I'm currently a comp sci major working in systems/operations. I work with server hardware and software, system administration...that kind of thing. I do a lot with a particular set of applications related to the work my company does that are more specific than a general sysadmin position, but no programming.
My company recently asked a bunch of us to send in updated information to the corporate security department. We were told to fax this and not email it because "the information was too sensitive for email." I think that may be one of the dumbest things I've ever read. I sent mine by FedEx in a sealed envelope.
This isn't gaming related, but it's as severe. At work, we use GuardianEdge Encryption Plus Hard Disk to encrypt the drives of all of our laptops. If it is accidentally installed on a system that doesn't need it, the uninstall is tricky. The software writes an alternate version of the wingina.dll under a different name (the DLL called for user logins), and points the system to use that file instead of the old one. When you uninstall the software, it removes the custom DLL, but it doesn't repoint the configuration. The result is a system that boots, but never displays a login prompt, and provides no way to actually access the system. You have to make sure to manually edit the configuration before you reboot. This is no doubt a bug and may have been fixed in a more recent version, but the software accidentally got installed on about half the desktops in the building and we have a few users uninstall and reboot before we figured out the problem.
Heard this on NPR last night about how it may of had oceans at one time and they may have evaporated due to climate change (caused by solar flairs).
That sparked a debate between me and the other passengers about evolution via traveling to earth from Venus and the thought of doing the same to Mars... Not to be too nitpicky, but I think the term you are looking for here is "panspermia," not "evolution." The origin of life, like you are talking about, is a separate issue from evolution.
I actually liked the demo of GH3 better than GH2. They've made the aforementioned gameplay additions to multiplayer, but they have also cleaned up some things in the single player game that I always hated (e.g., screen no longer shakes when going into star power mode), and they've made some nice informational additions to the interface. Also, the difficulty seems generally harder due to the inherently faster pace of the game, and the set list is phenomenal. All in all, a worthy sequel.
I'm intensely curious about Rock Band, however, I can't see myself buying it. I just don't get together to game with friends often enough to make the whole set worth it.
All you need is an appropriate length of oxygen free copper cable/wire with sufficient shielding and appropriate gauge. All but the lowest of low end OEM cables meet these needs. Beyond this, there is zero difference in cables other than packaging and branding. Any perceived difference is in the listeners head.
I've been a Cingular/AT&T customer for a while, and they have had free mobile to mobile as long as I can remember. If you look at the iPhone plans, the voice plans are identical in content and pricing to non-iPhone plans. Apple really had nothing to do with the pricing of that. The data plan is the only thing special about it. I kept my exact voice plan as before when I upgraded to the iPhone, and just bought the new data plan.
If your complaint is with the monthly pricing plan, it probably has more to do with the provider than Apple, if my AT&T experience is any indication.
I'm a little preturbed that more of a stink wasn't raised that BumbleBee was a Dodge Charger in the movies.
Actually, he was a yet-to-be-release fifth generation Camaro, currently scheduled for the 2009 model year. Prior to that point in the movie, he was a second generation 1970's era Camaro.
Actually, they are. The data has to be modulated to a particular frequency that equates to a television channel, using 64-QAM or 256-QAM modulation on the downstream (to the customer) channel, and QPSK or 16-QAM on the upstream (to the provider) channel. The cable system I used to work for used 64-QAM on 105MHz downstream (a very, very low frequency for a cable modem, equating to channel 97 digital 1 if I remember correctly) and QPSK on 26MHz (pretty typical). Just because the channel is carrying digital data doesn't mean it isn't modulated.
There have been four Hubble Servicing Missions: 1, 2, 3A, and 3B.
It was planned from the beginning that there would be regular missions to replace worn out gyroscopes (they are mechanical and do wear out) and upgrade cameras and equipment. Servicing Mission 1 got a lot of press because they "fixed" the mirror (actually just installed corrective optics), but it was a planned mission and they did much more than that. It was that mission that the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 was installed, which is the camera that has returned some of the most visually stunning images of the project.
All of these missions "fixed" certain things, but they weren't unplanned or unexpected missions. Hubble was designed from the beginning to need these missions. It was especially designed to run parallel with the shuttle project.
It bothers the hell out of me when people always post this response. Computers are great, but sometimes, I just want to play a damn game without having worry about tweaking my resolution and graphics settings to make it run like it should on a small, square monitor. Why bother when for a third of the price of a good gaming PC (which I do also have), I can get an HD console that I can just plug and play?
I quit using it months ago. Every time I had to go to their DNS to do a lookup I didn't have cached, the first lookup would timeout every single time. The second lookup would only work about 50%. Last time I checked, they were just as bad as ever. I've pointed several friends to OpenDNS and they were all amazed at the difference. Charter's customer server is horrendous and the only reason they have a market lead in this area is because they have exclusive service in so many apartments and subdivisions.
I do agree, with a qualification: you don't even see adventure games anymore. Everyone is all about instant gratification, and no one is willing to spend a week trying to figure out a single puzzle. The kinds of things that made those games good are no longer "acceptable" because no one appreciates the effort, only the reward. I'm not completely sure at what point it became a cardinal sin for a game to force you to think, but it happened sometime in the last 10-15 years, and has transformed games, with very few exceptions, into twitch fests. I enjoy a good FPS as much as the next guy, but I like to be mentally challeged sometimes as well.
Re:Don't forget LucasArts
on
Five That Fell
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I agree with the sentiment, even if it doesn't apply to the article. LucasFilm Games (anyone else remember when they were called that?) made some outstanding adventures. I recently paid $70 for a copy of Monkey Island 1&2, and didn't feel ripped off in the least.
Showing my age now, but Sierra made some of the greatest games ever. I genuinely miss the heyday of the adventure game. Granted, recent years have seen some of the best RPG's to ever be produced, but in general, the current style of gaming just can't match the late-80's to early-90's. I would love to see what the great storytellers of that era could do with the current technology.
I previously worked for a municiple cable company in a small town. Most of our system was in the air, but there were a number of the runs outside of the city limits (and therefore no longer on city owned utility poles) that we ran underground to avoid the recurring pole rental costs, and I can attest first hand at the fact that these lines are still prone to damage, just like the lines in the air, even though it is a different type of damage. Digging and lighting are the two main enemies on underground television cable, and I can imagine it being much the same for power.
Our underground mainline was buried 5-6 feet underground, and twice in the year I worked for the company, we had two lighting strikes damage underground cable, which was two more lighting strike incidents than we had on our overhead lines in the same period. The problem is, in both cases, there was no apparent strike point at ground level, but the current penetrated the ground, and melted the insulating foam inside the cable. With no way to tell at ground level where the lighting hit, it took specilaized equipement to track down the fault, and trenchers/backhoes to dig it up and replace the impacted cable.
Cable that had be cut by digging operations, whether by individuals or by companies/contractors were easier to find, but it still required trenchers and multiple technicians to repair. All in all, I never saw the so-called reliablilty of underground utilities to be anymore than a pipe dream, so to speak.
If you want a browser that does this easily, check out Netscape 8.1 at http://browser.netscape.com. You can assign trust settings and layout engines on a site-by-site basis, completely on-the-fly, and the browers remembers your settings and automatically uses them each time to visit.
I like Maxthon's ad handling better. Collapsing the page can do odd things to the formatting of some pages and make them look really weird. Maxthon keeps the formatting the way the page author intended so there's nothing unexpected when it is rendered. Even though that takes up more screen space, I find it typically makes things more readable.
I had that exact problem trying to buy Episode 1 yesterday. My card has never been rejected by any retailer until now and they reject it as an invalid address. I tried every possible variation of my address until they locked me out from using it again. I emailed them and have yet to get a response.
The problem with the 2-to-1 ratio is that it is rooted in the "I have nothing to hide" mentality. This is a dangerous line of thinking that creates a very slippery slope for more an more government intrusion. People think, "So the government knows who I call, big deal," which leads to the monitoring being acceptable, which lets them push a little farther. Eventually, you have the NSA/CIA listening in on random phone calls of average citizens, reading random emails of average citizens (not just those flagged by an Echelon type system), and randomly monitoring other communications. After that becomes acceptable, what happens then? Recording devices on every phone line? Keyloggers required for interenet access?
I realize that scenario is a little far out, but it's the kind of thing that could eventually result from the baby-step relinquishment of liberties that people are accepting in this country, and the intel agencies know it. If they take small steps into private lives of the people, people are more willing to accept them, and eventually, the steps that seem impossibly large now, are just baby steps away from the policies already instituted.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm currently a comp sci major working in systems/operations. I work with server hardware and software, system administration...that kind of thing. I do a lot with a particular set of applications related to the work my company does that are more specific than a general sysadmin position, but no programming.
My company recently asked a bunch of us to send in updated information to the corporate security department. We were told to fax this and not email it because "the information was too sensitive for email." I think that may be one of the dumbest things I've ever read. I sent mine by FedEx in a sealed envelope.
This isn't gaming related, but it's as severe. At work, we use GuardianEdge Encryption Plus Hard Disk to encrypt the drives of all of our laptops. If it is accidentally installed on a system that doesn't need it, the uninstall is tricky. The software writes an alternate version of the wingina.dll under a different name (the DLL called for user logins), and points the system to use that file instead of the old one. When you uninstall the software, it removes the custom DLL, but it doesn't repoint the configuration. The result is a system that boots, but never displays a login prompt, and provides no way to actually access the system. You have to make sure to manually edit the configuration before you reboot. This is no doubt a bug and may have been fixed in a more recent version, but the software accidentally got installed on about half the desktops in the building and we have a few users uninstall and reboot before we figured out the problem.
That sparked a debate between me and the other passengers about evolution via traveling to earth from Venus and the thought of doing the same to Mars... Not to be too nitpicky, but I think the term you are looking for here is "panspermia," not "evolution." The origin of life, like you are talking about, is a separate issue from evolution.
I actually liked the demo of GH3 better than GH2. They've made the aforementioned gameplay additions to multiplayer, but they have also cleaned up some things in the single player game that I always hated (e.g., screen no longer shakes when going into star power mode), and they've made some nice informational additions to the interface. Also, the difficulty seems generally harder due to the inherently faster pace of the game, and the set list is phenomenal. All in all, a worthy sequel. I'm intensely curious about Rock Band, however, I can't see myself buying it. I just don't get together to game with friends often enough to make the whole set worth it.
All you need is an appropriate length of oxygen free copper cable/wire with sufficient shielding and appropriate gauge. All but the lowest of low end OEM cables meet these needs. Beyond this, there is zero difference in cables other than packaging and branding. Any perceived difference is in the listeners head.
If your complaint is with the monthly pricing plan, it probably has more to do with the provider than Apple, if my AT&T experience is any indication.
I'm a little preturbed that more of a stink wasn't raised that BumbleBee was a Dodge Charger in the movies.
Actually, he was a yet-to-be-release fifth generation Camaro, currently scheduled for the 2009 model year. Prior to that point in the movie, he was a second generation 1970's era Camaro.
Actually, they are. The data has to be modulated to a particular frequency that equates to a television channel, using 64-QAM or 256-QAM modulation on the downstream (to the customer) channel, and QPSK or 16-QAM on the upstream (to the provider) channel. The cable system I used to work for used 64-QAM on 105MHz downstream (a very, very low frequency for a cable modem, equating to channel 97 digital 1 if I remember correctly) and QPSK on 26MHz (pretty typical). Just because the channel is carrying digital data doesn't mean it isn't modulated.
There have been four Hubble Servicing Missions: 1, 2, 3A, and 3B.
It was planned from the beginning that there would be regular missions to replace worn out gyroscopes (they are mechanical and do wear out) and upgrade cameras and equipment. Servicing Mission 1 got a lot of press because they "fixed" the mirror (actually just installed corrective optics), but it was a planned mission and they did much more than that. It was that mission that the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 was installed, which is the camera that has returned some of the most visually stunning images of the project.
All of these missions "fixed" certain things, but they weren't unplanned or unexpected missions. Hubble was designed from the beginning to need these missions. It was especially designed to run parallel with the shuttle project.
It bothers the hell out of me when people always post this response. Computers are great, but sometimes, I just want to play a damn game without having worry about tweaking my resolution and graphics settings to make it run like it should on a small, square monitor. Why bother when for a third of the price of a good gaming PC (which I do also have), I can get an HD console that I can just plug and play?
They did
I quit using it months ago. Every time I had to go to their DNS to do a lookup I didn't have cached, the first lookup would timeout every single time. The second lookup would only work about 50%. Last time I checked, they were just as bad as ever. I've pointed several friends to OpenDNS and they were all amazed at the difference. Charter's customer server is horrendous and the only reason they have a market lead in this area is because they have exclusive service in so many apartments and subdivisions.
Sweeps is essentially a week or two that most networks pull out all the stops and try to get new viewers. They conincide with the distribution of the Nielsen rating diaries to smaller television markets that are not normally counted in the daily ratings. Higher viewership in those periods mean the networks can demand higher ad rates, so the marketing for the shows is taken to the extreme.
Well of course, all you ever need to know about ninjas is right here.
I do agree, with a qualification: you don't even see adventure games anymore. Everyone is all about instant gratification, and no one is willing to spend a week trying to figure out a single puzzle. The kinds of things that made those games good are no longer "acceptable" because no one appreciates the effort, only the reward. I'm not completely sure at what point it became a cardinal sin for a game to force you to think, but it happened sometime in the last 10-15 years, and has transformed games, with very few exceptions, into twitch fests. I enjoy a good FPS as much as the next guy, but I like to be mentally challeged sometimes as well.
I agree with the sentiment, even if it doesn't apply to the article. LucasFilm Games (anyone else remember when they were called that?) made some outstanding adventures. I recently paid $70 for a copy of Monkey Island 1&2, and didn't feel ripped off in the least.
Showing my age now, but Sierra made some of the greatest games ever. I genuinely miss the heyday of the adventure game. Granted, recent years have seen some of the best RPG's to ever be produced, but in general, the current style of gaming just can't match the late-80's to early-90's. I would love to see what the great storytellers of that era could do with the current technology.
Wow, that is a lot more than I needed to know about you. Next, you'll say you rolled them into all 36 great holes one at a time.
I previously worked for a municiple cable company in a small town. Most of our system was in the air, but there were a number of the runs outside of the city limits (and therefore no longer on city owned utility poles) that we ran underground to avoid the recurring pole rental costs, and I can attest first hand at the fact that these lines are still prone to damage, just like the lines in the air, even though it is a different type of damage. Digging and lighting are the two main enemies on underground television cable, and I can imagine it being much the same for power.
Our underground mainline was buried 5-6 feet underground, and twice in the year I worked for the company, we had two lighting strikes damage underground cable, which was two more lighting strike incidents than we had on our overhead lines in the same period. The problem is, in both cases, there was no apparent strike point at ground level, but the current penetrated the ground, and melted the insulating foam inside the cable. With no way to tell at ground level where the lighting hit, it took specilaized equipement to track down the fault, and trenchers/backhoes to dig it up and replace the impacted cable.
Cable that had be cut by digging operations, whether by individuals or by companies/contractors were easier to find, but it still required trenchers and multiple technicians to repair. All in all, I never saw the so-called reliablilty of underground utilities to be anymore than a pipe dream, so to speak.
Like Dante said in Clerks: "People see money on the counter and no one around, they think they're being watched."
If you want a browser that does this easily, check out Netscape 8.1 at http://browser.netscape.com. You can assign trust settings and layout engines on a site-by-site basis, completely on-the-fly, and the browers remembers your settings and automatically uses them each time to visit.
I like Maxthon's ad handling better. Collapsing the page can do odd things to the formatting of some pages and make them look really weird. Maxthon keeps the formatting the way the page author intended so there's nothing unexpected when it is rendered. Even though that takes up more screen space, I find it typically makes things more readable.
I had that exact problem trying to buy Episode 1 yesterday. My card has never been rejected by any retailer until now and they reject it as an invalid address. I tried every possible variation of my address until they locked me out from using it again. I emailed them and have yet to get a response.
I realize that scenario is a little far out, but it's the kind of thing that could eventually result from the baby-step relinquishment of liberties that people are accepting in this country, and the intel agencies know it. If they take small steps into private lives of the people, people are more willing to accept them, and eventually, the steps that seem impossibly large now, are just baby steps away from the policies already instituted.