I don't know about you, but I don't take my brick with me everywhere. If I'm going to a meeting the brick stays on the desk. If I'm walking down to work on something with a co-worker for a while... the brick will stay on the desk.
I appreciate that my laptop is light as possible...
The worst thing to leave at home is my lunch, thats when I put my car key on my lunch in the fridge.
I've fixed this by bringing a shit ton of food to work. I have loaves of bread, cases of Dr. Pepper, assortment of snacks, peanut-butter etc. In fact, I recently took it to the next level and bought a mini-fridge for my cubicle. Now I have filtered water (think Brita), cold drinks, jelly, lunchmeat etc...
I'm the kind of person that is too lazy to make my lunch at home everday... if I tried that, I would end up eating out too much. So this works for me. Been doing it now for about 4 years...
Slashdot Mirror
In my limited testing with it this morning... I think it is very promising... but I won't quite be switching from Safari on Snow Leopard just yet.
My main gripe? Scrolling smoothness. It's a small thing... but the jarring scrolling of Chrome is enough to keep me on Safari.
Other than that I really like the tab tear off system (much better than Safari since you can _reattach_ tabs back into the main window) and the integrated search / location bar (which seems to be able to read my mind...).
Other than that they are very similar... can anyone spot big differences somewhere? I mean, these days, most browsers are the same. I used to use Firefox for the plugins... but now Firefox, Safari and Chrome all pretty much include the stuff I was using plugins for... so I go with Safari for how well integrated it is with OS X.
I am glad Google is building a good browser... it will keep everyone on their toes (especially since Microsoft has pretty much bowed out of the next-gen browser market with their unwillingness to implement standards in a timely fashion).
Why do you think that?
I don't know a single person with an iPhone that doesn't have at least a dozen extra Apps. Even my wife (whom isn't terribly tech savvy...) browses the App Store weekly and grabs new and interesting stuff (usually having to do with gossip mag type junk... but whatever).
EVERYONE downloads Apps.
You keep claiming that Wolf3d on the iPhone sucked... but what you need to realize is that you're in the minority in thinking that. Go look around the web at all of the reviews... maybe you didn't spend enough time choosing one of the several options for movement that suited you best...
This isn't a reality distortion field... the game is really fun... and I have a lot of faith that this port of Doom will be the same.
Friedmud
Worked fine in Safari on OSX for me...
Not solar powered but it does start automatically and return to its base station to charge automatically:
http://www.friendlyrobotics.com/
Quiet SLRs are also desirable because they are often used in noise sensitive situations.... like weddings. You don't want a ridiculously loud camera going off while people are saying their vows...
But, like you mention, this does bring up a good point about artificial sound on DSLRs.... there will be a major uprising if the government tries to force that one through. I mean, lots of us won't like our toy digital cameras making sounds... but start impacting photography professionals and you'll have riots in the streets.
Friedmud
"I'm amazed the official photo was done with a consumer grade camera, I figured they'd use something a little more presidential."
Are you serious? Do you actually know anything about the 5D Mark II? It is most definitely _not_ consumer grade!
21.1 Megapixels
Full Frame Sensor
Digic 4 Image Processor
1920x1080 HD Video Capture
Over $3000!
I'm not at all sure why you think it's consumer grade.... you must be thinking it's part of their "Rebel" line since it has the EOS in the name..... but that is just not the case.
Sure it doesn't cost as much (and missing a couple of features) as a 1Ds MarkIII... but that camera also has the older Digic 3 chip in it. The 5D MarkII is brand new... and pretty much as state of the art as it gets.
Friedmud
Both of these companies actually shut down for close to two weeks around Christmas / New Year. It's called "winter shutdown".
If you have the leave (which everyone does) you can use it... otherwise you have to take time off without pay (or work something out with your manager). Note that I've never heard of anyone having to take time off without pay.
So basically they realize that everyone is going to take off... so they might as well just shut the place down.
Again... these are research laboratories though... I don't really see this happening in the "normal" customer driven world...
Friedmud
I've worked for two consecutive companies with 9/80. At the first it was optional (but most people did it) at the second (current one) it is pretty much mandatory.
Let me tell you.... it's awesome.
Having a 3-day weekend every other week outweighs any perceived negatives. It gives you the ability to leave on a trip on a Thursday night... spend 3 days somewhere and still make it back for work without taking any vacation.
To answer your questions:
- I was wondering how this has been implemented in other companies.
For both of my companies you work 9 hours a day except the friday you work you only work 8 hours. Then you get every other friday off.
- Is your system flexible?
At the first company it was... you could choose which friday you wanted to start your 9/80 schedule on... so half of the people were gone every other friday.
At my current job it's not... everyone has the same friday off. I see the benefits of both. Personally, I really enjoyed fridays at my previous job... when (at least) half the people were gone I could get a lot of work done.
Both places I worked for have been flexible in your start time in the morning... meaning I can go in early and still get off early to get stuff done... which leads to:
- Do you find time to get personal stuff done during the week?
Yes. If I really need to get something done after work then I'll go in early. If I'm there by 7:00 then I can get off around 4:00 to 4:30... leaving plenty of time.
- Is Friday good for anything other than catching up on lost sleep?
Yes. You can use it for weekend trips like I mentioned above. Also, it's a great time to catch up around the house (mending fences, etc.). Finally, it's also a great day to get grocery shopping (and similar) done because most people are working...
I use the day a lot of different ways... and I do often sleep in a bit... but never sleep the day away!
- And perhaps most important, do your managers respect the off-Fridays, or do they pull people in on a regular basis to handle 'crises?'"
Has never happened to me. Like I said.. at my current job the friday off is mandatory. They actually turn out the lights and turn down the air-conditioning, etc. They really expect no one to be there.
But... I know my jobs are normal (I'm a research scientist at laboratories) so YMMV.
In conclusion... it can only be a good thing... go for it!
Friedmud
The three that I get the most "how did you do that?" type comments on is:
1. Alt + . (period) to auto-fill the last used argument. For instance:
mkdir somedir
cd Alt+.
Will automatically put somedir where you pressed Alt+. . This works on OSX as well but you have to make sure to select to use the "option key as meta key" in preferences.
2. Bash Completion ( http://www.caliban.org/bash/index.shtml#completion ).
This little tool provides programmable contextual completion capability to Bash. By default it comes with a bunch of useful capabilities. The one that seems to wow most of my coworkers is the ability to do TAB completion for files on remote machines when using scp... if you have passwordless ssh setup of course.
3. Ctrl + R. Why do so few people know that you can do a recursive search of your history using in Bash? I go completely nuts sitting there watching people hit the Up key a thousand times to get back to some command they typed an hour ago.... just use Ctrl+R and start typing a piece of the command you issued (it doesn't even have to be the beginning). It will immediately begin matching and if you want to continue searching you can type more characters or press Ctrl+R to keep searching backwards...
Anyway... these are just a couple that come to mind....
Friedmud
"antitrust investigation"
Just what monopoly does Apple have that they are unfairly competing in? They surely don't have a monopoly on phones... even smart phones.
There is no antitrust issue here until the _only_ viable phone you can buy runs OSX with Safari. As long as there are plenty of competitors in this space... you are free to go somewhere else with your dollars.
I'm not saying this is a good decision by Apple... but it is _their_ decision to make and the government has no say in it.
Friedmud
BTW: This has been the case for Mac laptops (especially the Macbooks) for the last few years... they have all had mini-DVI ports on them that needed a dongle to output VGA.
Even the Macbook Pro only had a DVI port on it and needed a dongle to output VGA (which it came with).
My whole group at work uses nothing but Mac Laptops... it is pretty funny when someone forgets their dongle... but there's always someone around that has one (I carry two actually, just in case I leave one somewhere while on a business trip).
Anyway... my point is that this isn't a new situation...
Friedmud
I, for one, am one of the people that invested in HD-DVD and hoped it would win out (I thought it was superior technology).... but the same week that Toshiba gave up the ghost... I went out and bought a PS3 and have never looked back.
People need to get over it. Bluray + PS3 = Really Good Platform. The PS3 just does so much more than just playing movies or games... I don't see how anyone with an HDTV and sound system gets by without one...
Anyway... I agree with the GP. I popped in Iron Man last night (rented) and it asked me if I wanted to download the BD-Live stuff. I didn't care so I just clicked "No" and we were able to watch the movie without issue.
BTW - What is the BFD about this movie? I waited to see it from Netflix like usual... but I was really anticipating a great movie from all the hype it got when it was released. Both my wife and I agreed that it was a mediocre movie at best. It had a lot of ridiculous plot elements and quite a few instances of bad acting. The camera work felt cliche and the dialog was uninspired. I just don't get it. I had a friend of mine say that he liked Iron Man more than the Dark Knight... but I don't think they're even in the same league...
Friedmud
As far as I know (as of 3 months ago) they're still running Catamount at Sandia... and it's for the reason you state: they developed it.
Friedmud
Sorry... got my supercomputers mixed up... ASCII Purple was at LANL...
I was thinking of ASCI Q, but that was made by HP...
Oh... just nevermind... I screwed it up well enough, just forget it ;-)
Need to get some sleep.
Friedmud
"Until then, supercomputing will continue to be a curiosity that us mainstream programmers and users can only dream about."
I'm not so sure that's a bad thing... most applications don't need the power of a super computer...
At the same time, I agree that I wish that desktop development tools made it easier to do threading for multi-core machines. Every new computer comes with more than one core... but the development tools (languages, compilers, IDE's, debuggers) simply aren't helping the everyday joe programmer out there make use of them...
Friedmud
I will just say that it was about a year before any meaningful calculations were run using Redstorm...
Friedmud
"he really big HPCs can tolerate the really big software development efforts because the runtime saved by the specialized OS may more than discount the extra development effort."
The thing is... that might be true for a very select number of projects... and that number of projects is actually smaller than most people think.
Yes, my code can run up to 3 or 4 thousand processors nicely... to get some really high fidelity engineering simulations... _but_ most people are running in the 64 to 128 processor range day to day and only very rarely need the kind of fidelity that comes from half a petaflop or more.
And therein lies the rub: While "potato-flop" computing sounds great... there really just aren't compelling reasons to move to it. The best justification is in analyzing natural phenomenon such as the weather. For engineering simulation (which is what LANL is all about) there are so many sources of error, that running these high fidelity simulations actually doesn't mean anything. A lot of the time the codes that "really make use of the supercomputer" are complete pieces of crap that take _many_ shortcuts in order to make sure that they execute efficiently on these oddball architectures.
I don't mean to sound all down on it... afterall this really is how I make my living. I just mean that from the outside looking in it's hard to see that Flops != good.
Friedmud
The specialization of the hardware / software combo is what I was referring to.
Have you ever coded for one of these special architectures? It really is a bitch. Yes, Redstorm is even worse (special OS that doesn't even allow dynamic linking!)... but the non-generality of the cell-processors is going to kill the real world impact of Roadrunner.
ASCII Purple was one of the previous machines at LANL that was a "one-off" build from IBM. It was a complete disaster. Porting code to the machine took much longer than usual and any person who could show that they were successfully running _anything_ on the machine got a pat on the back. I had the luxury of porting some software to it... good god, just thinking about it makes me want to blow my brains out...
I can't believe they've gone down that same path again.
Friedmud
Not very long with distcc....
I write massively parallel scientific code that runs on these supercomputers for a living... and this is what I've been preaching all along.
The thing about RoadRunner and others (such as Red Storm at Sandia) is that they are special pieces of hardware that run highly specialized operating systems. I can say from experience that these are an _enormous_ pain in the ass to code for... and reaching anything near the theoretical computing limit on these machines with real world engineering applications is essentially impossible... not too mention all of the extra time it costs you in just getting your application to compile on the machine and debug it...
My "day-to-day" supercomputer is a 2048 processor machine made up of generic Intel cores all running a slightly modified version of Suse Linux. This is a great machine for development _and_ for execution. My users have no trouble using my software and the machine... because it's just Linux.
When looking at a supercomputer I always think in terms of utility... not in terms of Flops. It's for this reason that I think the guys down at the Texas Advanced Computing Center got it right when they built Ranger ( http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/resources/hpcsystems/#constellation ). It's about a half a petaflop... but guess what? It runs Linux! And is actually made up of a bunch of Opteron cores... the machine itself is also a huge, awesome looking beast (I've been inside it... the 2 huge Infiniband switches are really something to see). I haven't used it myself (yet), but I have friends working at TACC and everyone really likes the machine a lot. It definitely strikes that chord between ultra-powerful and ultra-useful.
Friedmud
At Quakecon you register all of your stuff before you come in the door... and you get an official (and detailed) piece of paper with everything you are bringing in (ie, Samsung 3245 monitor, silver logitech keyboard, black Microsoft laser mouse, etc.).
If you are leaving with any hardware you have to show your paper stating that you brought it in.
You have to combine this with "someone" standing at the door checking the sheets... and going through people's bags so they can't just walk out. This doesn't have to be a security guard, it could just be a volunteer. At Quakecon they have a combination of both real (off-duty) Cops and Volunteers.
Finally, as others have mentioned... make sure there is only _one_ way in and out of the area with hardware in it. Lock all other doors and put up signs saying that there will be penalties for opening any non-official doors.
In the end, if someone really wants to steal someone's shit... they will do it. Ultimately, people have to watch their own stuff (and their friends, etc.).
I've been to quite a few LAN parties both big (over 3,000 people at Quakecon) and small (down to 10 and around 100 or so) and really haven't had issues. A friend of mine did get his crappy mouse swiped at Quakecon in the middle of the night... but that was one incident in 6 years of going there.
Good luck on the LAN party! They are a lot of effort, but the payoff is huge. The one piece of advice I would give is to not go overboard on the "extras". Let people focus on the gaming... I've seen too many medium sized LAN parties that try to have a bunch of other activities going on (DDR tourneys, scavenger hunts, etc.)... and it really detracts from just playing games. Further, it helps to state up front that there are a number of games that are for suggested play, and keep that number low. What you are aiming for is 4 or 5 highly trafficked games so the servers stay full...
Friedmud
Agreed... I use https for all of my Google stuff. I can't believe people do it any other way. The 3 main apps I use with it are:
GMail
Calendar
Google Docs
I can't believe that people actually use GMail and Google Docs _without_ using https! That is a lot of personal junk flowing over unencrypted pipes.
I have to agree with my sibling poster... why doesn't Google encrypt all services that can carry sensitive information by default? Just doesn't make sense.
BTW: Even Google Gears (used for offline google docs for one) can use https.
Friedmud
however that makes the notebook weigh more in the reviews (where the brick is conveniently not part of the review).
It also makes it weight more in _reality_. I don't know about you, but I don't take my brick with me everywhere. If I'm going to a meeting the brick stays on the desk. If I'm walking down to work on something with a co-worker for a while... the brick will stay on the desk.
I appreciate that my laptop is light as possible...
Friedmud
The worst thing to leave at home is my lunch, thats when I put my car key on my lunch in the fridge.
I've fixed this by bringing a shit ton of food to work. I have loaves of bread, cases of Dr. Pepper, assortment of snacks, peanut-butter etc. In fact, I recently took it to the next level and bought a mini-fridge for my cubicle. Now I have filtered water (think Brita), cold drinks, jelly, lunchmeat etc...
I'm the kind of person that is too lazy to make my lunch at home everday... if I tried that, I would end up eating out too much. So this works for me. Been doing it now for about 4 years...
Friedmud