The Apple IIe was my first real computer, and one on which I first learned to program in basic and turtle (anyone remember that one). And the games were fun back then too; I clearly remember playing 'Goonies' and 'Conan' on that system. Then Apple abandoned that system for the MAC which could not run any software from the Apple II series and I quickly became a PC enthusiast due to being pissed off by Apple. Shortly after that I used the OS/2 operating system to run my BBS and my Windows software at the same time. Ahh the memories:)
I liked my old Apple II. Then one day apple was all about MAC and those of us who already spent a lot of money and time on the Apple II were left behind with no upgrade path, as though we were nothing more than garbage. That is why I have been a PC user ever since.
the next stop is monitoring software measuring every second that you are actually inputting.
I can just see it now...
Payroll dept. can I help you?
Hi, I have a problem with my recent pay stub. It shows that I only got paid for 5.341 hours yesterday. I was here for more than 8 hours excluding lunch, please pay me for the missing 2.659 hours.
Well sir, in your resume you stated that you could type 30 words per minute. Yesterday you typed 9614 words, therefore we calculated that you only worked 5.341 hours. Good bye.
How the hell does it take anyone 15 minutes to boot up their computer.
Anti Virus software (such as the bloated Symantec and Norton products) examining every single file that is accessed when a user's 1GB+ roaming profile is synchronized across a network that is already clogged to begin with is just one of many ways to cause this effect.
...if you word the question correctly and explain how it can help development I think you could get considerably more than 1% of users to accept.
Also, when choosing the wording carefully when asking the user for data collection permission, make it have "yes, I want to allow this" as the default choice button. After all, most users don't pay much attention and just click on 'next..next..yes..yes..next' when installing software anyways.
Where was this when I was in high school?
on
Explosives Camp
·
· Score: 1
High school was a long time ago for me, so I don't think I'd fit in on this one. So where's the course for the 30 year olds who just want to blow stuff up and not go to jail for it? I'd love to 'play' with all sorts of different types of explosives. Why do the kids get to have all the fun?
Me, I don't buy many CDs these days because I don't know what's on them. All the song names and CD labels look the same to me. I know I like something when I hear it on the radio or such. Then I try to remember the band name or song name while I'm driving and often forget. So when I go to a music store and see the thousands of options and I don't even know exactly what category the music I heard was in, then it becomes REALLY hard to find it. And when I do find it it's usually on a CD with a half dozen songs who's names don't mean anything to me and if I've heard them before I can't remember. So I choose not to spend $15 to $20 on a CD that I think is only worth $5 when I only half remember liking 1 song as long as I've remembered the name right.
On the other hand, I do prefer the sound quality of CD when compared to MP3 or radio play. And I do end up with things I like but didn't know about.
But overall, the quality of both the music and the sound recording just isn't very good any more. So I don't buy very much music these days, and keep listening to the many available radio stations and internet streams hoping to find something good (and remember it).
I bought a Wii. I took it to my friend's house and showed it to his 6 year old son. I handed him a Wii remote and started the 'Baseball' game in Wii sports. Immediately, and without being told to do so, he put on the wrist strap, and even tightened it. Then he said "what do I do", to which I replied "Throw the ball". It was amazing to watch a brief moment of thought cross his face followed by his arm coming back and then watching him go through all the physical motion of throwing the ball. But, this 6 year old kid who has never before seen or used the Wii, did NOT LET GO of the controller. This average child was smart enough to figure out that it was only a video game and that the controller was not something that should actually be thrown!
Now, if this child can use common sense then why not these "adults" who seem to be having a problem playing with this toy? After all, these aren't Lawn Darts we're talking about here.
I only hope Nintendo counter-sues the greedy lawyers. Maybe they can claim slander or libel against these lawyers.
Talk about stupidity. How the hell can these reps not know the difference between dollars and cents, especially with the caller providing so many different examples. But, when he was talking to the last supposedly qualified supervisor he had an opportunity to drive his point home, but he missed it. At about the 18:19 time mark in the call recording, she starts talking about using the calculator, but fails to recognize the difference between dollars and cents (again). However, at about the 18:58 time mark in the recording he asks her a 'what if' question using 1 cent, at which point she says something like "so 1 cent, that would be.001 on the calculator". Here's where he should have said something like "Why did you just change 1 into.001 ?" to point out the fact that a conversion is required to change cents into dollars. But, unfortunately, he missed the opportunity.
Back in the early 90's I had a Commodore Vic 20 computer with a few games on it. To play some of those games I also had a simple 2-button, 2-axis joystick. I didn't like it so I took it apart to see how it worked. Then I stripped out the wiring and re-built the joystick into a high-density Styrofoam block which I hand cut and shaped so that it's cross-section was shaped similar to that of an airplane wing. Then I replaced the joystick switches with mercury tilt switches like those you find in your average home thermostat. The end result was a very easy to hold and use, tilt sensitive game controller. Want to go left, just tilt it to the left. 1 button under each thumb, and a whole lot of fun that I used for years to play all my games on that machine. I think it's still in a box in my parents basement somewhere. Oh, and I was about 10 years old at the time.
O.K. so they're sold out and Nintendo says more are coming. Great. But I don't want to spend the next few weeks driving around from store to store looking for one. I'd rather just go to Nintendo's website and order one directly and wait until it is available and ships to me without any hassle. But no, there's no way that I can see to order directly from Nintendo. Instead, a consumer MUST use a local retail outlet. Unfortunately, none of the outlets I visited are taking any orders. If they're out of stock, that's it. No other option. This sucks. Why cant they do some kind of 'pay now and we'll send it to you when it's here' ordering process.
Don't all of today's hard disk drives have a drive password option that is physically part of the hard drive's firmware? And don't most of today's portable computers have a BIOS option to enable this hard drive password? And isn't it impossible to reset this password without knowing the original, even if the drive is physically moved to another computer?
Now this is certainly not data encryption, but it seems like a much easier method of securly protecting the hard drive in a portable computer. And it doesn't rely on any software to be installed, or any additional resources to be used during disk reads or writes. And it's damn near impossible to crack the hard drive's firmware password for the average (or even above average) computer thief.
It seems to me that this problem of "what if the notebook is stolen" already has a solution in place that simply need to be enabled by those who want the extra protection.
Cisco manufacture most of the routers and other infrastructure elements which are required for a service provider (Like AT&T, etc.) to be able to make money. Cisco obviously wants the lion's share of this lucrative infrastructure market. To suggest they may take legal action against a provider who would be a potentially lucrative client is simply a foolish notion. If they forcefully stop the service providers from providing specific services, then they won't be able to sell them infrastructure equipment capable of supporting the service.
To put it simply, Cisco would loose customer's and would loose money if they pursued this unlikely course of legal action.
Our website is maintained internally, with no option enabled for accessing any maintenance options from outside our local LAN (for a bit of added security). All of our LAN IP address range is intentionally excluded from our statistics tracking. So these stats should be a legitimate representation of public visits to our (very) small company website. It may be important to note that our entire site contains little more than information about our company and our services. We do not do ANY commerce via the website. So it's not surprising that there are not very many daily visits. Oh, and the statistics package is configured not to include repeat hits from the same IP address during an active session. So it's not really tracking hits, but unique visitors.
I work for a small computer company which mainly deals with people who simply use whatever the default happens to be. In today's computers that means Internet Explorer. So I thought I'd look at the stats from our company website for the month of September and I was somewhat surprised to find the following:
I service computers for a living. I've done so for more than 10 years. Over the past few years, I've observed a vast increase in unrecoverable hard drive failure rates, and an even larger increase of malware which negatively affects the system beyond reasonable repair. In these situations it is often much faster (and cheaper for the client) for me to re-install the customer's Windows. I'd guess that more than 80% of these re-installs involve an OEM release of Windows, where the product license key is on a sticker physically and permanently attached to the computer's case. One which is quite obviously either a legitimate license or an extremely well made (and unlikely) counterfit. Now, about half of all re-installs (which require product re-activation) fail the product activaiton (even before I can install the WGA spyware). This requires a phone call to Microsoft's product activation line. Here, if someone asks me a question or the other phone line rings or I hickup, Microsoft's non-human system will often make me start all over again repeating a boring string of numbers. After this, I get informed that the product key can not be validated (Which is the reason I called in the first place) and put on hold again until I finally get a human (if not English) voice. Then I'm asked to repeat the first part of the boring string of numbers before I'm questioned like a murder suspect about why I want to activate Windows. After all this, I am usually provided the clearance code to activate Windows. Total time for this process per client computer is approximately 20 minutes. Repeat 4 or 5 times each day, 5 days a week and Microsoft has managed to waste a very large quantity of my billable time. However, after jumping through these hoops, WGA did not bother these clients (yet).
I have found that the most effective way to handle any client is to fully adress the situation at hand, and not just the technical issues (or percieved issues). All aspects of the situation must be examined with care. Be calm. Listen to everything the client tells you (and do not interrupt him/her) then repeat the situation back to the customer to make sure that you both have the same understanding of the situation. Also document everything. Be thorough. Record all indications of trouble, either stated by the customer or your own conjecture. Record all actions taken by you and your customer. Then you can start to get to the root of the problem.
If the client believes that you understand the situation and are really trying to resolve the situation (or find an acceptable workaroud) then he/she is much more likely to be happy with your company and more willing to pay your fees. If, however, the client is simply unwielding, beligerent, rude, or unacommodating then it may be time to end your business relationship and focus on other clients.
There are many games which don't need a story. Tetris, Checkers, and so on. But there are many games for which a story helps make it memorable.
Anyone remember "The 7th Guest" or "The 11th Hour"? These were clue based games where each clue you found or each puzzle you solved revealed a little more of the story and helped to refresh the player's desire to continue. And for me, made them unforgettable, clasic games.
Then there was "Grim Fandango". A major departure from the rest of the gaming industry at the time, with a unique approach to an older style of gameplay. The graphics weren't that good, and the gameplay had a bit of occasional awquardness, but the story (and the humor) kept me going back for more. Another great gaming memory that would not be if not for a great story holding it all together.
And more recently, "Hitman: Blood Money". Arguably one of the best of the 'Hitman' series of games. Here's a game where the story has always been somewhat minimal, yet still very important in the developement of the main character. In this newest incarnation, the story gets molded by your style of play and is presented in very interesting newspaper articles between levels of the game. A very good use of a minimal storyline.
How about "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas". Sure this is a great game with a wide-open style of play, but would it really be the same without a story to help compell the flow of the game. I loved the way the story kept me going in this wide-open game.
Now we're not talking about pulitzer prize calibler novels here, but game stories do share a common thread with those in books and movies. The story, however it is presented, provides the character developement, mystery, twists, and even much of the environmental ambiance which feed the player's interest in the game.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the "turtle" you are referring to is the LOGO programming language...
Yes, that's the one. It's been so long since I last used it that it's hard to remember.
The Apple IIe was my first real computer, and one on which I first learned to program in basic and turtle (anyone remember that one). And the games were fun back then too; I clearly remember playing 'Goonies' and 'Conan' on that system. Then Apple abandoned that system for the MAC which could not run any software from the Apple II series and I quickly became a PC enthusiast due to being pissed off by Apple. Shortly after that I used the OS/2 operating system to run my BBS and my Windows software at the same time. Ahh the memories :)
I liked my old Apple II. Then one day apple was all about MAC and those of us who already spent a lot of money and time on the Apple II were left behind with no upgrade path, as though we were nothing more than garbage. That is why I have been a PC user ever since.
What's next, outsource the drive-through window person overseas?
the next stop is monitoring software measuring every second that you are actually inputting.
I can just see it now...
Payroll dept. can I help you?
Hi, I have a problem with my recent pay stub. It shows that I only got paid for 5.341 hours yesterday. I was here for more than 8 hours excluding lunch, please pay me for the missing 2.659 hours.
Well sir, in your resume you stated that you could type 30 words per minute. Yesterday you typed 9614 words, therefore we calculated that you only worked 5.341 hours. Good bye.
How the hell does it take anyone 15 minutes to boot up their computer.
Anti Virus software (such as the bloated Symantec and Norton products) examining every single file that is accessed when a user's 1GB+ roaming profile is synchronized across a network that is already clogged to begin with is just one of many ways to cause this effect.
Hey, what do you mean? Doesn't anybody broadcast on C-band satellite anymore? Damn things change fast. :)
...if you word the question correctly and explain how it can help development I think you could get considerably more than 1% of users to accept.
Also, when choosing the wording carefully when asking the user for data collection permission, make it have "yes, I want to allow this" as the default choice button. After all, most users don't pay much attention and just click on 'next..next..yes..yes..next' when installing software anyways.
High school was a long time ago for me, so I don't think I'd fit in on this one. So where's the course for the 30 year olds who just want to blow stuff up and not go to jail for it? I'd love to 'play' with all sorts of different types of explosives. Why do the kids get to have all the fun?
Me, I don't buy many CDs these days because I don't know what's on them. All the song names and CD labels look the same to me. I know I like something when I hear it on the radio or such. Then I try to remember the band name or song name while I'm driving and often forget. So when I go to a music store and see the thousands of options and I don't even know exactly what category the music I heard was in, then it becomes REALLY hard to find it. And when I do find it it's usually on a CD with a half dozen songs who's names don't mean anything to me and if I've heard them before I can't remember. So I choose not to spend $15 to $20 on a CD that I think is only worth $5 when I only half remember liking 1 song as long as I've remembered the name right.
On the other hand, I do prefer the sound quality of CD when compared to MP3 or radio play. And I do end up with things I like but didn't know about.
But overall, the quality of both the music and the sound recording just isn't very good any more. So I don't buy very much music these days, and keep listening to the many available radio stations and internet streams hoping to find something good (and remember it).
This list sucks. It's just more of the same old crap rehashed with newer graphics, physics, maps, AI, etc.
What about the games that actually tried (and succeeded) to do something a little bit different, like Grimm Fandango, Hitman, GTA, and so forth?
I bought a Wii. I took it to my friend's house and showed it to his 6 year old son. I handed him a Wii remote and started the 'Baseball' game in Wii sports. Immediately, and without being told to do so, he put on the wrist strap, and even tightened it. Then he said "what do I do", to which I replied "Throw the ball". It was amazing to watch a brief moment of thought cross his face followed by his arm coming back and then watching him go through all the physical motion of throwing the ball. But, this 6 year old kid who has never before seen or used the Wii, did NOT LET GO of the controller. This average child was smart enough to figure out that it was only a video game and that the controller was not something that should actually be thrown!
Now, if this child can use common sense then why not these "adults" who seem to be having a problem playing with this toy? After all, these aren't Lawn Darts we're talking about here.
I only hope Nintendo counter-sues the greedy lawyers. Maybe they can claim slander or libel against these lawyers.
Talk about stupidity. How the hell can these reps not know the difference between dollars and cents, especially with the caller providing so many different examples. But, when he was talking to the last supposedly qualified supervisor he had an opportunity to drive his point home, but he missed it. At about the 18:19 time mark in the call recording, she starts talking about using the calculator, but fails to recognize the difference between dollars and cents (again). However, at about the 18:58 time mark in the recording he asks her a 'what if' question using 1 cent, at which point she says something like "so 1 cent, that would be .001 on the calculator". Here's where he should have said something like "Why did you just change 1 into .001 ?" to point out the fact that a conversion is required to change cents into dollars. But, unfortunately, he missed the opportunity.
Back in the early 90's I had a Commodore Vic 20 computer with a few games on it. To play some of those games I also had a simple 2-button, 2-axis joystick. I didn't like it so I took it apart to see how it worked. Then I stripped out the wiring and re-built the joystick into a high-density Styrofoam block which I hand cut and shaped so that it's cross-section was shaped similar to that of an airplane wing. Then I replaced the joystick switches with mercury tilt switches like those you find in your average home thermostat. The end result was a very easy to hold and use, tilt sensitive game controller. Want to go left, just tilt it to the left. 1 button under each thumb, and a whole lot of fun that I used for years to play all my games on that machine. I think it's still in a box in my parents basement somewhere. Oh, and I was about 10 years old at the time.
O.K. so they're sold out and Nintendo says more are coming. Great. But I don't want to spend the next few weeks driving around from store to store looking for one. I'd rather just go to Nintendo's website and order one directly and wait until it is available and ships to me without any hassle. But no, there's no way that I can see to order directly from Nintendo. Instead, a consumer MUST use a local retail outlet. Unfortunately, none of the outlets I visited are taking any orders. If they're out of stock, that's it. No other option. This sucks. Why cant they do some kind of 'pay now and we'll send it to you when it's here' ordering process.
Don't all of today's hard disk drives have a drive password option that is physically part of the hard drive's firmware? And don't most of today's portable computers have a BIOS option to enable this hard drive password? And isn't it impossible to reset this password without knowing the original, even if the drive is physically moved to another computer?
Now this is certainly not data encryption, but it seems like a much easier method of securly protecting the hard drive in a portable computer. And it doesn't rely on any software to be installed, or any additional resources to be used during disk reads or writes. And it's damn near impossible to crack the hard drive's firmware password for the average (or even above average) computer thief.
It seems to me that this problem of "what if the notebook is stolen" already has a solution in place that simply need to be enabled by those who want the extra protection.
Cisco manufacture most of the routers and other infrastructure elements which are required for a service provider (Like AT&T, etc.) to be able to make money. Cisco obviously wants the lion's share of this lucrative infrastructure market. To suggest they may take legal action against a provider who would be a potentially lucrative client is simply a foolish notion. If they forcefully stop the service providers from providing specific services, then they won't be able to sell them infrastructure equipment capable of supporting the service.
To put it simply, Cisco would loose customer's and would loose money if they pursued this unlikely course of legal action.
Our website is maintained internally, with no option enabled for accessing any maintenance options from outside our local LAN (for a bit of added security). All of our LAN IP address range is intentionally excluded from our statistics tracking. So these stats should be a legitimate representation of public visits to our (very) small company website. It may be important to note that our entire site contains little more than information about our company and our services. We do not do ANY commerce via the website. So it's not surprising that there are not very many daily visits. Oh, and the statistics package is configured not to include repeat hits from the same IP address during an active session. So it's not really tracking hits, but unique visitors.
From the same month's statistics:
Windows - 3471 hits - 94.6 %
Linux - 132 hits - 3.6 %
Unknown - 34 hits - 0.9 %
Macintosh - 29 hits - 0.7 %
And yes, most of our customer's use Windows. And we do nothing with Mac.
I work for a small computer company which mainly deals with people who simply use whatever the default happens to be. In today's computers that means Internet Explorer. So I thought I'd look at the stats from our company website for the month of September and I was somewhat surprised to find the following:
MS Internet Explorer - 2714 hits - 74 %
Firefox - 822 hits - 22.4 %
Netscape - 37 hits - 1 %
Unknown - 33 hits - 0.9 %
Mozilla - 25 hits - 0.6 %
Konqueror - 17 hits - 0.4 %
Opera - 16 hits - 0.4 %
Lynx - 2 hits - 0 %
Over 22% of visits to our company website were using FireFox. This from customers who typically just accept the defaults. Quite surprising to me.
I've seen something like this before, in a cigar humidor. I think I like it much better than these monstrosities.
u midor_description.html
here's a picture of the humidor: http://images10.newegg.com/UploadFilesForNewegg/h
It looks kinda neat, but where do I plug in my keyboard, mouse, and monitor.
SSH? You mean I need another computer in order to be able to use this computer?
I service computers for a living. I've done so for more than 10 years. Over the past few years, I've observed a vast increase in unrecoverable hard drive failure rates, and an even larger increase of malware which negatively affects the system beyond reasonable repair. In these situations it is often much faster (and cheaper for the client) for me to re-install the customer's Windows. I'd guess that more than 80% of these re-installs involve an OEM release of Windows, where the product license key is on a sticker physically and permanently attached to the computer's case. One which is quite obviously either a legitimate license or an extremely well made (and unlikely) counterfit. Now, about half of all re-installs (which require product re-activation) fail the product activaiton (even before I can install the WGA spyware). This requires a phone call to Microsoft's product activation line. Here, if someone asks me a question or the other phone line rings or I hickup, Microsoft's non-human system will often make me start all over again repeating a boring string of numbers. After this, I get informed that the product key can not be validated (Which is the reason I called in the first place) and put on hold again until I finally get a human (if not English) voice. Then I'm asked to repeat the first part of the boring string of numbers before I'm questioned like a murder suspect about why I want to activate Windows. After all this, I am usually provided the clearance code to activate Windows. Total time for this process per client computer is approximately 20 minutes. Repeat 4 or 5 times each day, 5 days a week and Microsoft has managed to waste a very large quantity of my billable time. However, after jumping through these hoops, WGA did not bother these clients (yet).
I have found that the most effective way to handle any client is to fully adress the situation at hand, and not just the technical issues (or percieved issues). All aspects of the situation must be examined with care. Be calm. Listen to everything the client tells you (and do not interrupt him/her) then repeat the situation back to the customer to make sure that you both have the same understanding of the situation. Also document everything. Be thorough. Record all indications of trouble, either stated by the customer or your own conjecture. Record all actions taken by you and your customer. Then you can start to get to the root of the problem.
If the client believes that you understand the situation and are really trying to resolve the situation (or find an acceptable workaroud) then he/she is much more likely to be happy with your company and more willing to pay your fees. If, however, the client is simply unwielding, beligerent, rude, or unacommodating then it may be time to end your business relationship and focus on other clients.
There are many games which don't need a story. Tetris, Checkers, and so on. But there are many games for which a story helps make it memorable.
Anyone remember "The 7th Guest" or "The 11th Hour"? These were clue based games where each clue you found or each puzzle you solved revealed a little more of the story and helped to refresh the player's desire to continue. And for me, made them unforgettable, clasic games.
Then there was "Grim Fandango". A major departure from the rest of the gaming industry at the time, with a unique approach to an older style of gameplay. The graphics weren't that good, and the gameplay had a bit of occasional awquardness, but the story (and the humor) kept me going back for more. Another great gaming memory that would not be if not for a great story holding it all together.
And more recently, "Hitman: Blood Money". Arguably one of the best of the 'Hitman' series of games. Here's a game where the story has always been somewhat minimal, yet still very important in the developement of the main character. In this newest incarnation, the story gets molded by your style of play and is presented in very interesting newspaper articles between levels of the game. A very good use of a minimal storyline.
How about "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas". Sure this is a great game with a wide-open style of play, but would it really be the same without a story to help compell the flow of the game. I loved the way the story kept me going in this wide-open game.
Now we're not talking about pulitzer prize calibler novels here, but game stories do share a common thread with those in books and movies. The story, however it is presented, provides the character developement, mystery, twists, and even much of the environmental ambiance which feed the player's interest in the game.