...and what happens in many years when you want to take a trip down memory lane? Will the activation servers still be up then
I very much agree with you because this past spring when I started getting excited about HL2 (and when I bought a new (working!) computer, I installed Half-Life again. I actually BOUGHT Half-Life when it came out and I installed the downloadable (free) CS, so I'm not one of the pirates - just a customer who really liked the game. It worked fine, I put on my old CS 1.5 patch and HL 1.1.09 (I think... whatever the latest one was in mid-'03). I played CS for about a week before getting notifications about WON shutdown.
I never wanted to play CS 1.6 because everyone I knew played 1.5, but when it all switched over to Steam, I figured I'd live with it. I fired up my computer anyways and tried playing CS, but it told me the game would no longer work - alright, fine.
Immediately I didn't like Steam's TOS, but I wanted to play CS and I missed the part about single-player Half-Life not working without an internet connection. So I installed Steam and CS 1.6 (which I quickly found out that I hate) over a cable modem, so luckily it didn't take very long to update. I restarted my system and tried playing regular old Half-Life again, and suddenly I couldn't do it unless I was on the internet. I got really pissed off when I got the urge to play it again when my internet connection went down. I was holding the damned disk in my hand, and I couldn't play the game! I got even more angry when I realized that once I head back to school I'm going to be sharing a single cable connection with 20 other people, so downloading the mandatory patches will be incredibly slow and it'll be a burden on everybody in the house!
Now, I don't want to go find a patch to play HL1 because I don't want to risk my Steam account getting permanently f***ed if they find out I've been using it, but I don't have another computer to install my original Half-Life on and wiping out Steam is out of the question because then HL2 won't work.
Way to completely fuck over your customers, Valve. You had a great product before Steam gored it to pieces and I hope that HL2 is REALLY DAMN GOOD, because it's going to take a fucking miracle to make me buy your next product. Believe me when I say that if I hadn't gotten my copy of HL2 at such a good discount I wouldn't have bought it at all, and it's ALL due to this Steam bullshit.
Scenario one: "These clowns" have done digging before or it's their main kind of work. If Verizon hadn't hired "these clowns" then someone else would have, and they'd still be out there messing up. Darwinism will eventually win out and they'll either improve or fold due to the fines or poor reputation, and it likely would have already happened, making this scenario rather unlikely.
Scenario two: "These clowns" have never done digging before but told Verizon they could do it anyway. It certainly IS Verizon's responsibility to look through the contractor's past work to make sure they know what they're doing, and my guess is that they did just this and found no problems because they've only stuck to their area of expertise. Now, the subcontractor should know when to say, "no, I don't think I can handle this" and if they fail to do this, it's their responsibility. They got blinded by the money Verizon was dangling in front of them and started doing a job they were not ready to do, and that's not Verizon's fault. Would it be your fault if you hired someone whose only experience was in web development if they gave you a resume claiming they were a skilled C++ programmer? They'd talk the talk convincingly enough but wouldn't have the skills.
There certainly are cirumstances where it could have been Verizon's fault, but I can't see it happening with such a large & important project.
Incompetence is right! This is ridiculous! There's no excuse for hitting all these water mains and sewer lines.
Well maybe the laws are different in FL, but in NY State there's a number you have to call before digging to ensure that there's no underground wires/pipes/etc. When you call this number, they in turn call the right people to go to the site and mark the underground lines. Every so often there's a mistake, but it's nowhere near 200 times in a month! When I worked at Time Warner Cable for a summer, we'd get faxes from these people, and we'd send the supervisors who knew the area to mark the ground. If no one knew the area, there was equipment to find the wires and mark them properly. This way, when the people who were digging showed up, they knew where NOT to dig.
That's the same way I feel when I go to the movies and see a commercial before the feature. I paid money to see a movie once, and I resent paying to sit through commercials. As a result, I have started going to the movies less; yes it bothers me that much.
Check out Viewtiful Joe. It's a 3D side scroller. You control the character as if the game were a pure side scroller, but he sometimes turns corners and the graphics are 3D, which is an interesting combination and it makes it a fun game:)
That should probably read, "Except for the folks who have to move to Wisconsin but don't want to leave the city..."
Personally, I despise cities and refuse to live in one. If I ever get the chance to have a job I like at a good company while living in a rural area, I'll jump at the chance.
After getting nailed by a Daisy Cutter, Osama made his way to the pearly gates. There, he is greeted by George Washington. "How dare you attack the nation I helped conceive!" yells Mr. Washington, slapping Osama in the face.
Patrick Henry comes up from behind. "You wanted to end the Americans' liberty, so they gave you death!" Henry punches Osama on the nose.
James Madison comes up next, and says "This is why I allowed the Federal government to provide for the common defense!" He drops a large weight on Osama's knee.
Osama is subject to similar beatings from John Randolph of Roanoke, James Monroe, and 65 other people who have the same love for liberty and America.
As he writhes on the ground, Thomas Jefferson picks him up to hurl him back toward the gate where he is to be judged.
As Osama awaits his journey to his final very hot destination, he screams "This is not what I was promised!"
An angel replies "I told you there would be 72 Virginians waiting for you, idiot. What did you think I said?"
A friend and I used to make bungee-cars out of legos. We'd make bungee cords out of lots of rubber bands and try building a strong anchor point on the car. We had lots of fun, especially when the cars wouldn't survive and the car would smash to pieces on the floor.
We quickly got good at making these vehicles so that they would survive multiple bungees, and moved on to using twine instead of rubber bands. We had a balcony with a railing that we'd tie the twine to, so that the height was constant. It turned into a contest to see who could make the heavier car that would survive the drop without pieces snapping off.
Sitting so close you can see the pixels defeats the purpose of seeing it in the cinema.
I know, that's part of what I was ranting about. Another problem I have is that with my glasses I have excellent vision, and I can sometimes see the pixels from halfway back in the theater, which is distracting.
Digital prints have ruined this process.
Now I don't know if you're agreeing with me or not. Those are my sentiments exactly.
The market has to adjust to the viewing habits; it appears people may want to watch new movies using alternative methods (aka internet). Don't most movies nowadays make more money from DVD sales then the actual movie? I wonder if the movies were released simultaneously to theaters, DVD, video on demand, video of Internet, etc if this would be an issue?
I'll keep my response limited to legal methods of viewing a movie.
IMO, there are only 2 reasons to go to a theater in the first place. The first reason is because the new movies are there and you don't have a choice if you want to see them while they're still hot. The second reason is the "big-screen experience". The bigger draw for me is the first reason. Either I want to see the movie beforehand or enough people talk about it that I want to see it without waiting for video. I don't usually see movies just for the effects, but on the rare occasion that I do, I'll usually wait for it to come to the local $3 theater. When I've gone to see special-effects movies in the past, it's usually been with a group of friends and we've gotten bad seats right up front, where I can see the pixels from the digital projectors. Between that and the price, I'm beginning to dislike theaters very much, regardless of whether or not they're "just breaking even."
About 5 years ago I was on a trip and went to a theater near Cincinnatti; the prices were cheap, the seats were incredibly comfortable, they had top-of-the-line sound and video, and it was very clean. I don't remember what the name of the place was, but ever since then I've used it as a benchmark and nothing within a 2 hour drive of home even comes close. At my local theater, I pay nearly $10 for unfriendly service in a dirty mall theater with bad acoustics and literal commercials before the previews. It's not pleasant.
Simultaneously releasing the movie on video and theatrically is a great idea for consumers, but a bad idea for your local theater. It'll never happen. By releasing at the theaters only, people pay per person per viewing and only the people who go to theaters for reason #2 would go out any more. Renting a movie at Blockbuster means that many people can amortize the cost ("You rent this time, I'll rent next." Or, "You rent, I'll bring the booze^H^H^H^H^Hsnacks.") and watch it many times if they want; bad news for theaters. I know that if I could rent the latest releases I'd all but stop going out to see movies until they slashed prices or greatly improved their theater.
I have access to a big HDTV and good 5.1 surround. It's 5 minutes to Blockbuster and 20 to the only theater friends ever want to go to. I can have a few drinks at home without worrying about the drive home. By renting a movie I can pause, replay a scene, pick a convenient time 24/7/365, sit in more comfortable seats, bring my own snacks, and I can avoid mall rats, insane drivers and carpools and parking lot dings. If I could rent the latest movies, it would be a no-brainer.
I agree with you, but some people don't share our lines of thinking.
I seriously wonder why no one's brought this issue up in court yet. Rape is a crime, and because it's committed within the walls of a prison it seems that people are turning a blind eye, and in this case the saying is true that "if you're not part of the solution, you're poart of the problem." It's wrong whether the person raped babies at a hospital, went on a killing spree at the mall on christmas eve, or whether they are in for tax evasion. Yes, it's a deterrant from committing crimes, but that doesn't make it right.
One of my biggest fears is being falsely convicted of a crime, and because of this, I'm afraid of being in proximity to law-breakers because the image sticks in my head: being hauled off to jail and tried for a crime I didn't commit, especially that kind of jail.
Why hasn't this been seriously discussed before? Scenario: guy goes to jail, gets raped by cellmate, complains to officers, officers tell him to fuck off, calls lawyer because these "public servants" failed to do their job in protecting his rights, it goes to court, who knows where it would go from there... I know what my decision would be if I were on that jury.
I know someone who got stock options in a company before it went public. He was already doing well, so he decided to go for it. Well his gamble paid off; the stock was worth quite a lot after a few years, and when he got the opportunity to sell 10% of the stock, he jumped at the chance. By the time the dust settled he ended up with a little over $5 million in his bank account and 90% of the original stock still in the market. This was back in the late 90s so I have no idea how much money this guy is worth right now, but I know that he's smart enough to have kept from wasting it. I'm sure he and his immediate family are set for life.
This kind of thing doesn't happen to everyone though, so if you're so highly regarded with this company you might do well to bargain with them for a higher salary than you're getting at whatever job you're at now and less stock options than they're baiting you with. I'm just throwing out ideas, by no means should you let me tell you how to live your life.
International Obfuscated C Code Contest (I think).
This groups releases a challenge each year that the entrants have to solve using the most obfuscated C code possible. They judge tne entries and award prizes to the best of the worst. Previous entries have used the precompiler to do much of the work, eliminated brackets and spaces, hacked the stack, and generally used many other tricks to complete the challenge.
I don't know, I enjoy the challenge of hooking up all my peripherals and hiding the wires. I agree that nixing the wires just makes it much nicer-looking and allows you to hide components in unexpected and unobtrusive places, but getting the right desk and doing a little work to make the wires look nice is really satisfying.
No, you are not. I don't like wireless for a few reasons:
1- Price.
3- Batteries.
4- Complexity / overhead. (I guess I'm old fashioned, but I'd rather put more development time into making smaller and more efficient programs rather than just upping the system specs.)
5- Performance/Reliability.
My housemate uses 802.11x for his internet connection, and I use cat5. The layout of the house prevents us from both using cat5, so we're stuck this way. When I turn on the wireless antenna in the router, I get 56k speeds. When I turn it off, I get closer to 10 Mbps, even when he's not running anything but AIM and an email client. I don't really care to figure it out since I'm only going to be living there for another few weeks, but it's very annoying to take such a performance hit because of an imperfect technology. There should be no reason for the dropped packets and bad signal strength to affect my connection so severely.
While we're on the topic of comedians' opinions, check this out (links to a webcomic with bad words, if that matters to you).
You'll already recognize this if you read SSDD, but if not, I think that he hits the nail right on the head. Think about why you're voting for your guy when you go vote. Think if your vote is "thrown away" if you live in a swing state and you vote for a 3rd party. Think about what you'll think of how you voted in 10 years. Get informed and get to the polls, ensure that they do everything properly at the polling place and if not, there's a number to call about it! Hope you don't have to use a Diebold machine, and lastly, remember that half the people will be upset no matter who wins the election but life will go on.
If anyone here reads the webcomic S.S.D.D., you'll already recognize the rant. If you haven't, go check it out: http://www.poisonedminds.com/d/20041025.html
If you go and implement this for all the entrances and you really DO want to be cautions about hackers gaining admittance, be careful what kind of RFID you choose. RFID Cloner
If would be easy enough to have the RFID readers ONLY within the building and give the engineers/manag^H^H^H^H^H^H/security/cleaning staff access to a sensitive lab, maybe. That way even if someone does manage to clone the tag while the engineer is in the street, they can't get in the building using just the cloned tag. If someone within the company did this, you probably have other problems anyways.
Slashdot Mirror
...and what happens in many years when you want to take a trip down memory lane? Will the activation servers still be up then
I very much agree with you because this past spring when I started getting excited about HL2 (and when I bought a new (working!) computer, I installed Half-Life again. I actually BOUGHT Half-Life when it came out and I installed the downloadable (free) CS, so I'm not one of the pirates - just a customer who really liked the game. It worked fine, I put on my old CS 1.5 patch and HL 1.1.09 (I think... whatever the latest one was in mid-'03). I played CS for about a week before getting notifications about WON shutdown.
I never wanted to play CS 1.6 because everyone I knew played 1.5, but when it all switched over to Steam, I figured I'd live with it. I fired up my computer anyways and tried playing CS, but it told me the game would no longer work - alright, fine.
Immediately I didn't like Steam's TOS, but I wanted to play CS and I missed the part about single-player Half-Life not working without an internet connection. So I installed Steam and CS 1.6 (which I quickly found out that I hate) over a cable modem, so luckily it didn't take very long to update. I restarted my system and tried playing regular old Half-Life again, and suddenly I couldn't do it unless I was on the internet. I got really pissed off when I got the urge to play it again when my internet connection went down. I was holding the damned disk in my hand, and I couldn't play the game! I got even more angry when I realized that once I head back to school I'm going to be sharing a single cable connection with 20 other people, so downloading the mandatory patches will be incredibly slow and it'll be a burden on everybody in the house!
Now, I don't want to go find a patch to play HL1 because I don't want to risk my Steam account getting permanently f***ed if they find out I've been using it, but I don't have another computer to install my original Half-Life on and wiping out Steam is out of the question because then HL2 won't work.
Way to completely fuck over your customers, Valve. You had a great product before Steam gored it to pieces and I hope that HL2 is REALLY DAMN GOOD, because it's going to take a fucking miracle to make me buy your next product. Believe me when I say that if I hadn't gotten my copy of HL2 at such a good discount I wouldn't have bought it at all, and it's ALL due to this Steam bullshit.
Scenario one: "These clowns" have done digging before or it's their main kind of work. If Verizon hadn't hired "these clowns" then someone else would have, and they'd still be out there messing up. Darwinism will eventually win out and they'll either improve or fold due to the fines or poor reputation, and it likely would have already happened, making this scenario rather unlikely.
Scenario two: "These clowns" have never done digging before but told Verizon they could do it anyway. It certainly IS Verizon's responsibility to look through the contractor's past work to make sure they know what they're doing, and my guess is that they did just this and found no problems because they've only stuck to their area of expertise. Now, the subcontractor should know when to say, "no, I don't think I can handle this" and if they fail to do this, it's their responsibility. They got blinded by the money Verizon was dangling in front of them and started doing a job they were not ready to do, and that's not Verizon's fault. Would it be your fault if you hired someone whose only experience was in web development if they gave you a resume claiming they were a skilled C++ programmer? They'd talk the talk convincingly enough but wouldn't have the skills.
There certainly are cirumstances where it could have been Verizon's fault, but I can't see it happening with such a large & important project.
Incompetence is right! This is ridiculous! There's no excuse for hitting all these water mains and sewer lines.
Well maybe the laws are different in FL, but in NY State there's a number you have to call before digging to ensure that there's no underground wires/pipes/etc. When you call this number, they in turn call the right people to go to the site and mark the underground lines. Every so often there's a mistake, but it's nowhere near 200 times in a month! When I worked at Time Warner Cable for a summer, we'd get faxes from these people, and we'd send the supervisors who knew the area to mark the ground. If no one knew the area, there was equipment to find the wires and mark them properly. This way, when the people who were digging showed up, they knew where NOT to dig.
That's the same way I feel when I go to the movies and see a commercial before the feature. I paid money to see a movie once, and I resent paying to sit through commercials. As a result, I have started going to the movies less; yes it bothers me that much.
Check out Viewtiful Joe. It's a 3D side scroller. You control the character as if the game were a pure side scroller, but he sometimes turns corners and the graphics are 3D, which is an interesting combination and it makes it a fun game :)
That should probably read, "Except for the folks who have to move to Wisconsin but don't want to leave the city..."
Personally, I despise cities and refuse to live in one. If I ever get the chance to have a job I like at a good company while living in a rural area, I'll jump at the chance.
After getting nailed by a Daisy Cutter, Osama made his way to the pearly gates. There, he is greeted by George Washington. "How dare you attack the nation I helped conceive!" yells Mr. Washington, slapping Osama in the face.
Patrick Henry comes up from behind. "You wanted to end the Americans' liberty, so they gave you death!" Henry punches Osama on the nose.
James Madison comes up next, and says "This is why I allowed the Federal government to provide for the common defense!" He drops a large weight on Osama's knee.
Osama is subject to similar beatings from John Randolph of Roanoke, James Monroe, and 65 other people who have the same love for liberty and America.
As he writhes on the ground, Thomas Jefferson picks him up to hurl him back toward the gate where he is to be judged.
As Osama awaits his journey to his final very hot destination, he screams "This is not what I was promised!"
An angel replies "I told you there would be 72 Virginians waiting for you, idiot. What did you think I said?"
You story reminds me of oen of my lego games.
A friend and I used to make bungee-cars out of legos. We'd make bungee cords out of lots of rubber bands and try building a strong anchor point on the car. We had lots of fun, especially when the cars wouldn't survive and the car would smash to pieces on the floor.
We quickly got good at making these vehicles so that they would survive multiple bungees, and moved on to using twine instead of rubber bands. We had a balcony with a railing that we'd tie the twine to, so that the height was constant. It turned into a contest to see who could make the heavier car that would survive the drop without pieces snapping off.
Sitting so close you can see the pixels defeats the purpose of seeing it in the cinema.
I know, that's part of what I was ranting about. Another problem I have is that with my glasses I have excellent vision, and I can sometimes see the pixels from halfway back in the theater, which is distracting.
Digital prints have ruined this process.
Now I don't know if you're agreeing with me or not. Those are my sentiments exactly.
Noo, Everyoen knows it was REALLY caused by a sadistic time-traveller
The market has to adjust to the viewing habits; it appears people may want to watch new movies using alternative methods (aka internet). Don't most movies nowadays make more money from DVD sales then the actual movie? I wonder if the movies were released simultaneously to theaters, DVD, video on demand, video of Internet, etc if this would be an issue?
I'll keep my response limited to legal methods of viewing a movie.
IMO, there are only 2 reasons to go to a theater in the first place. The first reason is because the new movies are there and you don't have a choice if you want to see them while they're still hot. The second reason is the "big-screen experience". The bigger draw for me is the first reason. Either I want to see the movie beforehand or enough people talk about it that I want to see it without waiting for video. I don't usually see movies just for the effects, but on the rare occasion that I do, I'll usually wait for it to come to the local $3 theater. When I've gone to see special-effects movies in the past, it's usually been with a group of friends and we've gotten bad seats right up front, where I can see the pixels from the digital projectors. Between that and the price, I'm beginning to dislike theaters very much, regardless of whether or not they're "just breaking even."
About 5 years ago I was on a trip and went to a theater near Cincinnatti; the prices were cheap, the seats were incredibly comfortable, they had top-of-the-line sound and video, and it was very clean. I don't remember what the name of the place was, but ever since then I've used it as a benchmark and nothing within a 2 hour drive of home even comes close. At my local theater, I pay nearly $10 for unfriendly service in a dirty mall theater with bad acoustics and literal commercials before the previews. It's not pleasant.
Simultaneously releasing the movie on video and theatrically is a great idea for consumers, but a bad idea for your local theater. It'll never happen. By releasing at the theaters only, people pay per person per viewing and only the people who go to theaters for reason #2 would go out any more. Renting a movie at Blockbuster means that many people can amortize the cost ("You rent this time, I'll rent next." Or, "You rent, I'll bring the booze^H^H^H^H^Hsnacks.") and watch it many times if they want; bad news for theaters. I know that if I could rent the latest releases I'd all but stop going out to see movies until they slashed prices or greatly improved their theater.
I have access to a big HDTV and good 5.1 surround. It's 5 minutes to Blockbuster and 20 to the only theater friends ever want to go to. I can have a few drinks at home without worrying about the drive home. By renting a movie I can pause, replay a scene, pick a convenient time 24/7/365, sit in more comfortable seats, bring my own snacks, and I can avoid mall rats, insane drivers and carpools and parking lot dings. If I could rent the latest movies, it would be a no-brainer.
Now will someone PLEASE tell me how to get a gmail account?
E-mail me at k.j.powers@gmail.com and I'll send you an invitation.
I agree with you, but some people don't share our lines of thinking.
I seriously wonder why no one's brought this issue up in court yet. Rape is a crime, and because it's committed within the walls of a prison it seems that people are turning a blind eye, and in this case the saying is true that "if you're not part of the solution, you're poart of the problem." It's wrong whether the person raped babies at a hospital, went on a killing spree at the mall on christmas eve, or whether they are in for tax evasion. Yes, it's a deterrant from committing crimes, but that doesn't make it right.
One of my biggest fears is being falsely convicted of a crime, and because of this, I'm afraid of being in proximity to law-breakers because the image sticks in my head: being hauled off to jail and tried for a crime I didn't commit, especially that kind of jail.
Why hasn't this been seriously discussed before? Scenario: guy goes to jail, gets raped by cellmate, complains to officers, officers tell him to fuck off, calls lawyer because these "public servants" failed to do their job in protecting his rights, it goes to court, who knows where it would go from there... I know what my decision would be if I were on that jury.
That's why I was saying not to let me tell you what to do. I was guess I thought you had an everything-else-equal situation, which you clearly do not.
More power to you to be able to take off that much time! I certainly hope that I can do that.
I know someone who got stock options in a company before it went public. He was already doing well, so he decided to go for it. Well his gamble paid off; the stock was worth quite a lot after a few years, and when he got the opportunity to sell 10% of the stock, he jumped at the chance. By the time the dust settled he ended up with a little over $5 million in his bank account and 90% of the original stock still in the market. This was back in the late 90s so I have no idea how much money this guy is worth right now, but I know that he's smart enough to have kept from wasting it. I'm sure he and his immediate family are set for life.
This kind of thing doesn't happen to everyone though, so if you're so highly regarded with this company you might do well to bargain with them for a higher salary than you're getting at whatever job you're at now and less stock options than they're baiting you with. I'm just throwing out ideas, by no means should you let me tell you how to live your life.
International Obfuscated C Code Contest (I think).
This groups releases a challenge each year that the entrants have to solve using the most obfuscated C code possible. They judge tne entries and award prizes to the best of the worst. Previous entries have used the precompiler to do much of the work, eliminated brackets and spaces, hacked the stack, and generally used many other tricks to complete the challenge.
Unfortunately it's really just a list of the entries. I couldn't even get to the challenge description before it caught fire.
I don't know, I enjoy the challenge of hooking up all my peripherals and hiding the wires. I agree that nixing the wires just makes it much nicer-looking and allows you to hide components in unexpected and unobtrusive places, but getting the right desk and doing a little work to make the wires look nice is really satisfying.
No, you are not. I don't like wireless for a few reasons:
1- Price.
3- Batteries.
4- Complexity / overhead. (I guess I'm old fashioned, but I'd rather put more development time into making smaller and more efficient programs rather than just upping the system specs.)
5- Performance/Reliability.
My housemate uses 802.11x for his internet connection, and I use cat5. The layout of the house prevents us from both using cat5, so we're stuck this way. When I turn on the wireless antenna in the router, I get 56k speeds. When I turn it off, I get closer to 10 Mbps, even when he's not running anything but AIM and an email client. I don't really care to figure it out since I'm only going to be living there for another few weeks, but it's very annoying to take such a performance hit because of an imperfect technology. There should be no reason for the dropped packets and bad signal strength to affect my connection so severely.
Well, mine was free, and this article was helful. So na na na na na!
Well all those advertising companies don't have my information, and I don't get bombarded by even more flyers every day trying to sell me things.
Everyone will sell out for a price, I guess that a "free" iPod is a high enough price for a lot of people...
While we're on the topic of comedians' opinions, check this out (links to a webcomic with bad words, if that matters to you).
You'll already recognize this if you read SSDD, but if not, I think that he hits the nail right on the head. Think about why you're voting for your guy when you go vote. Think if your vote is "thrown away" if you live in a swing state and you vote for a 3rd party. Think about what you'll think of how you voted in 10 years. Get informed and get to the polls, ensure that they do everything properly at the polling place and if not, there's a number to call about it! Hope you don't have to use a Diebold machine, and lastly, remember that half the people will be upset no matter who wins the election but life will go on.
If anyone here reads the webcomic S.S.D.D., you'll already recognize the rant. If you haven't, go check it out: http://www.poisonedminds.com/d/20041025.html
It sums it all up perfectly.
Yeah, especially wtih one of these...
I ordered mine yesterday along with a co-worker, and we'll hopefully see them by early next week.
Been there, done that, the pumpkin doesn't stain and washes out rather easily.
If you go and implement this for all the entrances and you really DO want to be cautions about hackers gaining admittance, be careful what kind of RFID you choose. RFID Cloner
If would be easy enough to have the RFID readers ONLY within the building and give the engineers/manag^H^H^H^H^H^H/security/cleaning staff access to a sensitive lab, maybe. That way even if someone does manage to clone the tag while the engineer is in the street, they can't get in the building using just the cloned tag. If someone within the company did this, you probably have other problems anyways.