buy about 2 video games a month. At 40.00 (looks like this will go up, both doom 3 and HL2 were 55.00) a game, thats 960.00 a year on video games + 800 * 2 = 2560 a year (not including tax) on games.
Let me get this straight, you spend $1600 a year for two EQ accounts? That's $67/mo. in recurring fees per account? Is it just me or does that sound way too high? Granted, I played EQ a long time ago, but the recurring fees were only like $12 or something!
Let's say you had 2 EQ accounts with ALL the bells and whistles (the all access package EQ, PlanetSide, and EQ2) that's $22/mo. I know for a while they had an additional "journal" type service that was another $10/mo. so say you signed up for that too. Total that out over a year and it's $768 total for two accounts for the full year. What on earth did you spend the remaining $832 on?
I've been testing SP2 since RC1 and it's still pretty buggy... the new wireless features have issues with certain products from some major manufacturers, the added browser security has (in my case) created more problems than it solves, but the new firewall features and interface are VERY nice.
I just hope they work the bugs out before release, as it stands now, it's no where near ready for release to the general public IMHO.
...they went into Fry's to try to buy an ATI Radeon 99000 XT+ video card, Intel P5 1.2 THz
processor, and a Terabyte of RAM. The arresting agent was overheard saying, "I knew they weren't using that much computing power to play Unreal Tournament"
Poulsen used to run with Kevin Mitnick. You may have seen him on Unsolved Mysteries or on a post office wall... (he's the one who won a Porsche from a radio station by taking over their phonelines)
Now he's "reformed" and reporting for Security Focus (however his reporting tactics are tantamount to social engineering).
I know that that image is probably "enhanced" by an artist, but come on! The sun is glaring in the lens, yet the moon and earth are full, meaning the sun would be BEHIND the spacecraft... even if it is artistic license, they should try to make the image a little more realistic, it's still spectacular...
Slackware is an excellent distro, and for a server OS it's one of the best I've tried. I'd highly recommend making the switch from Red Hat to Slack, I did myself it years ago and haven't looked back!
I think that their marketing strategy is to get in as much legal hot water as possible... next they'll be sued by SCO! After all, there's no such thing as bad publicity!
Oh, my bad, you've actually got a point there! Actually, now that I think about it, the "spending significant sums to comply with the act (thereby reducing the effectiveness of its business)" probably has more to do with the fact that their business model is based on duping their "customers" and they'll have to reorganize the whole company around this law.
Give me a break! Their argument is ridiculous! The "right to advertise"?! When they're using MY hard drive, MY CPU cycles, and MY bandwidth to do it?! If some brick-and-mortar company spray painted their ads on the side of my house, or hooked up the lighting for their billboard to my electrical socket, then surely that's not protected under the "right to advertise"... especially if they are using ads that are "stolen" from their competitors...
I'm not saying that this is a great law, especially since it's basically one advertiser fighting against another advertiser, but still, enough with the constitutional rhetoric already, what we're talking about is people hijacking personal property, be it my computer or some other company's advertisements!
Just give me a choice (even if it's buried in the EULA) and get on with it! Like it's that hard to throw in a window saying "Do you want to install this?"
Actually, for a brief time the Star Wars website had it labeled as "The Creeping Fear" on their menu to the right. It was only recently taken down (possibly in advance of this announcement?)
What do you mean "what??", you're agreeing with me. I'm saying that the movie industry isn't in its death throes, even without innovations in story...
As for video games, Savage is a recent one that kicked butt and didn't get its due... and Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time is very innovative and fun to play. Not to mention some of the puzzle games that are out right now. There's lots of good stuff to play, but I agree with you that EB's selection is wanting...
I disagree. The movie industry is still booming, and since the 1960's the only "improvements" in the technology have been special effects... sure the ratio of crappy games to fun games will contiue to change, but there are still innovative games that continue to captivate my imagination after 25 years of gaming. The article is funny, and interesting, but I disagree that we're seeing the end of an industry.
LOGO is not a horrible language when it's used as it's intended... learning LOGO when I was about 9 years old got me interested in computers, which led to a great career... I don't know many 9 year olds who could handle learning assembly.
My Grandfater worked for IBM in the 70's and 80's. He did all his coding in assembly and machine language. His motto is "Anyone who doesn't know machine language has no business using a computer."
There has to be a happy medium IMHO, and I think this is a great start. While my Grandfather was on the cutting edge of the PC revolution, he now has trouble figuring out email, etc, because he operates at too LOW a level (and I feel that he now has no business being online!). Then you have the users who have the same problems because they operate at too HIGH a level (AOL, etc...). The majority of programmers nowadays fall about smack in the middle of these two groups, but I'd argue they should be a little closer to the lower levels than they currently are.
I learned LOGO and BASIC as a kid, then grew into Cobol and C, and learned a little assembly in the process. I now use C++, Perl, and (shudder) Visual Basic (when the need arises). My introduction to programming at a young age through very simple languages really helped to whet my appetite, but I think that my intermediate experiences with low level languages helps me to write code that is a lot tighter than some of my peers. Let's hope this starts a trend, it would be great if more young (and current) programmers appreciated the nuts and bolts!
I can see you have a problem with generalizations... so let me try to clear up my point; based on what I've observed, species that are more technically advanced have a tendency to either a) exploit and or dominate other species or b) consider other species "pests". Neither of these options makes me feel comfortable with the idea of an extraterrestrial species (that is more technologically advanced than we are) discovering we exist.
The anthill just proves my point, as they serve us no real purpose, more often then not we just poision them. Would you prefer to be exploited, or exterminated?
Alone? I hope so!
on
Lonely Planets
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I actually really do hope that we're alone, at least in our neck of the galaxy. I look at it this way, is there any species that is more "advanced" than another that doesn't prey on the weaker species? In nature, it seems that the strong always dominate the weak. If there is advanced life out there, how long do you think it would be before they dominated us? If the natural history of our particular planet is any indicator, I'm hoping that we don't run into any more "advanced" species in my lifetime!
I've recently started collecting all my old computers... so that my kids can see what dad used back when he was their age.
I remember how hard I worked and saved for each computer, having to sell my old ones with all their peripherials and software in order to get the money to buy the latest.
I started with my dad's Sanyo MBC1150, then my folks got me a Commodore64. That C-64 was a monster by the time I was done with it, disk drives, modem, tape drives, printer, the works! I sold it all used to get seed money for an Atari ST... looking back on it, that was dumb. I ended up getting rid of the Atari and going to a Mac. I sold the Mac and bought a PackardBell (ugh!), which I used until I started building my own machines in 1996.
Ahh the good old days, out of all those machines, I think the C-64 served me the best. There was nothing like being online in the mid 80's! Funny that after all that money I spent on those systems, I can buy them all back through eBay for pennies on the dollar. Purchasing every PC I used throughout my childhood (even the Apple II I used in school) ended up costing me less than $200, and now I have a working computer museum!
Remind me to check my dumpster here at the office for a NYT login...
But seriously, we use a shredding company here at my office for our important papers. They're supposed to do all the shredding "on site" in their truck. Yesterday they were here to empty our shred bins, and they brought in a big trash bin to haul our stuff out to the truck. One of these bins was sitting in the hallway, and no one was around, so I took a peek inside. It was papers from an accounting firm down the street! I mean, we're supposed to be paying these guys to keep our info secure, but here they are waiting until their bin is full before they shred anything?! Needless to say, I had a long conversation with our facilities manager after this...
If you want something done right, better do it yourself! I'm now using a $30 shredder BEFORE I dump anything in our shred bins! Who knows where our important documents have been travelling to before they actually got shredded?!
This is why I burn all my important docs, credit card offers, old checks, etc... at home, who knows who is going through your trash? All they need is an account number, and a shredded document can be taped back together with enough motivation and time... (although with some people being easy marks, I guess the harder you can make it, the better!)
I keep waiting for someone in the US to start one of these up... anyone know if there's one in the works anywhere? (Perhaps I should get up off my lazy butt and put one together...)
"To just change the email system around isn't feasable."
If this were true than everyone would still be using CTSS Mail circa 1965. I'm not saying that we take on the "preposterous" job of implementing a worldwide change overnight, I'm merely suggesting that some thought be put into how we move forward.
If you think that SMTP will still be "de rigour" thirty years from now, you're in for a surprise, by then it will have gone the way of CTSS Mail, Autodin, Multics, the ARPANET, etc... things change!
Slashdot Mirror
buy about 2 video games a month. At 40.00 (looks like this will go up, both doom 3 and HL2 were 55.00) a game, thats 960.00 a year on video games + 800 * 2 = 2560 a year (not including tax) on games.
Let me get this straight, you spend $1600 a year for two EQ accounts? That's $67/mo. in recurring fees per account? Is it just me or does that sound way too high? Granted, I played EQ a long time ago, but the recurring fees were only like $12 or something!
Let's say you had 2 EQ accounts with ALL the bells and whistles (the all access package EQ, PlanetSide, and EQ2) that's $22/mo. I know for a while they had an additional "journal" type service that was another $10/mo. so say you signed up for that too. Total that out over a year and it's $768 total for two accounts for the full year. What on earth did you spend the remaining $832 on?
So yeah, *takes drink of 35th cup of coffee* you can say I've changed. Jeez, maybe you oughta lay off the coffee a bit?
Love that album... "Material", right?
I've been testing SP2 since RC1 and it's still pretty buggy... the new wireless features have issues with certain products from some major manufacturers, the added browser security has (in my case) created more problems than it solves, but the new firewall features and interface are VERY nice. I just hope they work the bugs out before release, as it stands now, it's no where near ready for release to the general public IMHO.
Get the region 2 from Japan... it's already subtitled, and it's letterbox!
...they went into Fry's to try to buy an ATI Radeon 99000 XT+ video card, Intel P5 1.2 THz processor, and a Terabyte of RAM. The arresting agent was overheard saying, "I knew they weren't using that much computing power to play Unreal Tournament"
Poulsen used to run with Kevin Mitnick. You may have seen him on Unsolved Mysteries or on a post office wall... (he's the one who won a Porsche from a radio station by taking over their phonelines)
Now he's "reformed" and reporting for Security Focus (however his reporting tactics are tantamount to social engineering).
I know that that image is probably "enhanced" by an artist, but come on! The sun is glaring in the lens, yet the moon and earth are full, meaning the sun would be BEHIND the spacecraft... even if it is artistic license, they should try to make the image a little more realistic, it's still spectacular...
Slackware is an excellent distro, and for a server OS it's one of the best I've tried. I'd highly recommend making the switch from Red Hat to Slack, I did myself it years ago and haven't looked back!
I think that their marketing strategy is to get in as much legal hot water as possible... next they'll be sued by SCO! After all, there's no such thing as bad publicity!
Ok, I know, it's not punny. Sorry.
Oh, my bad, you've actually got a point there! Actually, now that I think about it, the "spending significant sums to comply with the act (thereby reducing the effectiveness of its business)" probably has more to do with the fact that their business model is based on duping their "customers" and they'll have to reorganize the whole company around this law.
Give me a break! Their argument is ridiculous! The "right to advertise"?! When they're using MY hard drive, MY CPU cycles, and MY bandwidth to do it?! If some brick-and-mortar company spray painted their ads on the side of my house, or hooked up the lighting for their billboard to my electrical socket, then surely that's not protected under the "right to advertise"... especially if they are using ads that are "stolen" from their competitors...
I'm not saying that this is a great law, especially since it's basically one advertiser fighting against another advertiser, but still, enough with the constitutional rhetoric already, what we're talking about is people hijacking personal property, be it my computer or some other company's advertisements! Just give me a choice (even if it's buried in the EULA) and get on with it! Like it's that hard to throw in a window saying "Do you want to install this?"
Actually, for a brief time the Star Wars website had it labeled as "The Creeping Fear" on their menu to the right. It was only recently taken down (possibly in advance of this announcement?)
What do you mean "what??", you're agreeing with me. I'm saying that the movie industry isn't in its death throes, even without innovations in story...
As for video games, Savage is a recent one that kicked butt and didn't get its due... and Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time is very innovative and fun to play. Not to mention some of the puzzle games that are out right now. There's lots of good stuff to play, but I agree with you that EB's selection is wanting...
I disagree. The movie industry is still booming, and since the 1960's the only "improvements" in the technology have been special effects... sure the ratio of crappy games to fun games will contiue to change, but there are still innovative games that continue to captivate my imagination after 25 years of gaming. The article is funny, and interesting, but I disagree that we're seeing the end of an industry.
LOGO is not a horrible language when it's used as it's intended... learning LOGO when I was about 9 years old got me interested in computers, which led to a great career... I don't know many 9 year olds who could handle learning assembly.
My Grandfater worked for IBM in the 70's and 80's. He did all his coding in assembly and machine language. His motto is "Anyone who doesn't know machine language has no business using a computer."
There has to be a happy medium IMHO, and I think this is a great start. While my Grandfather was on the cutting edge of the PC revolution, he now has trouble figuring out email, etc, because he operates at too LOW a level (and I feel that he now has no business being online!). Then you have the users who have the same problems because they operate at too HIGH a level (AOL, etc...). The majority of programmers nowadays fall about smack in the middle of these two groups, but I'd argue they should be a little closer to the lower levels than they currently are.
I learned LOGO and BASIC as a kid, then grew into Cobol and C, and learned a little assembly in the process. I now use C++, Perl, and (shudder) Visual Basic (when the need arises). My introduction to programming at a young age through very simple languages really helped to whet my appetite, but I think that my intermediate experiences with low level languages helps me to write code that is a lot tighter than some of my peers. Let's hope this starts a trend, it would be great if more young (and current) programmers appreciated the nuts and bolts!
I can see you have a problem with generalizations... so let me try to clear up my point; based on what I've observed, species that are more technically advanced have a tendency to either a) exploit and or dominate other species or b) consider other species "pests". Neither of these options makes me feel comfortable with the idea of an extraterrestrial species (that is more technologically advanced than we are) discovering we exist.
The anthill just proves my point, as they serve us no real purpose, more often then not we just poision them. Would you prefer to be exploited, or exterminated?
I actually really do hope that we're alone, at least in our neck of the galaxy. I look at it this way, is there any species that is more "advanced" than another that doesn't prey on the weaker species? In nature, it seems that the strong always dominate the weak. If there is advanced life out there, how long do you think it would be before they dominated us? If the natural history of our particular planet is any indicator, I'm hoping that we don't run into any more "advanced" species in my lifetime!
I've recently started collecting all my old computers... so that my kids can see what dad used back when he was their age.
I remember how hard I worked and saved for each computer, having to sell my old ones with all their peripherials and software in order to get the money to buy the latest.
I started with my dad's Sanyo MBC1150, then my folks got me a Commodore64. That C-64 was a monster by the time I was done with it, disk drives, modem, tape drives, printer, the works! I sold it all used to get seed money for an Atari ST... looking back on it, that was dumb. I ended up getting rid of the Atari and going to a Mac. I sold the Mac and bought a PackardBell (ugh!), which I used until I started building my own machines in 1996.
Ahh the good old days, out of all those machines, I think the C-64 served me the best. There was nothing like being online in the mid 80's! Funny that after all that money I spent on those systems, I can buy them all back through eBay for pennies on the dollar. Purchasing every PC I used throughout my childhood (even the Apple II I used in school) ended up costing me less than $200, and now I have a working computer museum!
Remind me to check my dumpster here at the office for a NYT login...
But seriously, we use a shredding company here at my office for our important papers. They're supposed to do all the shredding "on site" in their truck. Yesterday they were here to empty our shred bins, and they brought in a big trash bin to haul our stuff out to the truck. One of these bins was sitting in the hallway, and no one was around, so I took a peek inside. It was papers from an accounting firm down the street! I mean, we're supposed to be paying these guys to keep our info secure, but here they are waiting until their bin is full before they shred anything?! Needless to say, I had a long conversation with our facilities manager after this...
If you want something done right, better do it yourself! I'm now using a $30 shredder BEFORE I dump anything in our shred bins! Who knows where our important documents have been travelling to before they actually got shredded?!
This is why I burn all my important docs, credit card offers, old checks, etc... at home, who knows who is going through your trash? All they need is an account number, and a shredded document can be taped back together with enough motivation and time... (although with some people being easy marks, I guess the harder you can make it, the better!)
I keep waiting for someone in the US to start one of these up... anyone know if there's one in the works anywhere? (Perhaps I should get up off my lazy butt and put one together...)
"To just change the email system around isn't feasable."
If this were true than everyone would still be using CTSS Mail circa 1965. I'm not saying that we take on the "preposterous" job of implementing a worldwide change overnight, I'm merely suggesting that some thought be put into how we move forward.
If you think that SMTP will still be "de rigour" thirty years from now, you're in for a surprise, by then it will have gone the way of CTSS Mail, Autodin, Multics, the ARPANET, etc... things change!