Google has standalone enterprise-grade search appliances that do not phone home. Perhaps college students are a juicier demographic to be crawling than stuffy old widget factories, but I think many organizations would like a software or appliance solution to save on WAN bandwidth (for internal attachments, for example). Then again, Google Apps eliminates the need to send a copy of an attachment to each recipient so perhaps that's Google's reasoning for keeping email on their end of the cloud.
I'd go as far as to say that the KOTOR series is the best branch of the entire Star Wars tree. It's an awesome universe and KOTOR not only gives you the opportunity to explore it for a good long while, but it is teeming with life and personality and conflict with numerous ways to resolve the problems of many worlds. Star Wars is lucky that KOTOR uses its canon.
Your idea is definitely viable. I prefer the methodology taken by Radiohead and smaller indie artists like DJ Amber from San Francisco. Amber gives many recordings away for free on her website, and gives you the option to buy a cheap CD, to be delivered to your front door. I respect artists who ask for but don't demand money. I blogged about this if you're interested.
You're taking things a little far. Cuban is just being a greedy old fuddy duddy, not a totalitarian warmonger. This old timer is simply confused about what the internet is really for. He thinks that servers should be the only things unicasting bits over the internuts, and that applications that make clients act like servers are somehow filling the narrow tubes with sludge, not unlike the buttery paste clogging his arteries. I can understand how someone who lives in an ivory tower would want to preserve the internet for his fellow economic bobbleheads so that they may dictate whatever they wish to the unwashed masses.
As an amateur musician I disagree with you. I've written about 20 songs over the years and I've always given them away for free. To me, music is nice but not necessary. I write music or DJ when I get home from my real job.
Music is art. Artists should be thrilled that people are interested in enjoying their art. That enjoyment should be enough. A physical piece of art is worth money because the consumer can hold the materials in his hand. A concert is worth money because consumers pay the performers to work for them live and in real time. However, bits may be duplicated infinitely which renders them absolutely valueless.
There was only one fade to black moment in all of hl2 when you teleport out out of the prison back to the lab, and you find out that it actually took you a week to get there.
That wasn't a fade to black moment though. It's justified as a "slow teleport" that seemed instantaneous to the heroes. Really the only gaps in storytelling are between games and episodes.
My suggestion was primarily intended to be cost-effective. The original poster didn't say anything about performance, and RAID5 wouldn't solve the issues you raise about viruses and malware anyway. I suggested RAID 1 (even though I called it RAID 0) because it is cost-effective and more redundant than any single-disk solution which was his point of failure last time. The logic driving the backup solution remains to be seen, but I'm sure freeware is available so that won't cut into the bottom line. A simple batch file or shell script will probably do the trick for him.
I personally don't have that much data that I deem irreplaceable so I simply back up my important files to my web host. I pay about $3/month and I get 100GB of storage. I created a.htaccess file and turned off directory browsing so that only someone using FTP can access the contents easily. This is security through obscurity, I know, but it's pretty darn obscure.
This solution is only palatable if you don't have too much data and you have a decent uprate with your ISP.
By software RAID I mean using a motherboard with a chipset that handles RAID arrays with the help of a software driver, as opposed to using a Promise card or other hardware RAID controller. This puts more stress on the CPU and southbridge but is a very economical solution.
For $500 you could buy a whole PC with a pair of 7200RPM 500GB SATA2 drives. You could configure a mirrored RAID 0 array and back your stuff up over the network. For many dollars fewer you could upgrade your power supply and stick those drives in your current PC, assuming your motherboard supports software RAID.
As teenagers my friends and I were sold tickets to some R-rated Steven Seagal action movie. Before the movie started an usher escorted us out apologetically, stating that we'd been sold the tickets in error. We traded our tickets for Species, rated PG-13, which ended up being as scary as hell and had nudity and much gore. At least we weren't exposed to colourful language.
I think I chose my words poorly. I meant to say that the Source engine doesn't support DirectX 10 natively. In fact, if I understand this correctly, DX10 doesn't introduce any new effects but merely enables more DX9 effects to be used onscreen at one time. DX9 cards and software are perfectly capable of performing any tricks DX10 cards can do.
Another recent Steam survey showed that less than 15% of gamers use Vista. Source, the game engine used to build Half Life 2 and its episodes, scales down to DirectX 8 for lesser video cards. That's where the other 30% resides. Source does not support DirectX 10 effects.
This software already exists! It's a free open source application called Telecrapper 2000. It refers to a text file full of phone numbers deemed "annoying" by the user and checks caller ID when the phone rings. If the caller is on the list the Telecrapper jumps into action, playing WAV files and waiting for the person on the other end to pause before playing the next WAV. After a while Telecrapper resorts to a subset of WAV files and plays them randomly until the caller hangs up.
This cute Flash animation shows the Telecrapper in action. Hilarious stuff!
I wasn't able to submit the Steam survey either for some reason. I'm running Windows XP and I was able to successfully submit these surveys in the past. Maybe one of their servers was having trouble or something.
I like Valve's knack for programming top notch effects for lowest common denominator hardware. For instance, instead of conforming to audio standards like EAX and ASIO they built a custom sound engine that supports and/or emulates the requisite effects. Also, Source Engine games are the only ones that can use both antialiasing and HDR on my GeForce 7950GT - NVidia themselves claimed this to be a limitation of this hardware yet Valve proved them wrong.
If Valve can achieve top-end results with middle-end (is middle an end?) hardware then more power to them!
Re:Tried it, don't like it
on
Miro Turns 1.0
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· Score: 1
I keep Miro running 24/7 and it only seems to transfer data when it's downloading, unlike Joost which makes itself right at home. Also, you're able to choose the default and specific behaviour of channels so that they only download the most recent episode or nothing at all.
However, I know where you're coming from. I tried and uninstalled Miro several times before deciding to stick with it. It takes a perspective shift to appreciate it. Now I honestly love it so much that I decided to take the plunge - my wife and I cancelled our TV cable and upgraded our internet. Now we watch shows that are better suited to our tastes, we watch them whenever we want and can pause and rewind and rewatch them at will, and we see maybe 2 commercials a day instead of 5 every 10 minutes. We also save $50/month and the only show we miss from real TV is Jeopardy.
I was playing Blades of Steel the other day and had a great chuckle during the second intermission where you play a Gradius mini game on the jumbotron.
I got it from Gamersection in Quebec. I placed the order on a Friday and received the part the following Monday (though I'm in Toronto which is quite nearby). I see the price has dropped $4 since I bought it last month!
The R4 comes with a MicroSD USB coupler, a mini CDROM with the firmware (very easy to install, but the web has the new version 1.11), and a nifty little keychain that holds 2 DS games.
All I needed in addition to the R4 was a MicroSD card. I bought a 2GB one for $50.
Slashdot Mirror
Google has standalone enterprise-grade search appliances that do not phone home. Perhaps college students are a juicier demographic to be crawling than stuffy old widget factories, but I think many organizations would like a software or appliance solution to save on WAN bandwidth (for internal attachments, for example). Then again, Google Apps eliminates the need to send a copy of an attachment to each recipient so perhaps that's Google's reasoning for keeping email on their end of the cloud.
I'd go as far as to say that the KOTOR series is the best branch of the entire Star Wars tree. It's an awesome universe and KOTOR not only gives you the opportunity to explore it for a good long while, but it is teeming with life and personality and conflict with numerous ways to resolve the problems of many worlds. Star Wars is lucky that KOTOR uses its canon.
Your idea is definitely viable. I prefer the methodology taken by Radiohead and smaller indie artists like DJ Amber from San Francisco. Amber gives many recordings away for free on her website, and gives you the option to buy a cheap CD, to be delivered to your front door. I respect artists who ask for but don't demand money. I blogged about this if you're interested.
You're taking things a little far. Cuban is just being a greedy old fuddy duddy, not a totalitarian warmonger. This old timer is simply confused about what the internet is really for. He thinks that servers should be the only things unicasting bits over the internuts, and that applications that make clients act like servers are somehow filling the narrow tubes with sludge, not unlike the buttery paste clogging his arteries. I can understand how someone who lives in an ivory tower would want to preserve the internet for his fellow economic bobbleheads so that they may dictate whatever they wish to the unwashed masses.
As an amateur musician I disagree with you. I've written about 20 songs over the years and I've always given them away for free. To me, music is nice but not necessary. I write music or DJ when I get home from my real job.
Music is art. Artists should be thrilled that people are interested in enjoying their art. That enjoyment should be enough. A physical piece of art is worth money because the consumer can hold the materials in his hand. A concert is worth money because consumers pay the performers to work for them live and in real time. However, bits may be duplicated infinitely which renders them absolutely valueless.
No, I mean a RAID controller built onto the motherboard using shared resources on the southbridge. http://www.nvidia.com/object/feature_raid.html
My suggestion was primarily intended to be cost-effective. The original poster didn't say anything about performance, and RAID5 wouldn't solve the issues you raise about viruses and malware anyway. I suggested RAID 1 (even though I called it RAID 0) because it is cost-effective and more redundant than any single-disk solution which was his point of failure last time. The logic driving the backup solution remains to be seen, but I'm sure freeware is available so that won't cut into the bottom line. A simple batch file or shell script will probably do the trick for him.
I personally don't have that much data that I deem irreplaceable so I simply back up my important files to my web host. I pay about $3/month and I get 100GB of storage. I created a .htaccess file and turned off directory browsing so that only someone using FTP can access the contents easily. This is security through obscurity, I know, but it's pretty darn obscure.
This solution is only palatable if you don't have too much data and you have a decent uprate with your ISP.
By software RAID I mean using a motherboard with a chipset that handles RAID arrays with the help of a software driver, as opposed to using a Promise card or other hardware RAID controller. This puts more stress on the CPU and southbridge but is a very economical solution.
And by RAID 0 I mean RAID 1, naturally.
pshh, 1, 0, computers barely know the difference.
For $500 you could buy a whole PC with a pair of 7200RPM 500GB SATA2 drives. You could configure a mirrored RAID 0 array and back your stuff up over the network. For many dollars fewer you could upgrade your power supply and stick those drives in your current PC, assuming your motherboard supports software RAID.
As teenagers my friends and I were sold tickets to some R-rated Steven Seagal action movie. Before the movie started an usher escorted us out apologetically, stating that we'd been sold the tickets in error. We traded our tickets for Species, rated PG-13, which ended up being as scary as hell and had nudity and much gore. At least we weren't exposed to colourful language.
I think I chose my words poorly. I meant to say that the Source engine doesn't support DirectX 10 natively. In fact, if I understand this correctly, DX10 doesn't introduce any new effects but merely enables more DX9 effects to be used onscreen at one time. DX9 cards and software are perfectly capable of performing any tricks DX10 cards can do.
Another recent Steam survey showed that less than 15% of gamers use Vista. Source, the game engine used to build Half Life 2 and its episodes, scales down to DirectX 8 for lesser video cards. That's where the other 30% resides. Source does not support DirectX 10 effects.
This software already exists! It's a free open source application called Telecrapper 2000. It refers to a text file full of phone numbers deemed "annoying" by the user and checks caller ID when the phone rings. If the caller is on the list the Telecrapper jumps into action, playing WAV files and waiting for the person on the other end to pause before playing the next WAV. After a while Telecrapper resorts to a subset of WAV files and plays them randomly until the caller hangs up.
This cute Flash animation shows the Telecrapper in action. Hilarious stuff!
I wasn't able to submit the Steam survey either for some reason. I'm running Windows XP and I was able to successfully submit these surveys in the past. Maybe one of their servers was having trouble or something.
I like Valve's knack for programming top notch effects for lowest common denominator hardware. For instance, instead of conforming to audio standards like EAX and ASIO they built a custom sound engine that supports and/or emulates the requisite effects. Also, Source Engine games are the only ones that can use both antialiasing and HDR on my GeForce 7950GT - NVidia themselves claimed this to be a limitation of this hardware yet Valve proved them wrong.
If Valve can achieve top-end results with middle-end (is middle an end?) hardware then more power to them!
I keep Miro running 24/7 and it only seems to transfer data when it's downloading, unlike Joost which makes itself right at home. Also, you're able to choose the default and specific behaviour of channels so that they only download the most recent episode or nothing at all.
However, I know where you're coming from. I tried and uninstalled Miro several times before deciding to stick with it. It takes a perspective shift to appreciate it. Now I honestly love it so much that I decided to take the plunge - my wife and I cancelled our TV cable and upgraded our internet. Now we watch shows that are better suited to our tastes, we watch them whenever we want and can pause and rewind and rewatch them at will, and we see maybe 2 commercials a day instead of 5 every 10 minutes. We also save $50/month and the only show we miss from real TV is Jeopardy.
I was playing Blades of Steel the other day and had a great chuckle during the second intermission where you play a Gradius mini game on the jumbotron.
Do it!!
You can turn your DS into an FTP server? That's wild! I'm gonna try this out an see if I can get Apache serving a web page!
If it's not too late you might consider getting a bigger memory stick as I'm displeased with the inadequacy of my 2GB card. :)
I haven't checked into MOD players yet but I did find a very attractive MOD tracker called Nitrotracker. It's quite functional though it doesn't support effects yet. You'd do well to check out which has some (but not much) demoscene love for the DS. The "Flower Demo" is pretty attractive.
I got it from Gamersection in Quebec. I placed the order on a Friday and received the part the following Monday (though I'm in Toronto which is quite nearby). I see the price has dropped $4 since I bought it last month!
http://www.gamersection.ca/product_info.php?products_id=372
The R4 comes with a MicroSD USB coupler, a mini CDROM with the firmware (very easy to install, but the web has the new version 1.11), and a nifty little keychain that holds 2 DS games.
All I needed in addition to the R4 was a MicroSD card. I bought a 2GB one for $50.
If it can display white text on a black background it'll be my dream ereader. Thanks for the link.