Seriously, I've found many sources for inexpensive rackmount chassis online. Often you get what you pay for, of course, but places like "rackbuy.com" have some great deals on generic ATX rackmount chassis that will probably be good enough. I have several of the 3U chassis, and I think they're great. They're just tall enough to support a standard ATX power supply and full upright cards instead of using a PCI riser board or some-such. (one caveat-- don't buy anything electronic from rackbuy.com, such as power supplies, KVMs, etc... bad experiences on 100% of those!)
Most of these sorts of chassis will support 80mm or larger fans, which of course can be run relatively quietly, just like your desktop.
People put a lot of emphasis on 1U servers, but unless you're really pressed for space, why bother? Those high-RPM 40mm fans are ridiculously noisy. And when parts fail, you need specialized 1U replacements, such as low-profile heatsinks and CPU fans, and 1U power supplies.
Just get something bigger that will take 100% standard ATX components.
Legitimate fear of their government? It's always legitimate. Don't think for one second that any government is immune to corruption. It's human nature... people who enjoy exerting some sort of control or authority over others are drawn to government and law enforcement jobs, so government has an inordinate number of people with that sort of mentality. Governments, as anything else, will tend to act in their own best interest.
Even the best system, with the best of intentions, can gradually erode.
Whether you liked him or not, Ronald Reagan had a great quote that comes to mind: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."
While spoken about the US in particular, this applies to any free state.
Also, let's not forget that in Ultime 7 part 2 (serpent isle), you could add a command-line parameter that would alter the Guardian's opening speech, such that he would say "Avatar! Know that my face is most muppet like!"
Yeah, I'm not surprised your data survived well. MO is exceedingly reliable in terms of the integrity of the media. As long as you have a working drive, and don't abuse the disks, the data will hold up indefinitely, for all practical purposes. The data is read optically, but written magnetically. The disc surface has to be heated to a precise temperature with a laser in order for the bits to be flipped. This means that under normal storage conditions, the data simply can't be lost. It also means that writes are much slower than reads, but for archival purposes, this is quite acceptable.
I'd agree if it just pointed out that IBM has copyrights for the 700,000 lines of code, and is therefore safe as far as that code is concerned... But it went on to point out that SCO may be in violation of that code's copyright, so depending on the ruling, it could still be an apples to apples comparison.
I've never once blamed him for the SWG fiasco. He's always looked to take the sandbox concept in new directions and has proven very sharp with all of his writings. In my mind, it appeared that his influence diminished before the rewrites. I for one look forward to seeing what he has up his sleeve.
I have multiple laptops that I run 24x7 without disk failures so far. They've run nearly continuously for a couple of years. Granted, they're being used as light duty terminals, not servers, but I'd imagine that with a light load you're probably OK. If you can configure it to spin down the disk and power down the LCD when not needed, you're golden.
I'll definitely second the idea of going with a flash device. In fact, it's cheap and easy to get a CompactFlash to 2.5" laptop IDE adapter, and use a CF card as your main disk. I even found an adapter on ebay that fits into the standard 2.5" HDD form-factor. If you do so, you'll probably want to mount it with the "noatime" flag (a good idea anyway when you're trying to limit disk access), since it's writes, and not reads, that wear out flash memory... and the atime updates are arguably useless to most people.
BTW, part of the trick to it is to keep it from overheating. I use those "laptop cooler" stands. Seem to work well until the bearings wear out in the fans.
"If the game producers don't like people circumventing the grind, stop adding stupid grinds to games."
QFE. I enjoyed WOW for a while, but eventually walked away. As wonderful of a job as they did at addressing the issues that plague most MMORPGs, it's still a level-grind and gold-grind. Been there, done that. I've had enough grinds and level-ladders to make me entirely sick of it.
If I had stuck it out, I'd have probably considered buying gold. But truthfully, I want to play games that remain fun in their own right, and don't need to be circumvented in the first place.
Fodder is _NOT_ quite right. You'll hear the term "FodderSide" quite a bit, but it's not that simple. As others have stated, this game is not as simple as you might think. Once you start to learn your way around the game, there is depth and subtlety and nuance.
Unlike most other MMOGs, PS allows newbies to contribute and play right along side hardnened veterans, and do so in a meaningful way. At rank 6, you will have 11 certification points to spend on equipment and vehicles. This is enough to pick a role you enjoy, and specialize in it. Aircraft Pilot? Tank Driver? Combat Medic? Deployer Engineer? Cloaking Assassin/Sabateur? You can do those things within rank 6. The higher ranks will earn you new uniforms (cosmetic only), additional implants (up to 3, but you get your first at rank 6, and they provide mildly useful enhancements), and of course more certification points. The later ranks mostly provide you with additional flexibility in the field, without having to recertify to change roles (which is easily done anyway at a certification terminal).
If you can aim straight and learn the nuances of your weapons and your enemies, you can hold your own even at rank 6. And heck, a couple of n00bs can still take down a 2-year vet if they can shoot straight.
It's definitely worth a try. I've been playing off and on since the beta 3 years ago, and I've decided to resubscribe for a year's worth. It's truly a unique (and sometimes frustrating) experience. Some of the most fun I've had since Tribes 2.
I was about to say the same thing. I even entered a program into the Loebner competition once (with the full expectation of coming in last, and I was not disappointed).
There may be some subtle differences between this and Turing's original paper, but the spirit of it is the same I think, and it's been held annually for many years now.
I think I first heard of ALICE as one of the entrants. It's won several of the Loebner competitions.
I've been doing the rackmount thing at home for nearly a year now, and I have to agree, it can actually be very cost effective if you shop around and considering getting some of your components off of eBay.
It's 2U but still accepts a standard ATX PSU, and is only $137 after adding shipping and rails. You can very easily fit standard desktop components into this formfactor. The only flaw is that the two internal fans in the med-section of the case have circular holes in the chassis that aare cut in such a way as to produce a loud whine. If you cut the remaining metal out with a case-cutter tool (or dremel or something) and replace it with a basic fan-guard, it'll run quietly.
They also offer very inexpensive 4U cases, and some attractive 3U models that still accept a full compliment of upright PCI slots.
For KVM, shelves, and other accessories, eBay has been my friend. Mildly used parts can often be had for significantly cheaper than retail, such as the rackmount surge-protector I managed to find, nearly new, for about 80% off of the retail value.
As for the UPS, I would always buy APC. They're simply the best. I've had nothing but troubles with the few Cyberpower UPSs I've worked with. Granted, they were the desktop models, but after having them fail within weeks *repeatedly*, I vowed never to buy a CyberPower again. I went with a 1500VA 2U APC SmartUPS, brand new... Pricy, yes... But very capable.
That explains something, I guess. Generally two cmopletely dissimilar products/companies can have similar names if they'er derived independantly from a common word, which 'mandrake' would certainly count as, being an herb/root. However, if they did indeed take the name from the Mandrake character, then I can see why they were ruled against...
Personally I don't see much point in the BTX design. It doesn't really appear to accomplish much of anything that can't be done with ATX. It's almost an identical layout, except that it's mirrored... so it strikes me more as a publicity stunt, and an attempt to make changes for the sake of making changes, and forcing everyone to upgrade their older parts (cases, etc) if they want to stay current.
The article never really went into much detail about just how far back they're going in thier product scheme. I mean, I'd hate for it to go so far back that it's just bricks and Duplo. If they take it back to where it was in the 80's, that would be great. I can sum up my feeling on it in just 3 words: "Town, Castle, Space". I always though they were crazy for going off into all sorts of bizarre themes, when it should be relatively generic in concept. The old 80's space and castle sets were simple enough and yet broad enough to have mass appeal.
I also wonder how long it'll take for someone to write some really nasty EFI-infecting viruses/worms/trojans. The results oculd be quite scary/amusing.
Interestingly, after Groklaw posted this and it was pointed out that their FTP server was still accessible, which clearly counters their claim of a DDoS attack, it now appears that the FTP server has been knocked down as well.
I can see it now at SCO:
Darl: Dammit, you forgot to take down the FTP server too! Admin: Yeah, uhh, forgot... Darl: Fix it now, before anyone reads Groklaw!
He's half-right. The missiles, and especially their exhaust, behaved as if in an atmosphere. Missiles can arc in space, by adjusting their thrust vectors, but will undergo constant acceleration, and you would essentially see the missile appear to side-slip, as it would have to rotate significantly with respect to it's velocity to make a major course-correction. Since they always appeared to move forward relative to their orientation, they behaved more like atmospheric missiles.
In terms of exhaust, you would never see smoke trails, or turbulant clouds of smoke. Turbulance is caused by, you guessed it, interaction with the atmosphere. You'd have unlimited radial/spherical expansion of gas in space, most of which would be invisible, and thus no smoke trails. The thrust off the back of the vipers was much more appropriately represented, and the maneuvering jets were close to realistic.
You should do what I do... Store all of the components on the floor, desk, and any other available horizontal surface, until the time comes to clean up for guests.
Then where does it all go? Filing cabinet, rubbermaid bin, and my personal favorite- the excess space inside the rack cabinet. It all blends in with the existing cablemess anyway.
When everyone leaves, it comes right back out into floor piles. How else am I supposed to find anything??
I was just thinking about this the other day. As I've gone over my own website looking at old links, I've come to the realization that most of the sites on the 'net that I'd link to often are gone after a year. If I'm writing articles that cite references or locations for additional information, or just including courtesy-links for further reading, the links frequently go dead long before I ever notice.
The obvious solution is to write web content to be commpletely self-contained, just to save yourself all of the maintenance woes down the line. This, of course, is highly unfortunate, since the "hypertext" nature of the web is one of it's greatest strengths. The lack of any longevity in its content is perhaps it's greatest weakness.
Seriously, I'd probably participate. With my limited bandwidth I tend not to take part in P2P or distributed computing projects (except SETI@Home). I'd give something like this a try.
Slashdot Mirror
eBay is your friend, as is google. :)
Seriously, I've found many sources for inexpensive rackmount chassis online. Often you get what you pay for, of course, but places like "rackbuy.com" have some great deals on generic ATX rackmount chassis that will probably be good enough. I have several of the 3U chassis, and I think they're great. They're just tall enough to support a standard ATX power supply and full upright cards instead of using a PCI riser board or some-such. (one caveat-- don't buy anything electronic from rackbuy.com, such as power supplies, KVMs, etc... bad experiences on 100% of those!)
Most of these sorts of chassis will support 80mm or larger fans, which of course can be run relatively quietly, just like your desktop.
People put a lot of emphasis on 1U servers, but unless you're really pressed for space, why bother? Those high-RPM 40mm fans are ridiculously noisy. And when parts fail, you need specialized 1U replacements, such as low-profile heatsinks and CPU fans, and 1U power supplies.
Just get something bigger that will take 100% standard ATX components.
Legitimate fear of their government? It's always legitimate. Don't think for one second that any government is immune to corruption. It's human nature... people who enjoy exerting some sort of control or authority over others are drawn to government and law enforcement jobs, so government has an inordinate number of people with that sort of mentality. Governments, as anything else, will tend to act in their own best interest.
Even the best system, with the best of intentions, can gradually erode.
Whether you liked him or not, Ronald Reagan had a great quote that comes to mind: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."
While spoken about the US in particular, this applies to any free state.
Also, let's not forget that in Ultime 7 part 2 (serpent isle), you could add a command-line parameter that would alter the Guardian's opening speech, such that he would say "Avatar! Know that my face is most muppet like!"
In the more recent "TV Games" joystick releases, the author's name has been removed. Quite sad.
Yeah, I'm not surprised your data survived well. MO is exceedingly reliable in terms of the integrity of the media. As long as you have a working drive, and don't abuse the disks, the data will hold up indefinitely, for all practical purposes. The data is read optically, but written magnetically. The disc surface has to be heated to a precise temperature with a laser in order for the bits to be flipped. This means that under normal storage conditions, the data simply can't be lost. It also means that writes are much slower than reads, but for archival purposes, this is quite acceptable.
Two words:
Magneto Optical.
'nuff said.
I'd agree if it just pointed out that IBM has copyrights for the 700,000 lines of code, and is therefore safe as far as that code is concerned... But it went on to point out that SCO may be in violation of that code's copyright, so depending on the ruling, it could still be an apples to apples comparison.
I've never once blamed him for the SWG fiasco. He's always looked to take the sandbox concept in new directions and has proven very sharp with all of his writings. In my mind, it appeared that his influence diminished before the rewrites. I for one look forward to seeing what he has up his sleeve.
The best solution is not to use burnt discs for archival purposes. Magneto Optical would be ideal, but has never caught on.
I have multiple laptops that I run 24x7 without disk failures so far. They've run nearly continuously for a couple of years. Granted, they're being used as light duty terminals, not servers, but I'd imagine that with a light load you're probably OK. If you can configure it to spin down the disk and power down the LCD when not needed, you're golden.
I'll definitely second the idea of going with a flash device. In fact, it's cheap and easy to get a CompactFlash to 2.5" laptop IDE adapter, and use a CF card as your main disk. I even found an adapter on ebay that fits into the standard 2.5" HDD form-factor. If you do so, you'll probably want to mount it with the "noatime" flag (a good idea anyway when you're trying to limit disk access), since it's writes, and not reads, that wear out flash memory... and the atime updates are arguably useless to most people.
BTW, part of the trick to it is to keep it from overheating. I use those "laptop cooler" stands. Seem to work well until the bearings wear out in the fans.
"If the game producers don't like people circumventing the grind, stop adding stupid grinds to games."
QFE. I enjoyed WOW for a while, but eventually walked away. As wonderful of a job as they did at addressing the issues that plague most MMORPGs, it's still a level-grind and gold-grind. Been there, done that. I've had enough grinds and level-ladders to make me entirely sick of it.
If I had stuck it out, I'd have probably considered buying gold. But truthfully, I want to play games that remain fun in their own right, and don't need to be circumvented in the first place.
Fodder is _NOT_ quite right. You'll hear the term "FodderSide" quite a bit, but it's not that simple. As others have stated, this game is not as simple as you might think. Once you start to learn your way around the game, there is depth and subtlety and nuance.
Unlike most other MMOGs, PS allows newbies to contribute and play right along side hardnened veterans, and do so in a meaningful way. At rank 6, you will have 11 certification points to spend on equipment and vehicles. This is enough to pick a role you enjoy, and specialize in it. Aircraft Pilot? Tank Driver? Combat Medic? Deployer Engineer? Cloaking Assassin/Sabateur? You can do those things within rank 6. The higher ranks will earn you new uniforms (cosmetic only), additional implants (up to 3, but you get your first at rank 6, and they provide mildly useful enhancements), and of course more certification points. The later ranks mostly provide you with additional flexibility in the field, without having to recertify to change roles (which is easily done anyway at a certification terminal).
If you can aim straight and learn the nuances of your weapons and your enemies, you can hold your own even at rank 6. And heck, a couple of n00bs can still take down a 2-year vet if they can shoot straight.
It's definitely worth a try. I've been playing off and on since the beta 3 years ago, and I've decided to resubscribe for a year's worth. It's truly a unique (and sometimes frustrating) experience. Some of the most fun I've had since Tribes 2.
I was about to say the same thing. I even entered a program into the Loebner competition once (with the full expectation of coming in last, and I was not disappointed).
Information can be seen here: http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html
There may be some subtle differences between this and Turing's original paper, but the spirit of it is the same I think, and it's been held annually for many years now.
I think I first heard of ALICE as one of the entrants. It's won several of the Loebner competitions.
I've been doing the rackmount thing at home for nearly a year now, and I have to agree, it can actually be very cost effective if you shop around and considering getting some of your components off of eBay.
I've found a nice cheap source of basic rackmount cases/chassis at http://www.plinkusa.net/
I'm fond of this chassis: http://www.plinkusa.net/web2025.htm
It's 2U but still accepts a standard ATX PSU, and is only $137 after adding shipping and rails. You can very easily fit standard desktop components into this formfactor. The only flaw is that the two internal fans in the med-section of the case have circular holes in the chassis that aare cut in such a way as to produce a loud whine. If you cut the remaining metal out with a case-cutter tool (or dremel or something) and replace it with a basic fan-guard, it'll run quietly.
They also offer very inexpensive 4U cases, and some attractive 3U models that still accept a full compliment of upright PCI slots.
For KVM, shelves, and other accessories, eBay has been my friend. Mildly used parts can often be had for significantly cheaper than retail, such as the rackmount surge-protector I managed to find, nearly new, for about 80% off of the retail value.
As for the UPS, I would always buy APC. They're simply the best. I've had nothing but troubles with the few Cyberpower UPSs I've worked with. Granted, they were the desktop models, but after having them fail within weeks *repeatedly*, I vowed never to buy a CyberPower again. I went with a 1500VA 2U APC SmartUPS, brand new... Pricy, yes... But very capable.
That explains something, I guess. Generally two cmopletely dissimilar products/companies can have similar names if they'er derived independantly from a common word, which 'mandrake' would certainly count as, being an herb/root. However, if they did indeed take the name from the Mandrake character, then I can see why they were ruled against...
Personally I don't see much point in the BTX design. It doesn't really appear to accomplish much of anything that can't be done with ATX. It's almost an identical layout, except that it's mirrored... so it strikes me more as a publicity stunt, and an attempt to make changes for the sake of making changes, and forcing everyone to upgrade their older parts (cases, etc) if they want to stay current.
I'm not impressed.
The article never really went into much detail about just how far back they're going in thier product scheme. I mean, I'd hate for it to go so far back that it's just bricks and Duplo. If they take it back to where it was in the 80's, that would be great. I can sum up my feeling on it in just 3 words: "Town, Castle, Space". I always though they were crazy for going off into all sorts of bizarre themes, when it should be relatively generic in concept. The old 80's space and castle sets were simple enough and yet broad enough to have mass appeal.
I also wonder how long it'll take for someone to write some really nasty EFI-infecting viruses/worms/trojans. The results oculd be quite scary/amusing.
Interestingly, after Groklaw posted this and it was pointed out that their FTP server was still accessible, which clearly counters their claim of a DDoS attack, it now appears that the FTP server has been knocked down as well.
I can see it now at SCO:
Darl: Dammit, you forgot to take down the FTP server too!
Admin: Yeah, uhh, forgot...
Darl: Fix it now, before anyone reads Groklaw!
He's half-right. The missiles, and especially their exhaust, behaved as if in an atmosphere. Missiles can arc in space, by adjusting their thrust vectors, but will undergo constant acceleration, and you would essentially see the missile appear to side-slip, as it would have to rotate significantly with respect to it's velocity to make a major course-correction. Since they always appeared to move forward relative to their orientation, they behaved more like atmospheric missiles.
In terms of exhaust, you would never see smoke trails, or turbulant clouds of smoke. Turbulance is caused by, you guessed it, interaction with the atmosphere. You'd have unlimited radial/spherical expansion of gas in space, most of which would be invisible, and thus no smoke trails. The thrust off the back of the vipers was much more appropriately represented, and the maneuvering jets were close to realistic.
Heh, for a moment there I thought you were going to finish that out with "all the used ones in a sticky mess"...
You should do what I do... Store all of the components on the floor, desk, and any other available horizontal surface, until the time comes to clean up for guests.
Then where does it all go? Filing cabinet, rubbermaid bin, and my personal favorite- the excess space inside the rack cabinet. It all blends in with the existing cablemess anyway.
When everyone leaves, it comes right back out into floor piles. How else am I supposed to find anything??
I was just thinking about this the other day. As I've gone over my own website looking at old links, I've come to the realization that most of the sites on the 'net that I'd link to often are gone after a year. If I'm writing articles that cite references or locations for additional information, or just including courtesy-links for further reading, the links frequently go dead long before I ever notice.
The obvious solution is to write web content to be commpletely self-contained, just to save yourself all of the maintenance woes down the line. This, of course, is highly unfortunate, since the "hypertext" nature of the web is one of it's greatest strengths. The lack of any longevity in its content is perhaps it's greatest weakness.
C'mon, do it... you know you want to. :)
Seriously, I'd probably participate. With my limited bandwidth I tend not to take part in P2P or distributed computing projects (except SETI@Home). I'd give something like this a try.
Even better, you could always use a ramdisk instead of a physical hard disk and avoid all of these issues. Fresh OS on every boot! Yeah baby!