I can see a couple or problems with this plan. First of all, how would you collect? You'd need some sort of account so that the sender could transfer the penny over. They'd need a secure way to send it. I've got a feeling administration and transactional costs would make the price per EMail much higher then a penny.
Secondly, the system would be abused. People would set up email drops and subscribe them to every mailing list and joke list out there. They'd never read the emails, just delete them and collect the cash. 10 addresss receiving 100 emails a day would earn $300 a month. Legitimiate mass Emailers would have to start charging.
I'm not really concerned about my processors lifespan. I've got a bunch of computers out in the garage with perfectly good processors in them. Processors become obsolete long before they wear out.
I dunno, this whole project seems to me to be one of those geeky "cool to think about" things. I'd take one if they were free, but no way I'm gonna pay money for it.
I don't mind doing it when we visit her. I'll sit at her computer for several hours fixing and tweaking her P166/Win98 box.
The alternative is to sit and socialize with her and my wife while they talk and argue and argue some more. I'd *much* rather be checking out the tech support forums at/. for information on her modem.
id is still charging for it, though. I can't tell you how much, the link to the selling site is b0rked, but there's a "buy it" icon on ids Commander Keen page.
The only memorization I recall in connection with teh periodic table was being able to tell an Element from its symbol and vice-versa. Which is something that the haikus would be totally useless as a learning or teaching aid.
Actually, reading the authors comments, I didn't see a mention anywhere that the table was intended to be a learning tool. I think it was just intended to be a geek/poet fun thing, and for that it's pretty good.
I wonder whats so great about being able to play from the CD? Personally, I'd much rather have it the other way... install the game once, then store the CD somewhere because it won't be needed any more. Having to track down the stupid CD every time you want to play a game would be a pain. Not to mention the problems if it gets scratched or melted or whatever.
I mean, whats the attraction to being able to run off CD? Hard drive space is pretty cheap these days. I guess maybe there are some people who get intimidated when they try to install software, but if that's the issue it should be fixed by making software installation easier.
Hell yes gamers have brand loyalty. How many ATI/nVidia/AMD/Intel/Linux/Mac/Id/Blizzard/whateve r fanboys are out there? Hell, I think it's a pretty rare gamer who can just evaluate a game or product based solely on its merits, without letting preconcieved notions get in the way.
They're not saying "it is highly unlikely", or "it would be extremely difficult"... they're flat out calling it an impossibility. Maybe there's some obscure law of physics involved here, or perhaps SCO has some elegant mathematical proof for this whole statement.
My former employer was in the middle of moving their HR functions from some PoS mainframe system to SAP. We had to contend with three employee identifiers. SSN, old employee number (which was just their SSN with a leading 0), and their new SAP employee number, which was a 6 digit code. Problem was the various legacy HR databases were linked by SSN or EMP number with no discernable pattern. Getting those numbers out from where they didn't belong and linking everything back with the new employee number was a major pain.
It led to a few rather comical forkrups, like 6000+ employees getting a letter in the mail telling them that their new employee number was printed on the address label. Only the labels had been printed without the employee number on them. It was comical because the letters were sent out by corporate HQ rather then our group.
Anyway, screwing with/replacing the SSN key fields in a manufacturing company with 6000 employees was a huge task. I can just imagine how it would be for a university with 30,000 students.
I *think* the point was not that the game testers have it so much fucking harder then anyone else, but that the job isn't all fun and games and fat paychecks and free perks. It's a lot like any other job. Probably not as well paid as similar jobs in other industries just because everyone thinks it would be cool to work for a gaming company.
Reminds me of an article I read in Texas Monthly many, many years ago... a discussion of some of the worst jobs in the state. Soem that I can remember... bomb assembler.... traffic bump installer (on 120 degree Texas roads)... chick sexer (keep the females that will grow up to be egg-laying hens, kill the males... sexing them involves pushing your little finger up their anus and feeling for a bump... try doing that one all day).
My personal worst job... working for Heritage Models in Dallas, making lead miniatures. Wearing thick gloves, jeans, pouring molten lead/tin into rubber molds and then breaking them apart... did I mention it was a summer job? In Dallas? And of course the warehouse wasn't air-conditioned. Things got sweaty, to put it mildly.
Laptop batteries have their own costs. A quick check of Dells website shows them selling a battery for $130, which is advertised as being good for 500 charges. That works out to about 25 cents a charge, assuming that the cost of electricity is negligible. If a fuel cell can approach that cost per charge ratio and not wear out, I'd rather go that route.
Shutting down for a week won't do it. I had a secondary EMail account I set up for a job search a couple of years ago. Once I got a job, I deactivated the account. That was back in late 2001. Two weeks ago I reactivated it because I needed to let some site I was registered on EMail me my password. I left the account active overnight, and the next morning it had half-a-dozen Spams. This was after being inactive and bouncing messages for more then a year.
Here's what I'm going to do. I'll download a copy of your Tarproxy and take it apart. I'll find the good words, the bad words, and all the other rules and exactly how everything is weighed. Then I'll sit down and carefully craft a message that will sneak under your spam filter, but will still manage to do a decent job of selling my penis enlargement device. Once that's done, I'll EMail the message off to 15 or 20 million of my closest friends.
I'm sure you'll get a chuckle out of the clever way I wrote "P3nis" instead of "Penis". And you'll probably modify your filters so that they look for that word from now on. But all that means is that I have to is download the new version and figure out some other way to sneak past it. Sure, your filter will get cleverer and cleverer, but I'll always have the advantage of knowing the rules beforehand and being able to try and retry and carefully craft my message until it works.
I've got a problem with the automatic assumption that anything which arrives at your honey-pot must be spam. Two possibilites:
1) Someone typoes a legit address and drops an EMail into your spam account by accident. Granted, not very likely if you make the address "di20djd8480d0@whatever.com".
2) A spammer gets hold of one of those addresses and figures out a way to induce people to send an EMail to your spam account. Heck, maybe they send out some of their spam with your address listed at the bottom as the "opt-out" address. Your spam box starts getting EMails from legit sites, you automatically blacklist them... and step 4 becomes not "Profit", but "Fight off lawsuits".
Well, that's where the DMCA thing comes in. It's not illegal for another company to make toner cartridges that are compatible with Lexmark printers. But some Lexmark printers use cartridges that have a chip embedded in them. The company that Lexmark is sueing reverse-engineered the chip so that they could manufacture a compatible cartridge, and Lexmark is charging that the reverse-engineering part violates the DMCA.
Lexmark isn't telling consumers that they can't use third-party toner cartridges, or telling companies that they can't manufacture those cartridges. They're just telling the company that they can't reverse engineer the chip thats in the cartridge. Granted the effect is the same, but the legal point is different.
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Mailing them a fine would just be ignored. Sending someone to arrest them costs money and manpower... probably not worth it for a simple misdemeanor.
I can see a couple or problems with this plan. First of all, how would you collect? You'd need some sort of account so that the sender could transfer the penny over. They'd need a secure way to send it. I've got a feeling administration and transactional costs would make the price per EMail much higher then a penny.
Secondly, the system would be abused. People would set up email drops and subscribe them to every mailing list and joke list out there. They'd never read the emails, just delete them and collect the cash. 10 addresss receiving 100 emails a day would earn $300 a month. Legitimiate mass Emailers would have to start charging.
I'm not really concerned about my processors lifespan. I've got a bunch of computers out in the garage with perfectly good processors in them. Processors become obsolete long before they wear out.
I dunno, this whole project seems to me to be one of those geeky "cool to think about" things. I'd take one if they were free, but no way I'm gonna pay money for it.
I don't mind doing it when we visit her. I'll sit at her computer for several hours fixing and tweaking her P166/Win98 box.
/. for information on her modem.
The alternative is to sit and socialize with her and my wife while they talk and argue and argue some more. I'd *much* rather be checking out the tech support forums at
Real life keeps bleeding over into my games. Who do I see for that?
id is still charging for it, though. I can't tell you how much, the link to the selling site is b0rked, but there's a "buy it" icon on ids Commander Keen page.
The only memorization I recall in connection with teh periodic table was being able to tell an Element from its symbol and vice-versa. Which is something that the haikus would be totally useless as a learning or teaching aid.
Actually, reading the authors comments, I didn't see a mention anywhere that the table was intended to be a learning tool. I think it was just intended to be a geek/poet fun thing, and for that it's pretty good.
I wonder whats so great about being able to play from the CD? Personally, I'd much rather have it the other way... install the game once, then store the CD somewhere because it won't be needed any more. Having to track down the stupid CD every time you want to play a game would be a pain. Not to mention the problems if it gets scratched or melted or whatever.
I mean, whats the attraction to being able to run off CD? Hard drive space is pretty cheap these days. I guess maybe there are some people who get intimidated when they try to install software, but if that's the issue it should be fixed by making software installation easier.
Hey, it's cheaper then your average porn site.
If they stuck with the sticks and clubs, no one would be after them. Running a camel into the WTC would not have caused much damage.
Hell yes gamers have brand loyalty. How many ATI/nVidia/AMD/Intel/Linux/Mac/Id/Blizzard/whateve r fanboys are out there? Hell, I think it's a pretty rare gamer who can just evaluate a game or product based solely on its merits, without letting preconcieved notions get in the way.
They're not saying "it is highly unlikely", or "it would be extremely difficult"... they're flat out calling it an impossibility. Maybe there's some obscure law of physics involved here, or perhaps SCO has some elegant mathematical proof for this whole statement.
My former employer was in the middle of moving their HR functions from some PoS mainframe system to SAP. We had to contend with three employee identifiers. SSN, old employee number (which was just their SSN with a leading 0), and their new SAP employee number, which was a 6 digit code. Problem was the various legacy HR databases were linked by SSN or EMP number with no discernable pattern. Getting those numbers out from where they didn't belong and linking everything back with the new employee number was a major pain.
It led to a few rather comical forkrups, like 6000+ employees getting a letter in the mail telling them that their new employee number was printed on the address label. Only the labels had been printed without the employee number on them. It was comical because the letters were sent out by corporate HQ rather then our group.
Anyway, screwing with/replacing the SSN key fields in a manufacturing company with 6000 employees was a huge task. I can just imagine how it would be for a university with 30,000 students.
I'm gonna wear them over each shoulder, bandolier-style.
I *think* the point was not that the game testers have it so much fucking harder then anyone else, but that the job isn't all fun and games and fat paychecks and free perks. It's a lot like any other job. Probably not as well paid as similar jobs in other industries just because everyone thinks it would be cool to work for a gaming company.
Reminds me of an article I read in Texas Monthly many, many years ago... a discussion of some of the worst jobs in the state. Soem that I can remember... bomb assembler.... traffic bump installer (on 120 degree Texas roads)... chick sexer (keep the females that will grow up to be egg-laying hens, kill the males... sexing them involves pushing your little finger up their anus and feeling for a bump... try doing that one all day).
My personal worst job... working for Heritage Models in Dallas, making lead miniatures. Wearing thick gloves, jeans, pouring molten lead/tin into rubber molds and then breaking them apart... did I mention it was a summer job? In Dallas? And of course the warehouse wasn't air-conditioned. Things got sweaty, to put it mildly.
Laptop batteries have their own costs. A quick check of Dells website shows them selling a battery for $130, which is advertised as being good for 500 charges. That works out to about 25 cents a charge, assuming that the cost of electricity is negligible. If a fuel cell can approach that cost per charge ratio and not wear out, I'd rather go that route.
Two reasons I can think of:
1) You can refill in places where you can't get to traditional power, like an airplane or in your car.
2) You can refill in just a couple of minutes. How long does it take to recharge the batteries on your typical laptop?
But aren't we supposed to be the good guys?
Nope, still not dumbed-down enough.
I think it's obviously Y2K related. Civilization as we know it should be coming to an end in a week or so.
I was at Quakecon last year. I'd say maybe 1:30, though I really wasn't keeping score. Most of them seemed to be wives/girlfriends of other attendees.
Shutting down for a week won't do it. I had a secondary EMail account I set up for a job search a couple of years ago. Once I got a job, I deactivated the account. That was back in late 2001. Two weeks ago I reactivated it because I needed to let some site I was registered on EMail me my password. I left the account active overnight, and the next morning it had half-a-dozen Spams. This was after being inactive and bouncing messages for more then a year.
Here's what I'm going to do. I'll download a copy of your Tarproxy and take it apart. I'll find the good words, the bad words, and all the other rules and exactly how everything is weighed. Then I'll sit down and carefully craft a message that will sneak under your spam filter, but will still manage to do a decent job of selling my penis enlargement device. Once that's done, I'll EMail the message off to 15 or 20 million of my closest friends.
I'm sure you'll get a chuckle out of the clever way I wrote "P3nis" instead of "Penis". And you'll probably modify your filters so that they look for that word from now on. But all that means is that I have to is download the new version and figure out some other way to sneak past it. Sure, your filter will get cleverer and cleverer, but I'll always have the advantage of knowing the rules beforehand and being able to try and retry and carefully craft my message until it works.
Will this work? Or am I missing something?
I've got a problem with the automatic assumption that anything which arrives at your honey-pot must be spam. Two possibilites:
1) Someone typoes a legit address and drops an EMail into your spam account by accident. Granted, not very likely if you make the address "di20djd8480d0@whatever.com".
2) A spammer gets hold of one of those addresses and figures out a way to induce people to send an EMail to your spam account. Heck, maybe they send out some of their spam with your address listed at the bottom as the "opt-out" address. Your spam box starts getting EMails from legit sites, you automatically blacklist them... and step 4 becomes not "Profit", but "Fight off lawsuits".
Well, that's where the DMCA thing comes in. It's not illegal for another company to make toner cartridges that are compatible with Lexmark printers. But some Lexmark printers use cartridges that have a chip embedded in them. The company that Lexmark is sueing reverse-engineered the chip so that they could manufacture a compatible cartridge, and Lexmark is charging that the reverse-engineering part violates the DMCA.
Lexmark isn't telling consumers that they can't use third-party toner cartridges, or telling companies that they can't manufacture those cartridges. They're just telling the company that they can't reverse engineer the chip thats in the cartridge. Granted the effect is the same, but the legal point is different.