ahh, but then I have to listen to them complain about IE. I guess I can't win. They complain about how IE sucks, and then complain again when I suggest that they change it.
I know this isn't an ask slashdot topic, but does anyone have any tips for how to get people to switch from IE to Mozilla/Firebird? I just don't understand why I can't get people to change, and Lord knows I've tried.
I don't understand it, I really don't. I've seen people complain about viruses, bugs, pop-ups, and ads, and yet when I suggest that they go with Mozilla, they don't want to switch. Why? "Because IE's there." Or "because Mozilla takes too long to load." "Using quickstart isn't worth it because IE starts when the system does, so why run two browsers at the same time?" But yet they'll complain about a 5 second load time for Mozilla, when they'll spend more time than that closing pop-ups and resetting their homepage from where someplace changed it. I've even come across the situations where people won't switch because Mozilla had a different print screen (even though I used an IE skin so the rest looked the same), and one didn't want to use it because when you opened a "new" window, you didn't get the old window in it. Even after I showed them the clone window extension (which is pretty close to the same functionality), he didn't switch. It's just frustrating.
It's sad, Microsoft has people so brainwashed that they'll complain until they're blue in the face that IE sucks, and yet they won't switch unless you put a gun to their head. So does anyone have any suggestions for just how to make them switch? (without actually putting a gun to their head)
You know, at this point in time the patent system is in such sorry shape that if I was considering inventing anything, I'd patent it. Even if it already had a patent out for it. Chances are you'd get it, it seems like. Even if you use it as more of a cover-your-ass thing instead of trying to take on other companies with it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you invent something you get it patented immediately, so that if you get sued for your item, you can turn around and show that you have a patent on it too. Now in a dream world this would be nice because if you got sued for a patent violation, you could countersue over the issue too. Then since you would both be under the gun for patent violations, the system would see how screwed up it was and reform itself so that it would work like it was supposed to.
But in reality, the person with deeper pockets would most likely win the lawyer battle. But it would be amusing to watch people countersuing each other over something when they both have patents over the same thing. How would you prove who is in the wrong, when both sides have valid patents?
Ah well, just something I've been thinking about lately. But you can bet if I ever came up with something I would patent it just to make sure that the law was on my side if someone ever tried to sue me over something I created. How else are you going to defend yourself these days?
I have to agree with you on Tetris. My mom used to borrow my gameboy to play it too. I even remember bringing my GB to a friend's house to play it there, and we'd link up with his mom and their GB for a game or two.
My mom eventually switched to Dr. Mario when it came out, though ity's the same type of game in a way. My girlfriend now loves games like collapse. It's been my experience that most "non-gamers" will take an interest in games, as long as they are the right games. It seems like generic puzzle games seem to work the best as they are not just mindless shooting games, and you don't need to know how to work 20 different buttons and pull off a hundred different combos to make the game fun. Simple games that challenge the mind seem to be the best at pulling in the non-traditional gamer.
Does my VT100 terminal count? It's an old Digital brand montior with an amber/black screen. Still works though. I think that's been kicking around since 1992 or so.
We also have somewhere in storage a monitor that went with an 8086 with CGA graphics. I haven't tried it in years, but it worked when we put it away. I'm sure that's well over a decade old too.
I'm surprised that they even considered Sin City for the name of the next one. Not that it's a big deal, it's just that San Andreas fits the naming convention better.
After all, the 3 parts of the city in the original (Top-down 2D DOS version) GTA were Liberty, Vice, and San Andreas. It would just make sense that if GTAIII was in Liberty, and Vice City was obviously in Vice, that the next installment would be in San Andreas.
Does this count if you have a laptop sitting open on the passenger seat while war driving for wireless networks, even if you don't look at it?:-)
Though this makes me curious. I know that in NY the driver isn't allowed to see the screen while driving, but this would mean that the passenger couldn't see it either? (at least in CA) And does this apply to police officers? While I don't know what police cars are like in CA, here all of the cars in our county have laptops installed in them. This makes me wonder if a provision will be written in for emergency vechiles. Not like it's a big deal anyway since one cop would never pull over another for having a standard issue laptop in his squad car, even if it IS still illegal.
The thing I'm curious about, is how this is expected to work on all cars. If it's a mechanical device that slows cars, then would it latch onto another car or something? If it's electronic (which I'm assuming it is) then how would this work on older cars that have mechanical systems controlling their engines, instead of electronic ones? After all, according to the linked article, it sounds like it depends on newer cars and electronic controlls for it to work.
The key is the electronics box in most new cars which, when the driver presses the accelerator or brake, sends a message to the engine to speed up or slow down. It can be programmed to limit the speed generally or according to the position of the car, established via a GPS satellite. For remote operation, a modem, which works like a mobile phone, can be used tell the car to slow down or stop.
Now granted, most cars on the road today are like this, but not all. I drive a 1986 Chevy Celebrity with a carbureted engine. When I step on the gas pedal, it pulls a cable that is attached to the engine at the carburetor. Since while electronics monitor my car's performance but don't directly control it, does this mean that my car would be immune to a device that would try and slow my car electronically? While I'm not sure if it would or wouldn't, it is an interesting thought to think about. Something like an EMP pulse would probably disrupt the electrical system enough to bring the car to a stop, but stalling the engine at say 65mph+ is not a good idea. You'd lose power steering and brakes, and in a manual transmission car you'd risk locking the wheels and losing control. So I'm still curious as to how this would work on all cars, new and old.
I think this is a great idea - a company with a deep and developed support network finally pushing an alternative desktop at the consumer market. As it is also cheaper than a windows license, it is likely to be at least somewhat popular.
I have to agree with you that this is a good idea. It's always nice to have options out there instead of having the same thing forced down your throat all the time. But what I think would make this even more interesting would be to have them throw Star Office into the mix in addition to Java. Think about it, they could promote the fact that they have a free office suite that is compatable with Microsoft Office. I think that would also turn a head or two.
Granted I'm not expecting this type of thing to change the world, but it's kinda nice to think about.
I don't know where the submitter of the article lives, but in New York it's illegal for a TV to be placed in a vechile within view of the driver. Then again it's also illegal for a driver here to use a cell phone that's not hands free, and we know how well people obey that law.
Ah well, this is kinda a neat idea regardless. I mean, satellite TV for vechiles is not exactly a new idea, though before now they've been traditionally reserved for RV's and such, but this may be the first practical application for smaller cars.
This is really a disappointment for me to hear. I'm surprised that they are ending support so soon, even for RH 9. We use various versions of RH on our servers at work, and while we can "support" these products on our own, this will mean that either we have to upgrade everything to their advanced server, or just go without ever being able to ever ask RH for support. It's a shame. Granted it's not THAT big of a deal for companies to just buy a copy of RH advanced server, but for little servers that's often overkill and an annoyance. (like for our 2 time servers on campus. They don't need Advanced Server since it would be just too much for the hardware that they run on.)
Ah well, it just makes me glad that I use Slackware at home and didn't get stuck with only using RH's GUI configuration tools, and RPM's to keep my system up to date. If I had never used anything besides Red Hat, I'd certainly be up a creek without a paddle!
At work here we use a combination of two things to monitor our servers. First is Nagios (previously NetSaint). Nagios is good because it can do very basic checks from just pinging a server to see if it's up (and network routers, switches, firewalls, printers, etc...) to actually checking to see if a certain service is up. Such as requesting a webpage to make sure that your HTTP server is running, or making an SMTP or FTP request to check that those services respond too. (it also does more, but there's no use in listing them all here.) We have nagios setup to send out pages whenever a server is reported as going down.
Also what we use is just a simple implimentation of SNMP plus Cricket (an interface for MRTG) to graph the SNMP data over time. That tells us things like CPU load, memory + swap usage, and a number of other things. Both products work pretty well and they give us a very good idea as to what is going on with our servers and such. And on the bright side, they're free! The only cost you need is the hardware to run them on.
And if you really wanted to get fancy, you could always try something like Smoke Ping which tells you the latency to your servers over time. It'll report the average time for a ping reply, plus a graph of how far away from the norm a ping is. Works great for if you want to see things like if a server's network response time slows down at various points of the day, or during heavy CPU load and things like that. It's a very nice product, and it sits on MRTG just like Cricket does, so you don't even need a separate box for it.
Wow, this is definately a good thing for the GameCube. Now I own a GC and have since they were $200, and for me it's the only console I own. Though for another player who might not want to get one because it is seen as being too childish, they now can pick up a new one that would work great as a second console for them without breaking the bank.
Honestly now... I know that GameCube games *look* childish, and I'm not going to deny that, but give them a shot. Most of them are a complete blast to play and they're great party games. Like the "monkey fight" game in Super Monkey Ball. It's very simple to play, but when you're trying your hardest to keep your friends from knocking you out of the ring with a big boxing glove, it's actually pretty fun. And other games like Zelda or F-Zero GX are very polished and just great all-around games since there's not a lot out there like them in general.
I hope this trend continues. More people will find out just how good the Cube really is.
The sad thing is that I don't believe that this will slow down counterfiters. I wouldn't be surprised if once the new bill was released and cashiers weren't properly trained yet, you had people saying "Just take it, it's one of those new $20's." An uneducated public would easily fall for it at first I would assume.
This makes me wonder though, will this affect vending machines? Yeah, I know there aren't too many machines that take $20's in the grand scheme of things, but what about when this starts to filter down to the $10's and $5's? Will they have to be updated to accept the new currancy?
I hate to tell you this, but most casinos already track what you play in the slots. But as far as I know, they use it to give you bonuses to play at the casino. They track how much you play and how much you win, and the more you play the more comps (bonuses) you can get.
For example, I play at Casino Niagra once or twice a month on average. (I live in new york, so Niagra Falls isn't that far away.) Every month the casino sends me a mailing that has 2 $10 coupons in it. I have heard that other people can get either 2 $20 or 2 $50 coupons for the casino each month depending on how much they spend in the slots. And how do they know how much they spend? By inserting a card and being tracked at the slots basically. So if you spend more, you're rewarded with more freebies. While on the other hand, if you don't use your card they think you don't play and stop giving you the coupons as a result. But honestly, for $20/month for free, I'm willing to be tracked.
Now I assume that the same type of thing is done in Canada that's done in Nevada, though I can't say for sure. But in Los Vegas, a machine has to be random to be legal. A casino can't skew the results of a machine to play out better to one player or another. It can control how likely the machine is to pay out as a whole (usually the more a machine costs to play, the more likely you are to win, though the odds are still in the house's favor), but it's illegal to change it from person to person. (if someone wants to correct me on this that's fine. I since live in NY I could be wrong about this.)
As for the printed slips, those are annoying. We have 3 casinos within about 2 hours from here. Casino Niagra, Seneca Niagara, and Turning Stone Casino. I like Casino Niagara the best since it uses both coins to play, and that's how you get your winnings. It's tangeable at all times, instead of only getting money when you visit a cashier. Turning stone I like next because it's completely electronic. Your winnings/losings are all stored on your casino card which you take from machine to machine, so it's easier to carry around. Seneca Niagra uses the printed slips and they're a bit annoying because if you win, you have to take your slip to a cashier to collect your winnings. You can't just go from machine to machine as easily. It kinda sucks that way but there's nothing you can do about it.
So in closing, don't worry. The casinos aren't out to get you. They are just after your money, and you pretty much turn it over freely when you play the slots.:-) So take off the tin foil hat since as far as I know, they can't legally skew the slot machines either for or against you no matter how much you play.
If you run your own mail server, I'd recommend installing SquirrelMail. All you basically need is an imap connection to the server that hosts the email, and your web server has to be able to run PHP scripts.
I know it has a funny name, but SquirrelMail is free, open sourced, and fairly easy to install. And it should do everything that you need it to do. (it may not have *all* the bells and whistles, but it gets the job done) And so long as you're running it on your mail server, you can firewall out imap to everyone but localhost.
I use this for my home server since I host my own email too. I use it for those rare times when I can't get an SSH connection to the server so that I can use pine instead. Oh, and the college that I work for went with using this for our web-based email that we use here for the students. While there may be better ones out there, the word "free" was very attractive, plus it did what we needed it to. So we host 4000+ email accounts with using this to access them. (though we changed the logos and graphics and things like that. It's fairly customizeable as well.) I'd say it was worth your time to check it out.
I wonder if this means that Nintendo will resume production on the GC again soon? After all, quadrupling the sales by lowering the price as we start to slide into the Christmas season... that could certainly burn up some inventory.
This is certainly going to be interesting to see how this turns out. In the meantime, if you state has a DNC registry, I'd suggest signing up for it.
I mean I know that nothing is guaranteed, but I'm still signed up with both the National DNC list as well as New York's DNC registry. I figure that way, even if the National DNC registry is overturned, then there is always the state DNC list to fall back on. Afterall, I seriously doubt that Oklahoma could strike down something that was completely setup and maintained by a totally different state. (personally I'm surprised they could do that to something that was setup by the federal government, but I'm still trying to keep all my bases covered.)
When you have to keep track of many different servers of different OSes, sometimes you forget things, or stuff that you thought you turned off you find out you didn't. It happens to the best of us.
It's the first thing I always do when I put a new server on the network. It never hurts to do a double-check to make sure that your servers are behaving the way that you think they are. Just like it doesn't hurt to reboot a linux box perodically to make sure that all your startup scrips work as expected in case of a power outage or whatever.
Being a system admin for a college, having this updated tool out for the world really doesn't bother me. Honestly, I'd rather have it in my hands to know what's running on my server, than to be ignorant and hope everything is ok. It also is a good tool to for testing things like if your firewall is configured properly. After all... all the script k1dd13z are going to have these programs too, so it's best to know what you've got exposed to the internet. Besides, in a lot of the programs out there, you can turn off the server identification so that when you connect, you don't know what the host is running for programs. Apache does this (I know because I turned it off myself). And you could probably even hack the source code to them if you really wanted. My FTP server at home just says "Go away!" when you connect so you don't even even see which program is running, much less what version.
Now for a *real* tool for making sure your sytems are up to date, try Nessus. It not only scans your system for what programs are running (using nmap no less), but it finds out what versions they are if they can, and it tries to run common exploits on them too! I use it perodically just to make sure that all the bases are covered so that none of the holes for common exploits on the internet are left open.
I wonder how they'll police this?
Honestly, I think it's a good idea in theory, like especially when dealing with troublesome intersections that cause frequent accidents. Having the public watch the cams and call in accidents as soon as they happen could be a *very* good thing. But the problem is that you'd need someone to police the people viewing the cams to make sure that if they acted on what they saw (or think they saw) that it was a real and legitimate problem.
Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding the article. I guess that at first read through, "the role of bored security guard" makes it sound like you'll watch the cameras instead of the guards, but I guess that you could be watching them in addition to the guards/security that normally view them.
But if THAT is the case, then I guess this brings up the question, is this then just for entertainment value? You know it's a sad but true fact of life that if people saw something bad that happened, they'd just be like "oh, that sucks" or laugh or whatever, and then go on with life just being glad that it wasn't them.
Now honestly, I do like online games for the fact that there is almost always someone willing to play you at any hour of the day, and they don't have to be in your living room to do it. But I swear that some games just weren't meant to be played online. After all, get some friends together and play console games. They're a lot of fun when you can yell at the person who's in the same room as you.:-)
And there are other reasons too that consoles are better without being online. Granted this comic talks about arcade games, but the concept is the same with console games too. If your opponent is being an ass, you can always hit them since they're most likely right next to you. A lot of the k1dd13z online are just a pain to deal with, and they do nothing but ruin the fun.
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ahh, but then I have to listen to them complain about IE. I guess I can't win. They complain about how IE sucks, and then complain again when I suggest that they change it.
I know this isn't an ask slashdot topic, but does anyone have any tips for how to get people to switch from IE to Mozilla/Firebird? I just don't understand why I can't get people to change, and Lord knows I've tried.
I don't understand it, I really don't. I've seen people complain about viruses, bugs, pop-ups, and ads, and yet when I suggest that they go with Mozilla, they don't want to switch. Why? "Because IE's there." Or "because Mozilla takes too long to load." "Using quickstart isn't worth it because IE starts when the system does, so why run two browsers at the same time?" But yet they'll complain about a 5 second load time for Mozilla, when they'll spend more time than that closing pop-ups and resetting their homepage from where someplace changed it. I've even come across the situations where people won't switch because Mozilla had a different print screen (even though I used an IE skin so the rest looked the same), and one didn't want to use it because when you opened a "new" window, you didn't get the old window in it. Even after I showed them the clone window extension (which is pretty close to the same functionality), he didn't switch. It's just frustrating.
It's sad, Microsoft has people so brainwashed that they'll complain until they're blue in the face that IE sucks, and yet they won't switch unless you put a gun to their head. So does anyone have any suggestions for just how to make them switch? (without actually putting a gun to their head)
You know, at this point in time the patent system is in such sorry shape that if I was considering inventing anything, I'd patent it. Even if it already had a patent out for it. Chances are you'd get it, it seems like. Even if you use it as more of a cover-your-ass thing instead of trying to take on other companies with it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you invent something you get it patented immediately, so that if you get sued for your item, you can turn around and show that you have a patent on it too. Now in a dream world this would be nice because if you got sued for a patent violation, you could countersue over the issue too. Then since you would both be under the gun for patent violations, the system would see how screwed up it was and reform itself so that it would work like it was supposed to.
But in reality, the person with deeper pockets would most likely win the lawyer battle. But it would be amusing to watch people countersuing each other over something when they both have patents over the same thing. How would you prove who is in the wrong, when both sides have valid patents?
Ah well, just something I've been thinking about lately. But you can bet if I ever came up with something I would patent it just to make sure that the law was on my side if someone ever tried to sue me over something I created. How else are you going to defend yourself these days?
I have to agree with you on Tetris. My mom used to borrow my gameboy to play it too. I even remember bringing my GB to a friend's house to play it there, and we'd link up with his mom and their GB for a game or two.
My mom eventually switched to Dr. Mario when it came out, though ity's the same type of game in a way. My girlfriend now loves games like collapse. It's been my experience that most "non-gamers" will take an interest in games, as long as they are the right games. It seems like generic puzzle games seem to work the best as they are not just mindless shooting games, and you don't need to know how to work 20 different buttons and pull off a hundred different combos to make the game fun. Simple games that challenge the mind seem to be the best at pulling in the non-traditional gamer.
Does my VT100 terminal count? It's an old Digital brand montior with an amber/black screen. Still works though. I think that's been kicking around since 1992 or so.
We also have somewhere in storage a monitor that went with an 8086 with CGA graphics. I haven't tried it in years, but it worked when we put it away. I'm sure that's well over a decade old too.
I'm surprised that they even considered Sin City for the name of the next one. Not that it's a big deal, it's just that San Andreas fits the naming convention better.
After all, the 3 parts of the city in the original (Top-down 2D DOS version) GTA were Liberty, Vice, and San Andreas. It would just make sense that if GTAIII was in Liberty, and Vice City was obviously in Vice, that the next installment would be in San Andreas.
Same in New York. I don't see any less people talking on cell phones while driving since the law against non hands free units has gone into effect.
Does this count if you have a laptop sitting open on the passenger seat while war driving for wireless networks, even if you don't look at it? :-)
Though this makes me curious. I know that in NY the driver isn't allowed to see the screen while driving, but this would mean that the passenger couldn't see it either? (at least in CA) And does this apply to police officers? While I don't know what police cars are like in CA, here all of the cars in our county have laptops installed in them. This makes me wonder if a provision will be written in for emergency vechiles. Not like it's a big deal anyway since one cop would never pull over another for having a standard issue laptop in his squad car, even if it IS still illegal.
The thing I'm curious about, is how this is expected to work on all cars. If it's a mechanical device that slows cars, then would it latch onto another car or something? If it's electronic (which I'm assuming it is) then how would this work on older cars that have mechanical systems controlling their engines, instead of electronic ones? After all, according to the linked article, it sounds like it depends on newer cars and electronic controlls for it to work.
The key is the electronics box in most new cars which, when the driver presses the accelerator or brake, sends a message to the engine to speed up or slow down. It can be programmed to limit the speed generally or according to the position of the car, established via a GPS satellite. For remote operation, a modem, which works like a mobile phone, can be used tell the car to slow down or stop.
Now granted, most cars on the road today are like this, but not all. I drive a 1986 Chevy Celebrity with a carbureted engine. When I step on the gas pedal, it pulls a cable that is attached to the engine at the carburetor. Since while electronics monitor my car's performance but don't directly control it, does this mean that my car would be immune to a device that would try and slow my car electronically? While I'm not sure if it would or wouldn't, it is an interesting thought to think about. Something like an EMP pulse would probably disrupt the electrical system enough to bring the car to a stop, but stalling the engine at say 65mph+ is not a good idea. You'd lose power steering and brakes, and in a manual transmission car you'd risk locking the wheels and losing control. So I'm still curious as to how this would work on all cars, new and old.
I think this is a great idea - a company with a deep and developed support network finally pushing an alternative desktop at the consumer market. As it is also cheaper than a windows license, it is likely to be at least somewhat popular.
I have to agree with you that this is a good idea. It's always nice to have options out there instead of having the same thing forced down your throat all the time. But what I think would make this even more interesting would be to have them throw Star Office into the mix in addition to Java. Think about it, they could promote the fact that they have a free office suite that is compatable with Microsoft Office. I think that would also turn a head or two.
Granted I'm not expecting this type of thing to change the world, but it's kinda nice to think about.
What an incredible idea! Maybe some day someone will figure out how to do that. :-)
I don't know where the submitter of the article lives, but in New York it's illegal for a TV to be placed in a vechile within view of the driver. Then again it's also illegal for a driver here to use a cell phone that's not hands free, and we know how well people obey that law.
Ah well, this is kinda a neat idea regardless. I mean, satellite TV for vechiles is not exactly a new idea, though before now they've been traditionally reserved for RV's and such, but this may be the first practical application for smaller cars.
My bad, I mean Enterprise Linux, not Advance Server.
This is really a disappointment for me to hear. I'm surprised that they are ending support so soon, even for RH 9. We use various versions of RH on our servers at work, and while we can "support" these products on our own, this will mean that either we have to upgrade everything to their advanced server, or just go without ever being able to ever ask RH for support. It's a shame. Granted it's not THAT big of a deal for companies to just buy a copy of RH advanced server, but for little servers that's often overkill and an annoyance. (like for our 2 time servers on campus. They don't need Advanced Server since it would be just too much for the hardware that they run on.)
Ah well, it just makes me glad that I use Slackware at home and didn't get stuck with only using RH's GUI configuration tools, and RPM's to keep my system up to date. If I had never used anything besides Red Hat, I'd certainly be up a creek without a paddle!
At work here we use a combination of two things to monitor our servers. First is Nagios (previously NetSaint). Nagios is good because it can do very basic checks from just pinging a server to see if it's up (and network routers, switches, firewalls, printers, etc...) to actually checking to see if a certain service is up. Such as requesting a webpage to make sure that your HTTP server is running, or making an SMTP or FTP request to check that those services respond too. (it also does more, but there's no use in listing them all here.) We have nagios setup to send out pages whenever a server is reported as going down.
Also what we use is just a simple implimentation of SNMP plus Cricket (an interface for MRTG) to graph the SNMP data over time. That tells us things like CPU load, memory + swap usage, and a number of other things. Both products work pretty well and they give us a very good idea as to what is going on with our servers and such. And on the bright side, they're free! The only cost you need is the hardware to run them on.
And if you really wanted to get fancy, you could always try something like Smoke Ping which tells you the latency to your servers over time. It'll report the average time for a ping reply, plus a graph of how far away from the norm a ping is. Works great for if you want to see things like if a server's network response time slows down at various points of the day, or during heavy CPU load and things like that. It's a very nice product, and it sits on MRTG just like Cricket does, so you don't even need a separate box for it.
Wow, this is definately a good thing for the GameCube. Now I own a GC and have since they were $200, and for me it's the only console I own. Though for another player who might not want to get one because it is seen as being too childish, they now can pick up a new one that would work great as a second console for them without breaking the bank.
Honestly now... I know that GameCube games *look* childish, and I'm not going to deny that, but give them a shot. Most of them are a complete blast to play and they're great party games. Like the "monkey fight" game in Super Monkey Ball. It's very simple to play, but when you're trying your hardest to keep your friends from knocking you out of the ring with a big boxing glove, it's actually pretty fun. And other games like Zelda or F-Zero GX are very polished and just great all-around games since there's not a lot out there like them in general.
I hope this trend continues. More people will find out just how good the Cube really is.
The sad thing is that I don't believe that this will slow down counterfiters. I wouldn't be surprised if once the new bill was released and cashiers weren't properly trained yet, you had people saying "Just take it, it's one of those new $20's." An uneducated public would easily fall for it at first I would assume.
This makes me wonder though, will this affect vending machines? Yeah, I know there aren't too many machines that take $20's in the grand scheme of things, but what about when this starts to filter down to the $10's and $5's? Will they have to be updated to accept the new currancy?
I hate to tell you this, but most casinos already track what you play in the slots. But as far as I know, they use it to give you bonuses to play at the casino. They track how much you play and how much you win, and the more you play the more comps (bonuses) you can get.
:-) So take off the tin foil hat since as far as I know, they can't legally skew the slot machines either for or against you no matter how much you play.
For example, I play at Casino Niagra once or twice a month on average. (I live in new york, so Niagra Falls isn't that far away.) Every month the casino sends me a mailing that has 2 $10 coupons in it. I have heard that other people can get either 2 $20 or 2 $50 coupons for the casino each month depending on how much they spend in the slots. And how do they know how much they spend? By inserting a card and being tracked at the slots basically. So if you spend more, you're rewarded with more freebies. While on the other hand, if you don't use your card they think you don't play and stop giving you the coupons as a result. But honestly, for $20/month for free, I'm willing to be tracked.
Now I assume that the same type of thing is done in Canada that's done in Nevada, though I can't say for sure. But in Los Vegas, a machine has to be random to be legal. A casino can't skew the results of a machine to play out better to one player or another. It can control how likely the machine is to pay out as a whole (usually the more a machine costs to play, the more likely you are to win, though the odds are still in the house's favor), but it's illegal to change it from person to person. (if someone wants to correct me on this that's fine. I since live in NY I could be wrong about this.)
As for the printed slips, those are annoying. We have 3 casinos within about 2 hours from here. Casino Niagra, Seneca Niagara, and Turning Stone Casino. I like Casino Niagara the best since it uses both coins to play, and that's how you get your winnings. It's tangeable at all times, instead of only getting money when you visit a cashier. Turning stone I like next because it's completely electronic. Your winnings/losings are all stored on your casino card which you take from machine to machine, so it's easier to carry around. Seneca Niagra uses the printed slips and they're a bit annoying because if you win, you have to take your slip to a cashier to collect your winnings. You can't just go from machine to machine as easily. It kinda sucks that way but there's nothing you can do about it.
So in closing, don't worry. The casinos aren't out to get you. They are just after your money, and you pretty much turn it over freely when you play the slots.
If you run your own mail server, I'd recommend installing SquirrelMail. All you basically need is an imap connection to the server that hosts the email, and your web server has to be able to run PHP scripts.
I know it has a funny name, but SquirrelMail is free, open sourced, and fairly easy to install. And it should do everything that you need it to do. (it may not have *all* the bells and whistles, but it gets the job done) And so long as you're running it on your mail server, you can firewall out imap to everyone but localhost.
I use this for my home server since I host my own email too. I use it for those rare times when I can't get an SSH connection to the server so that I can use pine instead. Oh, and the college that I work for went with using this for our web-based email that we use here for the students. While there may be better ones out there, the word "free" was very attractive, plus it did what we needed it to. So we host 4000+ email accounts with using this to access them. (though we changed the logos and graphics and things like that. It's fairly customizeable as well.) I'd say it was worth your time to check it out.
I wonder if this means that Nintendo will resume production on the GC again soon? After all, quadrupling the sales by lowering the price as we start to slide into the Christmas season... that could certainly burn up some inventory.
This is certainly going to be interesting to see how this turns out. In the meantime, if you state has a DNC registry, I'd suggest signing up for it.
I mean I know that nothing is guaranteed, but I'm still signed up with both the National DNC list as well as New York's DNC registry. I figure that way, even if the National DNC registry is overturned, then there is always the state DNC list to fall back on. Afterall, I seriously doubt that Oklahoma could strike down something that was completely setup and maintained by a totally different state. (personally I'm surprised they could do that to something that was setup by the federal government, but I'm still trying to keep all my bases covered.)
When you have to keep track of many different servers of different OSes, sometimes you forget things, or stuff that you thought you turned off you find out you didn't. It happens to the best of us.
It's the first thing I always do when I put a new server on the network. It never hurts to do a double-check to make sure that your servers are behaving the way that you think they are. Just like it doesn't hurt to reboot a linux box perodically to make sure that all your startup scrips work as expected in case of a power outage or whatever.
Being a system admin for a college, having this updated tool out for the world really doesn't bother me. Honestly, I'd rather have it in my hands to know what's running on my server, than to be ignorant and hope everything is ok. It also is a good tool to for testing things like if your firewall is configured properly. After all... all the script k1dd13z are going to have these programs too, so it's best to know what you've got exposed to the internet. Besides, in a lot of the programs out there, you can turn off the server identification so that when you connect, you don't know what the host is running for programs. Apache does this (I know because I turned it off myself). And you could probably even hack the source code to them if you really wanted. My FTP server at home just says "Go away!" when you connect so you don't even even see which program is running, much less what version.
Now for a *real* tool for making sure your sytems are up to date, try Nessus. It not only scans your system for what programs are running (using nmap no less), but it finds out what versions they are if they can, and it tries to run common exploits on them too! I use it perodically just to make sure that all the bases are covered so that none of the holes for common exploits on the internet are left open.
I wonder how they'll police this? Honestly, I think it's a good idea in theory, like especially when dealing with troublesome intersections that cause frequent accidents. Having the public watch the cams and call in accidents as soon as they happen could be a *very* good thing. But the problem is that you'd need someone to police the people viewing the cams to make sure that if they acted on what they saw (or think they saw) that it was a real and legitimate problem.
Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding the article. I guess that at first read through, "the role of bored security guard" makes it sound like you'll watch the cameras instead of the guards, but I guess that you could be watching them in addition to the guards/security that normally view them.
But if THAT is the case, then I guess this brings up the question, is this then just for entertainment value? You know it's a sad but true fact of life that if people saw something bad that happened, they'd just be like "oh, that sucks" or laugh or whatever, and then go on with life just being glad that it wasn't them.
Now honestly, I do like online games for the fact that there is almost always someone willing to play you at any hour of the day, and they don't have to be in your living room to do it. But I swear that some games just weren't meant to be played online. After all, get some friends together and play console games. They're a lot of fun when you can yell at the person who's in the same room as you. :-)
And there are other reasons too that consoles are better without being online. Granted this comic talks about arcade games, but the concept is the same with console games too. If your opponent is being an ass, you can always hit them since they're most likely right next to you. A lot of the k1dd13z online are just a pain to deal with, and they do nothing but ruin the fun.