It sounds like it might be time to buy an automated tape library. We have several 80 bay StorageTek (IIRC) tape libraries in the server room and they work pretty well for massive backups.
I don't think that anybody there is all that worried.
They damn well should be as they're not in terribly good shape. Have you read the Wired.com article? Unfortunately they didn't include the charts from the print article, but there are still some choice quotations:
Only once in the past five years has Sony's all-important electronics division posted a profit; during that same period, the company's share price has fallen by nearly half.
Yet Sony has to face Microsoft not just in videogames but across the entire panoply of home electronics, which Microsoft is determined to control through software. And Sony has to do this with cash reserves of $6 billion - compared to Microsoft's $38 billion hoard - while losing hundreds of dollars in manufacturing costs alone for every PS3 sold. Eventually, Sony's costs will come down. But in the meantime, Goldman Sachs projects, Sony will lose nearly $2 billion on the PS3 by the end of this fiscal year in March.
So, by March Sony will have burned through a third of its cash reserves due to losses from the PS3. I hate to think what that number's going to look like when you factor in the losses due to Blu-Ray players.
Now, before you label me a Nintendo or XBox fanboy, understand that I own a PS1 and PS2 along with several hundred games for each system and the fact that the PS2 played DVDs did factor into my decision to buy it first before I got a Gamecube. However, despite the fact that I earn a nice salary, $600 is way too much to pay for a console that I might play two or three times in a week. And Blu-Ray? Please. I already have a DVD player with a huge movie library and it's good enough for me. I think Sony's throwing their weight behind the PS3 + Blu-Ray because it's their last chance at survival.
Which Ninja Gaiden game? The arcade, NES, SNES, GameGear, Master System, PCEngine, DOS or XBOX release? I'll assume the NES version. Like many NES games, Ninja Gaiden was pretty easy once you learned where all of the enemies were and how they moved (that long level with the eagles was a PITA though). Heck, I can remember Contra being hard at first, but eventually I could beat it with a single life.
Regarding the Knights of the Round Materia, as I recall it wasn't that difficult to obtain. I believe it took my roommate two or three days to get it.
As for the materia that's hidden in the giant nest above the train tracks, well many players have been around since the NES days and have learned to try walking everywhere. Many RPGs over the years have hidden treasures and other secrets in locations that you'll only find by exploring the boundaries of the map. Yes, it is tedious work.
*LOL* I got the release date wrong too; StarFox Command went on sale yesterday. If I had remembered that, I'd be playing it now instead of reading/.
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux
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A New Kind of OS
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I suspect that many people drawn to programming are actually interested in things like growing their own food, servicing their own automobile, carpentry, brewing beer, etc. In my experience good programmers tend to be people who like to build and create, and who enjoy understanding how things work at a fundamental level. A computer is simply the preferred medium for expressing their art.
Perhaps the real message is that programmers can't understand why non-programmers aren't interested in learning how things work.
FWIW, I'm doing contract work for a company whose name I probably shouldn't mention (I've signed NDAs) that uses open source software for most of it's infrastructure. They have a custom built WebObjects application running on FreeBSD (under Linux compatibility), Apache+SSL, MySQL and PHP plus some other tools/libraries like JBoss, JFreechart, ClamAV, Tripwire, etc. They're a startup company doing project portfolio management, have been around for about three years and are currently profitable.
When a kid dropping his iPod in a toilet leads to him being interrogated by law enforcement about his sexual desires, I think we can state with confidence that at least some of these officials were not performing their duties in good faith.
I think the agents were performing their jobs in good faith, it's just that the protocol for handling this sort of situation is seriously screwed up. I'd be willing to bet that the agents were simply following their terrorism training rather than using their brains when dealing with the situation. Of course, you're likely to get fired for using your brain instead of following protocol in many jobs, especially a government job.
If you haven't dealt with law enforcement personnel, then I can understand thinking that the agents overreacted. However, law enforcement personnel are trained to be pricks and to bully in order to take control of a situation. They really do believe they are judge, juror and executioner and when a person stands up to them they usually can't handle it and blow up, start threatening you, etc. It's their modus operandi.
I don't know what motivated this whole fiasco, but it doesn't seem that it can all be explained as a legitimate effort to protect public safety, or even slavish following of regulations.
Security policy motivated the fiasco. It's just that the security policy was created by a bunch of incompetent bureaucrats. Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.
Finally, what the hell is this obsession with freakin' Opening Weekend Gross? Whatever happened to films with staying power?
You answered your own question. Studios are concerned with opening weekend since by the second weekend everyone has heard that the movie sucks. I can only speculate that the studios have figured out that they make more money by creating a low-budget movie and then promoting the hell out of it.
FWIW, condoms break; if you're lucky you realize it broke before you ejaculate. Don't count on being lucky every time. You need to have a backup plan like both people using birth control.
I didn't have sex the first time until I was 17... my parents never had to do that "zomg keep your door open" shit.
OMFG! You had sex outside of marriage?!:p I also was seventeen, it was the summer before my senior year, and my parents _never_ had The Talk with me. Now that I'm older I realize that even at 30 I'm not really prepared for a sexual relationship since I have no desire to risk getting a woman pregnant and certainly don't want some clingy girlfriend trying to get me to marry her (the last one wanted to marry me and have my kids). I know, unlike a seventeen year old, that I'm prepared financially, but I'm not willing to make the necessary sacrifices to raise a child. If you're not willing to raise a child you really shouldn't be having sex.
First of all, I agree with your message 100%; heck, I'm 30 and I don't necessarily feel comfortable sleeping with women since even with birth control there's a chance of pregnancy.
My parents never made me keep my bedroom door open when I had girls over, but I attended a residential high school and they _did_ have that policy (in addition to signing the person into your residential area). I'm not sure what the point was so far as trying to prevent intercourse, since it's not like two people can only have sex in a bedroom. What it did do was cover the school's ass should something happen.
Unfortunately for parents, there's not a whole lot they can do to stop a child that's determined to have sex. Even your open door policy doesn't ensure that you won't have to have that talk with some girl's parents. I believe this is the point that one of the other respondants was trying to make; you can prevent him from having sex in your home, but you can't prevent him from having sex. I know people may have a problem with this, but I think the best one can do is ensure that their daughter is using birth control even if they don't think she's having sex.
However, at 18 a "child" in no longer the legal responsibility of the parents. But there is a flip that gets switched... it's the one that says "I'll go to jail, not juvi, if I do something wrong, " and the one that says "my parents are not legally responsible for me anymore."
Maybe you haven't heard, but in the U.S. kids under 18 _do_ go to jail for crimes. IIRC, there have been twelve year olds that have been tried as adults. Sure, you sit in juvi until you're eighteen and then get transferred to the adult jail for the rest of your sentence (life?).
I'll admit that there can be times where I'll read political news or technical documents for half of the day. However, I do the work of at least three people and the areas I'm responsible for are covered. Personally, I'm not going to feel bad about following politics while at the office (I'm salaried BTW, so I'm basically on the clock 24x7). Being knowledgable about what's going on in your country is much more important in my opinion than making sure you're doing productive work for an employer at every possible moment.
Do you want someone who has 5 years of experience in your company having extra incentive to leave because you try and control them like a 12 year old? Do you want that to happen in the middle of a key project?
*LOL* I just last week resigned my current position after five years and in the middle of a key project. I just finally got sick of the company's policies: them not wanting to provide opportunities for growth (training, conferences, etc.), an enforced biz casual dress-code even though I just hang out in a cubicle, non-technical managers in techical positions making poor decisions that impacted me and so on. Eventually I just became unmotivated, tried to force myself to continue showing up for a couple of months and then realized that it was time for me to leave.
The one policy that really irked me (I'm a UNIX admin and software developer) was the strict work hours and location. I just got sick of having to get up at six and driving an hour from Chicago out to the suburbs in order to be there at eight o'clock. Now, there was no real reason for me to be there at eight other than a policy that was in effect so everyone was at the office together (I'm not sure why that's important if you're not actually working with one another). Things actually got worse when the company instituted "summer hours"; the work day started an hour earlier, at seven, but you got half of Friday off. Sweet! Now I have to get up at five in the morning!
:) Chicago. Most consulting companies charge at least $200 per hour, but a lot of that fee goes to the owners. Unfortunately the people doing the work aren't usually worth that rate.
Most small businesses need a file server, possibly a mail/calendar server, maybe a domain controller (actually, one-login-per-machine isn't horrible IMHO), maybe a VPN server, a DNS server, a DHCP server, a VPN gateway and a print server. All of which can be handily be accomplished with a net-installed Debian system in 5 or 6 hours. Assuming a consultant charging $70/hr, that's $350-420.
Where are you going to find a good consultant charging those rates? In my area, they typically bill something like $200 or $250 per hour.
Like the others have said, he means Microsoft SQL Server. Now, I haven't done this myself, but I believe you _can_ run Microsoft SQL Server in VMWare on top of OpenBSD.
Don't forget the fact that most (all?) cards provide some sort of fraud insurance (typically you're only on the hook for the first $50). What kind of insurance is this vendor offering?
I'd argue the issue is that people aren't including non-compliance clauses in their contracts. The company I just got hired by does telephony and VOIP applications, and their clients typcially have such clauses included in any contracts. If the provider drops the ball with regards to, say, a call center application, then they are required to pay some sort of fine.
Some people argue that non-compliance clauses can make it difficult to find people willing to do the work for you, but I'd argue that if said people are capable of doing the work, then there's no reason to think that they'd run afoul of such clauses.
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- They're sold at Wal-Mart. I don't buy from Wal-Mart; I buy from independent operators when I can.
- Most of the lights in my place are either track lights or recessed lights. I honestly don't think I have a single 60 Watt bulb in the place.
In any case, I thought the article was pretty good. I imagine that most homes in America have a place for these types of light bulbs.Yeah, sorry. I didn't check the beginning of the thread until after I posted and realized my mistake.
It sounds like it might be time to buy an automated tape library. We have several 80 bay StorageTek (IIRC) tape libraries in the server room and they work pretty well for massive backups.
They damn well should be as they're not in terribly good shape. Have you read the Wired.com article? Unfortunately they didn't include the charts from the print article, but there are still some choice quotations:
So, by March Sony will have burned through a third of its cash reserves due to losses from the PS3. I hate to think what that number's going to look like when you factor in the losses due to Blu-Ray players.
Now, before you label me a Nintendo or XBox fanboy, understand that I own a PS1 and PS2 along with several hundred games for each system and the fact that the PS2 played DVDs did factor into my decision to buy it first before I got a Gamecube. However, despite the fact that I earn a nice salary, $600 is way too much to pay for a console that I might play two or three times in a week. And Blu-Ray? Please. I already have a DVD player with a huge movie library and it's good enough for me. I think Sony's throwing their weight behind the PS3 + Blu-Ray because it's their last chance at survival.
Which Ninja Gaiden game? The arcade, NES, SNES, GameGear, Master System, PCEngine, DOS or XBOX release? I'll assume the NES version. Like many NES games, Ninja Gaiden was pretty easy once you learned where all of the enemies were and how they moved (that long level with the eagles was a PITA though). Heck, I can remember Contra being hard at first, but eventually I could beat it with a single life.
Regarding the Knights of the Round Materia, as I recall it wasn't that difficult to obtain. I believe it took my roommate two or three days to get it.
As for the materia that's hidden in the giant nest above the train tracks, well many players have been around since the NES days and have learned to try walking everywhere. Many RPGs over the years have hidden treasures and other secrets in locations that you'll only find by exploring the boundaries of the map. Yes, it is tedious work.
*LOL* I got the release date wrong too; StarFox Command went on sale yesterday. If I had remembered that, I'd be playing it now instead of reading /.
I suspect that many people drawn to programming are actually interested in things like growing their own food, servicing their own automobile, carpentry, brewing beer, etc. In my experience good programmers tend to be people who like to build and create, and who enjoy understanding how things work at a fundamental level. A computer is simply the preferred medium for expressing their art.
Perhaps the real message is that programmers can't understand why non-programmers aren't interested in learning how things work.
OFMG! I forgot StarFox was released today; time to run out to Fry's.
FWIW, I'm doing contract work for a company whose name I probably shouldn't mention (I've signed NDAs) that uses open source software for most of it's infrastructure. They have a custom built WebObjects application running on FreeBSD (under Linux compatibility), Apache+SSL, MySQL and PHP plus some other tools/libraries like JBoss, JFreechart, ClamAV, Tripwire, etc. They're a startup company doing project portfolio management, have been around for about three years and are currently profitable.
God help you if you're running OpenBSD with encrypted filesystems and a sticker of an armed Puffy on the laptop's lid.
I think the agents were performing their jobs in good faith, it's just that the protocol for handling this sort of situation is seriously screwed up. I'd be willing to bet that the agents were simply following their terrorism training rather than using their brains when dealing with the situation. Of course, you're likely to get fired for using your brain instead of following protocol in many jobs, especially a government job.
If you haven't dealt with law enforcement personnel, then I can understand thinking that the agents overreacted. However, law enforcement personnel are trained to be pricks and to bully in order to take control of a situation. They really do believe they are judge, juror and executioner and when a person stands up to them they usually can't handle it and blow up, start threatening you, etc. It's their modus operandi.
Security policy motivated the fiasco. It's just that the security policy was created by a bunch of incompetent bureaucrats. Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.
You answered your own question. Studios are concerned with opening weekend since by the second weekend everyone has heard that the movie sucks. I can only speculate that the studios have figured out that they make more money by creating a low-budget movie and then promoting the hell out of it.
*LOL* I can remember how uncomfortable I was the first few times I bought condoms.
FWIW, condoms break; if you're lucky you realize it broke before you ejaculate. Don't count on being lucky every time. You need to have a backup plan like both people using birth control.
OMFG! You had sex outside of marriage?! :p I also was seventeen, it was the summer before my senior year, and my parents _never_ had The Talk with me. Now that I'm older I realize that even at 30 I'm not really prepared for a sexual relationship since I have no desire to risk getting a woman pregnant and certainly don't want some clingy girlfriend trying to get me to marry her (the last one wanted to marry me and have my kids). I know, unlike a seventeen year old, that I'm prepared financially, but I'm not willing to make the necessary sacrifices to raise a child. If you're not willing to raise a child you really shouldn't be having sex.
First of all, I agree with your message 100%; heck, I'm 30 and I don't necessarily feel comfortable sleeping with women since even with birth control there's a chance of pregnancy.
My parents never made me keep my bedroom door open when I had girls over, but I attended a residential high school and they _did_ have that policy (in addition to signing the person into your residential area). I'm not sure what the point was so far as trying to prevent intercourse, since it's not like two people can only have sex in a bedroom. What it did do was cover the school's ass should something happen.
Unfortunately for parents, there's not a whole lot they can do to stop a child that's determined to have sex. Even your open door policy doesn't ensure that you won't have to have that talk with some girl's parents. I believe this is the point that one of the other respondants was trying to make; you can prevent him from having sex in your home, but you can't prevent him from having sex. I know people may have a problem with this, but I think the best one can do is ensure that their daughter is using birth control even if they don't think she's having sex.
Maybe you haven't heard, but in the U.S. kids under 18 _do_ go to jail for crimes. IIRC, there have been twelve year olds that have been tried as adults. Sure, you sit in juvi until you're eighteen and then get transferred to the adult jail for the rest of your sentence (life?).
I'll admit that there can be times where I'll read political news or technical documents for half of the day. However, I do the work of at least three people and the areas I'm responsible for are covered. Personally, I'm not going to feel bad about following politics while at the office (I'm salaried BTW, so I'm basically on the clock 24x7). Being knowledgable about what's going on in your country is much more important in my opinion than making sure you're doing productive work for an employer at every possible moment.
*LOL* I just last week resigned my current position after five years and in the middle of a key project. I just finally got sick of the company's policies: them not wanting to provide opportunities for growth (training, conferences, etc.), an enforced biz casual dress-code even though I just hang out in a cubicle, non-technical managers in techical positions making poor decisions that impacted me and so on. Eventually I just became unmotivated, tried to force myself to continue showing up for a couple of months and then realized that it was time for me to leave.
The one policy that really irked me (I'm a UNIX admin and software developer) was the strict work hours and location. I just got sick of having to get up at six and driving an hour from Chicago out to the suburbs in order to be there at eight o'clock. Now, there was no real reason for me to be there at eight other than a policy that was in effect so everyone was at the office together (I'm not sure why that's important if you're not actually working with one another). Things actually got worse when the company instituted "summer hours"; the work day started an hour earlier, at seven, but you got half of Friday off. Sweet! Now I have to get up at five in the morning!
:) Chicago. Most consulting companies charge at least $200 per hour, but a lot of that fee goes to the owners. Unfortunately the people doing the work aren't usually worth that rate.
Where are you going to find a good consultant charging those rates? In my area, they typically bill something like $200 or $250 per hour.
Like the others have said, he means Microsoft SQL Server. Now, I haven't done this myself, but I believe you _can_ run Microsoft SQL Server in VMWare on top of OpenBSD.
Don't forget the fact that most (all?) cards provide some sort of fraud insurance (typically you're only on the hook for the first $50). What kind of insurance is this vendor offering?
I'd argue the issue is that people aren't including non-compliance clauses in their contracts. The company I just got hired by does telephony and VOIP applications, and their clients typcially have such clauses included in any contracts. If the provider drops the ball with regards to, say, a call center application, then they are required to pay some sort of fine.
Some people argue that non-compliance clauses can make it difficult to find people willing to do the work for you, but I'd argue that if said people are capable of doing the work, then there's no reason to think that they'd run afoul of such clauses.
Hey, don't forget the MemoryStick support!