I was just about to mention Solaris. I have a copy of xv (the perennially useful graphics app.) compiled on Solaris 2.3 circa, um, early 90s, which I've just fired up in Solaris 10.
Interface stability - one of Solaris's best and least appreciated features (on slashdot at least).
Primarily written for a UK audience, where we are well used to spectacular goverment IT project failure and runaway spending (ID cards? Erm, with your track record? You must be joking!)
It contains much wisdom on the subject of major IT project failure and quite a lot of insightful material taken from notable historical project cock-ups.
I like the approach of identifying 40 common root causes (a good proportion of which I've seen in my career, at least once), of course, most of them involve failure to communicate requirements and expectations during the early stages.
This stuff is mostly common sense, but of course common sense is always in short supply as the deadline draws inexorably closer and the project managers start to loose their grasp on reality...
Not only did they not accept it, they called the police and held them there.
Which they were obliged to do in the case of a suspected forgery. I repeat; obliged to call the police, you can't just say 'that's a suspicious note, I'm not going to accept it'. You accept the note or you call the police.
The Woolies manager did what he thought was the right thing, but since scottish banknotes aren't legal tender (as has been mentioned), what is the correct procedure for dealing with suspected forgeries? Arguably he was right - a strange note with a face value of £20, passed as if it were a real Bank of England £20?
What does a genuine scottish banknote look like? I last saw one (a fiver) 10 years ago, English fivers have changed since then at least once. I have no idea what security features Scottish banknotes sport, what artwork they employ nor the feel of the paper and printing. How could I possibly spot a fake?
From a security perspective - Scottish banknotes should *never* be accepted by English, Welsh or Northern Irish merchants because when used outside of Scotland they actively weaken the security of the entire currency system, which is bad news for all of us.
I love TCR. Was buying some laptop memory the other day, the dude didn't have it, so he sent me to a "rival" store - what did he care about the lost business, it was his cousin! I wouldn't be surprised if the whole street was run by 2 or 3 families.
I hate TCR, it's a crap place to shop for anything (with one exception - the little basement HiFi shop, which is superb). nobody knows anything about the products, the prices are fixed (and vastly inflated compared to internet shopping), the range is crap and God help you if you need to take anything back.
The place has a dingy, untrustworthy feel about. I'd certainly think twice before using a credit card in one of those shops.
Yes, there's the threat that someone might break into your home with the means and intention to kill or injure anyone that he finds therein.
There is also the threat that terrorists might send you a parcel of anthrax in the post, or that bears might break into your home and eat your family, or a pickup truck driven by a drunk might crash through your living room window.
They're all threats, but the risk of each happening is statistically miniscule (especially if you live nowhere near bears).
The reality is that keeping a weapon in your home is merely palliative - decreasing your fear of crime, while increasing the risk of accidental shootings.
If it were legal in this country, I would keep and shoot a handgun - but only because I love to shoot, I was brought up with guns, know how to handle them safely and respect them. I don't kid myself that I need one for domestic 'protection' because I know I don't. I'd be more likely to be shot by a policeman in my home than a criminal.
We're not talking about minesweeper or solitaire here, we're talking about a 3D game. First off, they usually stress the hardware pretty hard to get the best performance - leading to thermal stability issues. So it could be a hardware/cooling issue (especially under hot lights).
Second, for performance reasons the 3D chip's driver usually has at least some code running in kernel context. A bug in NVidia's code can bring an entire system to it's knees.
Third, the graphics hardware is addressed using shared memory. Unchecked memory access in the game's code can (sometimes) stomp all over system memory. Lazy programming and the use undocumented hacks for extra speed are commonplace.
Fourth, remember that some code is also running on the GPU (the graphics chip). A bug in this code can cause the GPU to stall, which (usually/eventually) causes the whole system to panic - or worse, stall.
Part of Doom 3's problem was that it had to meet some huge expectations. Doom 1 was *such* a ground breaking game, but Doom 3 failed to deliver the expected 'raising of the bar' in any of the areas that people were looking for: graphics (technically good, but not exactly stunning, considering the horsepower required), gameplay (pretty dull), characters (what characters?), weapons (fairly crap). level design (polished, but too samey and waay too dark).
I know when I'm playing a good FPS; I only get that 'I'm starting to get bored' feeling after the 3rd or 4th day (usually on the second go through). I played Doom 3 through once - I started again on 'hard' and I just lost interest half way through.
The other problem with the perception of Doom 3 is that the two decent FPSs which came before and after (FarCry and HL2) are just *way* better. If you took Doom 3 and sent it back in a time machine to 2002, perhaps it would have been that ground breaking smash-hit that people were expecting.
I'm certainly looking forward to games by Ravensoft et al. based on the Doom 3 engine.
Absolutely. Property crimes should never be equated with crimes against a person. There simply is no property crime that warrants incarceration. There are too many alternatives that are much more effective, but they never seem to satisfy the hunger for revenge. Again, only dangerous people should be locked away. Big money says otherwise.
All property crimes warrent incarceration, all personal crimes warrent incarceration.
All crime is against people. My family (small isolated village) experienced 13 burglaries in as many years. My mother had all of her jewelry stolen - grandmothers wedding and engagement rings, her rings, bracelets etc. family heirlooms - clocks, candlesticks, cutlery, plates.
Over the years we lost everything that was valuable to us - as children we were brought up knowing that anything we had could be taken away, at any moment. Including toys! - and most importantly for me at the time - my computers. I lost a zx81, an Acorn Electron (with plus1 interface) and a c64.
Someone living in a constant state of fear of intrusion needs to know that the police are going to take the crime seriously. They are the only defence we have in this country, since I'm more at risk of prosecution than the offender. I keep a biig Stillson wrench by my bed, but I know I'd serve time if I used it (for anything other than tightning bolts).
I once saw a burglar being savaged by police dogs, which is some small consolation.
And of course, the shuttle could only protect us from shuttle-mass type objects, which would burn up in the atmosphere anyway. So it would be a good distraction for the general populace, if and when.
Err, if all you're doing is reading a compressed filesystem into RAM then it will last, for all intents and purposes, forever.
Even if you use the drive as an occaisional document store, with a suitable filesystem that distributes data writes - including meta-data - evenly (i.e. not FAT), it can last for years.
Take for example an early ipaq's internal flash. It is supposidly rated at 300000 writes. Lets assume we initially create then overwrite a file in the same location (say a company telephone list) once everyday. By my calculation, the device will last for nearly 822 years. In practice of course, it won't. In that sort of timescale it'll be dropped, or lost, or fried by radiation, or stomped on by a giant Japanese lizard.
Removable flash storage in PDAs tends to be misused by both applications and user alike, but that's separate issue for which I blame Microsoft. Running linux on a flash based device is really quite easy and very effective and reliable, if you have a good understanding of it's read/write behaviour.
I generally don't buy these games until they're out on a budget label with 3 or 4 good mods available (Unreal Tournament - the best 10 quid I've every spent). If a FPS game ever comes along that is as replayable as a really good film on DVD, then I'll consider buying it brand new. Until then, it's back to UT:Inf or UT:TacOps for me. The added bonus is that most of the 12 year olds have lost interest in those games.
...decided to "test" it on Scotland a year before the rest of the country...
I wonder if we can test this ludicrous ID card scheme in scotland with the same result. Probably not worth the bother, looks like David's already made up his mind.
Anyone who say's otherwise is a terrorist, or if you're a parent, a pedophile!
Slashdot Mirror
I was just about to mention Solaris. I have a copy of xv (the perennially useful graphics app.) compiled on Solaris 2.3 circa, um, early 90s, which I've just fired up in Solaris 10.
Interface stability - one of Solaris's best and least appreciated features (on slashdot at least).
Primarily written for a UK audience, where we are well used to spectacular goverment IT project failure and runaway spending (ID cards? Erm, with your track record? You must be joking!)
e d_ IT_Projects.cfm
This book is excellent:
http://www.iee.org/OnComms/PN/Management/Troubl
It contains much wisdom on the subject of major IT project failure and quite a lot of insightful material taken from notable historical project cock-ups.
I like the approach of identifying 40 common root causes (a good proportion of which I've seen in my career, at least once), of course, most of them involve failure to communicate requirements and expectations during the early stages.
This stuff is mostly common sense, but of course common sense is always in short supply as the deadline draws inexorably closer and the project managers start to loose their grasp on reality...
Yes!
Pure hacking. He doesn't claim to understand the system he's messing with, he just wants to learn more. A novel and cool hack.
More stories like this please Slashdot!
Not only did they not accept it, they called the police and held them there.
Which they were obliged to do in the case of a suspected forgery. I repeat; obliged to call the police, you can't just say 'that's a suspicious note, I'm not going to accept it'. You accept the note or you call the police.
The Woolies manager did what he thought was the right thing, but since scottish banknotes aren't legal tender (as has been mentioned), what is the correct procedure for dealing with suspected forgeries? Arguably he was right - a strange note with a face value of £20, passed as if it were a real Bank of England £20?
What does a genuine scottish banknote look like? I last saw one (a fiver) 10 years ago, English fivers have changed since then at least once. I have no idea what security features Scottish banknotes sport, what artwork they employ nor the feel of the paper and printing. How could I possibly spot a fake?
From a security perspective - Scottish banknotes should *never* be accepted by English, Welsh or Northern Irish merchants because when used outside of Scotland they actively weaken the security of the entire currency system, which is bad news for all of us.
I love TCR. Was buying some laptop memory the other day, the dude didn't have it, so he sent me to a "rival" store - what did he care about the lost business, it was his cousin! I wouldn't be surprised if the whole street was run by 2 or 3 families.
I hate TCR, it's a crap place to shop for anything (with one exception - the little basement HiFi shop, which is superb). nobody knows anything about the products, the prices are fixed (and vastly inflated compared to internet shopping), the range is crap and God help you if you need to take anything back.
The place has a dingy, untrustworthy feel about. I'd certainly think twice before using a credit card in one of those shops.
Yes, there's the threat that someone might break into your home with the means and intention to kill or injure anyone that he finds therein.
There is also the threat that terrorists might send you a parcel of anthrax in the post, or that bears might break into your home and eat your family, or a pickup truck driven by a drunk might crash through your living room window.
They're all threats, but the risk of each happening is statistically miniscule (especially if you live nowhere near bears).
The reality is that keeping a weapon in your home is merely palliative - decreasing your fear of crime, while increasing the risk of accidental shootings.
If it were legal in this country, I would keep and shoot a handgun - but only because I love to shoot, I was brought up with guns, know how to handle them safely and respect them. I don't kid myself that I need one for domestic 'protection' because I know I don't. I'd be more likely to be shot by a policeman in my home than a criminal.
Solar shock troops!
We're not talking about minesweeper or solitaire here, we're talking about a 3D game. First off, they usually stress the hardware pretty hard to get the best performance - leading to thermal stability issues. So it could be a hardware/cooling issue (especially under hot lights).
Second, for performance reasons the 3D chip's driver usually has at least some code running in kernel context. A bug in NVidia's code can bring an entire system to it's knees.
Third, the graphics hardware is addressed using shared memory. Unchecked memory access in the game's code can (sometimes) stomp all over system memory. Lazy programming and the use undocumented hacks for extra speed are commonplace.
Fourth, remember that some code is also running on the GPU (the graphics chip). A bug in this code can cause the GPU to stall, which (usually/eventually) causes the whole system to panic - or worse, stall.
Game consoles are brittle systems.
Part of Doom 3's problem was that it had to meet some huge expectations. Doom 1 was *such* a ground breaking game, but Doom 3 failed to deliver the expected 'raising of the bar' in any of the areas that people were looking for: graphics (technically good, but not exactly stunning, considering the horsepower required), gameplay (pretty dull), characters (what characters?), weapons (fairly crap). level design (polished, but too samey and waay too dark).
I know when I'm playing a good FPS; I only get that 'I'm starting to get bored' feeling after the 3rd or 4th day (usually on the second go through). I played Doom 3 through once - I started again on 'hard' and I just lost interest half way through.
The other problem with the perception of Doom 3 is that the two decent FPSs which came before and after (FarCry and HL2) are just *way* better. If you took Doom 3 and sent it back in a time machine to 2002, perhaps it would have been that ground breaking smash-hit that people were expecting.
I'm certainly looking forward to games by Ravensoft et al. based on the Doom 3 engine.
Absolutely. Property crimes should never be equated with crimes against a person. There simply is no property crime that warrants incarceration. There are too many alternatives that are much more effective, but they never seem to satisfy the hunger for revenge. Again, only dangerous people should be locked away. Big money says otherwise.
All property crimes warrent incarceration, all personal crimes warrent incarceration.
All crime is against people. My family (small isolated village) experienced 13 burglaries in as many years. My mother had all of her jewelry stolen - grandmothers wedding and engagement rings, her rings, bracelets etc. family heirlooms - clocks, candlesticks, cutlery, plates.
Over the years we lost everything that was valuable to us - as children we were brought up knowing that anything we had could be taken away, at any moment. Including toys! - and most importantly for me at the time - my computers. I lost a zx81, an Acorn Electron (with plus1 interface) and a c64.
Someone living in a constant state of fear of intrusion needs to know that the police are going to take the crime seriously. They are the only defence we have in this country, since I'm more at risk of prosecution than the offender. I keep a biig Stillson wrench by my bed, but I know I'd serve time if I used it (for anything other than tightning bolts).
I once saw a burglar being savaged by police dogs, which is some small consolation.
Alright. I like it for a backup plan.
And of course, the shuttle could only protect us from shuttle-mass type objects, which would burn up in the atmosphere anyway. So it would be a good distraction for the general populace, if and when.
With the Solaris Role Based Access Control, I can stop people deleting stuff...
That's platform dependent. Many (decent :) UNIX platforms put optional software in the /opt directory...
5 successfully absorbed nitroglycerin in kieselguhr? ANSWER: Alfred Noble, inventor of TNT
Dynamite not TNT.
In case you don't know. Mog is a fairly common word for cat. Perhaps it isn't in your country.
/etc/init.d/nfs start
Get a self powered USB hub.
Err, if all you're doing is reading a compressed filesystem into RAM then it will last, for all intents and purposes, forever.
Even if you use the drive as an occaisional document store, with a suitable filesystem that distributes data writes - including meta-data - evenly (i.e. not FAT), it can last for years.
Take for example an early ipaq's internal flash. It is supposidly rated at 300000 writes. Lets assume we initially create then overwrite a file in the same location (say a company telephone list) once everyday. By my calculation, the device will last for nearly 822 years. In practice of course, it won't. In that sort of timescale it'll be dropped, or lost, or fried by radiation, or stomped on by a giant Japanese lizard.
Removable flash storage in PDAs tends to be misused by both applications and user alike, but that's separate issue for which I blame Microsoft. Running linux on a flash based device is really quite easy and very effective and reliable, if you have a good understanding of it's read/write behaviour.
Right... except the flash will die after about a million writes. Still, a cool concept indeed!
/var and /tmp to a ramdisk. Even PocketPC basically bootstraps the OS from read-only flash into RAM.
Not if you symlink
This problem has already been addressed, many times.
I've never had to change the CR2032 battery on any motherboard I've ever owned - and I've got a 10+ year old Pentium 75 here which still runs fine.
The backup battery is only used when the power is off to the unit. These things could easily be left switched on, or left on standby.
Um, cack handed as in left handed?
Me too.
I generally don't buy these games until they're out on a budget label with 3 or 4 good mods available (Unreal Tournament - the best 10 quid I've every spent). If a FPS game ever comes along that is as replayable as a really good film on DVD, then I'll consider buying it brand new. Until then, it's back to UT:Inf or UT:TacOps for me. The added bonus is that most of the 12 year olds have lost interest in those games.
Note: I am, in fact, a rabid Benny Hill fan... although I am not British.
Please explain why? No one in Britain is.
I have never understood what people saw in Benny Hill. It's just so incredibly naff.
cult: a small unpopular religion.
religion: a large popular cult.
...decided to "test" it on Scotland a year before the rest of the country...
I wonder if we can test this ludicrous ID card scheme in scotland with the same result. Probably not worth the bother, looks like David's already made up his mind.
Anyone who say's otherwise is a terrorist, or if you're a parent, a pedophile!