Well boys and girls, I had my "eyes done" at age 40, which was 10 years ago. I had terrible myopia and astigmatism so bad, I couldn't wear contacts of any kind.
I was in the Air Force in the 70's and tried to fly; no dice with 20/400 vision.
It was never vanity, but practical reasons that caused me to take a chance on eye surgery. I've always been involved in sports and martial arts. I've had a zillion cuts and bruises on my face (nose especially) from that. Then in 1995, I started fighting full contact with some serious folks. Now, I always fought WITHOUT glasses because I only had to see the shape in front of me, right?
Nope. A circular technique like a roundkick didn't "show up" in my field of vision until too late to block or duck effectively. After two concussions and some broken bones, I went under the knife on both eyes. Today, I'm still 20/20 in both eyes and love it.
I retired from fighting about a year ago but my last fight was in a small ring with 3 opponents at least 10 years younger than me. We went about 20 minutes non-stop and as one of them commented later "we never got a clean shot in even once!"
Yeah...I'm real unhappy with eye surgery...NOT!
Seriously, do a lot of research and shopping for a good doctor. Check with his patients who are 1, 2, 5 and 10 years out from their work. See what they say. Then, do it!
Hell, it was worth it not to have permanent furrows on either side of my nose anymore from the weight of the coke bottle bottom glasses I had to wear from age 5 on.:o)
I'd say that I am one of the RABID StarCrack and Diablo fans you posit. I have the earlier WarCraft titles but I never purchased WoW because I just don't care for it. My son and I did EverQuest and Asheron's Call to death and WoW seemed like more of the same.
I still play crappy ol' 640x480 StarCrack at least once a week. Usually Protoss, occasionally Terran, NEVER Zerg. (bugs creep me out) If Blizzard did a MMORPG of SC, I'd be first in line to get that puppy.
I hope Blizzard re-thinks this...they would make a ton of money.
The current issue of PopSci has an article about laser weapon research and the players. Pretty interesting.
From a practical standpoint, it appears that a fairly small aircraft...an F-22 for instance....could be armed with an effective laser weapon in the near future.
FYI, the U.S. had an ASAT weapon in the form of a specially modified F-16 with a modified Phoenix radar-guided missile. The mission profile was to fly the bird as high as possible...get a lock on an enemy sat and launch the Phoenix. The Russians specifically proscribed this platform in the SALT talks in 1976.
I saw the ASAT F-16 from a distance of about 50 feet on the tarmac at Edwards AFB in '75 once. It was pretty interesting. I don't know if any photos exist.
Uh, dude...the Romulans are Vulcans who left Vulcan because they didn't want to conform to the growing influence of "logic over emotion" movement.
Intellectually, they were the equals of (and in some cases maybe even superior to) their Vulcan ancestors.
They had warp technology...this was shown in "Balance of Terror" in TOS.
The Romulans and Klingons were aligned due to the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thinking and exchanged various technologies during that alliance.
The issue with cloaking was the enormous power requirements; you had to uncloak to fire weapons. This was a big plot point in "ST6:The Undiscovered Country".
The Klingons had a WarBird that could fire while cloaked. Scotty and Bones modified a photon torpedo, they shot the "invisible" ship, everyone was happy and the universe was safe once more.
Not that I've watched too much Trek or anything......
Well, I have a use for an external SATA drive...on the device in the subject line.
I bought a 250GB eSATA box for my DVR and it's performed perfectly. I have 410GB of storage for movies and time-shifting. (160GB on the cable box itself)
As much as I sometimes hate to admit it, I live in Oklahoma. Born and raised here.
There are really, really smart people here and then there are those who keep buying mobile homes IN THE ONE PLACE MOST LIKELY to have an F5 tornado.
Some of those people are elected officials.
True story #1:
A 17 y/o boy escaped a detention facility. Yes, he had been in trouble before but he hadn't hurt anyone in his life. He was shot 13 times by a police officer...mostly in the back. It was ruled reasonable force by the local DA. The family has filed a civil suit.
True Story #2:
A woman in my town ran for City Council on a platform that basically amounted to "we need to encourage more retail businesses to build here so I have more places to shop". I'm not kidding. She lost in a landslide as most people in my ward thought she was a loon, but I wasn't sure until the night of the election it would go that way.
Oklahoma has produced some great folks; Jim Thorpe, Mickey Mantle, Chuck Norris, Will Rogers, Carl Albert (former Speaker Of The House), numerous C&W music folks (Garth Brooks, Toby Keith, etc.), the last American Idol winner, the still current record of 47 wins by the Oklahoma Sooner football team, and on and on.
I'm proud to be an Oklahoman, but you need to know we have "Okies" here as well. Politics and corruption have long been regular bedfellows. We whored Dell into town, why not let Microsoft write our laws?
The NSA has more computing power and human analyst brainpower than is probably believable.
Back in the days when I did NeXT machines and software development, I heard that the NSA bought 400 NeXT cubes. The joke was "of course they did...saves them a ton of money on black paint!"
I later heard that the NSA liked the fact that the magnesium case was a pretty effective RF shield.
And then I got to see a NeXT app, Zilla, that let you build an early parallel processing system. Now, 400 Motorola 68040 CPUs isn't a Cray, but it's close. NeXT used 50 cubes to crunch on Fermat's Theorem and got throughout similar to a Cray YMP48 (this was 1990-91, so I may be fuzzy on this, but that's what I think I heard)
So, if the NSA was dorking with massively parallel systems 15-20 years ago, where are they today?
Personally, I think they have the data acquisition capability...with or without AT&T, the processing power, and plenty of human talent to build the data sieves to extract something useful.
Wait a minute...there's a knock at my door................
Unfortunately, most folks in the general population never develop those good habits. Certainly none of my family has since I get to do free tech support for them!
My experiences are much like yours...I own and/or administer about a dozen Windows machines at home, and twice that at work. Most are XP with some 2000 and 2003 on the servers and one older laptop that won't support XP.
I've never had to rebuild or even clean one of them, BUT, I have everything behind physical firewalls, run BlackIce, etc. locally, NAT my addresses, and absolutely insure that AV and OS updates are done ASAP.
Once a week, I run complete, deep scans on everything for malware.
The problem is two-fold...it's not a trivial amount of work AND most people DON'T do ANY of that, much less all. That creates situations like the article....lots of hardware toasted by malware.
I have two decades of experience with Macs and NeXT machines and the administration overhead is tons less than Windows. At one point, I had a network with Macs, PCs, AIX machines, an SCO UNIX server, a Novell server with Netware NFS, and a dozen NeXT machines. Everything had NFS mounts and remote admin capability was a snap. In 2 years, no downtime and no malware. Again, I spent a LONG time setting everything up; most people can't or won't.
And, I do think that if the world dumped Windows and Apple's market share was 80%, OS/X would have a big target painted on its back. It's never been impossible or even hard to write malware for a Mac...there was just no fun in doing so.:o)
I registered last night and the closest city to me is St. Louis, so if I do "pass", I'll still be flying and staying in a hotel at least one night.
And the same rules still apply; if you pass the on-line test, the mock session, and the personality interview, you go into the contestant pool for 1 year. No guarantee you'll ever get to stand on stage and say " what is terrified out of my mind, Alex? "
Re:Sudo is only useful when there are lots of admi
on
Sudo vs. Root
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· Score: 1
If you restrict allowable commands under sudo, it becomes pretty useful. When you add a shell logger that requires you to identify yourself and the reason for opening a shell, you have an audit trail.
In short, sudo can be very good, but it requires some work and the ability to withstand much cursing from the recently crippled.:o)
I am using 2 providers that essentially offer the same "we can do it all" bundles; one for telephone and Internet (DSL) and the cable provider for HDTV and DVR.
The cable service is pretty good in terms of quality...when it's working, although I did install a custom line amplifier to insure decent signal to every coax connection in the house. The problem, and the reason I don't use cable for my network is reliability. Their uptime is really good, but certainly not 100%.
I really like my DSL service...it's just never down. I am provisioned at 3Mb down / 1.5Mb up and get every bit of that and typically burst higher. The cable provider offers 9 / 4 for about $10-15 more than what I pay for DSL (about $26 currently) but that's misleading as I got a wireless gateway/router for no cost from the DSL folks and that's "extra" from the cable folks. And, I've always had dial-up backup from the DSL host whereas the cable guys just added that in the last 6-12 months.
Overall, I chose 99.9% over 95%.
Oh, and I tried the "mega bundle" from the DSL folks for a year; didn't like it that much. I dropped everything but basic telephone and DSL and cut $100 a month from the bill. So far, I don't miss anything, so that seems to have been a good choice.
...this new legislation will certainly stop all that evil poker playing, won't it?
Most credit card companies quit processing direct transactions to PokerStars, Ultimate Bet, and Full Tilt in the last 12-18 months. I did find some local banks' debit cards will work on all 3 of those, but no majors like Visa and MasterCard.
And as some have pointed out, FirePay and other indirect transactions will not be affected.
The stupidity of this is that several major US casinos had on-line poker business plans in the works only to see the feds rain on their parade. If you had a choice to play online poker with a off-shore site or a "branded" U.S. site like Harrah's, which would you choose?
The casinos would almost certainly give incentives and freebies for on-line players to visit their brick and mortar (or plastic and neon, if you prefer) locations, helping local economies while raking in TAXABLE revenue from both.
This is a mostly useless law that will do little to impact on-line gaming in the U.S. (unless of course they contract the R.I.A.A. to kick in grandma's door while she's playing.5 /.10 cent No Limit on PartyPoker)
[ Or maybe Apple will create a real iBook and do for literature what they did for music. Pleeeeeeeeeease? ]
Are we all missing the obvious here?
If Apple (or Sony, Samsung, whoever) would create a decent device AND then open up the "iLibrary" store, I would be a rat on crack. That seems to be what works for music...Apple and the iTunes store have my money for that...so why doesn't SOMEONE get a clue for books.
I have thousands of books and some are collector's items to be sure, but mostly it's stuff I've read, will perhaps re-read again, and certainly enjoy loaning or giving to friends and relatives. Mostly, I just like to read...a lot.
I just finished King's "Cell" in hardcover and right now, that's the only choice I had for reading it. (Yes, I know there's an audiobook out, but I like to READ books and LISTEN to music) Since it was, for me, a "page turner" that I finished in about 4-5 hours, I would have loved to have had a eReader device instead of getting muscle strains and keeping the wife awake reading the damn 5-6 pound book in bed.
My perfect scenario would be something similar to the iPod/iTunes combination:
1) A well-designed piece of hardware that's easy to use and carry with software/controls that instantly become second nature...like the iPod click wheel.
2) A place to add content without breaking the bank or requiring 19 steps to actually download and use.
I've been in IT at a Fortune 100 firm for 10 years. My group built, deployed and maintains a global network that makes the company about $6B a year.
Since 9/11, salaries have been stagnant or seen tiny, tiny increases. Solve a major problem and save the company $10M and your reward is...nothing. A pat on the back does not, in fact, help pay my kids college tuition.
If I were 25 or 30, I'd be long gone to greener pastures. But at 50, it's a completely different equation. And trust me, the company knows that and is rolling the dice. I expect their next trick to be a lawsuit against me after I retire to erode my benefits. Other companies are doing just that as detailed in a Reader's Digest article in the current issue.
If I get downsized before retirement, I'll dust off the teaching certificate and go to work at a college for 30-50% of what I make now.
While most of my "active" library is digital...I have a home-built SAN for the 1800 CDs in the house...my pride and joy is the electic collection of vinyl I have under lock and key.
I have a dbx decoder still in use in my secondary audio system. I need it because I have some dbx-encoded vinyl like "Teaser and the Firecat". I have a fairly mediocre linear track turntable with an Ortofon cartridge. BUT, I have spare parts for it and an Audio-Technica cartridge squirelled away.
I quit arguing about vinyl versus CD years ago...just not worth the grief!
I played French Horn for decades before discovering bass guitar and sat a season with the local symphony back in the 70's. I have yet to hear a classical CD that could touch some of the pressings I have.
Haven't been enthralled with DVD-Audio or SACD yet...most of what little I've heard sounds "over-engineered" if that makes any sense.
And yes, I think Apple will adapt well to the future; they don't seem to be stupid of recent.:o)
I did, indeed, use the term "low-fi" in describing the iPod.
I have a houseful of them, all the car "stuff" and a cable on my main receiver, as I've said, and I actually have done some "testing" with a Mini and my Shuffle. Not double-blind with Julian Hirsch recording the results, but sufficient for me to prefer a CD THROUGH MY MAIN SYSTEM to the iPods.
Maybe I have dog hearing, but I definitely hear a moderate flattening of the treble and somewhat muddy bass. Now, I don't have the Shure earbuds...just the $40 Apple ones. So this may be the fault of the OUTPUT device, not the input device!
This is FINE for driving, mowing the lawn, and doing the gym thing; I never leave the house without my Shuffle. The ambient noise floor is high enough to mask the effect. The reason I tried both iPods was because I thought perhaps I had a defective unit. In fact, both have been exchanged under warranty, so the test was really 4 units; same results.
In all honesty, none of my family can hear a difference...it's definitely just me, but that's the fact, not an opinion.
I recently bought a Sirius brick for my car and I like it. The Shuffle sounds far better and I switch off depending on mood. A couple of weekends ago, I hooked up the Sirius brick to the main Denon and listened to dozens of stations for several hours. It was pretty atrocious. It sounds like Sirius alters their compression across their programming. Some talk channels sounded like bad Sci-Fi movie actors talking. Still, I only paid $25 after rebate for the thing and for long drives, it beats changing CDs or dorking with the Shuffle. I'll never buy a home kit, that's for sure!
...and you must be running the hunt for Bin Laden as you've missed the points entirely....again.
1) No iPod currently available is good enough for MY listening, not yours or the unwashed masses. I don't care how you listen to music.
2) The iPod Speaker...with its purported shortcomings (I've not heard one yet, but have tested the Bose, Klipsch, Altec, and JBL offerings with the wife's Mini) will probably work for most people. Again, not me.
I'm not "special", just real picky and blessed/cursed with good hearing and trained ears.
I don't know who assigned you to climb on my ass or "educate" me today, so I'll tell you...your shift is over.
[ An iPod playing lossless or uncompressed files into your amp and out your B&Ws (great speakers, btw!), will sound every bit as good as some of the top-of-the-line analog-out CD players, including your treasured Denon. Several leading audio magazines have written reviews (and double-blind tests) which confirm this. ]
For most people, again I would agree. That does not hold true for yours truly. I've been a musician for 40 years and done a ton of session work as well as my own stuff. I have perfect pitch and virtually all of my hearing intact. I worked as an studio engineer for several years and I'm a fairly good equipment designer.
My house is literally built around my audio/video system. And no, I don't care for Monster Cables. I buy Belden cable on spools and build my own cables. The one Monster Cable I bought was for my Fender Jazz bass and it's in the trash box. I use Planet Waves with the cut-out switches since I change guitars frequently during a set.
The only "dampers" I use is another home-built item for my subwoofers and that was to offset some harmonics from a nearby floor-to-ceiling bookcase at around 50Hz.
Basically, I can hear subtle to sometimes dramatic differences depending on the input source device. Now, in agreement with your point, the VAST majority of people cannot indeed, hear the difference. They also buy cardboard speakers at Wal-Mart...I don't.
And that was my original point...the iPod Speaker is probably OK for most people with iPods...who rip at 128 to 192 and jam tiny earbuds in and listen in blissful ignorance.:o)
[ The iPod plays uncompressed or lossless-compressed audio which sounds just as good (and in some cases, far better) than just about any CD player on the market. WTF are you talking about?
If you are going to listen to AAC or MP3 files, you might as well use a MUCH cheaper room system than the "iPod Hi-Fi" ]
Portable CD player, I would agree. My Denon 5910 or my Sony ES-555? Coming out of B&W DM's? No freakin' way.
Really good equipment does make the difference. It's a matter of target audience.
That was my point. If you want to hear most or all of what the studio engineers laid down, an iPod...any of them...won't do that. Fact, not opinion. I've been on both sides of the glass in recording studios for 35 years so I think I know whereof I speak!:o)
Which for the low-fi input device being used...an iPod...is about perfect.
I wrote a paper in college on how to purchase and install a high fidelity audio system (this was 1982) for Technical Writing. Got an A on the paper, but the comment by the professor was telling; "Does all this stuff really make a difference?"
Most people have no idea what music really sounds like. They actually think an MP3 player sounds good! They don't hear compression artifacts or that it's lifeless crap coming out of tiny transducers that can't hope to reproduce anything decent sounding.
My wife still thinks I'm nuts because I re-EQ the home theatre system every time we re-arrange the furniture.
The point is that the iPod Speaker is exactly perfect for the target audience....iPod / MP3 player owners. It isn't being marketed to audiophiles as a primary buyer...or doesn't seem so.
Of course, it doesn't state (truthfully) that it allows the user to fill the room with the sound of mangled music, but I can't fault them for that.
Yes, I own a Shuffle. For mowing the lawn. The sound of the machinery offsets the dreadful quality. I looped out an input into my primary Denon AVR for the iPod but couldn't stand the sound coming out of the B&W's.
"Um, it adds 802.11 and Bluetooth, a larger HD (80 vs 40 GB) and a faster processor (1.5 vs 1.25 GHz) for an extra $100. Otherwise the specs are the same. If you're disappointed by that, I don't see how it's Apple's problem. They're laughing all the way to the bank."
Which, if you added those options to the "old" Mac Mini, would have sent the price to about $700. It's actually a better deal. Plus, if it is 2 to 4 times faster, where's the beef?
I wish every one of my relatives running Windows would switch to a Mini; my annual free family support hours would drop to ZERO.
Actually, people spent $3-500 for the 1G iPod when it came out. And it didn't do video, and iTunes had far fewer songs, etc.
Personally, I would cough up $400 for a good eReader in a skinny minute. I read a LOT and some of it is on airplanes. Problem is, I read for work and pleasure AND very fast, so I usually have 3-6 books with me in carry-on luggage.
A single device with 3-6 books on it would be awesome!
Not a direct comparison as any idiot can jam earbuds in and listen to music while Johnny still can't read........
Slashdot Mirror
Well boys and girls, I had my "eyes done" at age 40, which was 10 years ago. I had terrible myopia and astigmatism so bad, I couldn't wear contacts of any kind.
:o)
I was in the Air Force in the 70's and tried to fly; no dice with 20/400 vision.
It was never vanity, but practical reasons that caused me to take a chance on eye surgery. I've always been involved in sports and martial arts. I've had a zillion cuts and bruises on my face (nose especially) from that. Then in 1995, I started fighting full contact with some serious folks. Now, I always fought WITHOUT glasses because I only had to see the shape in front of me, right?
Nope. A circular technique like a roundkick didn't "show up" in my field of vision until too late to block or duck effectively. After two concussions and some broken bones, I went under the knife on both eyes. Today, I'm still 20/20 in both eyes and love it.
I retired from fighting about a year ago but my last fight was in a small ring with 3 opponents at least 10 years younger than me. We went about 20 minutes non-stop and as one of them commented later "we never got a clean shot in even once!"
Yeah...I'm real unhappy with eye surgery...NOT!
Seriously, do a lot of research and shopping for a good doctor. Check with his patients who are 1, 2, 5 and 10 years out from their work. See what they say. Then, do it!
Hell, it was worth it not to have permanent furrows on either side of my nose anymore from the weight of the coke bottle bottom glasses I had to wear from age 5 on.
I'd say that I am one of the RABID StarCrack and Diablo fans you posit. I have the earlier WarCraft titles but I never purchased WoW because I just don't care for it. My son and I did EverQuest and Asheron's Call to death and WoW seemed like more of the same.
I still play crappy ol' 640x480 StarCrack at least once a week. Usually Protoss, occasionally Terran, NEVER Zerg. (bugs creep me out) If Blizzard did a MMORPG of SC, I'd be first in line to get that puppy.
I hope Blizzard re-thinks this...they would make a ton of money.
Folks,
The current issue of PopSci has an article about laser weapon research and the players. Pretty interesting.
From a practical standpoint, it appears that a fairly small aircraft...an F-22 for instance....could be armed with an effective laser weapon in the near future.
FYI, the U.S. had an ASAT weapon in the form of a specially modified F-16 with a modified Phoenix radar-guided missile. The mission profile was to fly the bird as high as possible...get a lock on an enemy sat and launch the Phoenix. The Russians specifically proscribed this platform in the SALT talks in 1976.
I saw the ASAT F-16 from a distance of about 50 feet on the tarmac at Edwards AFB in '75 once. It was pretty interesting. I don't know if any photos exist.
Uh, dude...the Romulans are Vulcans who left Vulcan because they didn't want to conform to the growing influence of "logic over emotion" movement.
Intellectually, they were the equals of (and in some cases maybe even superior to) their Vulcan ancestors.
They had warp technology...this was shown in "Balance of Terror" in TOS.
The Romulans and Klingons were aligned due to the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thinking and exchanged various technologies during that alliance.
The issue with cloaking was the enormous power requirements; you had to uncloak to fire weapons. This was a big plot point in "ST6:The Undiscovered Country".
The Klingons had a WarBird that could fire while cloaked. Scotty and Bones modified a photon torpedo, they shot the "invisible" ship, everyone was happy and the universe was safe once more.
Not that I've watched too much Trek or anything......
Well, I have a use for an external SATA drive...on the device in the subject line.
:o)
I bought a 250GB eSATA box for my DVR and it's performed perfectly. I have 410GB of storage for movies and time-shifting. (160GB on the cable box itself)
I paid about $150 plus shipping.
As much as I sometimes hate to admit it, I live in Oklahoma. Born and raised here.
There are really, really smart people here and then there are those who keep buying mobile homes IN THE ONE PLACE MOST LIKELY to have an F5 tornado.
Some of those people are elected officials.
True story #1:
A 17 y/o boy escaped a detention facility. Yes, he had been in trouble before but he hadn't hurt anyone in his life. He was shot 13 times by a police officer...mostly in the back. It was ruled reasonable force by the local DA. The family has filed a civil suit.
True Story #2:
A woman in my town ran for City Council on a platform that basically amounted to "we need to encourage more retail businesses to build here so I have more places to shop". I'm not kidding. She lost in a landslide as most people in my ward thought she was a loon, but I wasn't sure until the night of the election it would go that way.
Oklahoma has produced some great folks; Jim Thorpe, Mickey Mantle, Chuck Norris, Will Rogers, Carl Albert (former Speaker Of The House), numerous C&W music folks (Garth Brooks, Toby Keith, etc.), the last American Idol winner, the still current record of 47 wins by the Oklahoma Sooner football team, and on and on.
I'm proud to be an Oklahoman, but you need to know we have "Okies" here as well. Politics and corruption have long been regular bedfellows. We whored Dell into town, why not let Microsoft write our laws?
Echelon is NOT a fairy tale.
The NSA has more computing power and human analyst brainpower than is probably believable.
Back in the days when I did NeXT machines and software development, I heard that the NSA bought 400 NeXT cubes. The joke was "of course they did...saves them a ton of money on black paint!"
I later heard that the NSA liked the fact that the magnesium case was a pretty effective RF shield.
And then I got to see a NeXT app, Zilla, that let you build an early parallel processing system. Now, 400 Motorola 68040 CPUs isn't a Cray, but it's close. NeXT used 50 cubes to crunch on Fermat's Theorem and got throughout similar to a Cray YMP48 (this was 1990-91, so I may be fuzzy on this, but that's what I think I heard)
So, if the NSA was dorking with massively parallel systems 15-20 years ago, where are they today?
Personally, I think they have the data acquisition capability...with or without AT&T, the processing power, and plenty of human talent to build the data sieves to extract something useful.
Wait a minute...there's a knock at my door................
Absolutely...good habits = good results.
Unfortunately, most folks in the general population never develop those good habits. Certainly none of my family has since I get to do free tech support for them!
My experiences are much like yours...I own and/or administer about a dozen Windows machines at home, and twice that at work. Most are XP with some 2000 and 2003 on the servers and one older laptop that won't support XP.
:o)
I've never had to rebuild or even clean one of them, BUT, I have everything behind physical firewalls, run BlackIce, etc. locally, NAT my addresses, and absolutely insure that AV and OS updates are done ASAP.
Once a week, I run complete, deep scans on everything for malware.
The problem is two-fold...it's not a trivial amount of work AND most people DON'T do ANY of that, much less all. That creates situations like the article....lots of hardware toasted by malware.
I have two decades of experience with Macs and NeXT machines and the administration overhead is tons less than Windows. At one point, I had a network with Macs, PCs, AIX machines, an SCO UNIX server, a Novell server with Netware NFS, and a dozen NeXT machines. Everything had NFS mounts and remote admin capability was a snap. In 2 years, no downtime and no malware. Again, I spent a LONG time setting everything up; most people can't or won't.
And, I do think that if the world dumped Windows and Apple's market share was 80%, OS/X would have a big target painted on its back. It's never been impossible or even hard to write malware for a Mac...there was just no fun in doing so.
Well, sort of.
I registered last night and the closest city to me is St. Louis, so if I do "pass", I'll still be flying and staying in a hotel at least one night.
And the same rules still apply; if you pass the on-line test, the mock session, and the personality interview, you go into the contestant pool for 1 year. No guarantee you'll ever get to stand on stage and say " what is terrified out of my mind, Alex? "
If you restrict allowable commands under sudo, it becomes pretty useful. When you add a shell logger that requires you to identify yourself and the reason for opening a shell, you have an audit trail.
:o)
In short, sudo can be very good, but it requires some work and the ability to withstand much cursing from the recently crippled.
I am using 2 providers that essentially offer the same "we can do it all" bundles; one for telephone and Internet (DSL) and the cable provider for HDTV and DVR.
The cable service is pretty good in terms of quality...when it's working, although I did install a custom line amplifier to insure decent signal to every coax connection in the house. The problem, and the reason I don't use cable for my network is reliability. Their uptime is really good, but certainly not 100%.
I really like my DSL service...it's just never down. I am provisioned at 3Mb down / 1.5Mb up and get every bit of that and typically burst higher. The cable provider offers 9 / 4 for about $10-15 more than what I pay for DSL (about $26 currently) but that's misleading as I got a wireless gateway/router for no cost from the DSL folks and that's "extra" from the cable folks. And, I've always had dial-up backup from the DSL host whereas the cable guys just added that in the last 6-12 months.
Overall, I chose 99.9% over 95%.
Oh, and I tried the "mega bundle" from the DSL folks for a year; didn't like it that much. I dropped everything but basic telephone and DSL and cut $100 a month from the bill. So far, I don't miss anything, so that seems to have been a good choice.
...this new legislation will certainly stop all that evil poker playing, won't it?
.5 / .10 cent No Limit on PartyPoker)
Most credit card companies quit processing direct transactions to PokerStars, Ultimate Bet, and Full Tilt in the last 12-18 months. I did find some local banks' debit cards will work on all 3 of those, but no majors like Visa and MasterCard.
And as some have pointed out, FirePay and other indirect transactions will not be affected.
The stupidity of this is that several major US casinos had on-line poker business plans in the works only to see the feds rain on their parade. If you had a choice to play online poker with a off-shore site or a "branded" U.S. site like Harrah's, which would you choose?
The casinos would almost certainly give incentives and freebies for on-line players to visit their brick and mortar (or plastic and neon, if you prefer) locations, helping local economies while raking in TAXABLE revenue from both.
This is a mostly useless law that will do little to impact on-line gaming in the U.S. (unless of course they contract the R.I.A.A. to kick in grandma's door while she's playing
....sharks with friggin' lasers on their heads!
:o)
Seriously, however, this is NOT a violation of the 1st Law as the robots don't have the fire / no fire decision.
Using a human operator makes this telepresence, not autonomous killing machines gone wild. (Hey, you sexy tin can...show us your gun!)
[ Or maybe Apple will create a real iBook and do for literature what they did for music. Pleeeeeeeeeease? ]
:o)
Are we all missing the obvious here?
If Apple (or Sony, Samsung, whoever) would create a decent device AND then open up the "iLibrary" store, I would be a rat on crack. That seems to be what works for music...Apple and the iTunes store have my money for that...so why doesn't SOMEONE get a clue for books.
I have thousands of books and some are collector's items to be sure, but mostly it's stuff I've read, will perhaps re-read again, and certainly enjoy loaning or giving to friends and relatives. Mostly, I just like to read...a lot.
I just finished King's "Cell" in hardcover and right now, that's the only choice I had for reading it. (Yes, I know there's an audiobook out, but I like to READ books and LISTEN to music) Since it was, for me, a "page turner" that I finished in about 4-5 hours, I would have loved to have had a eReader device instead of getting muscle strains and keeping the wife awake reading the damn 5-6 pound book in bed.
My perfect scenario would be something similar to the iPod/iTunes combination:
1) A well-designed piece of hardware that's easy to use and carry with software/controls that instantly become second nature...like the iPod click wheel.
2) A place to add content without breaking the bank or requiring 19 steps to actually download and use.
Can you hear me, Steve?
Exactly. This isn't news...at least to me.
I've been in IT at a Fortune 100 firm for 10 years. My group built, deployed and maintains a global network that makes the company about $6B a year.
Since 9/11, salaries have been stagnant or seen tiny, tiny increases. Solve a major problem and save the company $10M and your reward is...nothing. A pat on the back does not, in fact, help pay my kids college tuition.
If I were 25 or 30, I'd be long gone to greener pastures. But at 50, it's a completely different equation. And trust me, the company knows that and is rolling the dice. I expect their next trick to be a lawsuit against me after I retire to erode my benefits. Other companies are doing just that as detailed in a Reader's Digest article in the current issue.
If I get downsized before retirement, I'll dust off the teaching certificate and go to work at a college for 30-50% of what I make now.
Happy, happy, joy, joy....NOT!
Wow...I couldn't agree more about vinyl!
:o)
While most of my "active" library is digital...I have a home-built SAN for the 1800 CDs in the house...my pride and joy is the electic collection of vinyl I have under lock and key.
I have a dbx decoder still in use in my secondary audio system. I need it because I have some dbx-encoded vinyl like "Teaser and the Firecat". I have a fairly mediocre linear track turntable with an Ortofon cartridge. BUT, I have spare parts for it and an Audio-Technica cartridge squirelled away.
I quit arguing about vinyl versus CD years ago...just not worth the grief!
I played French Horn for decades before discovering bass guitar and sat a season with the local symphony back in the 70's. I have yet to hear a classical CD that could touch some of the pressings I have.
Haven't been enthralled with DVD-Audio or SACD yet...most of what little I've heard sounds "over-engineered" if that makes any sense.
And yes, I think Apple will adapt well to the future; they don't seem to be stupid of recent.
Mea culpa!
I did, indeed, use the term "low-fi" in describing the iPod.
I have a houseful of them, all the car "stuff" and a cable on my main receiver, as I've said, and I actually have done some "testing" with a Mini and my Shuffle. Not double-blind with Julian Hirsch recording the results, but sufficient for me to prefer a CD THROUGH MY MAIN SYSTEM to the iPods.
Maybe I have dog hearing, but I definitely hear a moderate flattening of the treble and somewhat muddy bass. Now, I don't have the Shure earbuds...just the $40 Apple ones. So this may be the fault of the OUTPUT device, not the input device!
This is FINE for driving, mowing the lawn, and doing the gym thing; I never leave the house without my Shuffle. The ambient noise floor is high enough to mask the effect. The reason I tried both iPods was because I thought perhaps I had a defective unit. In fact, both have been exchanged under warranty, so the test was really 4 units; same results.
In all honesty, none of my family can hear a difference...it's definitely just me, but that's the fact, not an opinion.
I recently bought a Sirius brick for my car and I like it. The Shuffle sounds far better and I switch off depending on mood. A couple of weekends ago, I hooked up the Sirius brick to the main Denon and listened to dozens of stations for several hours. It was pretty atrocious. It sounds like Sirius alters their compression across their programming. Some talk channels sounded like bad Sci-Fi movie actors talking. Still, I only paid $25 after rebate for the thing and for long drives, it beats changing CDs or dorking with the Shuffle. I'll never buy a home kit, that's for sure!
Sorry for the "jumping".....
...and you must be running the hunt for Bin Laden as you've missed the points entirely....again.
1) No iPod currently available is good enough for MY listening, not yours or the unwashed masses. I don't care how you listen to music.
2) The iPod Speaker...with its purported shortcomings (I've not heard one yet, but have tested the Bose, Klipsch, Altec, and JBL offerings with the wife's Mini) will probably work for most people. Again, not me.
I'm not "special", just real picky and blessed/cursed with good hearing and trained ears.
I don't know who assigned you to climb on my ass or "educate" me today, so I'll tell you...your shift is over.
[ An iPod playing lossless or uncompressed files into your amp and out your B&Ws (great speakers, btw!), will sound every bit as good as some of the top-of-the-line analog-out CD players, including your treasured Denon. Several leading audio magazines have written reviews (and double-blind tests) which confirm this. ]
:o)
For most people, again I would agree. That does not hold true for yours truly. I've been a musician for 40 years and done a ton of session work as well as my own stuff. I have perfect pitch and virtually all of my hearing intact. I worked as an studio engineer for several years and I'm a fairly good equipment designer.
My house is literally built around my audio/video system. And no, I don't care for Monster Cables. I buy Belden cable on spools and build my own cables. The one Monster Cable I bought was for my Fender Jazz bass and it's in the trash box. I use Planet Waves with the cut-out switches since I change guitars frequently during a set.
The only "dampers" I use is another home-built item for my subwoofers and that was to offset some harmonics from a nearby floor-to-ceiling bookcase at around 50Hz.
Basically, I can hear subtle to sometimes dramatic differences depending on the input source device. Now, in agreement with your point, the VAST majority of people cannot indeed, hear the difference. They also buy cardboard speakers at Wal-Mart...I don't.
And that was my original point...the iPod Speaker is probably OK for most people with iPods...who rip at 128 to 192 and jam tiny earbuds in and listen in blissful ignorance.
[ The iPod plays uncompressed or lossless-compressed audio which sounds just as good (and in some cases, far better) than just about any CD player on the market. WTF are you talking about?
:o)
If you are going to listen to AAC or MP3 files, you might as well use a MUCH cheaper room system than the "iPod Hi-Fi" ]
Portable CD player, I would agree. My Denon 5910 or my Sony ES-555? Coming out of B&W DM's? No freakin' way.
Really good equipment does make the difference. It's a matter of target audience.
That was my point. If you want to hear most or all of what the studio engineers laid down, an iPod...any of them...won't do that. Fact, not opinion. I've been on both sides of the glass in recording studios for 35 years so I think I know whereof I speak!
Which for the low-fi input device being used...an iPod...is about perfect.
I wrote a paper in college on how to purchase and install a high fidelity audio system (this was 1982) for Technical Writing. Got an A on the paper, but the comment by the professor was telling; "Does all this stuff really make a difference?"
Most people have no idea what music really sounds like. They actually think an MP3 player sounds good! They don't hear compression artifacts or that it's lifeless crap coming out of tiny transducers that can't hope to reproduce anything decent sounding.
My wife still thinks I'm nuts because I re-EQ the home theatre system every time we re-arrange the furniture.
The point is that the iPod Speaker is exactly perfect for the target audience....iPod / MP3 player owners. It isn't being marketed to audiophiles as a primary buyer...or doesn't seem so.
Of course, it doesn't state (truthfully) that it allows the user to fill the room with the sound of mangled music, but I can't fault them for that.
Yes, I own a Shuffle. For mowing the lawn. The sound of the machinery offsets the dreadful quality. I looped out an input into my primary Denon AVR for the iPod but couldn't stand the sound coming out of the B&W's.
Everything has a purpose...even the iPod Speaker.
"Um, it adds 802.11 and Bluetooth, a larger HD (80 vs 40 GB) and a faster processor (1.5 vs 1.25 GHz) for an extra $100. Otherwise the specs are the same. If you're disappointed by that, I don't see how it's Apple's problem. They're laughing all the way to the bank."
Which, if you added those options to the "old" Mac Mini, would have sent the price to about $700. It's actually a better deal. Plus, if it is 2 to 4 times faster, where's the beef?
I wish every one of my relatives running Windows would switch to a Mini; my annual free family support hours would drop to ZERO.
And that would be PRICELESS!
You beat me to it....Interstate '76! (and yes, the sequel was major suckage)
I wish someone would resurrect that game and port it to the XBox 360; I would gladly pay $60 for that.
Sigh!
Actually, people spent $3-500 for the 1G iPod when it came out. And it didn't do video, and iTunes had far fewer songs, etc.
Personally, I would cough up $400 for a good eReader in a skinny minute. I read a LOT and some of it is on airplanes. Problem is, I read for work and pleasure AND very fast, so I usually have 3-6 books with me in carry-on luggage.
A single device with 3-6 books on it would be awesome!
Not a direct comparison as any idiot can jam earbuds in and listen to music while Johnny still can't read........