I don't know, I don't like this at all. It's obviously abuse of TCP/IP, and there's no reason to try to mask what port it's on when SSH is a secure protocol anyway. Also I have my doubts that many OSes TCP/IP stacks can handle so many transient connections, or that it would be implementable at all (cough windows)
We don't run our SSH servers (on publicly available interfaces) on standard ports for the simple reason that it cuts down the number of attack probes by about 1000x. So while I think port knocking or moving ports around frequently may be overkill, there are good reasons to not run services on standard ports if you don't have to.
EVE Online is basically a sandbox PvP MMO. That means that the developers pretty much attempt to stay out of the way of things like in-game scams, theft, malicious destruction of property, griefing and the like.
Instead, they allow you to declare war against the corp that wronged you (or for fun, or as a mercenary). Ore/Wreck thieves can get flagged during their act of theft (meaning your corp can shoot the thief... if you can catch them).
And of course, in low-security or zero-security systems, might makes right because there's no NPC police force that is going to step in and stop aggressive acts.
It's an interesting game. Some of the mechanics are still a little rough and need polish though (some of the "flagging" rules can be manipulated in nasty ways).
It's mostly the size/weight factor in my case. I can't stand the idea of having to move a CRT display any more, unless you have a bunch of young friends who are willing to do all the heavy lifting. Once you place the sucker, you're stuck with its location.
LCD displays? Hell of a lot easier to move around and position.
They're finicky. There's too many formats. Not everyone has the same tape drive (and very few folks even have one in the first place). The drives are expensive and the tapes are no bargain either. And going hand-in-hand with the "nobody has one" is the issue that if your tape drive dies a few years down the road, you may be SOL at getting data back off of it if you picked the wrong brand.
Then there's the whole access time issue and tapes that only last a few times before they start sucking hard.
I despise tape for SOHO. It's too damn expensive and hard to work with. If the drives cost about 1/4 what they do now and the tapes were about 1/3 current prices, it would be worth dealing with.
Yer the odd one then. At my last apartment, I had a stairway bulb that I simply left turned on 24x7. It generally lasted about 5+ years before needing to be replaced. Which is good, because it was a pain to reach.
Most of my other CFLs (I switched back around 1998-2000 for almost all lights) were still running strong when I moved out last fall. The better CFLs can handle more abuse then an incandescent can because of the electronics inside.
If a CFL dies within a year, I'm more likely to wonder about the wiring. Things like floating grounds, ground leads that aren't properly tightened down, etc.
I dunno about where it came from, but growing up in the 70s, it meant someone gives you something then asks for it back. Usually said in a taunting manner to the person who asked for it to be given back.
There are a lot of folks who will re-read books. I fall into that category in that I will regularly go back through my shelf full of fiction. The first time around, I'm usually reading for plot, but the second / third / fourth time through I'm reading it out of enjoyment of the characters and their interactions. Or to take a closer look at how a plot point played out and whether the author was dropping hints earlier in the book.
Some books, I read as frequently as annually. Others only every 2-3 years. Some I haven't read again since I bought them 20-30 years ago.
Try the Chanur series by C. J. Cherryh (apologies for misspellings, but my books are packed away).
Her space battles are chaotic, pretty realistic, and deal with the issue that velocity = power. A ship moving at a fraction of the speed of light can do a lot of damage to a ship that is stuck at dock or that has just undocked.
There's an old saying that is more or less "encryption is easy, secure implementation is bloody impossible".
Basically, the problem boils down to encryption keys and the management thereof. When you're connecting to friend X - how do you *know* that you're encrypting with their key? Maybe not-friend Y snuck his key in and you're actually encrypting stuff that goes through Y's hands and he then turns around and sends it to X. (Which is the Alice -> Eve -> Bob issue, where Eve performs a man-in-the-middle attack on the encryption chain. Eve can then listen to all traffic between Alice and Bob, who are non-the-wiser.)
Which is why GPG/PGP go to great lengths to discuss the issue of trust and signing. And why they have specific rules on how to hold a key-signing party. As well as providing key fingerprints that can be transmitted via another channel (telephone call) to make sure that the key you have is the key you think it is.
There's also the belief that no encryption is better then badly implemented encryption. That way your users don't get a false sense of security.
I never understood this one. Zone transfer merely allows access to the same data you are already publishing to the public. There is nothing an attacker can gain from a zone transfer that he also cannot gain by using a tool to scan your network and reverse-resolve your address.
Could it be used to do a DDoS? Or take out your DNS server due to the load?
(It's been too long since I read all the reasons as to why to disable full zone transfers.)
Exactly, the problem is that 5400rpm drives barely exist now. In addition to quieter, slower and less power also means cooler. I want to build a very quiet media server to house a slew of drives, so if I can avoid loud, hot drives which require a bevy of fans to keep them cool I'm all for it.
5400RPM does not guarantee low heat and noise.
A lot of the newer 7200RPM drives using perpendicular recording are quieter then the old 3.5" 5400RPM drives. Mostly because they use fewer platters (less rotational mass to spin up/down) to achieve the same density.
Laptop drives are typically the best bet when you absolutely need low-power / low-heat / low-noise.
I've played both WoW (recently) and EQ2 (the first year after release).
Overall, WoW is definitely the better game. Where EQ2 was about 7/10 or 8/10, WoW scores at 8/10 to 9/10. There's a lot of things that WoW still does wrong, but there's also a lot of things where WoW is definitely more polished and friendly then EQ2 was. I spent the first two weeks in WoW constantly thinking "this is a nice spin on that idea or that gameplay mechanic".
I still miss the rich graphics of EQ2 - but the EQ2 world at release was a tiny shoebox compared to old Norrath or Azeroth.
There's also some interesting concepts in the gameplay that I hadn't seen before in EQ or EQ2 (or EVE):
- Talent trees that allow you to essentially reclassify your character in later levels without having to roll up an alt. For some classes, it's a dramatic difference for others it's more of a flavor change. It helps turn a limited 6 possible classes into 12 to 18 classes.
- Paladins use seals and judgments. Basically, you cast a 30-60 second buff that you can use, or you can "judge" the mob which will convert that buff into a debuff or damage on the mob. Then you can cast a second buff and use that for the rest of the fight (or judge again for the damage effect). Not to everyone's tastes, but no other class in WoW operates that way.
- Warriors work off of a "reverse mana" or "reverse energy" system. At the start of the fight, they can't use their extra abilities until they deal/take damage (unless they still have some leftover from the previous fight). As they take/deal damage, their rage pool fills up and they can fire off abilities. After the fight, their rage slowly dissipates.
- The rogue class uses "combo points" where firing off certain abilities uses up energy (that refills quickly during battle) and builds points. Once they have a few points on the target, they can fire off an advanced ability that will do additional damage for each point. It's an interesting twist (not one that I care for, so I haven't played a rogue past 10).
- Priests who can solo. Or they can respec using talent points into a shadow priest which is a high-DPS spec.
- Summon stones outside of instances (dungeons). Which allows two players to summon a 3rd person from anywhere (assuming that they meet the level requirements of the stone). That makes setting up a group and collecting everyone together a good bit easier. Or you can use a L20+ warlock and two others to summon a 4th player.
- Travel costs. Gryphon/bat flights cost a few copper to a few silver. And the prices go up based on the destination zone (higher level zones are more expensive) or if the flight is longer. There are also a few free methods of travel, but it helps to spread out the population.
- Quest XP that matters. While I haven't done a detailed examination, in the first 40-50 levels, quest XP can end up as half of your total XP earned. So if you play smart, always chase quests, you can level a lot faster then someone who just grinds out mobs. Plus you gain standing (discounts at merchants, other benefits) from performing quests.
But there are also things that WoW does wrong or not to everyone's tastes (not as much grouping in the outdoor areas).
Thinkpad X61s - 2GB RAM, Core 2 Duo, 160GB HD along with the extended (9 cell?) battery will get 6-7 hours on a single charge. With only a moderately aggressive power saving scheme. The downside is that it's only a 12" XGA screen. On the flip side, it is very lightweight even with the extended battery.
Things like "turning the monitor (back light) off after 2-3 minutes" or only running the display at half brightness go a long way. The Thinkpads have a function key combo that allows you to adjust display brightness, so I'm always turning the brightness down to get more life.
In comparison, my T61 (3GB RAM, Core 2 Duo, two 160GB HDs) with the standard battery only gets around 2.0-2.5 hours of use. But that has a larger 15.4" 1680x1050 display, the second HD, and the smaller battery pack.
The Macbooks are rumored to have better then average battery life, but I haven't personally used them.
I was running SETI@Home on all of my computers for a while until I realized that they use less power when the processors are idling as opposed to processing at full speed.
Yes, the idea of using idle cycles to run programs like SETI@ without it costing you more is a hold-over from the late 90s / early 2000s. Back then, CPUs *didn't* have an idle state - so it was true that it wouldn't cost you more.
Fast forward 5 years or so, CPUs (and GFX cards) now have idle states, power management, etc.
One of the things that killed the replay value for me, is the NPC spawns are endless. No matter how many you kill, they will keep popping until you pass certain areas of the map. This unnatural prompt to move forward, coupled with the lack of being able to fire effectively from behind cover is what turns this into an arcade shooter more than a real world combat shooter.
Oddly (or sadly) enough... one of the original design tenets of CoD (version 1) was that endless NPC spawns were a bad game decision. So they didn't do that in CoD.
Yet when they came out with CoD:2 - they threw all of their "better then MoH:AA" ideas out the window and went back to MoH:AA style gameplay.
I've been sour on the CoD series ever since CoD:2 came out.
Yes, I'm kind of cooling my heels waiting for a CoD:UO type expansion again. Something that allows map makers to have fun but still have combined arms battles.
I tried my hand with Tuchola Forest to match Barbarossa, but I never found the last 200 hours needed in order to polish it up to the same level. I still wish I had finished it, but I also knew that it was about 20-30% too large of a map that needed to be trimmed down. Plus the issue that population #s on the CoD:UO servers were dropping fairly steadily. (Note: I didn't make the Barb map, but I learned an awful lot from it and from talking to the creator of Barb. I just wish I had created Tuchola about 12 months earlier.)
Making tiny infantry-only maps just doesn't suit what I want to design for. So I've shelved my design skills for almost two years now. Not sure what I'll design for next (if ever). It has to be a really good game before I'll consider sitting down and spending 300-500 hours working on a map again.
Start a brand new guy on a new server in WoW and see how long it takes you to get a gold, especially if you're just soloing quests.
If you have access to the AH... you'll have your first gold by level 8-10 by selling herbs / ore / skins. By late-teens, you should have a few gold banked (unless you spend it all on the auction house). I've done this recently (trying out a character on the opposite side from what I normally play).
(I played EVE for about 9 months, and while I still have characters in training... as in two accounts... the game has pretty much lost its luster. I'm not interested in 0.0 politics and the rest of the game is very much grind grind grind for either ISK or standings. Mission running in teams is over-rated - nowhere near as enjoyable as a dungeon crawl in other MMOs. The only teamwork in EVE is "focus fire" or staying out of aggro range.)
I looked into this briefly (on wowwiki). Are daily quests only for very high level players? Will there be new daily quests at the lower levels (under, say, 45)?
Below 45, you'll be hard-pressed to do all of the one time only quests before you level past them and they turn grey. Especially with the large XP boost that quests got.
(So the answer is... probably not, but I didn't play on the PTR.)
If they want to do a crossover issue, they should publish the story in both product lines. Then, maybe if I'm interested in the other characters / storyline, I'll start following the other series.
That being said my AMD 2600+ is still going strong, I tend to buy when performance has increased 3-4x, processors don't seem to be doing that, lower power consumption is nice but I'd prefer 3ghz quad cores, which should be possible with this latest design shrink in the $100-150 price range...
If you count dual-core, we're at the 4x point. The Athlon64 X2 5200+ (or the slightly less expensive 4800 or 4600) will be about as twice as fast as your current CPU when using one core, or 4x faster when using both cores.
While I wouldn't rush to upgrade... dual-core is VERY nice to have. I moved from a laptop CPU (about as fast as a 2600+) w/ 1GB to a Core 2 Duo w/ 3GB and the responsiveness is night/day. And I'm looking forwards to affordable quad core units in about 1-2 years.
I do think the paperless office is arriving. I work at a normal big company and none of our processes are paper any more. They've even decreased the frequency of internal mail deliveries because it was underutilized.
I'd contribute that to a few things:
- The web browser - which makes it easy for certain types of applications to be rolled out quickly
- TCP/IP - Five years ago, a lot of folks still didn't have dial-up. Now it is probably rare that you know someone whose computer does not talk to the internet over TCP/IP
- Larger desktop displays. A 22" 1680x1050 LCD is modestly priced and is an absolute dream size. It's large enough that users can actually see two documents on the screen at the same time. (The previous size, 1440x900 was also a good size in the 19" category.)
But I still print things out to jot notes on. I still have a clipboard and a pad of tablet paper on my desk to write on. So, technology isn't quite there yet. It would take something like electronic paper that I could write on, which would act like an extension of my PC/laptop. Watcom style tablets aren't good enough, because I can't carry them around or see what I'm jotting notes on. Tablet PCs are overkill (I don't want another PC to deal with).
It would need to be around 9x12, maybe 1/2" thick, 200-300 dpi, with the ability to display documents and allow me to take handwritten notes on it. Basically a rudimentary display and smart input device that I could carry around or use as a scratch pad. It will have to use industry standard formats (TIFF?) and allow users to print to it easily and move documents from device to device. Basically, a super-sized Palm III.
In the real world, I think the price point for a 300GB holographic disk is around $2000-$5000 for the reader/writer and $100-$150 for the disks. Otherwise, you may as well buy one of the 200-400GB tape units. Even then, I think the drive needs to get below $1500 and the media needs to drop below $100 per disk before it will be useful (to me).
Or I'll just continue swapping SATA disks... Figure $50 for the SATA tray and $80 for the SATA drive. For a lot more capability but with a much higher weight. But the big advantage with SATA drives in trays is that you're absolutely not locked in to any proprietary format. Any PC in the world that can deal with that filesystem can talk to the hardware.
Removable storage needs to be about 1/2 to 1/4 the cost of hard drives in order to be economical. Tape can get away with 1/2 the cost because it is (somewhat) reusable, but write-once media needs to be under 1/4 the cost.
Notebook drives currently cost as little as about $50:80GB, or $6.50:GB, which is a good size for a mobile device, and almost the largest available.
The 2.5 inch magnetic drives are much more effective on a $/GB basis if you look at the larger 120/160/200 GB drives. And I'm not sure how you came up with $6.50:GB...
80GB for $60 = $0.75/GB
120GB for $70 = $0.58/GB
160GB for $90 = $0.56/GB
200GB for $170 = $0.85/GB
For current solid state drives:
8GB for $155 = $19.37/GB
16GB for $180 = $11.25/GB
32GB for $290 = $9.06/GB
After that it gets really expensive (64GB for $1600-$2000). Although the 32GB drives can be as much as $400-$480.
I'm surprised that the Mini doesn't sell well. I absolutely love my Mini. It makes a great, low-cost, moderate performance (I have a Intel dual-core w/ 2GB RAM) unit that I can use to check things in OS X (which is not my primary OS).
Sure, at times I wish I had a more powerful PowerMac, but the cost for the Mini is quite good. Plus it's small and stays out of the way (I have mine stacked on top of a pair of USB/Firewire drives that I use for expansion/backup).
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I don't know, I don't like this at all. It's obviously abuse of TCP/IP, and there's no reason to try to mask what port it's on when SSH is a secure protocol anyway. Also I have my doubts that many OSes TCP/IP stacks can handle so many transient connections, or that it would be implementable at all (cough windows)
We don't run our SSH servers (on publicly available interfaces) on standard ports for the simple reason that it cuts down the number of attack probes by about 1000x. So while I think port knocking or moving ports around frequently may be overkill, there are good reasons to not run services on standard ports if you don't have to.
EVE Online is basically a sandbox PvP MMO. That means that the developers pretty much attempt to stay out of the way of things like in-game scams, theft, malicious destruction of property, griefing and the like.
Instead, they allow you to declare war against the corp that wronged you (or for fun, or as a mercenary). Ore/Wreck thieves can get flagged during their act of theft (meaning your corp can shoot the thief... if you can catch them).
And of course, in low-security or zero-security systems, might makes right because there's no NPC police force that is going to step in and stop aggressive acts.
It's an interesting game. Some of the mechanics are still a little rough and need polish though (some of the "flagging" rules can be manipulated in nasty ways).
It's mostly the size/weight factor in my case. I can't stand the idea of having to move a CRT display any more, unless you have a bunch of young friends who are willing to do all the heavy lifting. Once you place the sucker, you're stuck with its location.
LCD displays? Hell of a lot easier to move around and position.
What's wrong with tape drives?
They're finicky. There's too many formats. Not everyone has the same tape drive (and very few folks even have one in the first place). The drives are expensive and the tapes are no bargain either. And going hand-in-hand with the "nobody has one" is the issue that if your tape drive dies a few years down the road, you may be SOL at getting data back off of it if you picked the wrong brand.
Then there's the whole access time issue and tapes that only last a few times before they start sucking hard.
I despise tape for SOHO. It's too damn expensive and hard to work with. If the drives cost about 1/4 what they do now and the tapes were about 1/3 current prices, it would be worth dealing with.
Yer the odd one then. At my last apartment, I had a stairway bulb that I simply left turned on 24x7. It generally lasted about 5+ years before needing to be replaced. Which is good, because it was a pain to reach.
Most of my other CFLs (I switched back around 1998-2000 for almost all lights) were still running strong when I moved out last fall. The better CFLs can handle more abuse then an incandescent can because of the electronics inside.
If a CFL dies within a year, I'm more likely to wonder about the wiring. Things like floating grounds, ground leads that aren't properly tightened down, etc.
I dunno about where it came from, but growing up in the 70s, it meant someone gives you something then asks for it back. Usually said in a taunting manner to the person who asked for it to be given back.
There are a lot of folks who will re-read books. I fall into that category in that I will regularly go back through my shelf full of fiction. The first time around, I'm usually reading for plot, but the second / third / fourth time through I'm reading it out of enjoyment of the characters and their interactions. Or to take a closer look at how a plot point played out and whether the author was dropping hints earlier in the book.
Some books, I read as frequently as annually. Others only every 2-3 years. Some I haven't read again since I bought them 20-30 years ago.
Try the Chanur series by C. J. Cherryh (apologies for misspellings, but my books are packed away).
Her space battles are chaotic, pretty realistic, and deal with the issue that velocity = power. A ship moving at a fraction of the speed of light can do a lot of damage to a ship that is stuck at dock or that has just undocked.
There's an old saying that is more or less "encryption is easy, secure implementation is bloody impossible".
Basically, the problem boils down to encryption keys and the management thereof. When you're connecting to friend X - how do you *know* that you're encrypting with their key? Maybe not-friend Y snuck his key in and you're actually encrypting stuff that goes through Y's hands and he then turns around and sends it to X. (Which is the Alice -> Eve -> Bob issue, where Eve performs a man-in-the-middle attack on the encryption chain. Eve can then listen to all traffic between Alice and Bob, who are non-the-wiser.)
Which is why GPG/PGP go to great lengths to discuss the issue of trust and signing. And why they have specific rules on how to hold a key-signing party. As well as providing key fingerprints that can be transmitted via another channel (telephone call) to make sure that the key you have is the key you think it is.
There's also the belief that no encryption is better then badly implemented encryption. That way your users don't get a false sense of security.
I never understood this one. Zone transfer merely allows access to the same data you are already publishing to the public. There is nothing an attacker can gain from a zone transfer that he also cannot gain by using a tool to scan your network and reverse-resolve your address.
Could it be used to do a DDoS? Or take out your DNS server due to the load?
(It's been too long since I read all the reasons as to why to disable full zone transfers.)
Exactly, the problem is that 5400rpm drives barely exist now. In addition to quieter, slower and less power also means cooler. I want to build a very quiet media server to house a slew of drives, so if I can avoid loud, hot drives which require a bevy of fans to keep them cool I'm all for it.
5400RPM does not guarantee low heat and noise.
A lot of the newer 7200RPM drives using perpendicular recording are quieter then the old 3.5" 5400RPM drives. Mostly because they use fewer platters (less rotational mass to spin up/down) to achieve the same density.
Laptop drives are typically the best bet when you absolutely need low-power / low-heat / low-noise.
I've played both WoW (recently) and EQ2 (the first year after release).
Overall, WoW is definitely the better game. Where EQ2 was about 7/10 or 8/10, WoW scores at 8/10 to 9/10. There's a lot of things that WoW still does wrong, but there's also a lot of things where WoW is definitely more polished and friendly then EQ2 was. I spent the first two weeks in WoW constantly thinking "this is a nice spin on that idea or that gameplay mechanic".
I still miss the rich graphics of EQ2 - but the EQ2 world at release was a tiny shoebox compared to old Norrath or Azeroth.
There's also some interesting concepts in the gameplay that I hadn't seen before in EQ or EQ2 (or EVE):
- Talent trees that allow you to essentially reclassify your character in later levels without having to roll up an alt. For some classes, it's a dramatic difference for others it's more of a flavor change. It helps turn a limited 6 possible classes into 12 to 18 classes.
- Paladins use seals and judgments. Basically, you cast a 30-60 second buff that you can use, or you can "judge" the mob which will convert that buff into a debuff or damage on the mob. Then you can cast a second buff and use that for the rest of the fight (or judge again for the damage effect). Not to everyone's tastes, but no other class in WoW operates that way.
- Warriors work off of a "reverse mana" or "reverse energy" system. At the start of the fight, they can't use their extra abilities until they deal/take damage (unless they still have some leftover from the previous fight). As they take/deal damage, their rage pool fills up and they can fire off abilities. After the fight, their rage slowly dissipates.
- The rogue class uses "combo points" where firing off certain abilities uses up energy (that refills quickly during battle) and builds points. Once they have a few points on the target, they can fire off an advanced ability that will do additional damage for each point. It's an interesting twist (not one that I care for, so I haven't played a rogue past 10).
- Priests who can solo. Or they can respec using talent points into a shadow priest which is a high-DPS spec.
- Summon stones outside of instances (dungeons). Which allows two players to summon a 3rd person from anywhere (assuming that they meet the level requirements of the stone). That makes setting up a group and collecting everyone together a good bit easier. Or you can use a L20+ warlock and two others to summon a 4th player.
- Travel costs. Gryphon/bat flights cost a few copper to a few silver. And the prices go up based on the destination zone (higher level zones are more expensive) or if the flight is longer. There are also a few free methods of travel, but it helps to spread out the population.
- Quest XP that matters. While I haven't done a detailed examination, in the first 40-50 levels, quest XP can end up as half of your total XP earned. So if you play smart, always chase quests, you can level a lot faster then someone who just grinds out mobs. Plus you gain standing (discounts at merchants, other benefits) from performing quests.
But there are also things that WoW does wrong or not to everyone's tastes (not as much grouping in the outdoor areas).
Thinkpad X61s - 2GB RAM, Core 2 Duo, 160GB HD along with the extended (9 cell?) battery will get 6-7 hours on a single charge. With only a moderately aggressive power saving scheme. The downside is that it's only a 12" XGA screen. On the flip side, it is very lightweight even with the extended battery.
Things like "turning the monitor (back light) off after 2-3 minutes" or only running the display at half brightness go a long way. The Thinkpads have a function key combo that allows you to adjust display brightness, so I'm always turning the brightness down to get more life.
In comparison, my T61 (3GB RAM, Core 2 Duo, two 160GB HDs) with the standard battery only gets around 2.0-2.5 hours of use. But that has a larger 15.4" 1680x1050 display, the second HD, and the smaller battery pack.
The Macbooks are rumored to have better then average battery life, but I haven't personally used them.
I was running SETI@Home on all of my computers for a while until I realized that they use less power when the processors are idling as opposed to processing at full speed.
Yes, the idea of using idle cycles to run programs like SETI@ without it costing you more is a hold-over from the late 90s / early 2000s. Back then, CPUs *didn't* have an idle state - so it was true that it wouldn't cost you more.
Fast forward 5 years or so, CPUs (and GFX cards) now have idle states, power management, etc.
One of the things that killed the replay value for me, is the NPC spawns are endless. No matter how many you kill, they will keep popping until you pass certain areas of the map. This unnatural prompt to move forward, coupled with the lack of being able to fire effectively from behind cover is what turns this into an arcade shooter more than a real world combat shooter.
Oddly (or sadly) enough... one of the original design tenets of CoD (version 1) was that endless NPC spawns were a bad game decision. So they didn't do that in CoD.
Yet when they came out with CoD:2 - they threw all of their "better then MoH:AA" ideas out the window and went back to MoH:AA style gameplay.
I've been sour on the CoD series ever since CoD:2 came out.
Yes, I'm kind of cooling my heels waiting for a CoD:UO type expansion again. Something that allows map makers to have fun but still have combined arms battles.
I tried my hand with Tuchola Forest to match Barbarossa, but I never found the last 200 hours needed in order to polish it up to the same level. I still wish I had finished it, but I also knew that it was about 20-30% too large of a map that needed to be trimmed down. Plus the issue that population #s on the CoD:UO servers were dropping fairly steadily. (Note: I didn't make the Barb map, but I learned an awful lot from it and from talking to the creator of Barb. I just wish I had created Tuchola about 12 months earlier.)
Making tiny infantry-only maps just doesn't suit what I want to design for. So I've shelved my design skills for almost two years now. Not sure what I'll design for next (if ever). It has to be a really good game before I'll consider sitting down and spending 300-500 hours working on a map again.
Start a brand new guy on a new server in WoW and see how long it takes you to get a gold, especially if you're just soloing quests.
If you have access to the AH... you'll have your first gold by level 8-10 by selling herbs / ore / skins. By late-teens, you should have a few gold banked (unless you spend it all on the auction house). I've done this recently (trying out a character on the opposite side from what I normally play).
(I played EVE for about 9 months, and while I still have characters in training... as in two accounts... the game has pretty much lost its luster. I'm not interested in 0.0 politics and the rest of the game is very much grind grind grind for either ISK or standings. Mission running in teams is over-rated - nowhere near as enjoyable as a dungeon crawl in other MMOs. The only teamwork in EVE is "focus fire" or staying out of aggro range.)
I looked into this briefly (on wowwiki). Are daily quests only for very high level players? Will there be new daily quests at the lower levels (under, say, 45)?
Below 45, you'll be hard-pressed to do all of the one time only quests before you level past them and they turn grey. Especially with the large XP boost that quests got.
(So the answer is... probably not, but I didn't play on the PTR.)
Indeed... the #1 reason why I won't buy comics:
Crossover issues
If they want to do a crossover issue, they should publish the story in both product lines. Then, maybe if I'm interested in the other characters / storyline, I'll start following the other series.
That being said my AMD 2600+ is still going strong, I tend to buy when performance has increased 3-4x, processors don't seem to be doing that, lower power consumption is nice but I'd prefer 3ghz quad cores, which should be possible with this latest design shrink in the $100-150 price range...
If you count dual-core, we're at the 4x point. The Athlon64 X2 5200+ (or the slightly less expensive 4800 or 4600) will be about as twice as fast as your current CPU when using one core, or 4x faster when using both cores.
While I wouldn't rush to upgrade... dual-core is VERY nice to have. I moved from a laptop CPU (about as fast as a 2600+) w/ 1GB to a Core 2 Duo w/ 3GB and the responsiveness is night/day. And I'm looking forwards to affordable quad core units in about 1-2 years.
I do think the paperless office is arriving. I work at a normal big company and none of our processes are paper any more. They've even decreased the frequency of internal mail deliveries because it was underutilized.
I'd contribute that to a few things:
- The web browser - which makes it easy for certain types of applications to be rolled out quickly
- TCP/IP - Five years ago, a lot of folks still didn't have dial-up. Now it is probably rare that you know someone whose computer does not talk to the internet over TCP/IP
- Larger desktop displays. A 22" 1680x1050 LCD is modestly priced and is an absolute dream size. It's large enough that users can actually see two documents on the screen at the same time. (The previous size, 1440x900 was also a good size in the 19" category.)
But I still print things out to jot notes on. I still have a clipboard and a pad of tablet paper on my desk to write on. So, technology isn't quite there yet. It would take something like electronic paper that I could write on, which would act like an extension of my PC/laptop. Watcom style tablets aren't good enough, because I can't carry them around or see what I'm jotting notes on. Tablet PCs are overkill (I don't want another PC to deal with).
It would need to be around 9x12, maybe 1/2" thick, 200-300 dpi, with the ability to display documents and allow me to take handwritten notes on it. Basically a rudimentary display and smart input device that I could carry around or use as a scratch pad. It will have to use industry standard formats (TIFF?) and allow users to print to it easily and move documents from device to device. Basically, a super-sized Palm III.
Definitely not price competitive.
In the real world, I think the price point for a 300GB holographic disk is around $2000-$5000 for the reader/writer and $100-$150 for the disks. Otherwise, you may as well buy one of the 200-400GB tape units. Even then, I think the drive needs to get below $1500 and the media needs to drop below $100 per disk before it will be useful (to me).
Or I'll just continue swapping SATA disks... Figure $50 for the SATA tray and $80 for the SATA drive. For a lot more capability but with a much higher weight. But the big advantage with SATA drives in trays is that you're absolutely not locked in to any proprietary format. Any PC in the world that can deal with that filesystem can talk to the hardware.
Removable storage needs to be about 1/2 to 1/4 the cost of hard drives in order to be economical. Tape can get away with 1/2 the cost because it is (somewhat) reusable, but write-once media needs to be under 1/4 the cost.
Notebook drives currently cost as little as about $50:80GB, or $6.50:GB, which is a good size for a mobile device, and almost the largest available.
The 2.5 inch magnetic drives are much more effective on a $/GB basis if you look at the larger 120/160/200 GB drives. And I'm not sure how you came up with $6.50:GB...
80GB for $60 = $0.75/GB
120GB for $70 = $0.58/GB
160GB for $90 = $0.56/GB
200GB for $170 = $0.85/GB
For current solid state drives:
8GB for $155 = $19.37/GB
16GB for $180 = $11.25/GB
32GB for $290 = $9.06/GB
After that it gets really expensive (64GB for $1600-$2000). Although the 32GB drives can be as much as $400-$480.
TrueCrypt encrypts at the *block* level, not the file level. Whatever the OS tells it to write to a particular block, it writes.
So format the TrueCrypt partition with NTFS and turn on folder compression if you want additional compression.
I'm surprised that the Mini doesn't sell well. I absolutely love my Mini. It makes a great, low-cost, moderate performance (I have a Intel dual-core w/ 2GB RAM) unit that I can use to check things in OS X (which is not my primary OS).
/Firewire drives that I use for expansion/backup).
Sure, at times I wish I had a more powerful PowerMac, but the cost for the Mini is quite good. Plus it's small and stays out of the way (I have mine stacked on top of a pair of USB
Definitely a good unit for testing the waters.