The last time I worked on call, I got an hour of overtime per weekday, and two hours on the weekend just for being on-call....and I was paid over time if I got paged and had to go in and do some work...but that is working in a Country that has real labour laws, Canada. Before that, I worked in Charlotte, NC, and if I didn't do on-call for free, I would have been let go from my job. A friend of mine working for another company there sometimes put in as much as 60 hours of over time, answering on-call problems, and never got paid dime one for it. Don't work in North Carolina if you can avoid it!
Not all books written by authors other than the original are bad. A good example is Donald Kingsbury's "Psychohistorical Crisis". It's a great addition to the Asimov canon of the Foundation Universe.
Actually, we didn't. The Internet basically runs on *UNIX* systems. No one in their right mind would trust an important part of the infrastructure of the Net to Microsoft products! *Nothing* of import runs MS software...it's all Unix of some flavour...
And that is why a company I used to work for making Medical Office Management software replaced all of thier 5000+ installed desktops with a version of Linux I created for them, and dramaticaly cut their support costs. 3 Customer service types, one System Architect (Me), and two developers were easily able to support 5000+ desktops, and around 200 servers, remotely.
Try that with Windows...and you will need many, many more people!
We don't have to worry about Skynet, or Overlords...Face it, a Military Intranet based upon Microsoft technology means that you will have to reboot it every few days, viruses will infect it daily, and every once in a while, it will all just crash for no observable reason at all.
Essentialy, it is China and Russia's wet dreams come true!
Well, it was a big success with the Sci-Fi Channel, er...Sy-Fi, doing *two* miniseries based upon the books. If it's good enough for that, I am sure it would do well. Add to that, the release of the latest books by Herbert's son...Lots of popularity there!
Remember that C&C is based upon the engine created for the game Dune II. If you want an MMO based upon the style of game, go after Dune! It's a hugely rich history, with larger than life chracaters, epic battles, and vast spaces. Remember that the collection of Tiberium was originally the collection of the Spice, Melange, upon which the whole Universe runs on...it allows the Navigators to fold space, and Paul Atreides, aka Muad'Dib, later to see the future. That could be a whole lot of fun! About the only Universe richer than the Dune is Star Wars, which, of course, borrowed from Dune in the first place.
If this had been a reading class for existing SF Fans, I would have agreed with you, but as it is aimed at attracting relatively new readers, or new readers, I don't.
You can get more people reading if you give them books that will catch there interest. Throwing Dune and Stranger in a Strange Land might scare off some newer readers...so it's always good to get some sort of a tie-in that they can relate to...and a good example of that would be Robert J. Sawyer's Flashfoward, which has the tie-in of the TV series based upon it. This leads to all sorts of great discussion topics for students about how Media interacts with Art.
Another to consider is Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. In this book, the main chracactors are high school students dealing with both mundane questions of teenage life, and fairly deep questions about freedom, authority and technology. And the technology is current, so that it will appeal greatly to today's high school i/n/m/a/t/e/s/ students.
I also bought Samsung ML-2851ND earlier this year. The duplex and postcript were important to me, and the ethernet was a nice addition. All that for under $200. Samsung has been on a role with me too, as my main LCD monitor is also a Samsung....full disclosure, I don't work for, or own shares of Samsung!
Actually, it's more like Vernor Vinge's novel "Rainbow's End" where the characters are able to interface with computers built into their clothing by how they move and what they wear. This allows for a fairly complex interface to ubiquitous "augmented reality"...much more immersible than just an iPhone or a set of i-glasses and a portable computer.
I admit, I started with SLS Linux, out of which Slackware grew (what do you mean you need 93 3.5" Floppies!?!?!)...and although I try lots of different distros, I keep on coming back to Slackware. Thanks to Patrick and his crew for all the work over the years!
Literacy, the ability to both read and write, is an important part of interactivity. If you want to take part in that interactivity, you need to be able to read and write...you don't have to do it well, but you need a certain proficiency in it , and that is what this new literacy revolution is based upon.
Literacy is not about *correctly* writing, but about both reading and writing. If you look back at how people thought things would come out in the '60s and '70s, they were talking about a coming "Post Literate" world, dominated by the TV. Instead we see the popularity of TV in freefall with a dramatically splintered audience. People are spending more time on interactive computer based games, in "chat", or surfing the net than they do watching tv. The biggest difference between the TV world of the future that never was and our reality is that we don't allow the TV, in any form, to passively feed us information. Harlan Ellison called it the Glass Teat. Thankfully, we live in a different reality.
Because if you are supporting CentOS systems in the field, it is easier to do so with a system that is running the same OS, as it, at very least, provides a system you can experiment with. It also means you will have the roughly same software load, and you won't be used to running apps that are not on the server. As well, replicating your server on your laptop also means having a system you can replicate a problem with, even if you are travelling. Of course, now that a 4 Gig laptop is possible, you could be running that replica system in a Virtual machine...I've been running Slackware 64 on my Laptop, and it is running very nicely. My main server also runs Slackware, but 32 bit, and has been running for a few years, with a few updates...it also has an AMD64, so I may move to that as it's next update.
Of course, not only is quality of product important...but, Has Ubisoft heard about the World Wide Recession?!?!?!?! Do you think it *might* have something to do with their sales?!?!?!
And if they want to compare to a Movie...well, a movie is almost an impulse buy, with maybe $8-$15 price wise...but when you start talking around $50 for a game....if you don't know where you next pay check is coming from, it's hard to justify a layout of $50 a pop,
Way back when, games for 6502 CPUs used to have all sorts of copy protection, I mean they even tried having deliberately, but uniquely damaged floppies as copy protect....but they all gave it up, as it cost so much to research and implement copy protection that it was driving up the costs, and the cracks would still come out within days of the titles. So they dropped all copy protection, and their profits went up.
I wish these game companies would look at history before repeating it...
Until recently, open source software was developed by people FOR THE LOVE OF IT!!!
That you get paid was a bonus! Most open source software still is written by people who like to write software, and more often than not, to fill a need that person had. Linux is such a piece of software. Although I don't know Linus personally, I am pretty sure that if there was suddenly no need for Linux, chances are, he would stop developing it. Sure, he might continue to do it for money...but with his programming and management chops, he could get a job almost anywhere today. IMOHO, of course.:-)
I'm also a dual CAN/US citizen...and have worked in both countries...and I found I had less money in the US after taxes because I had to pay close to $500 a month for the medical insurance, and they had all sorts of extra taxes like a city tax on my car,and having an emissions test every year. Sure, the GST gets you in Canada, but it only really hurts in large purchases.
All in all, unless you are in perfect health and never get sick, it is much cheaper to live in Canada.
The Law of Fives states simply that: All Things happen in Fives, or are divisible by or are multiples of Five, or are somehow directly or indirectly appropriate to 5. The Law of Fives is never wrong.
Not only WoW, but many Linux distros use Bittorrent to ease the access to their software. If BT is blocked, any Aussie based Linux distros that distribute would have a good starting ground for a legal case against the law.
Slashdot Mirror
The last time I worked on call, I got an hour of overtime per weekday, and two hours on the weekend just for being on-call....and I was paid over time if I got paged and had to go in and do some work...but that is working in a Country that has real labour laws, Canada. Before that, I worked in Charlotte, NC, and if I didn't do on-call for free, I would have been let go from my job. A friend of mine working for another company there sometimes put in as much as 60 hours of over time, answering on-call problems, and never got paid dime one for it. Don't work in North Carolina if you can avoid it!
ttyl
Farrell
I thought Harlan Ellison owned it!
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_Ellison#Copyright_suits
Not all books written by authors other than the original are bad. A good example is Donald Kingsbury's "Psychohistorical Crisis". It's a great addition to the Asimov canon of the Foundation Universe.
ttyl
Actually, we didn't. The Internet basically runs on *UNIX* systems. No one in their right mind would trust an important part of the infrastructure of the Net to Microsoft products! *Nothing* of import runs MS software...it's all Unix of some flavour...
ttyl
Farrell
And that is why a company I used to work for making Medical Office Management software replaced all of thier 5000+ installed desktops with a version of Linux I created for them, and dramaticaly cut their support costs. 3 Customer service types, one System Architect (Me), and two developers were easily able to support 5000+ desktops, and around 200 servers, remotely.
Try that with Windows...and you will need many, many more people!
ttyl
Farrell
We don't have to worry about Skynet, or Overlords...Face it, a Military Intranet based upon Microsoft technology means that you will have to reboot it every few days, viruses will infect it daily, and every once in a while, it will all just crash for no observable reason at all.
Essentialy, it is China and Russia's wet dreams come true!
Well, it was a big success with the Sci-Fi Channel, er...Sy-Fi, doing *two* miniseries based upon the books. If it's good enough for that, I am sure it would do well. Add to that, the release of the latest books by Herbert's son...Lots of popularity there!
Remember that C&C is based upon the engine created for the game Dune II. If you want an MMO based upon the style of game, go after Dune! It's a hugely rich history, with larger than life chracaters, epic battles, and vast spaces. Remember that the collection of Tiberium was originally the collection of the Spice, Melange, upon which the whole Universe runs on...it allows the Navigators to fold space, and Paul Atreides, aka Muad'Dib, later to see the future. That could be a whole lot of fun! About the only Universe richer than the Dune is Star Wars, which, of course, borrowed from Dune in the first place.
If this had been a reading class for existing SF Fans, I would have agreed with you, but as it is aimed at attracting relatively new readers, or new readers, I don't.
You can get more people reading if you give them books that will catch there interest. Throwing Dune and Stranger in a Strange Land might scare off some newer readers...so it's always good to get some sort of a tie-in that they can relate to...and a good example of that would be Robert J. Sawyer's Flashfoward , which has the tie-in of the TV series based upon it. This leads to all sorts of great discussion topics for students about how Media interacts with Art.
Another to consider is Cory Doctorow's Little Brother . In this book, the main chracactors are high school students dealing with both mundane questions of teenage life, and fairly deep questions about freedom, authority and technology. And the technology is current, so that it will appeal greatly to today's high school i/n/m/a/t/e/s/ students.
I also bought Samsung ML-2851ND earlier this year. The duplex and postcript were important to me, and the ethernet was a nice addition. All that for under $200. Samsung has been on a role with me too, as my main LCD monitor is also a Samsung. ...full disclosure, I don't work for, or own shares of Samsung!
Actually, it's more like Vernor Vinge's novel "Rainbow's End" where the characters are able to interface with computers built into their clothing by how they move and what they wear. This allows for a fairly complex interface to ubiquitous "augmented reality"...much more immersible than just an iPhone or a set of i-glasses and a portable computer.
Obligatory Wikipedia reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End
I wonder if this intensity of cosmic rays is what is fscking up the sun-spot cycle on our local star?
93, because I wanted to install X-Windows as well! Yes, I was a masochist....
ttyl
Farrell
Finally!
I admit, I started with SLS Linux, out of which Slackware grew (what do you mean you need 93 3.5" Floppies!?!?!)...and although I try lots of different distros, I keep on coming back to Slackware. Thanks to Patrick and his crew for all the work over the years!
ttyl
Farrell
Literacy, the ability to both read and write, is an important part of interactivity. If you want to take part in that interactivity, you need to be able to read and write...you don't have to do it well, but you need a certain proficiency in it , and that is what this new literacy revolution is based upon.
Literacy is not about *correctly* writing, but about both reading and writing. If you look back at how people thought things would come out in the '60s and '70s, they were talking about a coming "Post Literate" world, dominated by the TV. Instead we see the popularity of TV in freefall with a dramatically splintered audience. People are spending more time on interactive computer based games, in "chat", or surfing the net than they do watching tv. The biggest difference between the TV world of the future that never was and our reality is that we don't allow the TV, in any form, to passively feed us information. Harlan Ellison called it the Glass Teat. Thankfully, we live in a different reality.
Because if you are supporting CentOS systems in the field, it is easier to do so with a system that is running the same OS, as it, at very least, provides a system you can experiment with. It also means you will have the roughly same software load, and you won't be used to running apps that are not on the server. As well, replicating your server on your laptop also means having a system you can replicate a problem with, even if you are travelling. Of course, now that a 4 Gig laptop is possible, you could be running that replica system in a Virtual machine...I've been running Slackware 64 on my Laptop, and it is running very nicely. My main server also runs Slackware, but 32 bit, and has been running for a few years, with a few updates...it also has an AMD64, so I may move to that as it's next update.
ttyl
Farrell
Of course, not only is quality of product important...but, Has Ubisoft heard about the World Wide Recession?!?!?!?! Do you think it *might* have something to do with their sales?!?!?!
And if they want to compare to a Movie...well, a movie is almost an impulse buy, with maybe $8-$15 price wise...but when you start talking around $50 for a game....if you don't know where you next pay check is coming from, it's hard to justify a layout of $50 a pop,
Way back when, games for 6502 CPUs used to have all sorts of copy protection, I mean they even tried having deliberately, but uniquely damaged floppies as copy protect....but they all gave it up, as it cost so much to research and implement copy protection that it was driving up the costs, and the cracks would still come out within days of the titles. So they dropped all copy protection, and their profits went up.
I wish these game companies would look at history before repeating it...
ttyl
Farrell
Until recently, open source software was developed by people FOR THE LOVE OF IT!!!
That you get paid was a bonus! Most open source software still is written by people who like to write software, and more often than not, to fill a need that person had. Linux is such a piece of software. Although I don't know Linus personally, I am pretty sure that if there was suddenly no need for Linux, chances are, he would stop developing it. Sure, he might continue to do it for money...but with his programming and management chops, he could get a job almost anywhere today. IMOHO, of course. :-)
ttyl
Farrell
So, what's mine worth? :-)
Not that I would sell it...it's worth far more as geek cred than in script from any country!
ttyl
I'm also a dual CAN/US citizen...and have worked in both countries...and I found I had less money in the US after taxes because I had to pay close to $500 a month for the medical insurance, and they had all sorts of extra taxes like a city tax on my car,and having an emissions test every year. Sure, the GST gets you in Canada, but it only really hurts in large purchases.
All in all, unless you are in perfect health and never get sick, it is much cheaper to live in Canada.
ttyl
Welcome back, Bilestode, Wavy Navy, Lode Runner, Super Stellar Trek and Softporn Adventure!
Now if I could just find copies of those games....
ttyl
Farrell
Actually, it's Five, but two are secret.
ttyl
Farrell
5
The Law of Fives states simply that: All Things happen in Fives, or are divisible by or are multiples of Five, or are somehow directly or indirectly appropriate to 5.
The Law of Fives is never wrong.
-P Discordia
Not only WoW, but many Linux distros use Bittorrent to ease the access to their software. If BT is blocked, any Aussie based Linux distros that distribute would have a good starting ground for a legal case against the law.
ttyl