Hating MS is like people from non-US countries hating Americans. Sure, MS has its share of both decent/normal people and asshats... it's generally the higher-ups that have a tendency towards public assholery (*cough* Developers... developers... developers *cough*). The same applies to the US in general, lots of decent normal people, a certain population of asshats, and lots of assholes in the government/administration.
Shit floats to the top where it is more visible... go figure!
If it's for business use, and you've got to have 100% uptime, failure rate sill doesn't matter, since at these prices you buy multiple redundant systems and then sleep well at night
If you need redundancy, it's probably at a server level. Servers are not necessarily available at such cheap prices.
For desktops, if the unit dies in 3 months then you can probably get a better unit at less cost, but you still have to have somebody paid to swap the machine/components and reinstall software as necessarily.
If cars cost a grand and were shyte, I'd buy a car that wasn't shyte and cost more...
In some ways the above three work together, and in some ways they're competitors. Why should anyone lend credence to anything HP tells its competitors to do... how about we wait to hear what HP is going to do to make their products open-source... or how about getting the manufacturers of the wireless chipset and/or cardreader in my HP laptop to release an OS-driver for linux? No, I thought not.
If MS declared that Apple should open-source more of their offerings would it make news? Maybe only so we can laugh at them... which is about all we should be doing at HP right now
There's a difference between doing something and being able to do it, though. The ability to somebody to use google to get "information X" is a little different than somebody going to the trouble of using it to track down "nasty information Y"
My local Telco has a reverse lookup online. Certainly you could use this to get a person's address etc and use it for nefarious purposes... but does that make the tool or the intention evil. You can be sure that if I used it to look up person X and plastered it on a news article the tool would look bad, despite it being a rather general and in many cases useful tool.
Semi-OT but something I was curious about. What's the approximate latency on intercontinental connections via the trunk cables? I'm not quite sure on the distances but I'd imagine that they're enough to through a bit of skew into a connection between, N. America and Japan (or for fun distances, Canada and Australi)
In that case I'd imagine an international connection would suck royally for somebody viewing a N. American website/game as the latency would involve:
User-->Satellite-->Japan-->Trunk-to-N.America-->In ternal Routing-->Destination (and then back again).
I'm a Canadian here and I was in Australia (NSW) last year around this time. One of the things that I definately noticed was that they seemed to be a fair bit nicer on the traffic issues:
Traffic camera had 3 warning signs before you came up on them. Slow down for that third sign buddy!
Traffic cops were supposedly not allowed to "hide" but rather be in a non-concealed place.
Rather than accumulating points are you do here, you start with points (12 I think) and lose them depending on the severity of an infraction.
Aussies seemed to be a bit more aware of what they're politicians were into as well, not sure if they had any more control over it, but more awareness.
p.s. For those considering holidays Aus is a beautiful place to visit once you get out of the cities (and even within).
I can see some cases where they'd be quite useful. For computing classes with labs, for example, it would be quite nice to have a searchable-style ebook reference. Not only would you not have to lug your big hardcover text around (this assuming you either have the ebook on a school network drive, or usually carry the laptop anyhow), but you could use a search/find feature to look up particular items.
Really, I think the best way to go about it is not to offer seperate items, but to offer the ebook in conjunction with the printed media. Since they're in it to profit, maybe offer both for a slightly higher fee with the electronic medium inclusive on the paper medium as a CD-ROM insert like many books already have for extra materials, etc
I'd to throw in that not everyone plays "sequal" style games in a linear manner. I played the original GTA, and I own Vice City. Didn't play any of the ones in-between though, so perhaps people who grab Madden 2010 haven't played 2009 and below... but they'd still like an up-to-date roster, physics, etc.
Sequels that are "same ol' same ol'" are definately a problem, but just because something has the same name doesn't mean it's the same game... and sometimes sameness elements make the game familiar/fun as well. When I buy a Final Fantasy game I'm looking for an experience similar to what has come before, but unique enough to still keep me interested (which, except for FFX-2 is usually the case).
I just wish that making 'similar' games didn't kill off original games.
It's the attitude that "it's not my problem until it bites me in the ass someday" that makes me sick. Take into account that it was probably a very hard decision to turn in a friend, and certainly not one done without a good deal of thought. I'm not sure if I could do something like this, not because I think it was wrong to turn in the friend, but because it takes a lot of guts to do.
Also, if you'be ever grabbed something from the 'bargain bin' you might end up with one of these products. Since it's been opened it can't be resold as new, but buy a bargain bin item that doesn't turn out to be the real deal and you could have a hell of a time returning it or prove you weren't the one that switched it.
I wonder if the grandparent would change his tune if he buys a new video card only to get a $5 trident PCI card and then can't return it on grounds that the store accuses him of switching merchandise...
Some people are immoral, and in some cases not worthy of friendship. Often enough, they don't even see the wrong in their actions when confronted. I had a GF (now an ex), who was not in any way hurting for money, who would pull the tabs/etc off water bottles and fill them as a "refill" rather than paying the extra buck or two. Now is she less guilty because it's a buck, or worse because it's a freakin' dollar that was in no way a hardship for her to pay. Certainly these type of things dropped my respect for her, and probably led to the downfall of the relationship.
Some people have to learn the hard way, if dude's friend in the original post was under the age of majority then he's probably doing fine now without a record, but maybe the scare at least gave him a dose of reality in that it's not just when "the other guy" commits fraud that it is illegal.
The implied use of fossil-fuels doesn't apply to everyone though. Here up in Canada quite a lot of places have energy supplied by less polluting methods such as Hydroelectric dams, etc.
Given that the cost of gas is also a fair bit up on the cost of electricity around here, if it cost less to setup (which it probably would over time) the hydrogen-seperation method of making gas might actually be a pretty good option. Depending on whether the burning hydrogen is more efficient at producing heat than just an electric heater.
It would also be quite useful for places where it's hard to run gas-lines, such as the island communities Victoria, BC where dense rock ground makes running gas lines pretty implausable.
How about if the wireless routers don't use "admin" for both the username and password. I've hit quite a few networks named "default" and found that the web-interface was up by default, with the default passwords.
I'd put more blame on companies that put "out-of-the-box" ahead of security... ship the damn thing secured and have it run a "first-time setup" utility from CD-ROM for the newbies.
Yes, and quite often when I make mistakes I *pay* for them. If proper procedure was not followed, I'd like to see somebody held accountable for it rather than just having Indymedia have to bite on sour grapes.
And no, I'm not joking... much the constition is already being used as so much toilet paper... with rights giving way to corporate interests (DCMA) or religious "moral" groups trying to muzzle the content open to the public of all ages.
You don't need a gazillion games at the beginning, just some really strong contenders. I remember back when SNES first came out, I saved my money... and actually bought Zelda before I bought the system because I wanted it so badly.
Similarly, I bought a PS2 to play FFX.
As you might notice, both were part of a franchise. A new game on a new system takes time to gain a following. So it might be just as good to go with the franchise and gain followers, then move to more original content.
In my mind, the problem I've always had with Microsoft is not (despite the various issues with bugs and viruses) the Operating System. MS has done a fair bit to improve windows over time, but it's the bigger picture that worries me.
Microsoft is not just windows. It's a large, heavy, ruthless corporation. Unlike many ruthless corporations, MS also has a strong ability to crush other companies... hence the antitrust issues. So yes, while MS may have helped fund and bring some technologies to light, I can think of more than a few that were squashed when the refused to bow down and hand themselves over to MS...
Tell them to use another port, dick head
Ahhh, I truely hope you aren't a Telus worker, but if you are this reflects pretty closely some of the service I've got.
And FYI, STMP isn't really all that easily redirectable, which was needed when I got stuck with a temporary dynamic-IP. No port 25 means no inbound mail, meaning I had to wait a week while a screwup on the other end delayed my business account being properly moved over to a new line and thus email being lost.
I seem to remember that in most of the earlier Final-Fantasy type games your characters would technically not be "killed" but rather would "swoon" (pass out) or something similar. I suppose this was so that when a character was permanently offed from your party then you couldn't use a 'life' potion or something similar...
The online games could probably do something similar. You're not dead, just 'injured' until you can be recuperated. In fact, a military-game with more focus on Dr-Dodgeball style gaming could be rather fun...
I know for a fact that they block port 80, 21, and some other common ones for accounts with dynamic IP's. I was stuck with a dynamic while waiting for my server account to kick in at my new address, and all the common inbound web-ports were blocked. Telus wants you to pay up for inbound traffic, no dyndns for you!
The easiest way to get a game that is portable across OS's is to use a cross-OS toolkit. That being said, the game is already developed, but perhaps anyone else looking at cross-platform could use something like OGRE for 3d-type stuff.
Actually, my first thought was that such a bill would be aimed against unions. It's pretty hard to form a union if you're not allowed to meet/gather with your co-workers after work...
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Hating MS is like people from non-US countries hating Americans. Sure, MS has its share of both decent/normal people and asshats... it's generally the higher-ups that have a tendency towards public assholery (*cough* Developers... developers... developers *cough*). The same applies to the US in general, lots of decent normal people, a certain population of asshats, and lots of assholes in the government/administration.
Shit floats to the top where it is more visible... go figure!
If it's for business use, and you've got to have 100% uptime, failure rate sill doesn't matter, since at these prices you buy multiple redundant systems and then sleep well at night
If you need redundancy, it's probably at a server level. Servers are not necessarily available at such cheap prices.
For desktops, if the unit dies in 3 months then you can probably get a better unit at less cost, but you still have to have somebody paid to swap the machine/components and reinstall software as necessarily.
If cars cost a grand and were shyte, I'd buy a car that wasn't shyte and cost more...
In some ways the above three work together, and in some ways they're competitors. Why should anyone lend credence to anything HP tells its competitors to do... how about we wait to hear what HP is going to do to make their products open-source... or how about getting the manufacturers of the wireless chipset and/or cardreader in my HP laptop to release an OS-driver for linux? No, I thought not.
If MS declared that Apple should open-source more of their offerings would it make news? Maybe only so we can laugh at them... which is about all we should be doing at HP right now
There's a difference between doing something and being able to do it, though. The ability to somebody to use google to get "information X" is a little different than somebody going to the trouble of using it to track down "nasty information Y"
My local Telco has a reverse lookup online. Certainly you could use this to get a person's address etc and use it for nefarious purposes... but does that make the tool or the intention evil. You can be sure that if I used it to look up person X and plastered it on a news article the tool would look bad, despite it being a rather general and in many cases useful tool.
Semi-OT but something I was curious about. What's the approximate latency on intercontinental connections via the trunk cables? I'm not quite sure on the distances but I'd imagine that they're enough to through a bit of skew into a connection between, N. America and Japan (or for fun distances, Canada and Australi)
n ternal Routing-->Destination (and then back again).
In that case I'd imagine an international connection would suck royally for somebody viewing a N. American website/game as the latency would involve:
User-->Satellite-->Japan-->Trunk-to-N.America-->I
Anyone have some approx numbers on that?
I'm a Canadian here and I was in Australia (NSW) last year around this time. One of the things that I definately noticed was that they seemed to be a fair bit nicer on the traffic issues:
Traffic camera had 3 warning signs before you came up on them. Slow down for that third sign buddy!
Traffic cops were supposedly not allowed to "hide" but rather be in a non-concealed place.
Rather than accumulating points are you do here, you start with points (12 I think) and lose them depending on the severity of an infraction.
Aussies seemed to be a bit more aware of what they're politicians were into as well, not sure if they had any more control over it, but more awareness.
p.s. For those considering holidays Aus is a beautiful place to visit once you get out of the cities (and even within).
It's not really that much different. Proving you don't have some genetic condition isn't that much different than proving you don't do illegal drugs.
Last time I checked you couldn't choose not to have a genetic condition... nor was it illegal to have a certain condition.
I can see some cases where they'd be quite useful. For computing classes with labs, for example, it would be quite nice to have a searchable-style ebook reference. Not only would you not have to lug your big hardcover text around (this assuming you either have the ebook on a school network drive, or usually carry the laptop anyhow), but you could use a search/find feature to look up particular items.
Really, I think the best way to go about it is not to offer seperate items, but to offer the ebook in conjunction with the printed media. Since they're in it to profit, maybe offer both for a slightly higher fee with the electronic medium inclusive on the paper medium as a CD-ROM insert like many books already have for extra materials, etc
I'd to throw in that not everyone plays "sequal" style games in a linear manner. I played the original GTA, and I own Vice City. Didn't play any of the ones in-between though, so perhaps people who grab Madden 2010 haven't played 2009 and below... but they'd still like an up-to-date roster, physics, etc.
Sequels that are "same ol' same ol'" are definately a problem, but just because something has the same name doesn't mean it's the same game... and sometimes sameness elements make the game familiar/fun as well. When I buy a Final Fantasy game I'm looking for an experience similar to what has come before, but unique enough to still keep me interested (which, except for FFX-2 is usually the case).
I just wish that making 'similar' games didn't kill off original games.
I wonder though, how useful this might be on polygraph-style tests. Could you use it to tell if somebody is lying?
It's the attitude that "it's not my problem until it bites me in the ass someday" that makes me sick. Take into account that it was probably a very hard decision to turn in a friend, and certainly not one done without a good deal of thought. I'm not sure if I could do something like this, not because I think it was wrong to turn in the friend, but because it takes a lot of guts to do.
Also, if you'be ever grabbed something from the 'bargain bin' you might end up with one of these products. Since it's been opened it can't be resold as new, but buy a bargain bin item that doesn't turn out to be the real deal and you could have a hell of a time returning it or prove you weren't the one that switched it.
I wonder if the grandparent would change his tune if he buys a new video card only to get a $5 trident PCI card and then can't return it on grounds that the store accuses him of switching merchandise...
Some people are immoral, and in some cases not worthy of friendship. Often enough, they don't even see the wrong in their actions when confronted. I had a GF (now an ex), who was not in any way hurting for money, who would pull the tabs/etc off water bottles and fill them as a "refill" rather than paying the extra buck or two. Now is she less guilty because it's a buck, or worse because it's a freakin' dollar that was in no way a hardship for her to pay. Certainly these type of things dropped my respect for her, and probably led to the downfall of the relationship.
Some people have to learn the hard way, if dude's friend in the original post was under the age of majority then he's probably doing fine now without a record, but maybe the scare at least gave him a dose of reality in that it's not just when "the other guy" commits fraud that it is illegal.
The implied use of fossil-fuels doesn't apply to everyone though. Here up in Canada quite a lot of places have energy supplied by less polluting methods such as Hydroelectric dams, etc.
Given that the cost of gas is also a fair bit up on the cost of electricity around here, if it cost less to setup (which it probably would over time) the hydrogen-seperation method of making gas might actually be a pretty good option. Depending on whether the burning hydrogen is more efficient at producing heat than just an electric heater.
It would also be quite useful for places where it's hard to run gas-lines, such as the island communities Victoria, BC where dense rock ground makes running gas lines pretty implausable.
You'll notice that an "or" was used. Corporate interests are seperate from religious ones, but the current government is pandering to both.
They might not be strip-searching babies, but they are imposing *their* religious views upon private institutions and individuals.
But, you sound a bit upset, perhaps you should sit down for a quiet moment of prayer and relax?
p.s. I love God, it's certain members of his fanclub that really really piss me off...
How about if the wireless routers don't use "admin" for both the username and password. I've hit quite a few networks named "default" and found that the web-interface was up by default, with the default passwords.
I'd put more blame on companies that put "out-of-the-box" ahead of security... ship the damn thing secured and have it run a "first-time setup" utility from CD-ROM for the newbies.
Yes, and quite often when I make mistakes I *pay* for them. If proper procedure was not followed, I'd like to see somebody held accountable for it rather than just having Indymedia have to bite on sour grapes.
Don't worry, GWB is working on fixing this...
And no, I'm not joking... much the constition is already being used as so much toilet paper... with rights giving way to corporate interests (DCMA) or religious "moral" groups trying to muzzle the content open to the public of all ages.
You don't need a gazillion games at the beginning, just some really strong contenders. I remember back when SNES first came out, I saved my money... and actually bought Zelda before I bought the system because I wanted it so badly.
Similarly, I bought a PS2 to play FFX.
As you might notice, both were part of a franchise. A new game on a new system takes time to gain a following. So it might be just as good to go with the franchise and gain followers, then move to more original content.
In my mind, the problem I've always had with Microsoft is not (despite the various issues with bugs and viruses) the Operating System. MS has done a fair bit to improve windows over time, but it's the bigger picture that worries me.
Microsoft is not just windows. It's a large, heavy, ruthless corporation. Unlike many ruthless corporations, MS also has a strong ability to crush other companies... hence the antitrust issues. So yes, while MS may have helped fund and bring some technologies to light, I can think of more than a few that were squashed when the refused to bow down and hand themselves over to MS...
Tell them to use another port, dick head
Ahhh, I truely hope you aren't a Telus worker, but if you are this reflects pretty closely some of the service I've got.
And FYI, STMP isn't really all that easily redirectable, which was needed when I got stuck with a temporary dynamic-IP. No port 25 means no inbound mail, meaning I had to wait a week while a screwup on the other end delayed my business account being properly moved over to a new line and thus email being lost.
I seem to remember that in most of the earlier Final-Fantasy type games your characters would technically not be "killed" but rather would "swoon" (pass out) or something similar. I suppose this was so that when a character was permanently offed from your party then you couldn't use a 'life' potion or something similar...
The online games could probably do something similar. You're not dead, just 'injured' until you can be recuperated. In fact, a military-game with more focus on Dr-Dodgeball style gaming could be rather fun...
And how does that help me when somebody is trying to actually reach my machine at port 80/25/21/etc?
I know for a fact that they block port 80, 21, and some other common ones for accounts with dynamic IP's. I was stuck with a dynamic while waiting for my server account to kick in at my new address, and all the common inbound web-ports were blocked. Telus wants you to pay up for inbound traffic, no dyndns for you!
The easiest way to get a game that is portable across OS's is to use a cross-OS toolkit. That being said, the game is already developed, but perhaps anyone else looking at cross-platform could use something like OGRE for 3d-type stuff.
Actually, my first thought was that such a bill would be aimed against unions. It's pretty hard to form a union if you're not allowed to meet/gather with your co-workers after work...