Is it an invasion of privacy if they find out about that dope you've been hiding or that money you've been laundering, just because you didn't want them to know?
I think the point of the exercise is to show the viability of Open Source as a new platform (lol @ 'new'). So I think that "best" means to write the best program. I don't think the judges are going to be comparing code to see who has the best formatting or whatnot, but rather, what the finished product looks like. Thats how I would judge this contest. When its over, I want to say "DAMN! You wrote THAT in ONLY 500 lines of code???" Kind of like the old 64k demos people used to write all the time.
Try it? I did it all the time before I replaced my rear brakes and in the process disabled my parking brake. ALL THE TIME. When making right turns, when making left turns... ESPECIALLY, when making U-turns. All at 40mph or 50mph of course. I get a kick out of it when the other folks in my car get white-knuckled because I'm approaching a U-turn at 45mph and I don't apply my brakes at all. "Yeehaw!" I say as I slide around in a perfect 180 powerslide...
You see, Officer, I didn't *want* to make a U-turn at that interesection, but the sign said: "No, U Turn!"
Oh, by the way, for any who think I'm crazy doing these things, its only because I have a sweet performance car that can take that kind of driving: A 1988 Toyota Corolla.
Are you looking for something that will allow you to manage users and give them passwords and stuff to log on, then look to see how long they used the connection and that kind of thing? To manage your subscribers? Some friends of mine had a plan to sell to cafe-owners who wanted to have the Internet available and part of that plan involved Knoppix. I am not positive how they intended for it to work... And since Knoppix is really a version of Linux I would imagine that it would not meet your requirement of "Compatibility with Windows". But, shouldn't there be some software out there that you could install that would allow you to administrate a Cyber Cafe that would allow Windows clients to connect? Pardon me for my most likely useless contribution to this discussion... Like I said, I don't have a clue what I'm talking about. All I know is they were gonna use Knoppix and install it on a computer for someone to use in a Cyber Cafe and make the computer a wireless access point that managed who logged on and who didn't.
Please expand on this if you have an idea what you are talking about!:)
BTW, Knoppix is a version of Linux that runs completely off of a CD. So you can plug it into virtually any x86 computer and boot into a fully-functional version of Linux with certain Apps pre-installed and ready-to-run.
I seem to remember that this was one of the only convenient ways that the US Army was able to demonstrate their 64-bit edition of "America's Army" by running it off of a Knoppix install. Could just be my imagination though.
As far as the addiction aspect of it goes, I would have to agree. About 20 of my real-life (haha I used the term "real-life") friends and I all started playing SWG (Star Wars Galaxies) at about the same time... We played for almost a year. The truth about that game, in our opinion, is that it quickly stopped being fun and turned into an obsession... an addictive obsession.
I played the part of a resource miner. I was managing a business wherein I purchased/upgraded/maintained somewhere around 50-60 mineral extractors. I had to visit them almost every day and because of the sheer amount of them, it took quite some time (sometimes these things would be spread out quite some distance over the game world) to maintain and collect the resources from each harvester. Then I would have to auction the resources I'd collected. Then I would have to scour the universe for the best price on power... Then once the current set of resources had been tapped out, I would have to "survey" for another high concentration of a resource that I predicted would sell for a good price. Next up, unrooting the harvesters and moving them to a new location. This could involve having to log in multiple times with different accounts, sine only 10 harvesters can be operated from one account, or nagging my friends to move them to the new location...
I was doing this, before SWG came out with vehicles... Now, in SWG walking around consumes approximately the same amount of time as it does in real life to go the same distance, maybe a little less. Sometimes I would have to walk round-trip 10km to maintain my harvesters, and thats if they were all in the same location!!! Just the travel time could take up to 30-40 minutes of your time, and if you got attacked and killed on your way out there... you would have to start all over!!!
I would estimate that my time invested in this (albeit highly profitable) business was around 2-3 hours a day. That left not very much time for any thing else in the game. I didn't fight much. I didn't quest (as if there are quests in SWG!). I didn't level my character... I just did my business.
Was it fun?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: It took me 10 months to realize that I was not enjoying myself. I used to sit down in my computer chair each night and sigh as I booted up SWG. I would wait through countless down-times (BRIA: Better Reboot It Again). I suffered numerous roll-backs, where I was forced to repeat my actions a second time because whatever progress I had made was lost by the server. Many glitches would kill my harvesters, cause me to lose items or resources that I intended to sell... It was quite ridiculous. And yet, I still played. To be honest, with all the money I made, I hardly ever bought ANYTHING! I was spending so much time making the money I didn't have time to spend it, literally! Why did I play? Because I was addicted.
I once made a drive to the Bay Area from Fresno, and on the way saw a bunch of Wind Generators. They reminded me of my "in-game" harvesters so I insisted on a photograph.
I would occassionally see "waypoints", giant columns of light, out of the corner of my eye as I was driving around town.
A waving field of brownish grass would recall to me "fond" memories of the fields of Corellia, my home-planet.
I actually maintained my harvesters in my sleep, while I was dreaming.
I would sometimes quote SWG NPCs to my friends... and they all got the joke... "Hello, my friend."
I thoroughly researched real-life vending machines because they are the closest and most practical real-life counterpart of SWG's harvesters...
As you can see... The game virtually took over my life. Did I mention that I would stay up very late at night almost every night at the expense of my performance at work and my social life? Haha my social life... I used to make up excuses to all of my real-life friends who DIDN'T play whenever they invited me out, because I just "HAD TO PLAY SWG". I used
With all these new advances in processor and video-card technology, when are we going to see some advances towards cheaper, and quieter cooling solutions? These devices keep getting hotter and hotter! In order to keep my gaming computer cool I have something like 7 or 8 fans in there, and the box sounds like a jet-engine taking off... I've looked into water-cooling but virtually every water-cooling setup costs upwards of $200. Is it really *that* expensive for the equipment? What other alternatives are out there? And with a notebook... isn't heat going to soon be a real serious issue with laptops?
I have to agree! I work now at a place that offers a casual work environment.
We don't have a strict dress code (jeans and a nice shirt...)
As long as you do your work, its not a big problem to come in +/- 30 min to work...
Need ergonomic stuff? You got it.
Eye exams are covered and if you need glasses you get 'em.
Theres a snack area with free sodas/snacks/bkfst/water/coffee/candy/etcetera.
Weekly company meeting includes lunch.
Doors. They actually shut!
A time clock at the door. The last place I worked was ridiculous. They wanted you to slide a card to get inside the building, then you had to slide a seperate time-card, then you had to fill out a weekly time sheet, and at the end of the day, email your manager with your time for the day! It was quite ridiculous.
Nice machines... When you are compiling your very large program fairly often... a good comp is what can make a difference in productivity. It would be very easy to lose 30 min. to an hour each day just on compile time with a slow comp.
Want to work in the dark? You've got your own office, so turn off the light.
Listen to music? Just shut your door.
It would be nice if I had more control over the AC for my personal area... Everyone else likes it about 10-15degrees cooler than me... I just bring a sweatshirt.
More bandwidth would be nice so I could stream music while working, but I can just bring my own CDs...
Oh yah... the place is clean too! The last place I worked at the lobby had some crazy funk stench! You had to hold your breath just to get in the building! Also, it was a phone-support job... so you had to use the cubes that someone else had just finished with... not very sanitary since cubes were not assigned it could be anyone leaving the desk you were about to use... not to mention using the same mic/headset they just finished with... sometimes it was pretty gross...
Everyone for the most part keeps their doors open though which really helps our communication. If we need the privacy we have it... but we are all accessible to each other if someone has a question about something...
Just a supplementary link:
http://www.ishn.com/ishn/cda/articleinformation/fe atures/bnp__features__item/0,2162,2439,00.html
Not a single case of permanent damage from laser pointers has ever been reported.
Just raise your price next time. It seems to me that raising the price and getting the job works on two levels:
1: You get the job. 2: You make more than you were going to with your original price.
If you need $1000 to make a product and quote $2000, and don't get the job, you have made $0. But if you quote $5000, and get the job, you have made $4000.
I tried the demonstration edition of the Blitz Basic 2D programming language, which allows you full access to all of the features except compile-to-executable, and now I'm hooked. Some of the things that hooked me:
1: Free download of operational software. I'm able to develop using the demo, if I want to distribute, I have to purchase.
2: Active support. The programmer behind BlitzBasic 2D is constantly at work on the project, making it better, and he listens to and replies to feature-requests. If there was a bug, he actually worked at fixing it, and sometimes patches or fixes were up within a week or two of reporting them. That is awesome.
3: If I want to buy Blitz Basic 2D, it is not too expensive (~50USD).
4: A great user forum. Of course, nothing makes a great user forum but users, but if you make an "official forum", they will come.
Things not to do:
1: Break the software. Blitz Basic 3D is limited to 30 uses. I never even downloaded that program, for that reason only.
2: Give customers shoddy or no support. I develop in a language called Visual Dataflex that has the worst documentation of any development system I've worked with (a lot!). It really ticks me off.
3: Lock up the forums. Blitz 2Ds forums were open to developers who had not purchased the software for quite a while, but were limited to only registered users after about 8 months. That was *almost* enough to make me quit Blitz altogether (if weren't such a good product by itself, I would have).
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Is it an invasion of privacy if they find out about that dope you've been hiding or that money you've been laundering, just because you didn't want them to know?
I think the point of the exercise is to show the viability of Open Source as a new platform (lol @ 'new'). So I think that "best" means to write the best program. I don't think the judges are going to be comparing code to see who has the best formatting or whatnot, but rather, what the finished product looks like. Thats how I would judge this contest. When its over, I want to say "DAMN! You wrote THAT in ONLY 500 lines of code???" Kind of like the old 64k demos people used to write all the time.
Try it? I did it all the time before I replaced my rear brakes and in the process disabled my parking brake. ALL THE TIME. When making right turns, when making left turns... ESPECIALLY, when making U-turns. All at 40mph or 50mph of course. I get a kick out of it when the other folks in my car get white-knuckled because I'm approaching a U-turn at 45mph and I don't apply my brakes at all. "Yeehaw!" I say as I slide around in a perfect 180 powerslide...
You see, Officer, I didn't *want* to make a U-turn at that interesection, but the sign said: "No, U Turn!"
Oh, by the way, for any who think I'm crazy doing these things, its only because I have a sweet performance car that can take that kind of driving: A 1988 Toyota Corolla.
What about taping your eyelids? Less tape!
Umm... if they will announce it, would we be even discussing this now? Somewhere someone at Intel has to have announced this by now...
Are you looking for something that will allow you to manage users and give them passwords and stuff to log on, then look to see how long they used the connection and that kind of thing? To manage your subscribers? Some friends of mine had a plan to sell to cafe-owners who wanted to have the Internet available and part of that plan involved Knoppix. I am not positive how they intended for it to work... And since Knoppix is really a version of Linux I would imagine that it would not meet your requirement of "Compatibility with Windows". But, shouldn't there be some software out there that you could install that would allow you to administrate a Cyber Cafe that would allow Windows clients to connect?
:)
Pardon me for my most likely useless contribution to this discussion... Like I said, I don't have a clue what I'm talking about. All I know is they were gonna use Knoppix and install it on a computer for someone to use in a Cyber Cafe and make the computer a wireless access point that managed who logged on and who didn't.
Please expand on this if you have an idea what you are talking about!
BTW, Knoppix is a version of Linux that runs completely off of a CD. So you can plug it into virtually any x86 computer and boot into a fully-functional version of Linux with certain Apps pre-installed and ready-to-run.
I seem to remember that this was one of the only convenient ways that the US Army was able to demonstrate their 64-bit edition of "America's Army" by running it off of a Knoppix install. Could just be my imagination though.
Think about that.
As far as the addiction aspect of it goes, I would have to agree. About 20 of my real-life (haha I used the term "real-life") friends and I all started playing SWG (Star Wars Galaxies) at about the same time... We played for almost a year. The truth about that game, in our opinion, is that it quickly stopped being fun and turned into an obsession... an addictive obsession.
I played the part of a resource miner. I was managing a business wherein I purchased/upgraded/maintained somewhere around 50-60 mineral extractors. I had to visit them almost every day and because of the sheer amount of them, it took quite some time (sometimes these things would be spread out quite some distance over the game world) to maintain and collect the resources from each harvester. Then I would have to auction the resources I'd collected. Then I would have to scour the universe for the best price on power... Then once the current set of resources had been tapped out, I would have to "survey" for another high concentration of a resource that I predicted would sell for a good price. Next up, unrooting the harvesters and moving them to a new location. This could involve having to log in multiple times with different accounts, sine only 10 harvesters can be operated from one account, or nagging my friends to move them to the new location...
I was doing this, before SWG came out with vehicles... Now, in SWG walking around consumes approximately the same amount of time as it does in real life to go the same distance, maybe a little less. Sometimes I would have to walk round-trip 10km to maintain my harvesters, and thats if they were all in the same location!!! Just the travel time could take up to 30-40 minutes of your time, and if you got attacked and killed on your way out there... you would have to start all over!!!
I would estimate that my time invested in this (albeit highly profitable) business was around 2-3 hours a day. That left not very much time for any thing else in the game. I didn't fight much. I didn't quest (as if there are quests in SWG!). I didn't level my character... I just did my business.
Was it fun?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: It took me 10 months to realize that I was not enjoying myself. I used to sit down in my computer chair each night and sigh as I booted up SWG. I would wait through countless down-times (BRIA: Better Reboot It Again). I suffered numerous roll-backs, where I was forced to repeat my actions a second time because whatever progress I had made was lost by the server. Many glitches would kill my harvesters, cause me to lose items or resources that I intended to sell... It was quite ridiculous. And yet, I still played. To be honest, with all the money I made, I hardly ever bought ANYTHING! I was spending so much time making the money I didn't have time to spend it, literally! Why did I play? Because I was addicted.
I once made a drive to the Bay Area from Fresno, and on the way saw a bunch of Wind Generators. They reminded me of my "in-game" harvesters so I insisted on a photograph.
I would occassionally see "waypoints", giant columns of light, out of the corner of my eye as I was driving around town.
A waving field of brownish grass would recall to me "fond" memories of the fields of Corellia, my home-planet.
I actually maintained my harvesters in my sleep, while I was dreaming.
I would sometimes quote SWG NPCs to my friends... and they all got the joke... "Hello, my friend."
I thoroughly researched real-life vending machines because they are the closest and most practical real-life counterpart of SWG's harvesters...
As you can see... The game virtually took over my life. Did I mention that I would stay up very late at night almost every night at the expense of my performance at work and my social life? Haha my social life... I used to make up excuses to all of my real-life friends who DIDN'T play whenever they invited me out, because I just "HAD TO PLAY SWG". I used
With all these new advances in processor and video-card technology, when are we going to see some advances towards cheaper, and quieter cooling solutions? These devices keep getting hotter and hotter!
In order to keep my gaming computer cool I have something like 7 or 8 fans in there, and the box sounds like a jet-engine taking off... I've looked into water-cooling but virtually every water-cooling setup costs upwards of $200. Is it really *that* expensive for the equipment? What other alternatives are out there?
And with a notebook... isn't heat going to soon be a real serious issue with laptops?
I have to agree! I work now at a place that offers a casual work environment. We don't have a strict dress code (jeans and a nice shirt...) As long as you do your work, its not a big problem to come in +/- 30 min to work... Need ergonomic stuff? You got it. Eye exams are covered and if you need glasses you get 'em. Theres a snack area with free sodas/snacks/bkfst/water/coffee/candy/etcetera. Weekly company meeting includes lunch. Doors. They actually shut! A time clock at the door. The last place I worked was ridiculous. They wanted you to slide a card to get inside the building, then you had to slide a seperate time-card, then you had to fill out a weekly time sheet, and at the end of the day, email your manager with your time for the day! It was quite ridiculous. Nice machines... When you are compiling your very large program fairly often... a good comp is what can make a difference in productivity. It would be very easy to lose 30 min. to an hour each day just on compile time with a slow comp. Want to work in the dark? You've got your own office, so turn off the light. Listen to music? Just shut your door. It would be nice if I had more control over the AC for my personal area... Everyone else likes it about 10-15degrees cooler than me... I just bring a sweatshirt. More bandwidth would be nice so I could stream music while working, but I can just bring my own CDs... Oh yah... the place is clean too! The last place I worked at the lobby had some crazy funk stench! You had to hold your breath just to get in the building! Also, it was a phone-support job... so you had to use the cubes that someone else had just finished with... not very sanitary since cubes were not assigned it could be anyone leaving the desk you were about to use... not to mention using the same mic/headset they just finished with... sometimes it was pretty gross... Everyone for the most part keeps their doors open though which really helps our communication. If we need the privacy we have it... but we are all accessible to each other if someone has a question about something...
Most of these people just don't have what it takes to do that In other words... Most of these people just can't hack it.
But oh, that third year!
Just a supplementary link: http://www.ishn.com/ishn/cda/articleinformation/fe atures/bnp__features__item/0,2162,2439,00.html
Not a single case of permanent damage from laser pointers has ever been reported.
Now... If we started calling it the Vowel Planet, and it somehow went out of its natural orbit, would that be called a "Vowel Movement"?
Lets not give Osama any ideas, now, huh?
Just raise your price next time. It seems to me that raising the price and getting the job works on two levels:
1: You get the job.
2: You make more than you were going to with your original price.
If you need $1000 to make a product and quote $2000, and don't get the job, you have made $0.
But if you quote $5000, and get the job, you have made $4000.
I'll take the $4000 over the $0 any day.
I tried the demonstration edition of the Blitz Basic 2D programming language, which allows you full access to all of the features except compile-to-executable, and now I'm hooked. Some of the things that hooked me: 1: Free download of operational software. I'm able to develop using the demo, if I want to distribute, I have to purchase. 2: Active support. The programmer behind BlitzBasic 2D is constantly at work on the project, making it better, and he listens to and replies to feature-requests. If there was a bug, he actually worked at fixing it, and sometimes patches or fixes were up within a week or two of reporting them. That is awesome. 3: If I want to buy Blitz Basic 2D, it is not too expensive (~50USD). 4: A great user forum. Of course, nothing makes a great user forum but users, but if you make an "official forum", they will come. Things not to do: 1: Break the software. Blitz Basic 3D is limited to 30 uses. I never even downloaded that program, for that reason only. 2: Give customers shoddy or no support. I develop in a language called Visual Dataflex that has the worst documentation of any development system I've worked with (a lot!). It really ticks me off. 3: Lock up the forums. Blitz 2Ds forums were open to developers who had not purchased the software for quite a while, but were limited to only registered users after about 8 months. That was *almost* enough to make me quit Blitz altogether (if weren't such a good product by itself, I would have).