Interesting... I really wanted to enjoy MOO3 (I loved MOO2 but felt the game got too one-dimensional towards the end due to infinite range on fleets). MOO3 interested me due to using bottlenecks and key systems and the expanded gameplay. (My only contribution to MOO3 was figuring out settings to create odd-shaped and more interesting galaxy formations.)
I'll have to look into that once I finish Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. And the half other dozen projects on my list... Thanks for the info that there are mods and people still working on the game.
I suspect "largest" in this case means: most players packed into a single shard/server.
Everyone in EVE (except for China players) are on the same shard/server. That's attractive because you aren't faced with "play here to find folks you know in real life". It also creates a massive and intricate economy that (mostly) works.
While I enjoy the sandbox of EVE, I wish the missions tied more into a storyline, or the backstory, or that said missions would slowly advance and change over time. Ah well, I'm taking a short break from EVE while I train some long duration skills to play Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to get my "storyline" fix.
If anyone despised WoW's "collect 25 murloc heads... and only 1 murloc out of 20 has a head" quests and considers those "grind", then adding a title for number of murloc kills doesn't turn it into non-grind.
Ugh, this is always a design that drives me crazy. If you want players to have to kill a few hundred of mob X, require them to collect something with a 30-40% or better drop rate off of every mob. That means, typically, worst case, getting that last drop is only going to take 5-15 kills.
Alternately, if you're going to do the collect X rare items (1:25 drop rate or lower), then it needs to be some reasonable number like "3".
Then there's the quests where you have to get a specific drop off of a specific mob that always spawns in the same place. WTF? Unless that area is instanced, you're just asking for trouble. Better to make it so that the drop is only 50% off the key mob, but you have a small (1-5%) chance of getting it off of related mobs in the area.
I still remember spending multiple nights in Lower Guk trying to assist someone with an epic quest (I think it was the Rogue epic). One mob that dropped the item, on a 20-odd minute respawn timer, with low percentage of success, and having to defend your camp against spawn stealers. Took the rogue close to a week of spending hours and hours sitting at the same spot in that dungeon, waiting for the same mob to spawn, then killing it over and over. If it would've dropped off of other mobs in the area, we could've spent that week dungeon crawling and killing everything in the place instead of staring at a single spawn point.
For systems that I access regularly (at least 2 times per week) that need a secure password, I make up a long one and memorize it. I find that I can memorize and track about 6 of those. These passwords are either login passwords or ones that protect my GPG or SSH2 keys. Basically those 6-12 passwords are the keys to my kingdom and the only ones I memorize.
For systems that I don't hit regularly, and don't need access to them from random locations or on a minute's notice while away from my desk - they get protected by my GPG key. I create a text file with a GPG encrypted block inside that contains the password. Easy to backup, printable, faxable, post them around town, etc. As long as I have my GPG keys, I can retrieve those passwords.
Websites? Same deal. I create a random password (different for each site) and have Firefox memorize it (as well as storing it in a GPG protected text file). After all, if I'm locked out of a forum for a day or two until I can get back to my laptop - who cares? I'd be hard-pressed to tell you what my slashdot password is, I'd have to go decrypt that GPG block first.
It also helps to have a good little password generator. Something with around 300k+ words where you can tell it how jumbled up to make things along with length, random symbols, random capitalization and insertion of numbers or letters in the middle. Whatever you use needs to be quickly accessible for times when you need a random password.
Back in the late-80s / early-90s, computer magazines were one of the best ways to keep a pulse on the industry. I used to have 3 years worth of PC Magazines on my shelves so that I could reference their product reviews. Remember, back then, the internet was fledgling and there weren't any central sites to go for to get this information. The closest was CompuServe (and I spent a lot of time there) but PCMag was a very useful tool when a user would come up and ask "which printer should I buy". I could flip open the "printer" issue for the year and bone up on the advantages / disadvantages of inkjet vs thermal vs ribbon vs laser (including estimated cost per page).
PCMag back in those days was at least 1/4" thick, often 1/2" thick if they were reviewing a large product line. Computer Shopper was typically a full inch thick and chock full of hardware ads.
Even back then (in the days of CompuServe, c1993) a lot of us were questioning the usefulness of tech rags. We would discuss news on CANOPUS about 1-3 months ahead of when it would hit the print stands. So by the time that PCMag and the other rags managed to get to the topic, it had already been discussed and we were all moving on to the next topic. The advent of HTTP/HTML and news websites just finished the process.
Oddly enough, I currently receive PCMag. I have no idea who paid for it, whether it's a free copy due to my job title, or a misguided gift form someone. I think I've read around 2 of 12 issues in the past year.
Interesting... I don't use iTunes or an iPod, so I wasn't aware that it was ripping to AAC for the most part.
It will be interesting to see how non-DRM sales from iTunes play out. iTunes is popular enough that it might be able to push AAC more into the mainstream and finally push MP3 out. Or at least gain enough mindshare that device manufacturers start to include AAC.
But if you only have $X to spend on licensing (enough for 2 licenses), which 2 of the 3 formats would you license right now? Most manufacturers seem to be going WMA+MP3 right now. Maybe that'll change over to MP3+AAC (since Microsoft screwed everyone over with the Zune, and with Apple dropping DRM on some AAC files).
Personally, I'm still not convinced that AAC will supplant MP3 anytime soon. Dropping the license costs would hurry the process, but otherwise it will take years for all of the existing MP3 devices to be replaced with devices that do both. (For instance, all of the MP3 CD players being placed into new factory car stereos.)
Recently I went to Frys to try and find a player that supported MPEG-4 audio (under any name, MP4, MPEG-4 Audio, or AAC) and found precisely one non-Apple player that supported it. More importantly, I only found one other player that supported ANYTHING but MP3 and Windows Media.
Probably due to licensing costs for AAC? MP3 licensing costs are a no-brainer, it's the "must have" format. If your player doesn't support MP3, you're dead in the water. Microsoft's format (shrug) I guess it's semi-popular, maybe they got a good price on it from Microsoft.
But where is the business case for supporting AAC (and paying yet more of your profit margin to someone else)? Now, maybe in another year or two AAC might start to supplant MP3, which might cause more manufacturers to pay for the licensing.
One question: how does Subversion handle binary files? And if you have a really big binary, and only one part of it is changed, does it analyze the file before uploading and only send the changes, or does it resend the entire file? (E.g., an MP3 file where you changed an ID3 tag, or a disk image / ISO that's only been slightly modified.)
The good: SVN is very good at storing and transmitting binary files (including only sending deltas over the wire and only storing deltas on the server). It also compresses binary data during transmission and storage in the server repository. Very handy when dealing with large files (such as MSAccess database) where you need to make a minor change, then transmit that over the WAN. It goes very quickly, even for a 300MB file.
The bad: SVN keeps the latest pristine copy of everything that you've versioned on your hard drive. So if you have a 300MB binary file, it will end up in the.svn or _svn sub-folder and eat up another 300MB (maybe less... I forget whether it compresses it). So SVN is very efficient on the server and across the network, but a bit fat on the local disk. (It was a reasonable design decision. But it causes some other issues.)
CoD2 was very pretty... but ultimately a steaming pile for multi-player compared to what CoD:UO was capable of. There were way too many compromises made for sake of making it work on the console which killed gameplay features that were present in previous versions.
We're down to around $600-$800 per month for our pair of T1s in Long Island, NY. (I forget the exact price.) At my office in Pennsylvania, I have a 1536/384 business DSL for around $150/mo.
A business DSL circuit seems to get priority support. I call - they fix. And I regularly abuse my bandwidth on a monthly basis with never an eyebrow raised.
So there are some DSL providers that provide better then 'best effort, when we feel like it' service.
Game publishers want to maximize sales. By only allowing their products to run on DX10, they're cutting their own throats. At least for the next 2-4 years until Vista finally has 80-90% market penetration. They may even be able to exert enough pressure on Microsoft to add DX10 to Windows XP (it's technically feasible if I've heard the rumors correctly - there are already hacks to do so).
I'm pretty sure that I won't be required to upgrade my gaming box to Vista much before mid-late 2008. And I have good odds that I'll be able to push that upgrade off until mid-2009.
(Which is fine, because hopefully the price on the GeForce 8800's will drop enough that I can put a pair in SLI mode without ransoming a princess.)
Windows was a piece of crap, and it is not normal to have to reboot more than a 1-2 times a year. By that point, they are ready to blame everything on Windows, not the PC manufacturer.
That view is old and stale. Windows XP (and 2000) on quality hardware with good drivers does not tend towards crashing. The caveat is, of course, finding good hardware and making sure that it's stable by running burn-in tests (a disk trashing tool, something to exercise the video card, and running Prime95 for a day or two without errors).
My video editing box (Windows XP Pro, pair of Opteron 246 CPUs, 3GB RAM) has been up and running for around 300 hours or so since the last reboot. With at least 150 hours spent with both CPUs at 100%. So that's almost 2 weeks since my last reboot, and that reboot was due to electricians rewiring a panel where I had to turn everything off for a few hours.
My primary laptop (Pentium 4M 1.7GHz 1GB RAM WinXP) goes about 2-3 weeks between reboots. Unless I'm traveling, it's very stable except for being short on RAM. When I travel with it, it likes to bluescreen a lot due to some loose wiring inside (or possibly bad drivers that act up due to not being docked). That issue is probably hardware driven and isn't the fault of the OS. Since the laptop is almost 5 years old and is stable in my docking station, I don't care that much (yet).
Same story for the dozens of other WinXP machines that I administer. It's a moderately capable and stable operating system that does most things well enough. There's a bunch of stuff I wish it did better and if Microsoft would focus on improving it rather then letting marketing drive development it would be better.
(Which is the primary reason that I'm interested in Ubuntu and other desktop-oriented distros. Shops like Microsoft have to make things "better" in order to drive new OS revenue. Marketing drives decisions. Other shops like Apple or those working on Linux desktops can focus on making the user experience truly better. I much prefer development where the user's drive decisions.)
I had the exact same thing happen to me, wife convinced me to have a physical since I hadn't been to the doctor in ~5 years, and then was for rotator cuff surgery. My last physical was 10 years prior for work. Anyway, I was recommended to start taking a multi-vitamin with iron supplement. This has brought my ferritin levels back up and am now allowed to donate again. The only reason I take the supplements is so I can donate, I only wish others took donating so seriously.
That's interesting - maybe things are different in Pennsylvania. Here in PA, as part of the mini-physical, I think they check iron levels before I'm allowed to donate. It's a simple test using a small thin glass/plastic tube a whirly-gig and a quick measurement of the separated out white/red blood. Maybe that isn't an iron test.
Probably the biggest personal advantage of giving blood every 8 weeks is the mini-physical. I find out what my blood pressure is and they typically do a free cholesterol screening once or twice a year. That's useful information to take back to my doctor so we get a broader baseline on whether things are going well/poorly. Especially since I don't always eat as well as I should.
The problem with ECC at the disk level is more of a user interface problem. When a disk starts failing (and the ECC is kicking in), you don't get notified. At least, not until it's too late and the ECC can no longer fix the errors. Attentive users may notice that the disk is having trouble seeking / reading but most users won't.
When you add PAR2 data to a disk, you create a window of time where you can recover the data after the disk shows obvious ECC errors. Now, when the disk throws errors that don't get covered up by the O/S or drive, you have the possibility that you can repair the data and burn a new disk. For archives where you don't want to store 2x the number of disks, PAR2 is a good option.
UDF is not a disk format, it's simply a file system.
Or find the SATA cables with metal clips on the ends.
Or do what inexpensive PC vendors did in the mid-90s... a small bead of glue from a glue gun on the connectors. (The one time I saw this, it had been done to the IDE/Floppy connectors inside the case to keep them from rattling loose.)
Re:Are they better, or just different?
on
eSATA Connectors
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· Score: 1
You ended up with cheap SATA cables (interior).
The better cables come with metal clips on the connectors that help lock them into the socket. They're just not that common and somewhat difficult to obtain. The ones I have came with a set of removable SATA drive trays.
Another interesting thing about Google's model is that, compared to traditional Madison Street advertising companies, most of Google's revenues come from small to medium-sized businesses. They've levelled the playing field when it comes to buying advertising space, allowing a mom-and-pop shop to compete directly with a mega-conglomerate.
No longer true according to a recent BusinessWeek. Large businesses are starting to drive up the costs of advertising with Google, effectively pushing small/medium businesses out of the game again.
Exactly. For the low-end, prebuilts are cheaper... but you get a cheap machine.
I just upgraded my game machine in the past month.
Antec Sonata II case w/ PSU, DVD-drive, (2) hard drives configured in RAID1.
Athlon64 X2 5200+, 2GB DDR2 RAM, Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard
(2) NVIDIA 7900GT PCIe cards in SLI
WinXP Pro
IIRC, the entire kit cost me around $1500, including shipping.
I don't even know if you could buy an equivalent system from Dell.
It has been quite a while since you have been able to piece together a system for cheaper than a prebuilt one.
As always (even in the old days) the answer is: Maybe
Can you build a cheap box for less then a low-end Dell? Most likely not.
Can you build a mid-level system that will run match what Dell (or other prebuilt's) offer for less? Definitely. For us, the cost savings was around $300/machine.
Even better, that mid-level system uses all commodity parts. So when the motherboard dies, you don't have to throw out a proprietary PSU (which Dell used to use) along with a proprietary case. You can get replacement parts from just about anywhere, without spending time on the phone trying to get warranty support. You may even choose to have a few spare parts sitting in the closet for quicker recovery from system downtime.
(By mid-level, I'm talking dual-core, 64bit, 2GB RAM, (2) hard drives in RAID1 with integrated video and an nForce chipset. With a decent case, PSU and DVD-writer.)
Those are mostly the same reasons that I've never developed a comic-book habit. Yet I have dozens of manga volumes.
- No overreaching plot arch in most of them. The ones that do have long-range plots are the ones that I enjoy. For example: "Year of the Bastard" has an excellent arch and conclusion. Possibly Spawn - except for the crossover issue addiction.
- Too many damn crossover issues where you have to buy 3 other comics in order to follow the story. That ticks me off and makes me simply stop following the issues. Back in the glory days, you might have small crossovers about once every 20-30 issues. Now it seems like every other issue involves some sort of crossover.
- The end is never the end. Plot points should be final. Most manga artists in Japan do this as they lay out a 2/3/4/5 year arc that has a definite conclusion. When you're done, you're done. Then find another story to tell.
Unfortunately, they neglected to tell you that the jumper diagram indicated what it should look like if you held the drive upside down.
Seagate IDE drives make this mistake too (just bought a 500GB IDE). The label is on backwards so that you have to mentally rotate the diagram to figure out which pins to jumper. Fortunately, they show you the power-connector on the diagram, so you know which pin is which.
(IBM/Hitachi and Maxtor always seemed to get it right though. And with SATA, it's no longer an issue.)
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting... I really wanted to enjoy MOO3 (I loved MOO2 but felt the game got too one-dimensional towards the end due to infinite range on fleets). MOO3 interested me due to using bottlenecks and key systems and the expanded gameplay. (My only contribution to MOO3 was figuring out settings to create odd-shaped and more interesting galaxy formations.)
I'll have to look into that once I finish Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. And the half other dozen projects on my list... Thanks for the info that there are mods and people still working on the game.
I suspect "largest" in this case means: most players packed into a single shard/server.
Everyone in EVE (except for China players) are on the same shard/server. That's attractive because you aren't faced with "play here to find folks you know in real life". It also creates a massive and intricate economy that (mostly) works.
While I enjoy the sandbox of EVE, I wish the missions tied more into a storyline, or the backstory, or that said missions would slowly advance and change over time. Ah well, I'm taking a short break from EVE while I train some long duration skills to play Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to get my "storyline" fix.
If anyone despised WoW's "collect 25 murloc heads... and only 1 murloc out of 20 has a head" quests and considers those "grind", then adding a title for number of murloc kills doesn't turn it into non-grind.
Ugh, this is always a design that drives me crazy. If you want players to have to kill a few hundred of mob X, require them to collect something with a 30-40% or better drop rate off of every mob. That means, typically, worst case, getting that last drop is only going to take 5-15 kills.
Alternately, if you're going to do the collect X rare items (1:25 drop rate or lower), then it needs to be some reasonable number like "3".
Then there's the quests where you have to get a specific drop off of a specific mob that always spawns in the same place. WTF? Unless that area is instanced, you're just asking for trouble. Better to make it so that the drop is only 50% off the key mob, but you have a small (1-5%) chance of getting it off of related mobs in the area.
I still remember spending multiple nights in Lower Guk trying to assist someone with an epic quest (I think it was the Rogue epic). One mob that dropped the item, on a 20-odd minute respawn timer, with low percentage of success, and having to defend your camp against spawn stealers. Took the rogue close to a week of spending hours and hours sitting at the same spot in that dungeon, waiting for the same mob to spawn, then killing it over and over. If it would've dropped off of other mobs in the area, we could've spent that week dungeon crawling and killing everything in the place instead of staring at a single spawn point.
I do something similar.
For systems that I access regularly (at least 2 times per week) that need a secure password, I make up a long one and memorize it. I find that I can memorize and track about 6 of those. These passwords are either login passwords or ones that protect my GPG or SSH2 keys. Basically those 6-12 passwords are the keys to my kingdom and the only ones I memorize.
For systems that I don't hit regularly, and don't need access to them from random locations or on a minute's notice while away from my desk - they get protected by my GPG key. I create a text file with a GPG encrypted block inside that contains the password. Easy to backup, printable, faxable, post them around town, etc. As long as I have my GPG keys, I can retrieve those passwords.
Websites? Same deal. I create a random password (different for each site) and have Firefox memorize it (as well as storing it in a GPG protected text file). After all, if I'm locked out of a forum for a day or two until I can get back to my laptop - who cares? I'd be hard-pressed to tell you what my slashdot password is, I'd have to go decrypt that GPG block first.
It also helps to have a good little password generator. Something with around 300k+ words where you can tell it how jumbled up to make things along with length, random symbols, random capitalization and insertion of numbers or letters in the middle. Whatever you use needs to be quickly accessible for times when you need a random password.
Is it really an "open" secret? They went to some lengths to protect it from discovery.
Part of me wonders whether they shouldn't be using trade secret laws to protect this hex value.
Who reads computer magazines, anyway?
Nowadays? Not as many as in yesteryear.
Back in the late-80s / early-90s, computer magazines were one of the best ways to keep a pulse on the industry. I used to have 3 years worth of PC Magazines on my shelves so that I could reference their product reviews. Remember, back then, the internet was fledgling and there weren't any central sites to go for to get this information. The closest was CompuServe (and I spent a lot of time there) but PCMag was a very useful tool when a user would come up and ask "which printer should I buy". I could flip open the "printer" issue for the year and bone up on the advantages / disadvantages of inkjet vs thermal vs ribbon vs laser (including estimated cost per page).
PCMag back in those days was at least 1/4" thick, often 1/2" thick if they were reviewing a large product line. Computer Shopper was typically a full inch thick and chock full of hardware ads.
Even back then (in the days of CompuServe, c1993) a lot of us were questioning the usefulness of tech rags. We would discuss news on CANOPUS about 1-3 months ahead of when it would hit the print stands. So by the time that PCMag and the other rags managed to get to the topic, it had already been discussed and we were all moving on to the next topic. The advent of HTTP/HTML and news websites just finished the process.
Oddly enough, I currently receive PCMag. I have no idea who paid for it, whether it's a free copy due to my job title, or a misguided gift form someone. I think I've read around 2 of 12 issues in the past year.
OTOH, an annoyed ex-employee could make life pretty miserable for you by tipping off the software police. Even if you are a smaller fish.
Stephenson would actually be a good writer... if he had a competent editor. He has some very good story concepts, but his writing lacks in execution.
Interesting... I don't use iTunes or an iPod, so I wasn't aware that it was ripping to AAC for the most part.
It will be interesting to see how non-DRM sales from iTunes play out. iTunes is popular enough that it might be able to push AAC more into the mainstream and finally push MP3 out. Or at least gain enough mindshare that device manufacturers start to include AAC.
But if you only have $X to spend on licensing (enough for 2 licenses), which 2 of the 3 formats would you license right now? Most manufacturers seem to be going WMA+MP3 right now. Maybe that'll change over to MP3+AAC (since Microsoft screwed everyone over with the Zune, and with Apple dropping DRM on some AAC files).
Personally, I'm still not convinced that AAC will supplant MP3 anytime soon. Dropping the license costs would hurry the process, but otherwise it will take years for all of the existing MP3 devices to be replaced with devices that do both. (For instance, all of the MP3 CD players being placed into new factory car stereos.)
Recently I went to Frys to try and find a player that supported MPEG-4 audio (under any name, MP4, MPEG-4 Audio, or AAC) and found precisely one non-Apple player that supported it. More importantly, I only found one other player that supported ANYTHING but MP3 and Windows Media.
Probably due to licensing costs for AAC? MP3 licensing costs are a no-brainer, it's the "must have" format. If your player doesn't support MP3, you're dead in the water. Microsoft's format (shrug) I guess it's semi-popular, maybe they got a good price on it from Microsoft.
But where is the business case for supporting AAC (and paying yet more of your profit margin to someone else)? Now, maybe in another year or two AAC might start to supplant MP3, which might cause more manufacturers to pay for the licensing.
One question: how does Subversion handle binary files? And if you have a really big binary, and only one part of it is changed, does it analyze the file before uploading and only send the changes, or does it resend the entire file? (E.g., an MP3 file where you changed an ID3 tag, or a disk image / ISO that's only been slightly modified.)
.svn or _svn sub-folder and eat up another 300MB (maybe less... I forget whether it compresses it). So SVN is very efficient on the server and across the network, but a bit fat on the local disk. (It was a reasonable design decision. But it causes some other issues.)
The good: SVN is very good at storing and transmitting binary files (including only sending deltas over the wire and only storing deltas on the server). It also compresses binary data during transmission and storage in the server repository. Very handy when dealing with large files (such as MSAccess database) where you need to make a minor change, then transmit that over the WAN. It goes very quickly, even for a 300MB file.
The bad: SVN keeps the latest pristine copy of everything that you've versioned on your hard drive. So if you have a 300MB binary file, it will end up in the
CoD2 was very pretty... but ultimately a steaming pile for multi-player compared to what CoD:UO was capable of. There were way too many compromises made for sake of making it work on the console which killed gameplay features that were present in previous versions.
CoD3 - not interested
Cod4 - not interested
We're down to around $600-$800 per month for our pair of T1s in Long Island, NY. (I forget the exact price.) At my office in Pennsylvania, I have a 1536/384 business DSL for around $150/mo.
A business DSL circuit seems to get priority support. I call - they fix. And I regularly abuse my bandwidth on a monthly basis with never an eyebrow raised.
So there are some DSL providers that provide better then 'best effort, when we feel like it' service.
DirectX 10.0: Windows Vista exclusive.
It's going to be an interesting fight.
Game publishers want to maximize sales. By only allowing their products to run on DX10, they're cutting their own throats. At least for the next 2-4 years until Vista finally has 80-90% market penetration. They may even be able to exert enough pressure on Microsoft to add DX10 to Windows XP (it's technically feasible if I've heard the rumors correctly - there are already hacks to do so).
I'm pretty sure that I won't be required to upgrade my gaming box to Vista much before mid-late 2008. And I have good odds that I'll be able to push that upgrade off until mid-2009.
(Which is fine, because hopefully the price on the GeForce 8800's will drop enough that I can put a pair in SLI mode without ransoming a princess.)
Windows was a piece of crap, and it is not normal to have to reboot more than a 1-2 times a year. By that point, they are ready to blame everything on Windows, not the PC manufacturer.
That view is old and stale. Windows XP (and 2000) on quality hardware with good drivers does not tend towards crashing. The caveat is, of course, finding good hardware and making sure that it's stable by running burn-in tests (a disk trashing tool, something to exercise the video card, and running Prime95 for a day or two without errors).
My video editing box (Windows XP Pro, pair of Opteron 246 CPUs, 3GB RAM) has been up and running for around 300 hours or so since the last reboot. With at least 150 hours spent with both CPUs at 100%. So that's almost 2 weeks since my last reboot, and that reboot was due to electricians rewiring a panel where I had to turn everything off for a few hours.
My primary laptop (Pentium 4M 1.7GHz 1GB RAM WinXP) goes about 2-3 weeks between reboots. Unless I'm traveling, it's very stable except for being short on RAM. When I travel with it, it likes to bluescreen a lot due to some loose wiring inside (or possibly bad drivers that act up due to not being docked). That issue is probably hardware driven and isn't the fault of the OS. Since the laptop is almost 5 years old and is stable in my docking station, I don't care that much (yet).
Same story for the dozens of other WinXP machines that I administer. It's a moderately capable and stable operating system that does most things well enough. There's a bunch of stuff I wish it did better and if Microsoft would focus on improving it rather then letting marketing drive development it would be better.
(Which is the primary reason that I'm interested in Ubuntu and other desktop-oriented distros. Shops like Microsoft have to make things "better" in order to drive new OS revenue. Marketing drives decisions. Other shops like Apple or those working on Linux desktops can focus on making the user experience truly better. I much prefer development where the user's drive decisions.)
I had the exact same thing happen to me, wife convinced me to have a physical since I hadn't been to the doctor in ~5 years, and then was for rotator cuff surgery. My last physical was 10 years prior for work. Anyway, I was recommended to start taking a multi-vitamin with iron supplement. This has brought my ferritin levels back up and am now allowed to donate again. The only reason I take the supplements is so I can donate, I only wish others took donating so seriously.
That's interesting - maybe things are different in Pennsylvania. Here in PA, as part of the mini-physical, I think they check iron levels before I'm allowed to donate. It's a simple test using a small thin glass/plastic tube a whirly-gig and a quick measurement of the separated out white/red blood. Maybe that isn't an iron test.
Probably the biggest personal advantage of giving blood every 8 weeks is the mini-physical. I find out what my blood pressure is and they typically do a free cholesterol screening once or twice a year. That's useful information to take back to my doctor so we get a broader baseline on whether things are going well/poorly. Especially since I don't always eat as well as I should.
Yes, all(?) optical media has ECC already.
The problem with ECC at the disk level is more of a user interface problem. When a disk starts failing (and the ECC is kicking in), you don't get notified. At least, not until it's too late and the ECC can no longer fix the errors. Attentive users may notice that the disk is having trouble seeking / reading but most users won't.
When you add PAR2 data to a disk, you create a window of time where you can recover the data after the disk shows obvious ECC errors. Now, when the disk throws errors that don't get covered up by the O/S or drive, you have the possibility that you can repair the data and burn a new disk. For archives where you don't want to store 2x the number of disks, PAR2 is a good option.
UDF is not a disk format, it's simply a file system.
Or find the SATA cables with metal clips on the ends.
Or do what inexpensive PC vendors did in the mid-90s... a small bead of glue from a glue gun on the connectors. (The one time I saw this, it had been done to the IDE/Floppy connectors inside the case to keep them from rattling loose.)
You ended up with cheap SATA cables (interior).
The better cables come with metal clips on the connectors that help lock them into the socket. They're just not that common and somewhat difficult to obtain. The ones I have came with a set of removable SATA drive trays.
Another interesting thing about Google's model is that, compared to traditional Madison Street advertising companies, most of Google's revenues come from small to medium-sized businesses. They've levelled the playing field when it comes to buying advertising space, allowing a mom-and-pop shop to compete directly with a mega-conglomerate.
No longer true according to a recent BusinessWeek. Large businesses are starting to drive up the costs of advertising with Google, effectively pushing small/medium businesses out of the game again.
Exactly. For the low-end, prebuilts are cheaper... but you get a cheap machine.
I just upgraded my game machine in the past month.
Antec Sonata II case w/ PSU, DVD-drive, (2) hard drives configured in RAID1.
Athlon64 X2 5200+, 2GB DDR2 RAM, Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard
(2) NVIDIA 7900GT PCIe cards in SLI
WinXP Pro
IIRC, the entire kit cost me around $1500, including shipping.
I don't even know if you could buy an equivalent system from Dell.
It has been quite a while since you have been able to piece together a system for cheaper than a prebuilt one.
As always (even in the old days) the answer is: Maybe
Can you build a cheap box for less then a low-end Dell? Most likely not.
Can you build a mid-level system that will run match what Dell (or other prebuilt's) offer for less? Definitely. For us, the cost savings was around $300/machine.
Even better, that mid-level system uses all commodity parts. So when the motherboard dies, you don't have to throw out a proprietary PSU (which Dell used to use) along with a proprietary case. You can get replacement parts from just about anywhere, without spending time on the phone trying to get warranty support. You may even choose to have a few spare parts sitting in the closet for quicker recovery from system downtime.
(By mid-level, I'm talking dual-core, 64bit, 2GB RAM, (2) hard drives in RAID1 with integrated video and an nForce chipset. With a decent case, PSU and DVD-writer.)
Those are mostly the same reasons that I've never developed a comic-book habit. Yet I have dozens of manga volumes.
- No overreaching plot arch in most of them. The ones that do have long-range plots are the ones that I enjoy. For example: "Year of the Bastard" has an excellent arch and conclusion. Possibly Spawn - except for the crossover issue addiction.
- Too many damn crossover issues where you have to buy 3 other comics in order to follow the story. That ticks me off and makes me simply stop following the issues. Back in the glory days, you might have small crossovers about once every 20-30 issues. Now it seems like every other issue involves some sort of crossover.
- The end is never the end. Plot points should be final. Most manga artists in Japan do this as they lay out a 2/3/4/5 year arc that has a definite conclusion. When you're done, you're done. Then find another story to tell.
Unfortunately, they neglected to tell you that the jumper diagram indicated what it should look like if you held the drive upside down.
Seagate IDE drives make this mistake too (just bought a 500GB IDE). The label is on backwards so that you have to mentally rotate the diagram to figure out which pins to jumper. Fortunately, they show you the power-connector on the diagram, so you know which pin is which.
(IBM/Hitachi and Maxtor always seemed to get it right though. And with SATA, it's no longer an issue.)
Even with brand-new parts you can beat Dell's price.
Price out a dual-core 2GB system with RAID1 of 200GB+. Include Office 2003 Pro and WinXP Pro.
Our build price was around $1100, Dell was around $1300-$1400.
Dell mostly holds the price lead in the low-end parts. But we prefer to build systems that are 5-10 year systems.