I've been using an old Linksys WRT54G with OpenWRT on it for years without a problem. Slapped a few extras on it like Shorewall and an ssh server and it's been working essentially untouched for two or three years. My only complaint is Shorewall takes a couple or three minutes to fully load, but otherwise it's been excellent.
A mini-ITX or even old laptop with built-in ethernet and a couple card slots might be an option too, but I've never been arsed to set all that up myself with the WRT54G doing as well as it has. One of these days I'll probably get an older WRT54GS or WRT54GL but can't really justify it right now.
I worked at MindSpring doing tech support during the time they cross-sold WebTV units with MindSpring dialup service, and we all hated those calls with a passion. It was invariably an older person who couldn't set the time on their microwave, much less understand the concept of a web site or e-mail. I think probably 60% of my calls were cut off after the first couple instructions with a determined "I'm taking this thing back!". Was almost amusing. Apparently a lot of people sent them back to MindSpring, and there wasn't anything we could do with them since WebTV wouldn't take them back, we couldn't resell them, and they were useless as geek toys. Incidentally, they make a very satisfying splat from the top of a three-tier parking deck:)
Somewhat oddly, the Dreamcast calls were almost as bad, though it was because of people trying to surf the web and set it up with just the controller and no keyboard. Waiting while someone keys in "mail.mindspring.com" twice because they mistyped it the first time with the controller was a pain.
Yeesh, does this bring back memories. I was pretty much the only computer geek in my middle school, and one of a few in my high school (not-quite-but-almost-backwater suburban Georgia) so I was usually the one called upon to fix the computers that were scattered around. I once got accused of hacking a computer when I set the taskbar to auto-hide, when they'd asked me to fix it (ISTR the "broken" was simply someone changing Windows colors. A virus, they swore.). By the end of my high school days in 1999 I'd pretty much refused to do much with them because they'd ask me to fix it but refuse to unlock them enough to let me do it. I did keep the lone foreign language lab full of Macs running flawlessly, and one of the teachers even took me to another school to fix theirs, during a school day, on her lunch break. It still amuses me that my senior year they paid large amounts of money to have computers installed in every classroom without training the teachers a bit. 99% of them either sat in the corner gathering dust or were stolen. They tried to run the entire school off a shared dialup connection. And yet they still proudly touted the school as "100% digitally connected".
Incidentally, one of my few positive memories of high school was being "taught" BASICA on a PS/2 model 25 (ancient even in 1998ish) by a true old-school hacker. I'd finished the 15 assignments in the first two or three weeks of the term and spent the rest of the time BSing with the teacher about the good ol' days or helping other people with stuff. I probably learned the most about good coding practices and structured programming there than I have in college so far, even if it was 15 years out of date. Good times, good times.
Twice even, if you count the 68k->PPC and Classic->OS X transitions. Heck, you might even count the Finder->Multifinder transition since that took a bit of doing in some applications. 24 bit->32 bit maybe? I was always amazed that System 7.5.5 still ran on a 4 meg Mac Plus.
It's kind of funny really. I bought B&W when it was still fairly new and found my fairly decent system that was well above the minimums still really couldn't handle it. I also had all the usual stability problems. I recently found a stash of disks I'd lost, including that one, and loaded it up with all the updates, addons, and such on my nice A64/GF6600GT system and I've found it runs smoothly and nicely. With the latest patches it seems fairly stable, and it's been a lot more fun than I remember it being.
It's not a bad goal to make a game that can make use of future hardware well, but doesn't work when it requires stuff that doesn't exist yet.
I'd expect the average consumer would buy a new computer with the needed OS preinstalled rather than upgrade an OS. Hardware requirements notwithstanding. I have coworkers who have thrown away fairly modern computers and bought new ones because they thought they needed more of some minor thing like drive space or memory. Doesn't even occur to them that they might be able to swap out parts. The computer is still a closed-box appliance to most people, and they wouldn't think of upgrading or modifying it any more than they'd think about putting a more powerful magnetron in their microwave or a hotter element in their oven.
Actually, I tried that, but he wasn't too pleased with the idea of not being able to make any system changes if he needed to since he runs a small business that absolutely depends on that box. He's one of those people that is just good enough with computers to maybe install a program or two and make them run, but still does stupid stuff. He figured out the Run As thing by himself, which surprised me.
Frighteningly, he had his entire customer database on the thing un-backed up. Thank God for the Damn Small Linux disc I happened to have in my car that let me copy stuff off, else he'd have been screwed. Wrote him a couple batch files that copies the thing to a flash drive as well as a Nero thingie that burns it to CD/DVD.
Let's see... somehow, somewhere, you pick up some *NIX malware. It searches your homedir for symlinks and common applinks to xterms (say, KDE desktop or quicklaunch icon) and replaces it with itself. It could also modify your login prefs to replace your PATH with one that would replace, say, the 'xterm' command with itself. From there, the next time you launch xterm, it's compromised. Whether it's a whole new program that looks like xterm, or something stuffed in the middle of xterm and your session, one su later and the bug has your root password.
I recently had to flatten a friend's box and do a restore as it had a similar situation to a previous post - literally every executable on the system was infected with something. I set him up with all the usual security software, got it running, and then switched his user to Limited, made sure his business software still worked properly, and let him run. A week later he calls me back and tells me he's having more problems, and when I go back I find out he's put a virus'd exe attachment on the desktop from his e-mail and used the Run As to run it as the Admin.
My point about all this is no amount of security or proper setup will prevent stupidity. Although this is a case where Linux/UNIX would suffer from the same problem. Social Engineering is still the greatest exploit out there, for any OS.
I stuck an old wireless router in my car hooked up to an inverter and an old laptop and used it both for updating mp3s and a few vids from home and accessing my music from work/remotely on my main laptop and other stuff. Should have patented it! I'd be rich!:)
I guess it revolves around the semantics of the word "explode". The article seems to be using it in the sense that it involves combustion and rapid expansion from the... burning? (I forget the technical term, it's still early here...). Many people would also use explode when referring to anything going from a small volume to a big volume, especially in smaller pieces (think balloon, confetti, tire/waterbed + nail...), but it's all semantics. I think the article's point was the shuttle broke up into a debris cloud from structural integrity failure rather than being forced apart by fuel explosions.
If you want a challenge, beat the game normally then go through it again without getting any heart/magic containers. Most of the game isn't terribly difficult with only 4 heart containers, but the last palace and the Thunderbird are *hard*. You have just enough magic for a Thunder, and the T-bird kills you in two hits. Without Jump, it's hard to get to the T-bird to hit him, and without Shield and Reflect it's nearly impossible to avoid the spewing fire. It took me about a week of on-and-off playing to get to the T-bird, and was stuck there for a couple months before I finally beat him. Didn't use save states at all (did it on the GC Zelda Collections disk).
My next project is going to use a cheat device on my GB Micro to keep the xp levels all at 1 and beat it that way:) Just haven't had time..
I recently picked up one of these, a Performa 640CD DOS, at a thrift store for $5. It's actually not a terribly bad setup. It's not too unlike the Classic environment is today. There is a Control Panel that lets you start and stop it, with a few other options. Then you can have a keycode to switch between the two full screen. The one I got was a 486DX2/66, but there was a Pentium model available later on. It actually ran pretty decently, and I could see how handy it'd be to be able to run not only the bulk of Mac OS software of the time, but also any DOS/Windows app.
More technically, it was implemented by way of a daughter board plugged into the 68040's CPU socket. On there was the actual 68LC040 (which I swapped for a real 68040) and the 486. There was a separate pair of SIMM sockets for the PC side of things; it had it's own RAM and didn't share the Macintosh's. There were runner ribbon cables that ran the audio over to the Macintosh's audio input plug (shared with, and mutually exclusive with, the Macintosh A/V card), as well as an output for midi/joysticks. All in all it wasn't a bad system, might have been cool if Apple had kept it up longer and perhaps allowed an intermixed interface with a Windows running on the system.
I'll be far more concerned when/if Windows is handling the base car functions - ABS, EFI, timing, traction control, etc. - than when it's just an addon. It might not be too bad if it's a completely separate, unnetworked system, but you know that if Windows ever was used for that it'd be part of a do-everything system including some sort of internet access or multi-car networking system. It'll be just like the old days when the rumors flew about viruses that blew up your monitor with improper refresh ratings, but this time you'll have viruses blowing up engines from over-revving, mis-timing, or other fun things:)
Of course I'm being alarmist and worst-case, I still don't really see it actually happening. At least in a widespread manner. As it is I can avoid overly-computerized cars easily enough. Not that I could afford one even if I wanted one anyway:) Although, "Sorry, my car bluescreened" would be a fun excuse to try at work if late..
God, that worm swept through my company not too long ago, and it pops back up from time to time. I've mentioned that using straight AIM is a bad idea, but unfortunately I'm a little too far down the food chain to make much difference quickly. I was one of the few using gaim on Linux and literally had to kill it because of the flurry of IMs from that worm.
Although I admit to using AIM to talk to my gf and other people outside the building, I'd not complain at all if it blocked and switched to Jabber or some other internal thing. Not gonna happen though, the IS/IT/developers are already bogged down with what they currently have, much less adding more. There's already a company policy in place about sending private information over AIM, but everyone uses it to send passwords, usernames, other login info, customer info, internal stuff... it's really pretty bad.
Somewhat ironically, my Linux laptop experience has actually regressed with my latest laptop over some previous ones. My last one was still APM-only, no ACPI junk, and all the various sleep and hibernation features worked great. My newest one is ACPI-only, "legacy free", and I've still never had it survive a sleep/wake cycle. Kind of a shame, I've gotten everything else working great. I've been using Gentoo on it; one of these days I may try Fedora or SuSE and see if it picks anything up better.
I'd love a fully vendor-supported Linux laptop, if it was done properly.
There's no reason the answer can't be "all of the above". I semi-recently took the plunge and set up my own mailserver. I got IMAP, POP, and Webmail going on it, so I can access it via IMAP from a local client (most of my static computers such as at home and work), webmail (travelling/others' computers), and POP (crappy limited clients, a couple other users on the system). They're all looking at the same Maildir, so it's all my mail. The only issue I've run into is filtering; I really need to investigate procmail or something for server-side filtering into folders. Just haven't been arsed.
Never said I was talking about computers;) Anyway, you're reading far too much into what were intended to be quick, general statements about everyday life as they related to the topic. Naturally it happens to doctors and lawyers, but the article was about technology in social situations. I was referencing the more philosophical issues regarding someone absorbed in their own work rather than perhaps interacting with their world around them. Again, I realize the same could be said of a book, magazine, or newspaper, but I was relating it to the topic at hand and how there are an ever-increasing number of things to be absorbed in. I could certainly spend several paragraphs making greater specificity in my posts, but this is/.:)
By the way, my shade of gray *is* better than your shade of gray:) Although I prefer a bit more silveryish.
Neo-luddite? I'm as much a gadget freak as anyone. I just prefer people who use their technology responsibly and in a non-invasive manner. Granted I dislike people talking louding to people near them as much as I do people talking loudly into cell phones, it just seems like cell phones induce it.
As for talking about computer problems, I'm a computer geek. Seriously. I was the kid typing BASIC into the Apple IIs in elementary school, on up to running Gentoo on anything I can get my hands on today. It's probably this that makes it annoying because everywhere I go I'm treated like mobile tech support if it slips out. Several years ago I was eating dinner at a restaurant with my family and someone at the next table overheard some comment I made about something that happened at work and they actually *went out to their car* and brought their laptop in and wanted me to fix it (they'd hosed the master boot record, simple fdisk/mbr fixed it).
Incidentally, I do have Mennonite heritage, though not Amish. But please, think a bit before criticizing before you put your foot in your mouth again:)
I was meaning, occasionally, people I'm dining with. Otherwise, yes, people do tend to talk more loudly on cell phones than they do in person. Another thing I've noticed is people seem to go on at length about more personal things on the phone, often with the aforementioned loud voice, than they would in person. I really don't need to hear about my table-neighbor's irritable bowl syndrome while I'm eating. No idea what causes that partcular phenomenon but I'm sure I'm not alone in experiencing it.
I guess the annoyance with computer problems comes partly from my technical background, and people who tend to both go on at length about it without understanding it, and others nearby who go on at length about it as if they understood it. I expect anyone specializing in anything might find uninformed commentary on it displeasing.
I readily admit my problems:) I'm rather problematic. Much more interesting than being dull.
I miss the days when I could go out and have a nice dinner without people yammering on cell phones, tapping on PDAs, talking about computer problems, etc. Sometimes I think people are a little too connected and socially technological these days.
I'm sure there have been positive effects too though.
I say the hard part is landing:) It was *years*, starting with Flight Simulator 2 on an Atari 8 bit at the tender age of 7 or 8, before I could nail landings most of the time. Now I consider myself a Flight Sim expert at least in doing things pseudo-properly. I still haven't had any real flight time but I plan to change that in the near future. I semi-recently graduated to X-Plane (had a DVD of it for awhile, but just recently got my computer upgraded to where it'd run it reasonably). MSFS isn't horrible, but X-Plane is dramatically better for realism by and large. It doesn't have as much eye-candy scenery building-wise, but for actual flying it's pretty incredible.
Besides, full 90* combat turns in a 777 is darn fun;)
It's funny you mention this. When I was growing up in the 80's I was always into computers, and people would go on about how rich I'd be as a programmer. Now here I am on the cusp of figuring out what I want to do with the rest of my life and programming isn't quite the glamorous setup it was made out to be. I often wonder if jobs like programming were originally expected to become/stay something of an elite job, but ended up being something everyone and his brother dabbles in. As it ended up I enjoyed the hardware/networking side far more than programming, but I still get sympathetic responses to mentioning what I like now.
There's a woman I work with who can hack'n'crack with the best of them who gets the "Okay, this is a mouse..." treatment every time someone new starts up in tech support, takes a shine to her, and tries to impress her. Needless to say they never get very far with her:) Although her being married might have something to do with that too...
She plays a mean game of CS too. Totally cleans my clock, though I play rarely enough that I've never had the practice to get beyond mediocre.
Slashdot Mirror
"Goin' to the bear pits tomorrow, you wanna come with?"
Still the best NPC convo I've ever heard. Had me rolling on the floor.
I've been using an old Linksys WRT54G with OpenWRT on it for years without a problem. Slapped a few extras on it like Shorewall and an ssh server and it's been working essentially untouched for two or three years. My only complaint is Shorewall takes a couple or three minutes to fully load, but otherwise it's been excellent.
A mini-ITX or even old laptop with built-in ethernet and a couple card slots might be an option too, but I've never been arsed to set all that up myself with the WRT54G doing as well as it has. One of these days I'll probably get an older WRT54GS or WRT54GL but can't really justify it right now.
I worked at MindSpring doing tech support during the time they cross-sold WebTV units with MindSpring dialup service, and we all hated those calls with a passion. It was invariably an older person who couldn't set the time on their microwave, much less understand the concept of a web site or e-mail. I think probably 60% of my calls were cut off after the first couple instructions with a determined "I'm taking this thing back!". Was almost amusing. Apparently a lot of people sent them back to MindSpring, and there wasn't anything we could do with them since WebTV wouldn't take them back, we couldn't resell them, and they were useless as geek toys. Incidentally, they make a very satisfying splat from the top of a three-tier parking deck :)
Somewhat oddly, the Dreamcast calls were almost as bad, though it was because of people trying to surf the web and set it up with just the controller and no keyboard. Waiting while someone keys in "mail.mindspring.com" twice because they mistyped it the first time with the controller was a pain.
Yeesh, does this bring back memories. I was pretty much the only computer geek in my middle school, and one of a few in my high school (not-quite-but-almost-backwater suburban Georgia) so I was usually the one called upon to fix the computers that were scattered around. I once got accused of hacking a computer when I set the taskbar to auto-hide, when they'd asked me to fix it (ISTR the "broken" was simply someone changing Windows colors. A virus, they swore.). By the end of my high school days in 1999 I'd pretty much refused to do much with them because they'd ask me to fix it but refuse to unlock them enough to let me do it. I did keep the lone foreign language lab full of Macs running flawlessly, and one of the teachers even took me to another school to fix theirs, during a school day, on her lunch break. It still amuses me that my senior year they paid large amounts of money to have computers installed in every classroom without training the teachers a bit. 99% of them either sat in the corner gathering dust or were stolen. They tried to run the entire school off a shared dialup connection. And yet they still proudly touted the school as "100% digitally connected".
Incidentally, one of my few positive memories of high school was being "taught" BASICA on a PS/2 model 25 (ancient even in 1998ish) by a true old-school hacker. I'd finished the 15 assignments in the first two or three weeks of the term and spent the rest of the time BSing with the teacher about the good ol' days or helping other people with stuff. I probably learned the most about good coding practices and structured programming there than I have in college so far, even if it was 15 years out of date. Good times, good times.
Twice even, if you count the 68k->PPC and Classic->OS X transitions. Heck, you might even count the Finder->Multifinder transition since that took a bit of doing in some applications. 24 bit->32 bit maybe? I was always amazed that System 7.5.5 still ran on a 4 meg Mac Plus.
It's kind of funny really. I bought B&W when it was still fairly new and found my fairly decent system that was well above the minimums still really couldn't handle it. I also had all the usual stability problems. I recently found a stash of disks I'd lost, including that one, and loaded it up with all the updates, addons, and such on my nice A64/GF6600GT system and I've found it runs smoothly and nicely. With the latest patches it seems fairly stable, and it's been a lot more fun than I remember it being.
It's not a bad goal to make a game that can make use of future hardware well, but doesn't work when it requires stuff that doesn't exist yet.
I'd expect the average consumer would buy a new computer with the needed OS preinstalled rather than upgrade an OS. Hardware requirements notwithstanding. I have coworkers who have thrown away fairly modern computers and bought new ones because they thought they needed more of some minor thing like drive space or memory. Doesn't even occur to them that they might be able to swap out parts. The computer is still a closed-box appliance to most people, and they wouldn't think of upgrading or modifying it any more than they'd think about putting a more powerful magnetron in their microwave or a hotter element in their oven.
Actually, I tried that, but he wasn't too pleased with the idea of not being able to make any system changes if he needed to since he runs a small business that absolutely depends on that box. He's one of those people that is just good enough with computers to maybe install a program or two and make them run, but still does stupid stuff. He figured out the Run As thing by himself, which surprised me.
Frighteningly, he had his entire customer database on the thing un-backed up. Thank God for the Damn Small Linux disc I happened to have in my car that let me copy stuff off, else he'd have been screwed. Wrote him a couple batch files that copies the thing to a flash drive as well as a Nero thingie that burns it to CD/DVD.
Let's see... somehow, somewhere, you pick up some *NIX malware. It searches your homedir for symlinks and common applinks to xterms (say, KDE desktop or quicklaunch icon) and replaces it with itself. It could also modify your login prefs to replace your PATH with one that would replace, say, the 'xterm' command with itself. From there, the next time you launch xterm, it's compromised. Whether it's a whole new program that looks like xterm, or something stuffed in the middle of xterm and your session, one su later and the bug has your root password.
:)
Unlikely, perhaps, but certainly possible
I recently had to flatten a friend's box and do a restore as it had a similar situation to a previous post - literally every executable on the system was infected with something. I set him up with all the usual security software, got it running, and then switched his user to Limited, made sure his business software still worked properly, and let him run. A week later he calls me back and tells me he's having more problems, and when I go back I find out he's put a virus'd exe attachment on the desktop from his e-mail and used the Run As to run it as the Admin.
My point about all this is no amount of security or proper setup will prevent stupidity. Although this is a case where Linux/UNIX would suffer from the same problem. Social Engineering is still the greatest exploit out there, for any OS.
I stuck an old wireless router in my car hooked up to an inverter and an old laptop and used it both for updating mp3s and a few vids from home and accessing my music from work/remotely on my main laptop and other stuff. Should have patented it! I'd be rich! :)
I guess it revolves around the semantics of the word "explode". The article seems to be using it in the sense that it involves combustion and rapid expansion from the... burning? (I forget the technical term, it's still early here...). Many people would also use explode when referring to anything going from a small volume to a big volume, especially in smaller pieces (think balloon, confetti, tire/waterbed + nail...), but it's all semantics. I think the article's point was the shuttle broke up into a debris cloud from structural integrity failure rather than being forced apart by fuel explosions.
If you want a challenge, beat the game normally then go through it again without getting any heart/magic containers. Most of the game isn't terribly difficult with only 4 heart containers, but the last palace and the Thunderbird are *hard*. You have just enough magic for a Thunder, and the T-bird kills you in two hits. Without Jump, it's hard to get to the T-bird to hit him, and without Shield and Reflect it's nearly impossible to avoid the spewing fire. It took me about a week of on-and-off playing to get to the T-bird, and was stuck there for a couple months before I finally beat him. Didn't use save states at all (did it on the GC Zelda Collections disk).
:) Just haven't had time..
My next project is going to use a cheat device on my GB Micro to keep the xp levels all at 1 and beat it that way
I recently picked up one of these, a Performa 640CD DOS, at a thrift store for $5. It's actually not a terribly bad setup. It's not too unlike the Classic environment is today. There is a Control Panel that lets you start and stop it, with a few other options. Then you can have a keycode to switch between the two full screen. The one I got was a 486DX2/66, but there was a Pentium model available later on. It actually ran pretty decently, and I could see how handy it'd be to be able to run not only the bulk of Mac OS software of the time, but also any DOS/Windows app.
More technically, it was implemented by way of a daughter board plugged into the 68040's CPU socket. On there was the actual 68LC040 (which I swapped for a real 68040) and the 486. There was a separate pair of SIMM sockets for the PC side of things; it had it's own RAM and didn't share the Macintosh's. There were runner ribbon cables that ran the audio over to the Macintosh's audio input plug (shared with, and mutually exclusive with, the Macintosh A/V card), as well as an output for midi/joysticks. All in all it wasn't a bad system, might have been cool if Apple had kept it up longer and perhaps allowed an intermixed interface with a Windows running on the system.
I'll be far more concerned when/if Windows is handling the base car functions - ABS, EFI, timing, traction control, etc. - than when it's just an addon. It might not be too bad if it's a completely separate, unnetworked system, but you know that if Windows ever was used for that it'd be part of a do-everything system including some sort of internet access or multi-car networking system. It'll be just like the old days when the rumors flew about viruses that blew up your monitor with improper refresh ratings, but this time you'll have viruses blowing up engines from over-revving, mis-timing, or other fun things :)
:) Although, "Sorry, my car bluescreened" would be a fun excuse to try at work if late..
Of course I'm being alarmist and worst-case, I still don't really see it actually happening. At least in a widespread manner. As it is I can avoid overly-computerized cars easily enough. Not that I could afford one even if I wanted one anyway
God, that worm swept through my company not too long ago, and it pops back up from time to time. I've mentioned that using straight AIM is a bad idea, but unfortunately I'm a little too far down the food chain to make much difference quickly. I was one of the few using gaim on Linux and literally had to kill it because of the flurry of IMs from that worm.
Although I admit to using AIM to talk to my gf and other people outside the building, I'd not complain at all if it blocked and switched to Jabber or some other internal thing. Not gonna happen though, the IS/IT/developers are already bogged down with what they currently have, much less adding more. There's already a company policy in place about sending private information over AIM, but everyone uses it to send passwords, usernames, other login info, customer info, internal stuff... it's really pretty bad.
Somewhat ironically, my Linux laptop experience has actually regressed with my latest laptop over some previous ones. My last one was still APM-only, no ACPI junk, and all the various sleep and hibernation features worked great. My newest one is ACPI-only, "legacy free", and I've still never had it survive a sleep/wake cycle. Kind of a shame, I've gotten everything else working great. I've been using Gentoo on it; one of these days I may try Fedora or SuSE and see if it picks anything up better.
I'd love a fully vendor-supported Linux laptop, if it was done properly.
There's no reason the answer can't be "all of the above". I semi-recently took the plunge and set up my own mailserver. I got IMAP, POP, and Webmail going on it, so I can access it via IMAP from a local client (most of my static computers such as at home and work), webmail (travelling/others' computers), and POP (crappy limited clients, a couple other users on the system). They're all looking at the same Maildir, so it's all my mail. The only issue I've run into is filtering; I really need to investigate procmail or something for server-side filtering into folders. Just haven't been arsed.
Never said I was talking about computers ;) Anyway, you're reading far too much into what were intended to be quick, general statements about everyday life as they related to the topic. Naturally it happens to doctors and lawyers, but the article was about technology in social situations. I was referencing the more philosophical issues regarding someone absorbed in their own work rather than perhaps interacting with their world around them. Again, I realize the same could be said of a book, magazine, or newspaper, but I was relating it to the topic at hand and how there are an ever-increasing number of things to be absorbed in. I could certainly spend several paragraphs making greater specificity in my posts, but this is /. :)
:) Although I prefer a bit more silveryish.
By the way, my shade of gray *is* better than your shade of gray
Neo-luddite? I'm as much a gadget freak as anyone. I just prefer people who use their technology responsibly and in a non-invasive manner. Granted I dislike people talking louding to people near them as much as I do people talking loudly into cell phones, it just seems like cell phones induce it.
/mbr fixed it).
:)
As for talking about computer problems, I'm a computer geek. Seriously. I was the kid typing BASIC into the Apple IIs in elementary school, on up to running Gentoo on anything I can get my hands on today. It's probably this that makes it annoying because everywhere I go I'm treated like mobile tech support if it slips out. Several years ago I was eating dinner at a restaurant with my family and someone at the next table overheard some comment I made about something that happened at work and they actually *went out to their car* and brought their laptop in and wanted me to fix it (they'd hosed the master boot record, simple fdisk
Incidentally, I do have Mennonite heritage, though not Amish. But please, think a bit before criticizing before you put your foot in your mouth again
I was meaning, occasionally, people I'm dining with. Otherwise, yes, people do tend to talk more loudly on cell phones than they do in person. Another thing I've noticed is people seem to go on at length about more personal things on the phone, often with the aforementioned loud voice, than they would in person. I really don't need to hear about my table-neighbor's irritable bowl syndrome while I'm eating. No idea what causes that partcular phenomenon but I'm sure I'm not alone in experiencing it.
:) I'm rather problematic. Much more interesting than being dull.
I guess the annoyance with computer problems comes partly from my technical background, and people who tend to both go on at length about it without understanding it, and others nearby who go on at length about it as if they understood it. I expect anyone specializing in anything might find uninformed commentary on it displeasing.
I readily admit my problems
I miss the days when I could go out and have a nice dinner without people yammering on cell phones, tapping on PDAs, talking about computer problems, etc. Sometimes I think people are a little too connected and socially technological these days.
I'm sure there have been positive effects too though.
I say the hard part is landing :) It was *years*, starting with Flight Simulator 2 on an Atari 8 bit at the tender age of 7 or 8, before I could nail landings most of the time. Now I consider myself a Flight Sim expert at least in doing things pseudo-properly. I still haven't had any real flight time but I plan to change that in the near future. I semi-recently graduated to X-Plane (had a DVD of it for awhile, but just recently got my computer upgraded to where it'd run it reasonably). MSFS isn't horrible, but X-Plane is dramatically better for realism by and large. It doesn't have as much eye-candy scenery building-wise, but for actual flying it's pretty incredible.
;)
Besides, full 90* combat turns in a 777 is darn fun
It's funny you mention this. When I was growing up in the 80's I was always into computers, and people would go on about how rich I'd be as a programmer. Now here I am on the cusp of figuring out what I want to do with the rest of my life and programming isn't quite the glamorous setup it was made out to be. I often wonder if jobs like programming were originally expected to become/stay something of an elite job, but ended up being something everyone and his brother dabbles in. As it ended up I enjoyed the hardware/networking side far more than programming, but I still get sympathetic responses to mentioning what I like now.
:)
Ah well, so goes life I suppose
There's a woman I work with who can hack'n'crack with the best of them who gets the "Okay, this is a mouse..." treatment every time someone new starts up in tech support, takes a shine to her, and tries to impress her. Needless to say they never get very far with her :) Although her being married might have something to do with that too...
She plays a mean game of CS too. Totally cleans my clock, though I play rarely enough that I've never had the practice to get beyond mediocre.