The pre-Deathstar drives were really excellent, I wish I hadn't donated mine as a replacement for friend's dying system.
Also have 6gb drives from Maxtor and WD that were 'inherited' from beat up old desktops at my last job, the WD has some problems being detected in certain setups but both are ok otherwise.
The general impression I get is that newer drives are simply lousy, since mechanical quality isn't something that can easily be shown on a price sheet. I've *never* had a drive smaller than 20GB fail, the only reason they get dismantled for magnets is when they're just too small to be useful.
Plus the actuator magnets in older ones seem to be a fair bit stronger than they are in newer drives.
Simple, you're trying too hard.
If someone's system is so badly hosed that a basic scanner sweep can't remove everything that looks suspicious, reformat the sucker. If your clients are leery of letting you see their secret porn stashes on the hard drive then they can do their own backup.
As it comes back up and they find that their themes and screensavers are gone, you can explain that's what caused the problem in the first place.
Ah, but that's the beauty! Pixar doesn't do sequels. Disney loves nothing more than to cannibalize its own films with nearly slash-fic quality ripoffs.
Yes, a sequel to Incredibles is possible, or even a whole series of them, but in principle it's not something Pixar seems to be interested in. They didn't spare anything in the original so there doesn't NEED to be another movie, they've already put forward their best ideas. So if Disney wants to run off cheap derivatives, it'll only make the Pixar original look that much better.
This raises a distinctly different point... the type of terrorism that everyone keeps squawking about is different than what you find in Ireland/Spain/etc. Those countries have civil problems as the cause, they're being attacked not by faceless foreigners but their own selves/neighbors.
So the big question is, what's worse? Constant threat, or random and high-profile?
At this point, I don't even think we HAVE a terrorism problem, except for the one that causes politicians to patronize us at every opportunity.
But there's still more to DX than just blowing stuff up. Any game with such wonderful intricacies also lend a chance to misbehave and see how far the game understands the diverging consequences.
My favorite cutscene comment in Deus Ex: Paul: You're a real jackass, you know that? (Getting your goodbuddy Paul to say this takes some *severe* behavioral problems) A nice anti-walkthrough is here: http://it-he.org/deus.htm
Now, the immature fun of popping tranquilizers into your co-workers isn't going to last any longer than the fun of blowing things up in the first place. But for games to even be able to comprehend that you're doing a bad thing and still allow you to do it is a big step. Fallout 2 was another great example of a truly open-ended game, even after you've played through it there's still so much to find that replaying it with a different approach can open up all kinds of possibilities you never though of before.
Yep, I've done both. Accidentally turned on a system with a good heatsink, luckily noticed that it was unusually quiet and killed it after about two minutes.
Also tried with no heatsink, I was planning to leave it only long enough for it to post and show the processor speed, but it didn't even bring up the bios logo before burning up.
What really amazes me is how fragile CPUs are, but I've gotten memory so hot it melted its stickers and still worked ok, even with the familiar magic-smoke-smell coming out of it.
Simple solution: crank down the safety mechanism so that it takes a little longer to stop. If you're careless because a little scrape is the worst your bandsaw will do, increase the response time. Now instead of a tiny cut you have a gusher, though you do still have your finger. (probably)
Waaah! I *have* to gain route authority for the 127.0.0.0/8 block! It's MINE!
How stupid... It's like the judge approved them to have a pony, but just because the judge said that they could, it's not going to make one appear right there in the courtroom. Hopefully NAC terminates the connection before the 'customer' figures out their route announcements will probably be ignored.
Ah, but is this a DSL connection? DSL speeds are highly variable and usually aren't hard-capped. Especially when DSL was new and not too oversubscribed, I've known people who paid for 256k and get 700+.
[Only partially pulled out of my ass, I don't know if the DSL communication frequencies shift to get around noise or if ranges are broken into specific channels like a T1.]
But being nonunion doesn't guarantee that you get recognized for anything. Most of the experience I've seen is that the hardest workers are rewarded with more responsibility, not being paid more. Being nonunion means that it's much easier to hit a ceiling where your employer won't pay more for your experience, and they'll certainly put you first in line for layoffs. The job market is so disgusting right now that I'm pretty well convinced that unions should be given another chance.
It's pretty obvious that in good times, unions encourage lazy bastards, I won't argue that. I've been working hard for diminishing returns the past year, no benefits, no job security, and no chance of finding more meaningful work. That's fucked up.
He's not stealing anything unless he's tapped into someone else's WAP without paying, and then reselling that. It doesn't matter if Comcast doesn't want him to, that's a fight between them and their soon-to-be-former customer.
Internet access is not a regulated service like phone or power, the Public Utilities Commission doesn't touch it. Being an ISP doesn't need to fit any particular definition to protect consumers, so it's just another service. It's like running a car wash with your neighbor's hose. (assuming you're paying your neighbor's water bill) Sure, the resources don't completely belong to you, but you're the conduit and there's some sort of added value.
The article's author kind of shot himself in the foot, but the idea is that you're NOT running around the block with a big sandwichboard sign advertising your unsecured network. It's there, it's open, whether anyone taps in or not is irrelevant. Developing any motive at all is bad.
Since a lot of wireless equipment is unsecured by default, you could probably even weasel out of negligence accusations. There are plenty of other ways to be secure, firewall it intelligently so you're not used as a spam hose or turn it off when you aren't using anything so the kiddies don't have a reliable playground.
You didn't hit it very hard, but there's an excellent point in there:
people who have often gone into debt to acquire their educations
I'd love to see the cost of education undercut in this country. Right now, I haven't bothered to go to school because it just seems like a high-risk investment that's likely to return NOTHING after spending $30k and wasing four years. So I'm stuck in a semi-skilled job in constant fear when I could be out getting a serious education and contributing to the intellectual edge we're supposed to have. If it didn't seem like such a huge waste, I wouldn't *care* if I had to go back to school later to completely change tracks.
Obviously you've never been accused of being overqualified, seeing how you missed the point completely. These days I almost feel guilty for taking a schlep job that an unemployed smarty-pants would love to have but can't, they have to settle for minimum wage instead.
I don't know if this trend is going away, but it's obviously a holdover from the boom days when you could go out and get a higher paying job over your lunch break. Paranoia that you may jump ship for a better-paying job is very well deserved these days, but when balanced against the odds of finding any such job, it's just silly.
And yet, for being supposedly empirical it neglects a lot of silly one-offs that could throw out the whole concept.
Was it Asonov doing the recording and the typing? Simple things like hand placement could completely change the acoustics if you're resting a finger on a key and dampening the sound. What effect does this have on real, used keyboards that have varying amounts of wear and/or dirt in them?
Extreme paranoia aside, I LOATHE rubber quietkey trash anyway. I want to know when I fat-finger something and I want to know whether I made a successful keystroke or not. Not sure how much this affects acoustics, but it certainly doesn't work for the drum effect.
Nahhh... BM was tough, but I'm not sure I'd consider it excessively hard, I knew plenty of others who could beat it *if* they had 3 hours to blow on it in one sitting.
The cutoff points I always saw were players who either couldn't learn the patterns of the level 3 boss or couldn't dodge enough to survive level 5. Those two points were the only places I've seen declared "too hard."
Holy water is indeed the *only* weapon needed in Castelvania, all bosses fall before it, except dracula's first form.
The one trick that I never could duplicate effectively was striking something as you get hit. In some obscure timing, it causes you to do 8 damage in a single strike. Thankfully for the game's integrity, it was just too hard to pull off.
Opera was nice, but after version 7 it just seemed to lose the attraction, mostly because they STILL couldn't get java working right.
I use Avant, and it behaves very nicely. Pages are rendered by IE, but has good anti-popup/java/flash/activex/etc controls, and its tabbing is right on par with Opera (BOOO, Mozilla!). Has gestures too, but I don't use them so I don't know how good they are.
Ideally, ISPs shouldn't be blocking spam. The only reason Earthlink etc started doing it is because of the INSANE volumes they get.
ISPs generally know it isn't their place to filter your mail, port traffic or porn habits, so if spam can be wrestled back under control they may be able to remove filtering entirely. That's unlikely, but at least the minute quantities of legit spam should be allowed through in reward for being honest.
This is partly a misleading argument. That coffee-holder you bought ISN'T a DVD player, it's a DVD-ROM drive. The difference being that playback of DVD movies the sanctioned way requires license fees to be paid, which in turn requires regulatory agencies to sniff through your product to make sure you're not going to steal and release their encryption scheme (well, too late now...) or use weak methods of hiding it like Xing did when DeCSS was written.
But- Most DVD-ROMs you buy these days come with bundled software, including among other things a DVD-playback package or a rebate to get one for free. So the manufacturer or software publisher has already paid for licensing, they just don't have a linux-compatible player. That should be the real target, just getting a version out there that can be sold into their bundle of other junk you get with the drive in the first place. Heck, it'd be a small program; have it printed on the DVDs just like the InterAct player usually is.
I have little sympathy for someone so utterly foolish that they don't install any kind of firewall. XP does INCLUDE one, you know.
Even if you magically evade the Nachi and Blaster Fairy, you're just going to get fucked up in a more subtle manner later when other vulnerabilities are uncovered.
Not necessarily. Keep in mind the reason SCO has been ridiculed so long in the first place, its insistance that they shouldn't have to provide evidence of wrongdoing.
To a VC firm that may be a little too laid back in their company research, this could appear as something different. Baystar may not fully realize that SCO's claims are full of shit, but can easily see that their handling of court cases is hopelessly incompetent.
Well, the simple answer is that even though tiny fees would be more readily paid, it'd be awfully hard to come up with Darl's near-million-dollar paycheck.
Not that a company dealing strictly in IP *needs* upper management at all, but mutiny isn't really an option in a corporation.
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The pre-Deathstar drives were really excellent, I wish I hadn't donated mine as a replacement for friend's dying system.
Also have 6gb drives from Maxtor and WD that were 'inherited' from beat up old desktops at my last job, the WD has some problems being detected in certain setups but both are ok otherwise.
The general impression I get is that newer drives are simply lousy, since mechanical quality isn't something that can easily be shown on a price sheet. I've *never* had a drive smaller than 20GB fail, the only reason they get dismantled for magnets is when they're just too small to be useful.
Plus the actuator magnets in older ones seem to be a fair bit stronger than they are in newer drives.
Simple, you're trying too hard. If someone's system is so badly hosed that a basic scanner sweep can't remove everything that looks suspicious, reformat the sucker. If your clients are leery of letting you see their secret porn stashes on the hard drive then they can do their own backup. As it comes back up and they find that their themes and screensavers are gone, you can explain that's what caused the problem in the first place.
Ah, but that's the beauty! Pixar doesn't do sequels. Disney loves nothing more than to cannibalize its own films with nearly slash-fic quality ripoffs. Yes, a sequel to Incredibles is possible, or even a whole series of them, but in principle it's not something Pixar seems to be interested in. They didn't spare anything in the original so there doesn't NEED to be another movie, they've already put forward their best ideas. So if Disney wants to run off cheap derivatives, it'll only make the Pixar original look that much better.
This raises a distinctly different point... the type of terrorism that everyone keeps squawking about is different than what you find in Ireland/Spain/etc. Those countries have civil problems as the cause, they're being attacked not by faceless foreigners but their own selves/neighbors.
So the big question is, what's worse? Constant threat, or random and high-profile?
At this point, I don't even think we HAVE a terrorism problem, except for the one that causes politicians to patronize us at every opportunity.
But there's still more to DX than just blowing stuff up. Any game with such wonderful intricacies also lend a chance to misbehave and see how far the game understands the diverging consequences.
My favorite cutscene comment in Deus Ex:
Paul: You're a real jackass, you know that?
(Getting your goodbuddy Paul to say this takes some *severe* behavioral problems)
A nice anti-walkthrough is here:
http://it-he.org/deus.htm
Now, the immature fun of popping tranquilizers into your co-workers isn't going to last any longer than the fun of blowing things up in the first place. But for games to even be able to comprehend that you're doing a bad thing and still allow you to do it is a big step. Fallout 2 was another great example of a truly open-ended game, even after you've played through it there's still so much to find that replaying it with a different approach can open up all kinds of possibilities you never though of before.
Yep, I've done both. Accidentally turned on a system with a good heatsink, luckily noticed that it was unusually quiet and killed it after about two minutes.
Also tried with no heatsink, I was planning to leave it only long enough for it to post and show the processor speed, but it didn't even bring up the bios logo before burning up.
What really amazes me is how fragile CPUs are, but I've gotten memory so hot it melted its stickers and still worked ok, even with the familiar magic-smoke-smell coming out of it.
Simple solution: crank down the safety mechanism so that it takes a little longer to stop. If you're careless because a little scrape is the worst your bandsaw will do, increase the response time. Now instead of a tiny cut you have a gusher, though you do still have your finger. (probably)
Waaah! I *have* to gain route authority for the 127.0.0.0/8 block! It's MINE!
How stupid... It's like the judge approved them to have a pony, but just because the judge said that they could, it's not going to make one appear right there in the courtroom. Hopefully NAC terminates the connection before the 'customer' figures out their route announcements will probably be ignored.
Ah, but is this a DSL connection? DSL speeds are highly variable and usually aren't hard-capped. Especially when DSL was new and not too oversubscribed, I've known people who paid for 256k and get 700+.
[Only partially pulled out of my ass, I don't know if the DSL communication frequencies shift to get around noise or if ranges are broken into specific channels like a T1.]
But being nonunion doesn't guarantee that you get recognized for anything. Most of the experience I've seen is that the hardest workers are rewarded with more responsibility, not being paid more. Being nonunion means that it's much easier to hit a ceiling where your employer won't pay more for your experience, and they'll certainly put you first in line for layoffs. The job market is so disgusting right now that I'm pretty well convinced that unions should be given another chance.
It's pretty obvious that in good times, unions encourage lazy bastards, I won't argue that. I've been working hard for diminishing returns the past year, no benefits, no job security, and no chance of finding more meaningful work. That's fucked up.
He's not stealing anything unless he's tapped into someone else's WAP without paying, and then reselling that. It doesn't matter if Comcast doesn't want him to, that's a fight between them and their soon-to-be-former customer.
Internet access is not a regulated service like phone or power, the Public Utilities Commission doesn't touch it. Being an ISP doesn't need to fit any particular definition to protect consumers, so it's just another service. It's like running a car wash with your neighbor's hose. (assuming you're paying your neighbor's water bill) Sure, the resources don't completely belong to you, but you're the conduit and there's some sort of added value.
intentionally unsecured wireless network
The article's author kind of shot himself in the foot, but the idea is that you're NOT running around the block with a big sandwichboard sign advertising your unsecured network. It's there, it's open, whether anyone taps in or not is irrelevant. Developing any motive at all is bad.
Since a lot of wireless equipment is unsecured by default, you could probably even weasel out of negligence accusations. There are plenty of other ways to be secure, firewall it intelligently so you're not used as a spam hose or turn it off when you aren't using anything so the kiddies don't have a reliable playground.
You didn't hit it very hard, but there's an excellent point in there:
people who have often gone into debt to acquire their educations
I'd love to see the cost of education undercut in this country. Right now, I haven't bothered to go to school because it just seems like a high-risk investment that's likely to return NOTHING after spending $30k and wasing four years. So I'm stuck in a semi-skilled job in constant fear when I could be out getting a serious education and contributing to the intellectual edge we're supposed to have. If it didn't seem like such a huge waste, I wouldn't *care* if I had to go back to school later to completely change tracks.
Obviously you've never been accused of being overqualified, seeing how you missed the point completely. These days I almost feel guilty for taking a schlep job that an unemployed smarty-pants would love to have but can't, they have to settle for minimum wage instead.
I don't know if this trend is going away, but it's obviously a holdover from the boom days when you could go out and get a higher paying job over your lunch break. Paranoia that you may jump ship for a better-paying job is very well deserved these days, but when balanced against the odds of finding any such job, it's just silly.
And yet, for being supposedly empirical it neglects a lot of silly one-offs that could throw out the whole concept.
Was it Asonov doing the recording and the typing? Simple things like hand placement could completely change the acoustics if you're resting a finger on a key and dampening the sound. What effect does this have on real, used keyboards that have varying amounts of wear and/or dirt in them?
Extreme paranoia aside, I LOATHE rubber quietkey trash anyway. I want to know when I fat-finger something and I want to know whether I made a successful keystroke or not. Not sure how much this affects acoustics, but it certainly doesn't work for the drum effect.
Nahhh... BM was tough, but I'm not sure I'd consider it excessively hard, I knew plenty of others who could beat it *if* they had 3 hours to blow on it in one sitting.
The cutoff points I always saw were players who either couldn't learn the patterns of the level 3 boss or couldn't dodge enough to survive level 5. Those two points were the only places I've seen declared "too hard."
Holy water is indeed the *only* weapon needed in Castelvania, all bosses fall before it, except dracula's first form.
The one trick that I never could duplicate effectively was striking something as you get hit. In some obscure timing, it causes you to do 8 damage in a single strike. Thankfully for the game's integrity, it was just too hard to pull off.
You just say that because you're not very good at it. (And the game is inherently brutal to newbies like Iran)
Opera was nice, but after version 7 it just seemed to lose the attraction, mostly because they STILL couldn't get java working right.
I use Avant, and it behaves very nicely. Pages are rendered by IE, but has good anti-popup/java/flash/activex/etc controls, and its tabbing is right on par with Opera (BOOO, Mozilla!). Has gestures too, but I don't use them so I don't know how good they are.
I propose we take this literally.
Boies: "Objection, you ho--"
Judge: (rolls up sleeves) "All right, I've had enough out of you. C'mere, bitch." *thwack!*
Ideally, ISPs shouldn't be blocking spam. The only reason Earthlink etc started doing it is because of the INSANE volumes they get.
ISPs generally know it isn't their place to filter your mail, port traffic or porn habits, so if spam can be wrestled back under control they may be able to remove filtering entirely. That's unlikely, but at least the minute quantities of legit spam should be allowed through in reward for being honest.
This is partly a misleading argument. That coffee-holder you bought ISN'T a DVD player, it's a DVD-ROM drive. The difference being that playback of DVD movies the sanctioned way requires license fees to be paid, which in turn requires regulatory agencies to sniff through your product to make sure you're not going to steal and release their encryption scheme (well, too late now...) or use weak methods of hiding it like Xing did when DeCSS was written.
But- Most DVD-ROMs you buy these days come with bundled software, including among other things a DVD-playback package or a rebate to get one for free. So the manufacturer or software publisher has already paid for licensing, they just don't have a linux-compatible player. That should be the real target, just getting a version out there that can be sold into their bundle of other junk you get with the drive in the first place. Heck, it'd be a small program; have it printed on the DVDs just like the InterAct player usually is.
I have little sympathy for someone so utterly foolish that they don't install any kind of firewall. XP does INCLUDE one, you know.
Even if you magically evade the Nachi and Blaster Fairy, you're just going to get fucked up in a more subtle manner later when other vulnerabilities are uncovered.
Not necessarily. Keep in mind the reason SCO has been ridiculed so long in the first place, its insistance that they shouldn't have to provide evidence of wrongdoing.
To a VC firm that may be a little too laid back in their company research, this could appear as something different. Baystar may not fully realize that SCO's claims are full of shit, but can easily see that their handling of court cases is hopelessly incompetent.
Well, the simple answer is that even though tiny fees would be more readily paid, it'd be awfully hard to come up with Darl's near-million-dollar paycheck.
Not that a company dealing strictly in IP *needs* upper management at all, but mutiny isn't really an option in a corporation.