I have a similar variation. Except I use a 6 character string with a few symbols and numbers, but try to make it easy to remember, like: silly1 --> $i!!Y1 Then I pick a place where to put in a 2 character site identifier. so something like: CitiBank --> $i!!cbY1 HotMail --> $i!!hmY1 SlashDot --> $i!!sdY1
So someone first needs to crack 2 of them, then know what accounts I have and the logins all within the 4-6 months between password changes...at which point I come up with a new 6 character key, and a new location within them to put the 2 characters.
I've given this advice to a lot of less tech savvy people and they seem to be able to do ok with it. Given, they don't change passwords as often as me, and typically put the 2 characters at the beginning or ending, but at least they end up with a more secure password then "mydogspot99"
Amen! I know a lot of the OSS crowd will comment about the greatness of MythTV (and yes, i've used it on Gentoo), but Snapstream is just way easy and does everything I want. The beta of 3.5 has some questionable decisions (the change in the web interface is questionable because it adds quite a few clicks to managing things), but that's why it's beta, and they're taking feedback.
I've also beta tested BeyondMedia and that is another really slick program. Not having used Media Center, I shouldn't comment too much about it, but I do love the fact that with Snapstream, you can use industry standard MPEG-2, or choose to recompress to either DivX or WMV (don't know of plans to support any other encoders as of just yet). It's easy for me then to share the files, or burn them to CD to watch on my laptop later. Combine that with their free snapstream.net guide service, and it's a no brainer to do most anything on it (even my idiot roommate has been able to figure it out).
I've tried Freevo, MythTV, ATI's TV app, WinPVR, PowerVCR II, and SageTV, and without a doubt, BeyondTV serves my needs the best.
Excuse me, but when you say that the tour isn't fake, you should consider doping.
All those guys (most of them) are cheaters and I don't consider this sport anymore.
Check those 2 links out:
http://www.thinkmuscle.com/articles/hoberman/tour. htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/cycli ng/3748973.stm
Let's see...one link is about a doping incident from 6 years ago. The other is about a raid that turned up nothing? Yet your claim is that "All those guys" or "most of them" cheat and dope? You really have to do better then that. Please offer some better proof. They do urine tests, blood tests, raid hotel rooms (as you proved), monitor red blood cell counts, and France itself is very strict on even bringing substances into the country (ask Edith Rumsas about that one!).
Obviously no sport can be perfect, after all, there will always be companies like BALCO trying to find a way around drug testing, but compared to other sports, professional cycling is one of the most aggressive testing sports around
I actually was surprised that Starcraft (a bit less so about NOLF) wasn't mentioned as a definite benchmark in storytelling. I mean, talk about a story that drew you in and actually made you care about the characters in a RTS game no less! I still remember the chills I got from Tassadar sacrificing himself to destroy the overmind....and the mixed feelings about the metamorphosis of Kerrigan. I simply HAD to complete each level to move the story forward...combined with each scenario making sense within the story. I thought it was absolute brilliance.
More recently, I played NOLF (1 and 2) and found the story campy, cheesey, and downright fun. I was speculating the entire time (moreso in the first one) about what would happen in the end. It was a game I simply HAD to beat no matter what just to find out who the traitor was. The sequel wasn't quite as compelling to me, but still a pretty fun romp with a story tying things together.
But overall, if I had to pick my benchmark in gaming storytelling, there is no doubts that Starcraft goes to the top of the list. Has anyone else found a game where you develop as strong of an emotional bond to a group of characters as with the likes of Raynor, Kerrigan, Tassadar, and even Mensk?
and Slashdot users feel they've said all they need to on a subject, so no point repeating themselves....nah. there's probably a better chance that it's a glitch in the Matrix.
Actually, I have an Athlon XP 2000+ w/ an AIW 7500 running in my living room 24/7. I'm quite happy with it (not too much worse then my PVR250 setup on my main computer). I record in close to good quality (it's nice how you can modify the bitrates and resolutions to maximize the capture quality to CPU utilization ratio). I use it ALL the time, having probably hundreds of things saved at any given time (even with deleting as I watch).
I had tried to get linux set up as a living room PC, but it was just taking too long compared to the Windows setup. Yeah, I know I could do it eventually, if I did the research into it, but considering BeyondTV did EVERYTHING I expected from it, I didn't feel it was worth the time. I'll figure out MythTV one of these days on my main PC now that I have a PVR250 instead of a Personal Cinema, but it's just a matter of time to get the drivers configured and all the other fun linux stuff.
Honestly, I think BeyondTV rocks. I have my Livingroom PC boot directly into a user account configured to start BTV in full screen mode. I use the ATI remote (awesome!) with girder (if you need the girder config for this, email me, and I can send it your way and explain the button configs I use). I don't need a monitor, keyboard, or mouse, just the remote.
Strengths: Effective use of size with it's showsqueeze functions (basically transcodes MPEG-2 into WindowsMedia OR DivX). For shows I don't care about slight artifacting, such as Quantum Leap, I can squeeze it down from 1901MB down to 998MB with only SLIGHT artifacts (I find it viewable). Full Screen UI is an effective 10 foot interface that does most everything I need (although I do use the web interface to handle manual compression). NON WEB based TV listing. VERY easy to navigate, and now they have a search feature. Can watch a recording as it records (which addresses the person who commented about missing the first 15 minutes). It's pretty common for me to wait 20 minutes into a show to start watching it, so I can skip the commercials and just delete the file when I'm done (sometimes I time it nearly perfectly so that I finish watching as the show ends). Responsive dev staff. I got into the beta program, and had directly input into the evolution of the software (I suggested that on the recorded program details screen to show the type of file) and have exchanged emails with the developers when addressing bugs. It simply works.
Weaknesses: Details not as good as TV when used without hardware encoder. This really only affects watching sports for me. Basketball for instance can move too fast, causing pixilation. Additionally, w/o hardware encoding, it really SHOULD be a standalone machine, or have a very beefy processor. Web Interface is basically IE only Scheduled recordings are on a per channel basis (in other words, if something is on ABC and ABC Family, it requires 2 seperate recording schedules).
Overall, I've been very pleased with it. It's the first PVR software I've felt comfortable using for the long haul (have used ATI, WinDVR, PowerDVR, and ShowShifter, and also attempted to use MythTV and Freevo, but none met my needs as well as BTV). I'm totally amped about the upcoming BeyondMedia product (read the details on their site. It supports DVD playing, Audio, and Photos in addition to the Video/TV). God, I sound like such a shill, but all I really am is a happy customer.
I think it's sad that Eudora gets short-shifted so much in reviews of email clients. There are 2 major things that keep me coming back to Eudora over anything else. First off, the auto-collapsing folders. I'm certain I'm not the only person here who has mail archives dating back more then 5 years. As such, I've built up quite a folder heirarchy, and when moving messages into their proper places, if things don't collapse, it's a LOT of scrolling (and I hate to sort mail via right click, send to, navigate through!) I love that I can grab a message, hover it over "lists" hover over "Yahoo!" and drop into my xosl folder, then 'lists' collapses back so I can get to my 'friends' heirarchy for the next message I need to sort without having to scroll up at all.
Secondly, I really like the filtering, specifically the manual filters. There are certain lists I get (such as NTBUGTRAQ) where I want to leave it in my inbox, read it, then file it away. With Eudora, once I've read it, I just CTRL-J it, and it gets filtered where it needs to. These two big time savers are the main things I hope to see in some of the OSS packages, and if I ever got the time, I'd love to work on incorporating, but alas, too busy to go through the source tree on any of the big projects. (Manual filters w/ hotkeys may be in other clients, but the folder collapsing thing is my biggest reason for never sticking too long with any other program to figure out how to do it).
True enough. But the salient point that everyone seems to miss when looking at things like this is that a trasition from software A to software B is always difficult, for pretty much any A and any B. Were Linux in a dominant position instead, we might well be seeing similar stories about a few high profile sites struggling with an attempted switch to Windows...
Also noting that A and B can be within the same software family. i.e. a migration from Win 9x to XP, or from XP to Longhorn, or OS9 to OSX, or Redhat to Debian. Any shifts in environment has the potential to break things or pose difficulties.
Any switchover of this kind will run into teething problems. We switched over most of our academic admin office (about 30 computers) to Linux/OpenOffice. Despite the support of two experienced Linux sysadmins and backing from On High, there was considerable grousing that still continues some 6 months later. File opening speeds, minor formatting things, print speeds - anything that might be imagined to be a little worse than the good old Win/Office system. I think it is mostly two factors: resistance to any kind of change, and the loss of freedom to mess around with the system. The slight but obvious user interface issues are a good added excuse.
On the flip side, though: No viruses. No files lost. No idiot using someone else's machine and wiping out data. Automatic remote backup. The sysadmins are happy! Unfortunately these things do not seem to figure in the tally of the staff, even when one of their colleagues who has yet to switch has had all her files scrambled by one of the latest viruses.
In short - it is hard to get people to change. But there are enormous savings, and not just financially.
You mirrored my thoughts on that. I was thinking 'growing pains' instead of teething, but it still is the same general idea
Let's face it, Linux DOES need this kind of experience. It's what helps it grow. I mean, you can't say that migrating from Windows 98/ME to XP was an EASY thing for companies. I'm sure that there were plenty of early implimenters who ran into similar cost/resource overruns. The fact of the matter is, the more companies who DO face these things, the more we learn about the process itself. I don't think we can even say that the migration problems are more techinical related or more to do with implementing business processes within a completely new environment
Having done work in managing software migration within a business process, I know for a fact that pre-existing business rules play a critical role in how easily something is implemented, but with Windows, any time there's a new release, I make sure I read through all the articles of InfoWorld (and other such trade mags) to see all the articles on caveats for migration. Linux needs this type of coverage so that more people actually DOING migrations can know what to plan ahead for. And let's face it, botched upgrades or cost overruns is part of this process.
Personally, I'm fine with Munich running into more problems then expected, because it's something real and something we can learn from. It just means that the next city/state/country that seeks a migration can communicate with Munich and find out WHERE the problems occurred to plan ahead for it prior to even starting. So each subsequent installation becomes that much easier until it becomes a neatly documented procedure.
No matter how 'Developers boy' tries and spin it, Microsoft went through the exact same thing with companies who moved to XP from the 9x family (I know I have firsthand experience of that as many of you probably do as well).
I realize that you are trying to make a joke, but seriously, how painful is a Linux upgrade compared to a WindowsUpdate(R)(C)TM? Cause that's about the price you pay almost daily to get up-to-date.
Let's see...with debian stable (possibly testing, but I don't recommend with unstable)
Change your second crontab to run the shell script, and done. (yes, I don't use variables in 2 line scripts)
Oh, to upgrade to the next release...
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
for kernels, there's make oldconfig, but I realize there can be complications and a little more technical stuff, but upgrading a debian system for me is very straight forward. Set it and forget it. (I used to do automatic updates with WindowsUpdate, but there is still a patch out there that makes my Athlon laptop freeze up randomly).
Amen to CoD! The first version had some "bugs" (more design flaws) where people would be jumping around like bunnies (the dreaded bunnyhopper) while blasting away. It really took the realism out of the game to see a russian soldier doing the mad hop in circles around people. Also, the sniper rifle was too much of an uberweapon in the right hands.
The recent patch addressed both of these problems (there's now a lag when ya land from a jump and slow down, plus the sniper rifle takes a few seconds to line up the sights when you bring it to your eye). I've played and played and played and slowly gotten better (have even won a pair of deathmatch games! but I definitely prefer team deathmatch).
As for game modes, they have quite a few:
Deathmatch Team Deathmatch Retrieval (think capture the flag, but only one team has a flag, the other defends it) Search and Destroy -- Two targets that need explosives planted on them. The defending team does have time to defuse) Behind Enemy Lines -- A few allied players and a whole bunch of axis players....killing an allied player respawns as an allied player (while the killed player becomes axis) Headquarters -- Control a specified zone of control for a set period of time to get points
There still are some problems, such as spawn point killers (which really sucks since you don't even have time to find them before you're dead) and some granade throwing contests, but all in all, it's fairly easy to get into and start improving and getting more kills.
Team Deathmatch definitely works as a starting point as you can use other players as a crutch while you explore and learn the maps (which are decent sized and varied, although there are not a ton of maps).
I have DEFINITELY gotten my 50$ out of it and then some. Oh, if you're ever in team deathmatch and see St00pidN00b, take it easy on me;)
I've read a few of her reviews, and even more telling, many of her responses to people who disagree with aspects of her reviews in the OSNews forums.
What is even worse is looking at how her responses always pick out the points she can argue with, ignoring the rest of the flames about her that are valid. I've long ago learned that her "reviews" of linux distributions could only be topped if there were reviews on Microsoft.com. I pretty much stopped reading this review after her long winded gripe about recompiling gaim.
Just browse through her reviews and the comments under them and you'll see how credible the author is.
Here are my views on applications that I use on a fairly regular basis (with a little editorials. The winners are which application is superior, in my opinion of course). I tried to select Open Source applications to compare to proprietary sources (selecting my personal choices or Microsoft solutions, whichever the case might be) For those with an IQ under 6, (OS) denotes Open Source (P) denotes Proprietary
Server Related Apache (OS) vs. IIS (P) Winner: Apache Comments: No brainer
Postgresql (OS) vs. SQL Server (P) Engine Winner: push Tools: SQL Server Comments: With the engines themselves, I haven't had much of a problem with the systems I've worked with, or felt that they weren't powerful enough for what I've done (including working with a 1.8 million row residential database). SQL Server's Query analyzer is one of the best tools I've used (almost entirely because of the object browser)
Postfix/HORDE (OS) vs. Exchange (P) Mail server Winner: Postfix Security Winner: Postfix Web interface winner: Exchange Comments: Postfix works without fail and was simple to setup and configure. Outlook Web Access however is very powerful, especially when using Internet Explorer. Hard to top how easy it is to work with things there.
Samba (OS) vs. Win 2000 File Sharing (P) Winner: Windows 2000 File Server Comments: The integration with Active Directory makes adding/deleting/managing shares within Windows 2000 easier when working with Windows clients. Speedwise, I haven't noticed too big of a problem with either one, so judged purely on ease of use.
NFS Server Winner: Linux Comments: Duh.
apt (OS) vs. WindowsUpdate (P) Winner: apt Comments: WindowsUpdate COULD be as easy as apt....if things got on there fast enough, and if I actually trusted the items on there. apt though is the easiest system updater I've worked with. I've set up debian boxes and simply never worried about them being insecure because of my trust in the fine folks who do the work there.
Workstation Related Konqueror (OS) vs. Explorer (P) Winner: Konqueror Comments: Explorer just gets too unstable, and the fact that it is soldered into the rest of the desktop means that any instability means my system is hosed (especially all the system tray icons! I hate losing those because explorer gets confused with a CD ROM and autorun).
Mozilla/Firebird (OS) vs. IE (P) Winner: Mozilla Comments: Security is the first reason, but after having gotten used to tabbed browsing in Galeon, I simply HATE internet explorer for lacking what seems like a no-brainer feature.
Filezilla (OS) vs. IE (P) Winner: Filezilla Comments: Talk about afterthoughts....yeah, IE can be used as an FTP client, but they could have done so much more over the past...I don't know....5 years or so to make it more then one step above the command line.
Evolution (OS) vs. Thunderbird(OS) vs. Eudora (P) vs. Outlook (P) Winner: Eudora Second: Thunderbird Third: Evolution Fourth: Outlook Comments: Eudora has the one feature I treasure the most...Autocollapsing folders. I like that I can take a mail message and drag it over a folder, and all the subfolders will appear, drop the mail message, and everything collapses back nice and neat. This saves a LOT of time when working with long folder lists and extensive heirarchies. Thunderbird came in a close second, mostly due to the built in spam filters.
Gaim (OS) vs. MSN Messenger/Y!/AIM/ICQ (P) Winner: Push Comments: The individual clients do their individual jobs better, but Gaim pulls even by putting all the features it does support within 2 windows (the buddy list and the message window). If gaim could support all the features (esp. yahoo webcam!), it would be the perfect tool.
Gaming -- No contest (Even with WineX) Winner: Duh. Comments: WineX is making good progress. But I like being able to buy games at BestBuy and know they will run without having to go home and look on
While some people may complain about it, I have been happy with my first month of using Vonage. I don't make a bunch of phone calls from home typically. In fact, I had really cut back to mostly cell phone usage, but was eating my minutes rapidly on business calls, so decided to give vonage a try to see about the quality and try and dump SBC for good.
Well, after a month of use, I've been fairly happy with it. There have been a few hiccups in communication, but that was mostly related to using eMule with 40k/40k settings (combined with hosting my own web server and email server among other things). I dropped it to 30/30 (using a 1.1Mbps DSL line) and the quality has been pretty close to POTS quality (most of the time it's the same quality, but for some reason, there are a couple places where there are hiccups).
Nowadays, whenever I work out of home, I set my cell phone to forward to my vonage line and have no complaints whatsoever. Nor have I had anyone tell me that the sound quality is bad or have problems understanding me.
It saves me 5$ per month in just base costs, without even using my 500 free long distance minutes. It definitely is a lot more cost effective for me then SBC, and if my next month goes as smoothly as this past month, I will be cancelling my POTS line and not have to deal at all with an RBOC for anything.
DivX 5.0.5 is still available for Linux here, no adware attached. Actually, it would be quite funny if adware was included as that would be the first case of linux adware afaik.
Hmmmm....adware for linux? projected 25% growth yearly? first to market? hmmm....*dollar signs for eyes*
Uh oh, better get an unlisted phone number and multiple PO boxes now.;)
see: Q811493
It caused complete freezing of my athlon laptop (mine wasn't the only case, as I found out about this by searching google).
Now I have to check every time an automatic update notice pops up to make sure it is not listed. I can only imagine what would happen to a poor soul who didn't realize what was happening every time his/her computer froze and was completely unresponsive until rebooting (hard reboot only).
No, because theoretically there can be multiple universes.
Hmm...I thought that the multiverse was brought back into line as a single universe when The Spectre thwarted the Anti-monitor's plans at the beginning of time? (for those who are wondering what I'm talking about check out One of the best comic book series ever written)...and yes, that means I was a comic book geek growing up...and proud of it!
That's a matter of point of view. Programs have to deal with unexpected user behaviour, that's why calculator programs tell you "Cannot divide by zero." instead of crashing. So either you prevent the user from ejecting a CD, that is you countermand his order, even if it was on a "hardware" level like the eject button (what's next, the reset button), or you treat it like it is, just another user input. Obviously there are more or less critical reactions programs need to initiate if the medium they have an open handle to is removed - Konquerer should, for instance, better handle it extremely gracefully, for instance by displaying a friendly error message and going back to the last readable directory. An app unexpectedly unable to write should also display an error and ask for another directory to write to, etc.
That all does make sense. The problem is, programs have been written with the assumption that a filesystem won't be closed with an open filehandle. It does all make sense why this is the case. After all, you wouldn't want someone arbitrarily umounting/home while 30 users are logged onto a system, or/var while an email server is receiving 100 emails per second...It is a logical thing, but you're absolutely right that ejecting a CD SHOULD just happen. But even in the Windows world, this isn't always the case. I've had frozen applications lock out the CDROM drive on me, and it took going through the task list and closing all possible applications that might have a file lock to try and eject (and eventually giving up and just rebooting the computer), i.e. autorun trying to fire up on a disk with unreadable sections, so the system keeps trying to read over and over and over but refusing to eject.
So what is the solution? I don't know myself. Others might have suggestions on this. I wouldn't want umount to be able to umount ANY file system, but then you run into the problem of differntiating between a memory card reader vs. a usb hard drive. Should all filesystems be umount-able always? should processes using the mounted file system be shut down? That's where I see the biggest catch....how SHOULD umount behave?
1. Oh *that's* intuitive - I know it took quite some time till I found lsof
[ROOT:~] # apropos "open file" flock (2) - apply or remove an advisory lock on an open file lockf (3) - apply, test or remove a POSIX lock on an open file lsof (8) - list open files [ROOT:~] #
At least in my experience, apropos is the second command to learn (after man, since you won't know what to do with the results, if you don't already understand what 'man' is for).
2. what if you don't want to kill that app? Often you're already browsing a completely different directory or -in case of Konqueror instead of Nautilus- you have a number of additional tabs open.
If you don't want to kill that app, then why would you want to umount the device? It doesn't make any sense to me. Sounds like an easy way to make an app freak out if you ask me.
Plus the wider things are, the more justification for buying that 21" Sony monitor to run at 1600x1200. If side scrolling were EASY, well, I wouldn't need as much of an excuse to get eliminate having to do it!
Now I just need an excuse that requires 2048x1536 so I can justify buying that 2000$ Sony 24" monitor.:)
I swear, I really didn't NEED to have a life. I don't know about many of you, but Diablo II ended up being THE most addictive game I've ever played (eclipsing both Nethack and Civ II no less!). Now there are even MORE things for me to try and figure out (including a bloody new tweaked skill tree? God save me!).
Well, I'm happy to hear about all this though. I'm hopefull that it will at least dampen the number of rushes and cow levels for a few days. While blizzard has been known to throw a few curveballs with thier patches to Diablo, I'm extremely excited about the chance to jump on there and give them a shot and go hunting after some of the new uniques. Ok. I've wasted too much time talking to all of you already. Off to battle.net.
Re:one app, one desktop, one united front
on
Too Much Free Software
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· Score: 3, Insightful
You seem to not quite get the gist of the article. From how I understood it, it's not about only going with ONE app, desktop, front. It's about 'cleaning up the crap'. In fact, the author endorses 4 different Desktop environments and 3 different office suites.
I think that the author has some valid points that some effort is wasted on projects that may never make it past beta. That the effort could better be spent improving or modularizing existing work to build truly best of breed applications. I tend to agree on this point. In other words, why start from scratch on a GUI mail program when Evolution and KMail can use the additional effort to become truly awesome applications.
I would tend to agree with his point, and could imagine a utopian OSS development world where all program have clearly defined APIs between the processing layer and the GUI layer with a plug-in architecture that allows for additional APIs to be added (without impacting the core functionality). This gives programmers freedom to rewrite or add or improve and keep their own "passions" in tact. I think Evolution makes the best example for this type of possibilities. For instance, I much prefer Eudora to Outlook. So, since the GUI is a separate component, I can write my own pure GUI using the APIs so that now Evolution behaves exactly like Eudora. Or, I like that Outlook Express allows me to connect to my hotmail account. So I write a plug-in module to add a connector to hotmail and yahoo as different account types. All the while, people are working on the core engine to speed up processing and add general enhancements.
I guess I think that a vast majority of software can be addressed like this where GUI rewriting is well beyond simple skinning (although skins could still be a component), and developers can focus their energies on specific areas instead of rewriting the same basic functionality over and over. In the end, I could imagine having quite a few more "best of breed" applications that can compete with most commercial software.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a similar variation. Except I use a 6 character string with a few symbols and numbers, but try to make it easy to remember, like:
silly1 --> $i!!Y1
Then I pick a place where to put in a 2 character site identifier.
so something like:
CitiBank --> $i!!cbY1
HotMail --> $i!!hmY1
SlashDot --> $i!!sdY1
So someone first needs to crack 2 of them, then know what accounts I have and the logins all within the 4-6 months between password changes...at which point I come up with a new 6 character key, and a new location within them to put the 2 characters.
I've given this advice to a lot of less tech savvy people and they seem to be able to do ok with it. Given, they don't change passwords as often as me, and typically put the 2 characters at the beginning or ending, but at least they end up with a more secure password then "mydogspot99"
Amen! I know a lot of the OSS crowd will comment about the greatness of MythTV (and yes, i've used it on Gentoo), but Snapstream is just way easy and does everything I want. The beta of 3.5 has some questionable decisions (the change in the web interface is questionable because it adds quite a few clicks to managing things), but that's why it's beta, and they're taking feedback.
I've also beta tested BeyondMedia and that is another really slick program. Not having used Media Center, I shouldn't comment too much about it, but I do love the fact that with Snapstream, you can use industry standard MPEG-2, or choose to recompress to either DivX or WMV (don't know of plans to support any other encoders as of just yet). It's easy for me then to share the files, or burn them to CD to watch on my laptop later. Combine that with their free snapstream.net guide service, and it's a no brainer to do most anything on it (even my idiot roommate has been able to figure it out).
I've tried Freevo, MythTV, ATI's TV app, WinPVR, PowerVCR II, and SageTV, and without a doubt, BeyondTV serves my needs the best.
Let's see...one link is about a doping incident from 6 years ago. The other is about a raid that turned up nothing? Yet your claim is that "All those guys" or "most of them" cheat and dope? You really have to do better then that. Please offer some better proof. They do urine tests, blood tests, raid hotel rooms (as you proved), monitor red blood cell counts, and France itself is very strict on even bringing substances into the country (ask Edith Rumsas about that one!).
Obviously no sport can be perfect, after all, there will always be companies like BALCO trying to find a way around drug testing, but compared to other sports, professional cycling is one of the most aggressive testing sports around
I actually was surprised that Starcraft (a bit less so about NOLF) wasn't mentioned as a definite benchmark in storytelling. I mean, talk about a story that drew you in and actually made you care about the characters in a RTS game no less! I still remember the chills I got from Tassadar sacrificing himself to destroy the overmind....and the mixed feelings about the metamorphosis of Kerrigan. I simply HAD to complete each level to move the story forward...combined with each scenario making sense within the story. I thought it was absolute brilliance.
More recently, I played NOLF (1 and 2) and found the story campy, cheesey, and downright fun. I was speculating the entire time (moreso in the first one) about what would happen in the end. It was a game I simply HAD to beat no matter what just to find out who the traitor was. The sequel wasn't quite as compelling to me, but still a pretty fun romp with a story tying things together.
But overall, if I had to pick my benchmark in gaming storytelling, there is no doubts that Starcraft goes to the top of the list. Has anyone else found a game where you develop as strong of an emotional bond to a group of characters as with the likes of Raynor, Kerrigan, Tassadar, and even Mensk?
and Slashdot users feel they've said all they need to on a subject, so no point repeating themselves....nah. there's probably a better chance that it's a glitch in the Matrix.
Actually, I have an Athlon XP 2000+ w/ an AIW 7500 running in my living room 24/7. I'm quite happy with it (not too much worse then my PVR250 setup on my main computer). I record in close to good quality (it's nice how you can modify the bitrates and resolutions to maximize the capture quality to CPU utilization ratio). I use it ALL the time, having probably hundreds of things saved at any given time (even with deleting as I watch).
I had tried to get linux set up as a living room PC, but it was just taking too long compared to the Windows setup. Yeah, I know I could do it eventually, if I did the research into it, but considering BeyondTV did EVERYTHING I expected from it, I didn't feel it was worth the time. I'll figure out MythTV one of these days on my main PC now that I have a PVR250 instead of a Personal Cinema, but it's just a matter of time to get the drivers configured and all the other fun linux stuff.
Honestly, I think BeyondTV rocks. I have my Livingroom PC boot directly into a user account configured to start BTV in full screen mode. I use the ATI remote (awesome!) with girder (if you need the girder config for this, email me, and I can send it your way and explain the button configs I use). I don't need a monitor, keyboard, or mouse, just the remote.
Strengths:
Effective use of size with it's showsqueeze functions (basically transcodes MPEG-2 into WindowsMedia OR DivX). For shows I don't care about slight artifacting, such as Quantum Leap, I can squeeze it down from 1901MB down to 998MB with only SLIGHT artifacts (I find it viewable).
Full Screen UI is an effective 10 foot interface that does most everything I need (although I do use the web interface to handle manual compression).
NON WEB based TV listing. VERY easy to navigate, and now they have a search feature.
Can watch a recording as it records (which addresses the person who commented about missing the first 15 minutes). It's pretty common for me to wait 20 minutes into a show to start watching it, so I can skip the commercials and just delete the file when I'm done (sometimes I time it nearly perfectly so that I finish watching as the show ends).
Responsive dev staff. I got into the beta program, and had directly input into the evolution of the software (I suggested that on the recorded program details screen to show the type of file) and have exchanged emails with the developers when addressing bugs.
It simply works.
Weaknesses:
Details not as good as TV when used without hardware encoder. This really only affects watching sports for me. Basketball for instance can move too fast, causing pixilation.
Additionally, w/o hardware encoding, it really SHOULD be a standalone machine, or have a very beefy processor.
Web Interface is basically IE only
Scheduled recordings are on a per channel basis (in other words, if something is on ABC and ABC Family, it requires 2 seperate recording schedules).
Overall, I've been very pleased with it. It's the first PVR software I've felt comfortable using for the long haul (have used ATI, WinDVR, PowerDVR, and ShowShifter, and also attempted to use MythTV and Freevo, but none met my needs as well as BTV). I'm totally amped about the upcoming BeyondMedia product (read the details on their site. It supports DVD playing, Audio, and Photos in addition to the Video/TV). God, I sound like such a shill, but all I really am is a happy customer.
Amen.
I think it's sad that Eudora gets short-shifted so much in reviews of email clients. There are 2 major things that keep me coming back to Eudora over anything else. First off, the auto-collapsing folders. I'm certain I'm not the only person here who has mail archives dating back more then 5 years. As such, I've built up quite a folder heirarchy, and when moving messages into their proper places, if things don't collapse, it's a LOT of scrolling (and I hate to sort mail via right click, send to, navigate through!) I love that I can grab a message, hover it over "lists" hover over "Yahoo!" and drop into my xosl folder, then 'lists' collapses back so I can get to my 'friends' heirarchy for the next message I need to sort without having to scroll up at all.
Secondly, I really like the filtering, specifically the manual filters. There are certain lists I get (such as NTBUGTRAQ) where I want to leave it in my inbox, read it, then file it away. With Eudora, once I've read it, I just CTRL-J it, and it gets filtered where it needs to. These two big time savers are the main things I hope to see in some of the OSS packages, and if I ever got the time, I'd love to work on incorporating, but alas, too busy to go through the source tree on any of the big projects. (Manual filters w/ hotkeys may be in other clients, but the folder collapsing thing is my biggest reason for never sticking too long with any other program to figure out how to do it).
Also noting that A and B can be within the same software family. i.e. a migration from Win 9x to XP, or from XP to Longhorn, or OS9 to OSX, or Redhat to Debian. Any shifts in environment has the potential to break things or pose difficulties.
You mirrored my thoughts on that. I was thinking 'growing pains' instead of teething, but it still is the same general idea
Let's face it, Linux DOES need this kind of experience. It's what helps it grow. I mean, you can't say that migrating from Windows 98/ME to XP was an EASY thing for companies. I'm sure that there were plenty of early implimenters who ran into similar cost/resource overruns. The fact of the matter is, the more companies who DO face these things, the more we learn about the process itself. I don't think we can even say that the migration problems are more techinical related or more to do with implementing business processes within a completely new environment
Having done work in managing software migration within a business process, I know for a fact that pre-existing business rules play a critical role in how easily something is implemented, but with Windows, any time there's a new release, I make sure I read through all the articles of InfoWorld (and other such trade mags) to see all the articles on caveats for migration. Linux needs this type of coverage so that more people actually DOING migrations can know what to plan ahead for. And let's face it, botched upgrades or cost overruns is part of this process.
Personally, I'm fine with Munich running into more problems then expected, because it's something real and something we can learn from. It just means that the next city/state/country that seeks a migration can communicate with Munich and find out WHERE the problems occurred to plan ahead for it prior to even starting. So each subsequent installation becomes that much easier until it becomes a neatly documented procedure.
No matter how 'Developers boy' tries and spin it, Microsoft went through the exact same thing with companies who moved to XP from the 9x family (I know I have firsthand experience of that as many of you probably do as well).
Let's see...with debian stable (possibly testing, but I don't recommend with unstable)Done.
Change your second crontab to run the shell script, and done. (yes, I don't use variables in 2 line scripts)Or, if you want a daily email of any packages requiring an update....
Oh, to upgrade to the next release...
for kernels, there's make oldconfig, but I realize there can be complications and a little more technical stuff, but upgrading a debian system for me is very straight forward. Set it and forget it. (I used to do automatic updates with WindowsUpdate, but there is still a patch out there that makes my Athlon laptop freeze up randomly).
Amen to CoD! The first version had some "bugs" (more design flaws) where people would be jumping around like bunnies (the dreaded bunnyhopper) while blasting away. It really took the realism out of the game to see a russian soldier doing the mad hop in circles around people. Also, the sniper rifle was too much of an uberweapon in the right hands.
The recent patch addressed both of these problems (there's now a lag when ya land from a jump and slow down, plus the sniper rifle takes a few seconds to line up the sights when you bring it to your eye). I've played and played and played and slowly gotten better (have even won a pair of deathmatch games! but I definitely prefer team deathmatch).
As for game modes, they have quite a few:
Deathmatch
Team Deathmatch
Retrieval (think capture the flag, but only one team has a flag, the other defends it)
Search and Destroy -- Two targets that need explosives planted on them. The defending team does have time to defuse)
Behind Enemy Lines -- A few allied players and a whole bunch of axis players....killing an allied player respawns as an allied player (while the killed player becomes axis)
Headquarters -- Control a specified zone of control for a set period of time to get points
There still are some problems, such as spawn point killers (which really sucks since you don't even have time to find them before you're dead) and some granade throwing contests, but all in all, it's fairly easy to get into and start improving and getting more kills.
Team Deathmatch definitely works as a starting point as you can use other players as a crutch while you explore and learn the maps (which are decent sized and varied, although there are not a ton of maps).
I have DEFINITELY gotten my 50$ out of it and then some. Oh, if you're ever in team deathmatch and see St00pidN00b, take it easy on me ;)
So instead of 'shutdown', would the command be 'whackoff'?
Does this mean AOL will now block lancearmstrong.com? ;)
What is even worse is looking at how her responses always pick out the points she can argue with, ignoring the rest of the flames about her that are valid. I've long ago learned that her "reviews" of linux distributions could only be topped if there were reviews on Microsoft.com. I pretty much stopped reading this review after her long winded gripe about recompiling gaim.
Just browse through her reviews and the comments under them and you'll see how credible the author is.
Here are my views on applications that I use on a fairly regular basis (with a little editorials. The winners are which application is superior, in my opinion of course). I tried to select Open Source applications to compare to proprietary sources (selecting my personal choices or Microsoft solutions, whichever the case might be)
For those with an IQ under 6, (OS) denotes Open Source (P) denotes Proprietary
Server Related
Apache (OS) vs. IIS (P)
Winner: Apache
Comments: No brainer
Postgresql (OS) vs. SQL Server (P)
Engine Winner: push
Tools: SQL Server
Comments: With the engines themselves, I haven't had much of a problem with the systems I've worked with, or felt that they weren't powerful enough for what I've done (including working with a 1.8 million row residential database). SQL Server's Query analyzer is one of the best tools I've used (almost entirely because of the object browser)
Postfix/HORDE (OS) vs. Exchange (P)
Mail server Winner: Postfix
Security Winner: Postfix
Web interface winner: Exchange
Comments: Postfix works without fail and was simple to setup and configure. Outlook Web Access however is very powerful, especially when using Internet Explorer. Hard to top how easy it is to work with things there.
Samba (OS) vs. Win 2000 File Sharing (P)
Winner: Windows 2000 File Server
Comments: The integration with Active Directory makes adding/deleting/managing shares within Windows 2000 easier when working with Windows clients. Speedwise, I haven't noticed too big of a problem with either one, so judged purely on ease of use.
NFS Server
Winner: Linux
Comments: Duh.
apt (OS) vs. WindowsUpdate (P)
Winner: apt
Comments: WindowsUpdate COULD be as easy as apt....if things got on there fast enough, and if I actually trusted the items on there. apt though is the easiest system updater I've worked with. I've set up debian boxes and simply never worried about them being insecure because of my trust in the fine folks who do the work there.
Workstation Related
Konqueror (OS) vs. Explorer (P)
Winner: Konqueror
Comments: Explorer just gets too unstable, and the fact that it is soldered into the rest of the desktop means that any instability means my system is hosed (especially all the system tray icons! I hate losing those because explorer gets confused with a CD ROM and autorun).
Mozilla/Firebird (OS) vs. IE (P)
Winner: Mozilla
Comments: Security is the first reason, but after having gotten used to tabbed browsing in Galeon, I simply HATE internet explorer for lacking what seems like a no-brainer feature.
Filezilla (OS) vs. IE (P)
Winner: Filezilla
Comments: Talk about afterthoughts....yeah, IE can be used as an FTP client, but they could have done so much more over the past...I don't know....5 years or so to make it more then one step above the command line.
Evolution (OS) vs. Thunderbird(OS) vs. Eudora (P) vs. Outlook (P)
Winner: Eudora
Second: Thunderbird
Third: Evolution
Fourth: Outlook
Comments: Eudora has the one feature I treasure the most...Autocollapsing folders. I like that I can take a mail message and drag it over a folder, and all the subfolders will appear, drop the mail message, and everything collapses back nice and neat. This saves a LOT of time when working with long folder lists and extensive heirarchies. Thunderbird came in a close second, mostly due to the built in spam filters.
Gaim (OS) vs. MSN Messenger/Y!/AIM/ICQ (P)
Winner: Push
Comments: The individual clients do their individual jobs better, but Gaim pulls even by putting all the features it does support within 2 windows (the buddy list and the message window). If gaim could support all the features (esp. yahoo webcam!), it would be the perfect tool.
Gaming -- No contest (Even with WineX)
Winner: Duh.
Comments: WineX is making good progress. But I like being able to buy games at BestBuy and know they will run without having to go home and look on
While some people may complain about it, I have been happy with my first month of using Vonage. I don't make a bunch of phone calls from home typically. In fact, I had really cut back to mostly cell phone usage, but was eating my minutes rapidly on business calls, so decided to give vonage a try to see about the quality and try and dump SBC for good.
Well, after a month of use, I've been fairly happy with it. There have been a few hiccups in communication, but that was mostly related to using eMule with 40k/40k settings (combined with hosting my own web server and email server among other things). I dropped it to 30/30 (using a 1.1Mbps DSL line) and the quality has been pretty close to POTS quality (most of the time it's the same quality, but for some reason, there are a couple places where there are hiccups).
Nowadays, whenever I work out of home, I set my cell phone to forward to my vonage line and have no complaints whatsoever. Nor have I had anyone tell me that the sound quality is bad or have problems understanding me.
It saves me 5$ per month in just base costs, without even using my 500 free long distance minutes. It definitely is a lot more cost effective for me then SBC, and if my next month goes as smoothly as this past month, I will be cancelling my POTS line and not have to deal at all with an RBOC for anything.
Hmmmm....adware for linux? projected 25% growth yearly? first to market? hmmm....*dollar signs for eyes*
Uh oh, better get an unlisted phone number and multiple PO boxes now.
see: Q811493
It caused complete freezing of my athlon laptop (mine wasn't the only case, as I found out about this by searching google).
Now I have to check every time an automatic update notice pops up to make sure it is not listed. I can only imagine what would happen to a poor soul who didn't realize what was happening every time his/her computer froze and was completely unresponsive until rebooting (hard reboot only).
So what is the solution? I don't know myself. Others might have suggestions on this. I wouldn't want umount to be able to umount ANY file system, but then you run into the problem of differntiating between a memory card reader vs. a usb hard drive. Should all filesystems be umount-able always? should processes using the mounted file system be shut down? That's where I see the biggest catch....how SHOULD umount behave?
[ROOT:~] # apropos "open file"
flock (2) - apply or remove an advisory lock on an open file
lockf (3) - apply, test or remove a POSIX lock on an open file
lsof (8) - list open files
[ROOT:~] #
At least in my experience, apropos is the second command to learn (after man, since you won't know what to do with the results, if you don't already understand what 'man' is for).
If you don't want to kill that app, then why would you want to umount the device? It doesn't make any sense to me. Sounds like an easy way to make an app freak out if you ask me.
Exactly!
:)
Plus the wider things are, the more justification for buying that 21" Sony monitor to run at 1600x1200. If side scrolling were EASY, well, I wouldn't need as much of an excuse to get eliminate having to do it!
Now I just need an excuse that requires 2048x1536 so I can justify buying that 2000$ Sony 24" monitor.
I swear, I really didn't NEED to have a life. I don't know about many of you, but Diablo II ended up being THE most addictive game I've ever played (eclipsing both Nethack and Civ II no less!). Now there are even MORE things for me to try and figure out (including a bloody new tweaked skill tree? God save me!).
Well, I'm happy to hear about all this though. I'm hopefull that it will at least dampen the number of rushes and cow levels for a few days. While blizzard has been known to throw a few curveballs with thier patches to Diablo, I'm extremely excited about the chance to jump on there and give them a shot and go hunting after some of the new uniques. Ok. I've wasted too much time talking to all of you already. Off to battle.net.
You seem to not quite get the gist of the article. From how I understood it, it's not about only going with ONE app, desktop, front. It's about 'cleaning up the crap'. In fact, the author endorses 4 different Desktop environments and 3 different office suites.
I think that the author has some valid points that some effort is wasted on projects that may never make it past beta. That the effort could better be spent improving or modularizing existing work to build truly best of breed applications. I tend to agree on this point. In other words, why start from scratch on a GUI mail program when Evolution and KMail can use the additional effort to become truly awesome applications.
I would tend to agree with his point, and could imagine a utopian OSS development world where all program have clearly defined APIs between the processing layer and the GUI layer with a plug-in architecture that allows for additional APIs to be added (without impacting the core functionality). This gives programmers freedom to rewrite or add or improve and keep their own "passions" in tact. I think Evolution makes the best example for this type of possibilities. For instance, I much prefer Eudora to Outlook. So, since the GUI is a separate component, I can write my own pure GUI using the APIs so that now Evolution behaves exactly like Eudora. Or, I like that Outlook Express allows me to connect to my hotmail account. So I write a plug-in module to add a connector to hotmail and yahoo as different account types. All the while, people are working on the core engine to speed up processing and add general enhancements.
I guess I think that a vast majority of software can be addressed like this where GUI rewriting is well beyond simple skinning (although skins could still be a component), and developers can focus their energies on specific areas instead of rewriting the same basic functionality over and over. In the end, I could imagine having quite a few more "best of breed" applications that can compete with most commercial software.
That is fairly easy, and would be great...except that by the time my laptop finishes the last of the compiling, I'm two versions behind.