Exactly. First iGoogle, then Reader, two user-friendly, very efficient ways of getting stuff I want to see in front of my beady eyes. Google kills them both, and is constantly begging / pushing me to use Google +, which I have absolutely no wish to use. Both iGoogle and Reader were great examples of things Google did very well. Now they are putting their resources into things that OTHER companies do very well, like Google + and Google Keep.
I have ties to Gmail I need for now, but beyond that I'm not getting involved in Google anything.
This is correct. BTW, by definition, Part 15 of the FCC rules state that consumer electronic devices DO produce interference, and CAN BE interfered with:
"This device complies with Part 15 of the FCC Rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) this device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation."
This is personally very sad to me. When my team and I set up BeyondUnreal back in 2001, FileFront was one of our original two file mirrors (eDome was the other). I remember clearly speaking with the great Mark Molinaro of FileFront, who has always been a huge proponent of the open source community, and who was 100% behind supporting our growing Unreal-powered gaming community. Never once in all that time did FileFront waver in their support of our efforts.
Unfortunately, this is a sign of the times. As the ad revenue streams dry up, it becomes more difficult to run ad-supported businesses. eDome suffered the same fate: there was no money in the file hosting business.
Farewell, FileFront, and thank you for being such a good friend to literally THOUSANDS of online communities just like mine.
My 17" Macbook Pro LED-backlit matte screen is simply excellent at 1920 x 1200. It powers on to full brightness immediately, is plenty bright in every ambient light situation I've had it in, the blacks are "black enough", and it's easy on the eyes to the point where I don't have an issue working on it all day.
That being said, I would *never* buy a laptop with a glossy display, for all the reasons Rob mentions in the article. Just go to any Apple store and be honest with yourself when you look at the displays. In most homes and offices, the reflectiveness of the screen is a MAJOR annoyance. When you're spending $2-3 thousand on a laptop, the words "major annoyance" shouldn't even come into your mind.
She was well-liked and highly-respected, and through her acting, was a part of the fabric of "me." RIP, Majel, and my condolences to her family and friends.
The first GH:WT I purchased for my kids was missing a bass drum pedal. Before returning it to the store, I picked up another one from another store, and it had a bad red button on the guitar (didn't work at all) and the drums didn't work 100% of the time (missed beats). I combined the working portions of both sets to come up with a single 'good' set, and returned the remainder to the first store.
Agreed. There's very little replay value in GoW, and I doubt sincerely we'll see much in GoW 2. Epic started going down a road where eye candy is king way back with UT2003, and has never looked back. They also make a ton of cash off licensing their engine and tools to build games.
What they've forgotten is how to make a fun game with great replay value. The original Unreal, while unpolished, accomplished the former, knocking the gaming world on its ass with incredible immersible gameplay. UT circa 1999 accomplished both, by offering a much less buggy environment plus a much more polished multiplayer. In addition, Epic was very community-focused back then, helping the community create incredible mods to the game like no other game developer I've ever known.
Don't get me wrong: GoW2 will be a hit. It will sell a gazillion copies, and those people who buy it will play it a lot. For a month. Then, like GoW, it will be yet another game that gets set aside while people play Halo or the latest fad game that comes along.
The fact that it may not be released for PC just puts another nail in the coffin of PC gaming. It's so much easier for Epic and other developers to develop for a single hardware platform rather than for the myriad of PC configurations. In the end, nobody will care.
Just chipping in with what I'm having my company do (I'm the Director of IT). We have no Vista machines on our network, we don't support them at home (even for executives), and we are downgrading all new purchases through Dell to XP Pro. We have evaluated Vista extensively, will not be implementing it at all; instead, we'll continue to downgrade.
We have begun implementing some Macs at the company, including one running VMWare Fusion and a copy of Win XP inside to handle a specific catalog application. While not perfect either, the Macs play nicer than Vista, and running XP in a VM is a real pleasure on a loaded Mac Pro.
Our biggest issues with Vista are the same ones than many people have mentioned over and over in here. Since MS is not even owning up to the problems, we're taking matters in our own hands.
If Windows 7 is little more than a modularized Vista, the only thing that may save it is hardware speed and the ability to carve out the exact "Windows" overhead we need to function.
I take my N800 on business trips with me in lieu of a company laptop. It's smaller, has better real-life battery life (seven hours), allows me to check my company email, VPN to my intranet, SSH/Remote Desktop/VNC in to my servers if I need to check/fix anything, provides me with a VoIP alternative to my cell phone (Skype) in the event I'm somewhere with wifi, but crappy cell coverage, and much more. It's a very useful tool.
On the entertainment side, you've got the usual.mp3 storage, the built-in FM radio, and the ability to store movies (I have 16 gb of memory in mine). Oh, and mindless playing of Nethack never hurts when you're stuck in an airport for hours.
This whole iPhone deal is too weird for me in many ways, some of them design-related, some of them evil business overlord related:
- arguably the most technologically-advanced phone in the world doesn't do video recording, nor does it allow you to replace the battery - if you open the package, but find out 31 days later that your phone has failed, AT&T will charge you a 10% restocking fee to accept it back for a replacement - if you have a discounted wireless plan (for example, you work at the post office, which nets you a 25% discount on your entire wireless bill - all phones), and you want to replace the PRIMARY phone on your plan with an iPhone, you lose your discount. - even though YOU activate your OWN phone via iTunes, AT&T is not giving up that $18 activation fee.
Please note that I personally verified the last three items on this list at a largish nearby AT&T store (Lehigh Valley Mall, Whitehall, PA).
My point in all of this is that I wouldn't put ANYTHING past Apple OR AT&T in regards to the iPhone. They are selling a ton of these phones, and as a result, feel they have carte blanche to treat their customers in any way they desire. If Steve Jobs decides this should be the ONE phone in the world for which you cannot replace your own battery, it shall be so. If AT&T decides you will lose a $25-$50/month (or more) discount on your cell phone bill, in ADDITION to charging you a minimum of $20 more per month for an iPhone data plan, your only recourse is to not get the phone. Frankly, they don't care.
Not to worry. Apple has announced they are well into development of "iTime", which will utilize a much cooler, more advanced touch screen interface. No word yet on whether you'll be able to replace the battery yourself...
Just chipping in here in my capacity as IT Director for my company. Vista is banned at my company for several reasons:
1) Incompatibility with many programs and home-grown applications, including our corporate anti-spyware/malware/virus solutions. 2) Cost (OS and hardware upgrades/replacement). 3) Performance (sluggish on all but the newest, fastest machines). 4) Bugs (never buy version 1.0 of anything).
We've tested Vista extensively over the past several months, and find little to nothing desirable about it. We've also banned Office 2007 temporarily, due to the long learning curve related to Microsoft's decision to eliminate drop-down menus and go with the Ribbon, moving things all over the place while they're at it. Upgrading Office from 2003 or Vista will require training (cost), lower productivity (like many companies, we have a lot of non-savvy computer users) and increase our help desk time spent telling people where (now) commonly used commands and features are found.
I find both Vista and Office 2007 utterly devoid of added value for my business, and chuckle at Microsoft for releasing either of them in the condition they are in. We will - no doubt - be one of those companies that clings to XP on the desktop as long as possible. Frankly, in my opinion, Microsoft is working as hard as it can to push my company away from using its products. We already utilize a Linux fileserver, FTP server, Web Server, fax server (Hylafax is amazing...) and firewall. It may well be time, very soon, to seriously investigate moving away from Exchange 2003, utilizing an open source replacement for it, and start migrating desktops to Linux.
It's a big job, but perhaps the end result, along with Microsoft's increasing pomposity, is beginning to justify the effort involved in migrating.
There is some truth in your post. The US will see renewed attacks on polarizing, but non-critical issues such as this one during the march toward our next Presidential election year. It's what our politicians do.
TV violence and sex, video game violence, radio language, smoking in public places, gays in the military, blah blah blah all serve to distract the American public from key issues like the 'war', how we're rapidly losing manufacturing jobs and our middle class, how towns all over this country are turning into ghost towns with no jobs due to outsourcing to Mexico and China, how laws such as the cleverly-named 'No Child Left Behind' have served to turn our schools into focused testing facilities, our teachers into robots and our children into undereducated adults.
No, instead we'll ban words like 'douchebag' and 'scumbag' on over-the-air radio and call it a successful day, because we're 'protecting our children.' Fact of the matter is, our government has been selling out the future for our children for at least the past 25 or so years through policies, regulations and laws that remove many avenues of the 'pursuit of happiness' our constitution guarantees.
The violence this country is apt to see won't be a result of what is shown on TV. It will be the direct result of more and more citizens who cannot effectively feed, shelter and clothe their families or themselves, get medical care and prescription drugs, are prevented from speaking their minds, and can't take it anymore. Honestly, we keep going the way we are, we're going to start seeing more armed militias and religious cults (read: Ruby Ridge) and terrorism by Americans against Americans.
It's a sad and dangerous time for our country, and it's not getting fixed by making our airwaves and video games 'G-Rated.'
You are *not* a good representative of the average person. The average person will (and has) adopt satellite radio just like they did cable TV. Subscriber growth, particularly at Sirius, has been even faster than that at cable TV, which was also hemorrhaging money when it was a 'baby'. No, it's clear - by the numbers - that people are ready and willing to pay for superior programming, with no FCC censorship.
I'm the IT Director for my company here in the northeast US. Our spam percentage over the past year has climbed from about 80% to 91.7% this past month (October 2006). I'd be interested, as a sub-thread here, to have other people with first-hand knowledge about their company spam percentages post a reply here.
I don't know that Sony is concerned with GoW, or if Microsoft is counting on GoW to become the next Halo, but there is something to consider here. The quality of the games Epic has released in the past for consoles has been miserable. Unreal Tournament and Unreal Championship 1 and 2 were horrible products that died quick deaths in the console world. One minor exception was the Sega Dreamcast version of UT, which was actually quite good (ported by Secret Level, of course).
There are two things that play in Epic's favor this time around. First, the enormous marketing capability of Microsoft. Epic has never had a publisher with the capacity to push a game into people's homes as they do now. The second great hope is that, since this game is being designed specifically for the 360, it should be quite optimized. Previous console games were ports from the PC.
In the big scheme of things, Microsoft will be fine with or without a big hit in GoW. The real question I ask myself is how important is GoW to Epic and their future as a game developer? Epic will thrive licensing their engine, but if GoW (and the upcoming UT2007) fail to deliver big numbers, is it time for Epic to hang up the game development and focus in 100% on the engine itself?
Hardly 'karma whoring' here. I simply didn't read every single reply before I threw mine together. First time I've duped anyone here on/. that I'm aware of.
Seriously, though, a more thorough listing of Jani's contributions over the past 6+ years might better show just how much of a loss it is to have him depart the scene (from http://www.zend.com/person.php?handle=sniper:
as a lead developer for Zend Engine II
as a lead developer for TSRM (Thread Safety Resource Management)
by testing and maintaining the build for the PHP core
by writing/maintaining tests for the standard functions in the PHP core
as a lead developer for gd, a core extension
by working as a developer on imap, a core extension
by working as a developer on session, a core extension
by working as a developer on sockets, a core extension
by providing occasional fixes for the testsuite distributed with PHP
by applying maintenance fixes to the underlying libraries in bcmath, pcre and xmlrpc
It always amazes me that the FUD train never seems to get derailed. Much of that I blame squarely on the left-wing nutbag Linux purists (or Open/FreeBSD purists, for that matter) for their crappy documentation holier-than-thou attitudes when it comes to ENGAGING OTHERS and getting them excited about Linux/BSD. Some of it I blame on RedHat's remarkable inability to market their quite excellent RHEL Enterprise Linux. Much of the rest, IMHO, goes to people who suckle on MS's cash-engorged breast....
.... however, I digress. My personal experience here as a Director of IT running HP-UX, RHEL, Slackware and a variety of Windows servers is that Linux (firewall, fileserver, web & ftp servers) run neck and neck with our HP-UX boxes (ERP system) for uptime. My latest Nagios printout shows zero downtime for both this year, and only a.001% difference last year (meaningless).
On the Windows side of things, Win2k3 server performs the best, most outages due to forced reboots from patching/hot fixing. Win2k servers follow closely behind. Both are about.04% behind the Linux and HP-UX boxes for uptime, and much further behind when it comes to the CPU running at 100% for an extended period of time doing whatever Windows servers decide to do overnight (Nagios classified as 'unavailable').
This 'study' is utter dreck. It's flawed from the get-go, and people have to be careful believing what they read. If you are an IT professional, I highly recommend you speak with peers who have some serious experience with Linux before you proceed with any deployment/changeover/rollout. Depending on what your needs are, you might be pleasantly surprised!
Problem is, if you are in a Sarbanes-Oxley environment, you're going to be forced to encrypt your backup media. Beyond that, you don't want unencrypted, unprotected raw.tar files on tapes that could be lost or stolen, exposing people's personal information or corporate 'secrets'. Too much of that happening these days.
To not encrypt tape backups simply because of the VERY off-chance the backup has one bad byte is kind of silly. We verify our backups at the time we take them, we have multiple copies of backups available at any time, and the risk of one bad byte of data (or 100, for that matter) of putting us in an untenable situation is extremely remote.
I stand by data encryption, especially when it is on media that is outside of your physical control, and especially when it involves personal information or corporate 'secrets'. To not do this is bad advice.
My company does a couple of things that I thought I'd share with you. First, we run a multi-terabyte SAMBA fileserver, on which we have both departmental/project shares and every user's 'My Documents' folder. Second, we have a group policy that maps everyone's 'My Documents' folder to the appropriate SAMBA fileserver directory. Finally, my IT policy is communicated to all new and existing company computer users explaining this setup, and the fact that - aside from mail - the only user data backed up is located in those two areas.
We use a product called Storix http://www.storix.com/, which is a very inexpensively priced commercial.tar generating backup software, and we store our fileserver info on a DLT2 carousel tape changer. This software is very easy to use and maintain, and works on a wide variety of Linux/AIX systems. The software allows for backups ranging from incrementals to full bare sheet metal restores, including a boot CD. For a small additional fee, you can ensure your tape data is encrypted. Highly recommended.
An additional point I'd like to make is I'm a big fan of having MORE backup devices, lots of redundancy. Yes, it's more expensive, but if your data is truly mission-critical, consider having a backup device for every key server. The internal DAT tape backup drives on Dell rack servers are inexpensive, and will provide you with this redundancy, as well as the ability to back up multiple servers in parallel (allowing for more frequent backups). If your server is larger than what DAT will handle, paying approximately $5k more for an additional tape carousel is not what I'd consider an inappropriate insurance policy for this type of data.
Finally, your onsite and offsite storage safes need to be fireproof, lockable and combination/key changeable. Ensure that you have at least one recent full backup on and offsite for all your key servers, whether you do incrementals or not.
An aside: for HP-UX users, Ignite and BRU are a great way to go. Should your boot drives/partitions fail, you can boot from tape and be up and running your system in less than a couple hours.
Other than the silly 'you can't replace the battery' issue (really, Apple, let's get with the 21st century here) and the lack of wifi, iPods are wonderful little devices that sync effortlessly and quickly and have an excellent software and hardware interface (the click wheel is clearly one of the best interfaces out there). You have choices ranging from the tiny little Shuffle through the 60 gb video iPod. Battery life has improved significantly from the first-generation units (14 hours for a nano, 20 hours for the 60 gb iPod). There are also hundreds of add-on products designed for them, including some very decent dockable sound systems and FM modulators, which just add to the appeal. Finally, the sheer 'coolness' of the simple physical design remains untouched.
Add to this the slick marketing and the ease of use of the iTunes store, and you have quite the phenomenon. Let's not blame Apple for DRM, btw. The push for DRM is a much more universal problem, and has more to do with the RIAA grasping at straws to prevent us from doing what we did 25 years ago without anyone imposing on us (taping our vinyl albums for use in our tape players) because they don't know how to deal with today's technology.
I look forward to seeing the next generation or two of iPods. Perhaps they'll gain the ability to function as FM receivers and directly record. Maybe we'll get the ability to pop in memory chips. Replaceable batteries, wifi (the iPod as the media center for your entire home... wow!). Whatever they come up with, I'm going to bet that Apple continues to redefine 'cool'.
Billy Was In Error
on
Futurama Returns
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· Score: 2, Informative
Billy just posted that he was in error..... false alarm. (sigh...)
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. First iGoogle, then Reader, two user-friendly, very efficient ways of getting stuff I want to see in front of my beady eyes. Google kills them both, and is constantly begging / pushing me to use Google +, which I have absolutely no wish to use. Both iGoogle and Reader were great examples of things Google did very well. Now they are putting their resources into things that OTHER companies do very well, like Google + and Google Keep.
I have ties to Gmail I need for now, but beyond that I'm not getting involved in Google anything.
In a press conference, Apple (after muttering to themselves "we care about EPEAT approval WHY?") stated simply, "Kneel before Zod!"
I use it every day, no different here than usual, a relatively mediocre 5mbps down, 1mbps up.
This is correct. BTW, by definition, Part 15 of the FCC rules state that consumer electronic devices DO produce interference, and CAN BE interfered with:
"This device complies with Part 15 of the FCC Rules. Operation is subject to the following two conditions: (1) this device may not cause harmful interference, and (2) this device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesired operation."
This is personally very sad to me. When my team and I set up BeyondUnreal back in 2001, FileFront was one of our original two file mirrors (eDome was the other). I remember clearly speaking with the great Mark Molinaro of FileFront, who has always been a huge proponent of the open source community, and who was 100% behind supporting our growing Unreal-powered gaming community. Never once in all that time did FileFront waver in their support of our efforts.
Unfortunately, this is a sign of the times. As the ad revenue streams dry up, it becomes more difficult to run ad-supported businesses. eDome suffered the same fate: there was no money in the file hosting business.
Farewell, FileFront, and thank you for being such a good friend to literally THOUSANDS of online communities just like mine.
My 17" Macbook Pro LED-backlit matte screen is simply excellent at 1920 x 1200. It powers on to full brightness immediately, is plenty bright in every ambient light situation I've had it in, the blacks are "black enough", and it's easy on the eyes to the point where I don't have an issue working on it all day.
That being said, I would *never* buy a laptop with a glossy display, for all the reasons Rob mentions in the article. Just go to any Apple store and be honest with yourself when you look at the displays. In most homes and offices, the reflectiveness of the screen is a MAJOR annoyance. When you're spending $2-3 thousand on a laptop, the words "major annoyance" shouldn't even come into your mind.
She was well-liked and highly-respected, and through her acting, was a part of the fabric of "me." RIP, Majel, and my condolences to her family and friends.
The first GH:WT I purchased for my kids was missing a bass drum pedal. Before returning it to the store, I picked up another one from another store, and it had a bad red button on the guitar (didn't work at all) and the drums didn't work 100% of the time (missed beats). I combined the working portions of both sets to come up with a single 'good' set, and returned the remainder to the first store.
Agreed. There's very little replay value in GoW, and I doubt sincerely we'll see much in GoW 2. Epic started going down a road where eye candy is king way back with UT2003, and has never looked back. They also make a ton of cash off licensing their engine and tools to build games.
What they've forgotten is how to make a fun game with great replay value. The original Unreal, while unpolished, accomplished the former, knocking the gaming world on its ass with incredible immersible gameplay. UT circa 1999 accomplished both, by offering a much less buggy environment plus a much more polished multiplayer. In addition, Epic was very community-focused back then, helping the community create incredible mods to the game like no other game developer I've ever known.
Don't get me wrong: GoW2 will be a hit. It will sell a gazillion copies, and those people who buy it will play it a lot. For a month. Then, like GoW, it will be yet another game that gets set aside while people play Halo or the latest fad game that comes along.
The fact that it may not be released for PC just puts another nail in the coffin of PC gaming. It's so much easier for Epic and other developers to develop for a single hardware platform rather than for the myriad of PC configurations. In the end, nobody will care.
Just chipping in with what I'm having my company do (I'm the Director of IT). We have no Vista machines on our network, we don't support them at home (even for executives), and we are downgrading all new purchases through Dell to XP Pro. We have evaluated Vista extensively, will not be implementing it at all; instead, we'll continue to downgrade.
We have begun implementing some Macs at the company, including one running VMWare Fusion and a copy of Win XP inside to handle a specific catalog application. While not perfect either, the Macs play nicer than Vista, and running XP in a VM is a real pleasure on a loaded Mac Pro.
Our biggest issues with Vista are the same ones than many people have mentioned over and over in here. Since MS is not even owning up to the problems, we're taking matters in our own hands.
If Windows 7 is little more than a modularized Vista, the only thing that may save it is hardware speed and the ability to carve out the exact "Windows" overhead we need to function.
I take my N800 on business trips with me in lieu of a company laptop. It's smaller, has better real-life battery life (seven hours), allows me to check my company email, VPN to my intranet, SSH/Remote Desktop/VNC in to my servers if I need to check/fix anything, provides me with a VoIP alternative to my cell phone (Skype) in the event I'm somewhere with wifi, but crappy cell coverage, and much more. It's a very useful tool.
.mp3 storage, the built-in FM radio, and the ability to store movies (I have 16 gb of memory in mine). Oh, and mindless playing of Nethack never hurts when you're stuck in an airport for hours.
On the entertainment side, you've got the usual
This whole iPhone deal is too weird for me in many ways, some of them design-related, some of them evil business overlord related:
- arguably the most technologically-advanced phone in the world doesn't do video recording, nor does it allow you to replace the battery
- if you open the package, but find out 31 days later that your phone has failed, AT&T will charge you a 10% restocking fee to accept it back for a replacement
- if you have a discounted wireless plan (for example, you work at the post office, which nets you a 25% discount on your entire wireless bill - all phones), and you want to replace the PRIMARY phone on your plan with an iPhone, you lose your discount.
- even though YOU activate your OWN phone via iTunes, AT&T is not giving up that $18 activation fee.
Please note that I personally verified the last three items on this list at a largish nearby AT&T store (Lehigh Valley Mall, Whitehall, PA).
My point in all of this is that I wouldn't put ANYTHING past Apple OR AT&T in regards to the iPhone. They are selling a ton of these phones, and as a result, feel they have carte blanche to treat their customers in any way they desire. If Steve Jobs decides this should be the ONE phone in the world for which you cannot replace your own battery, it shall be so. If AT&T decides you will lose a $25-$50/month (or more) discount on your cell phone bill, in ADDITION to charging you a minimum of $20 more per month for an iPhone data plan, your only recourse is to not get the phone. Frankly, they don't care.
The whole thing is just too weird...
Not to worry. Apple has announced they are well into development of "iTime", which will utilize a much cooler, more advanced touch screen interface. No word yet on whether you'll be able to replace the battery yourself...
Just chipping in here in my capacity as IT Director for my company. Vista is banned at my company for several reasons:
1) Incompatibility with many programs and home-grown applications, including our corporate anti-spyware/malware/virus solutions.
2) Cost (OS and hardware upgrades/replacement).
3) Performance (sluggish on all but the newest, fastest machines).
4) Bugs (never buy version 1.0 of anything).
We've tested Vista extensively over the past several months, and find little to nothing desirable about it. We've also banned Office 2007 temporarily, due to the long learning curve related to Microsoft's decision to eliminate drop-down menus and go with the Ribbon, moving things all over the place while they're at it. Upgrading Office from 2003 or Vista will require training (cost), lower productivity (like many companies, we have a lot of non-savvy computer users) and increase our help desk time spent telling people where (now) commonly used commands and features are found.
I find both Vista and Office 2007 utterly devoid of added value for my business, and chuckle at Microsoft for releasing either of them in the condition they are in. We will - no doubt - be one of those companies that clings to XP on the desktop as long as possible. Frankly, in my opinion, Microsoft is working as hard as it can to push my company away from using its products. We already utilize a Linux fileserver, FTP server, Web Server, fax server (Hylafax is amazing...) and firewall. It may well be time, very soon, to seriously investigate moving away from Exchange 2003, utilizing an open source replacement for it, and start migrating desktops to Linux.
It's a big job, but perhaps the end result, along with Microsoft's increasing pomposity, is beginning to justify the effort involved in migrating.
There is some truth in your post. The US will see renewed attacks on polarizing, but non-critical issues such as this one during the march toward our next Presidential election year. It's what our politicians do.
TV violence and sex, video game violence, radio language, smoking in public places, gays in the military, blah blah blah all serve to distract the American public from key issues like the 'war', how we're rapidly losing manufacturing jobs and our middle class, how towns all over this country are turning into ghost towns with no jobs due to outsourcing to Mexico and China, how laws such as the cleverly-named 'No Child Left Behind' have served to turn our schools into focused testing facilities, our teachers into robots and our children into undereducated adults.
No, instead we'll ban words like 'douchebag' and 'scumbag' on over-the-air radio and call it a successful day, because we're 'protecting our children.' Fact of the matter is, our government has been selling out the future for our children for at least the past 25 or so years through policies, regulations and laws that remove many avenues of the 'pursuit of happiness' our constitution guarantees.
The violence this country is apt to see won't be a result of what is shown on TV. It will be the direct result of more and more citizens who cannot effectively feed, shelter and clothe their families or themselves, get medical care and prescription drugs, are prevented from speaking their minds, and can't take it anymore. Honestly, we keep going the way we are, we're going to start seeing more armed militias and religious cults (read: Ruby Ridge) and terrorism by Americans against Americans.
It's a sad and dangerous time for our country, and it's not getting fixed by making our airwaves and video games 'G-Rated.'
You are *not* a good representative of the average person. The average person will (and has) adopt satellite radio just like they did cable TV. Subscriber growth, particularly at Sirius, has been even faster than that at cable TV, which was also hemorrhaging money when it was a 'baby'. No, it's clear - by the numbers - that people are ready and willing to pay for superior programming, with no FCC censorship.
I'm the IT Director for my company here in the northeast US. Our spam percentage over the past year has climbed from about 80% to 91.7% this past month (October 2006). I'd be interested, as a sub-thread here, to have other people with first-hand knowledge about their company spam percentages post a reply here.
I don't know that Sony is concerned with GoW, or if Microsoft is counting on GoW to become the next Halo, but there is something to consider here. The quality of the games Epic has released in the past for consoles has been miserable. Unreal Tournament and Unreal Championship 1 and 2 were horrible products that died quick deaths in the console world. One minor exception was the Sega Dreamcast version of UT, which was actually quite good (ported by Secret Level, of course).
There are two things that play in Epic's favor this time around. First, the enormous marketing capability of Microsoft. Epic has never had a publisher with the capacity to push a game into people's homes as they do now. The second great hope is that, since this game is being designed specifically for the 360, it should be quite optimized. Previous console games were ports from the PC.
In the big scheme of things, Microsoft will be fine with or without a big hit in GoW. The real question I ask myself is how important is GoW to Epic and their future as a game developer? Epic will thrive licensing their engine, but if GoW (and the upcoming UT2007) fail to deliver big numbers, is it time for Epic to hang up the game development and focus in 100% on the engine itself?
Hardly 'karma whoring' here. I simply didn't read every single reply before I threw mine together. First time I've duped anyone here on /. that I'm aware of.
Nothing to see here, let's move along...
Seriously, though, a more thorough listing of Jani's contributions over the past 6+ years might better show just how much of a loss it is to have him depart the scene (from http://www.zend.com/person.php?handle=sniper:
Whatever the reasons were, major thanks have to go to Jani for all of his work. We would be looking at a different www without his efforts.
On the Windows side of things, Win2k3 server performs the best, most outages due to forced reboots from patching/hot fixing. Win2k servers follow closely behind. Both are about .04% behind the Linux and HP-UX boxes for uptime, and much further behind when it comes to the CPU running at 100% for an extended period of time doing whatever Windows servers decide to do overnight (Nagios classified as 'unavailable').
This 'study' is utter dreck. It's flawed from the get-go, and people have to be careful believing what they read. If you are an IT professional, I highly recommend you speak with peers who have some serious experience with Linux before you proceed with any deployment/changeover/rollout. Depending on what your needs are, you might be pleasantly surprised!
To not encrypt tape backups simply because of the VERY off-chance the backup has one bad byte is kind of silly. We verify our backups at the time we take them, we have multiple copies of backups available at any time, and the risk of one bad byte of data (or 100, for that matter) of putting us in an untenable situation is extremely remote.
I stand by data encryption, especially when it is on media that is outside of your physical control, and especially when it involves personal information or corporate 'secrets'. To not do this is bad advice.
We use a product called Storix http://www.storix.com/, which is a very inexpensively priced commercial .tar generating backup software, and we store our fileserver info on a DLT2 carousel tape changer. This software is very easy to use and maintain, and works on a wide variety of Linux/AIX systems. The software allows for backups ranging from incrementals to full bare sheet metal restores, including a boot CD. For a small additional fee, you can ensure your tape data is encrypted. Highly recommended.
An additional point I'd like to make is I'm a big fan of having MORE backup devices, lots of redundancy. Yes, it's more expensive, but if your data is truly mission-critical, consider having a backup device for every key server. The internal DAT tape backup drives on Dell rack servers are inexpensive, and will provide you with this redundancy, as well as the ability to back up multiple servers in parallel (allowing for more frequent backups). If your server is larger than what DAT will handle, paying approximately $5k more for an additional tape carousel is not what I'd consider an inappropriate insurance policy for this type of data.
Finally, your onsite and offsite storage safes need to be fireproof, lockable and combination/key changeable. Ensure that you have at least one recent full backup on and offsite for all your key servers, whether you do incrementals or not.
An aside: for HP-UX users, Ignite and BRU are a great way to go. Should your boot drives/partitions fail, you can boot from tape and be up and running your system in less than a couple hours.
http://www.sturm.net.nz/website.php?Section=iPod+P rograms&Page=SharePod
Other than the silly 'you can't replace the battery' issue (really, Apple, let's get with the 21st century here) and the lack of wifi, iPods are wonderful little devices that sync effortlessly and quickly and have an excellent software and hardware interface (the click wheel is clearly one of the best interfaces out there). You have choices ranging from the tiny little Shuffle through the 60 gb video iPod. Battery life has improved significantly from the first-generation units (14 hours for a nano, 20 hours for the 60 gb iPod). There are also hundreds of add-on products designed for them, including some very decent dockable sound systems and FM modulators, which just add to the appeal. Finally, the sheer 'coolness' of the simple physical design remains untouched.
Add to this the slick marketing and the ease of use of the iTunes store, and you have quite the phenomenon. Let's not blame Apple for DRM, btw. The push for DRM is a much more universal problem, and has more to do with the RIAA grasping at straws to prevent us from doing what we did 25 years ago without anyone imposing on us (taping our vinyl albums for use in our tape players) because they don't know how to deal with today's technology.
I look forward to seeing the next generation or two of iPods. Perhaps they'll gain the ability to function as FM receivers and directly record. Maybe we'll get the ability to pop in memory chips. Replaceable batteries, wifi (the iPod as the media center for your entire home... wow!). Whatever they come up with, I'm going to bet that Apple continues to redefine 'cool'.
Billy just posted that he was in error..... false alarm. (sigh...)