Yeah, we did, actually. I agree that it's a severe downside, but we send a ton of mail (mostly in-company) and running our own server was getting to be insane. After weighing options and looking at email hosting companies, GMail was still the best choice, even disregarding price.
It's only free while it's in Beta. Afterwards, they intend to charge. (Apparently they don't intend to charge the beta testers, though... Very nice of them.)
My company has just finished switching all their domains to GMail. While it's got -great- spam filtering, and their servers are extremely fast, the lack of folders and their shitty pop implementation and lack of IMAP sucks.
Shitty pop: If you pop mail, even if you say 'leave on server', you can't pop it from another client afterwards. If anyone has a workaround that doesn't involve repeatedly clicking 'enable all mail for pop' then I'd love to hear it.
As for the spam filtering, I signed up my personal domain as well and used a catchall. The domain is over 10 years old, and some of the addresses have been used for countless stupid things like porn mail. It catches about 10,000 spam a month and only about 10-20 a week get through to the inbox. After I dropped the catchall, it is down to around 5000 spam a month and maybe 5-10 a week get through. I think those are pretty impressive numbers.
GMail DOES have to be trained, though. Our work emails have already dropped a few legit emails into the SPAM folder, and as we planned to POP the mails, this is a problem. Someone has to go in and check daily to see if there's anything good in the spam folder for each user. Annoying.
True, but that assume IPv4. With IPv6 slowly becoming more and more standard, this idea will have merit. The only issue I see with it is that it can take 48 hours for cache information to die. So really, you'd have 2 IPs at a time for the server and slowly rotate them:
Jan IP 1 IP 2
Feb IP 2 IP 3
Mar IP 3 IP 4
etc. This would rotate them nicely. Of course, then the problem is that eventually, the spammers will have all the IPs you use in their database and you're screwed anyhow. Nice idea, though.
I find it amazingly stupid as well. He actually gets hyped about a game because it's only on 1 system? WTF? In my list of 'cool features' for the game I'll never actually make but will perpetually plan, that is NOT in my list.
As a gamer, every time I hear 'exclusive' I cringe. I have way too many consoles on my rack at home as it is. At this point, it looks like if PS3 has any exclusives, I'm either going to find a sucker to borrow a PS3 from for a week, or just do without. Do without is much more likely. (I did the borrow thing with the 360 and ended up buying one, though. Haven't regretted it.)
No, but I think it should be noted that Viva Pinata for the x360 does. It also has 'realtime tool change'. I kid you not. You can talk to the characters and one of them states that you can hit Seedos' weakpoint for massive damage and that it has realtime tool change. (If you hit him with a shovel, he drops seeds.) It's got to be one of the funniest references in that game.
I read the wikipedia link, but it's not clear... Did he create those little 4" x 2" pamphlets you used to see in every restaurant that had a bright single-color front, and explain different aspects of Christianity? I used to read those as a kid and found them both entertaining and educational, even as someone who wasn't really Christian. (My parents had tried to drag us to a Methodist church for a while. They eventually gave up. I never really figured out why.)
I've seen a few of these pamphlets again recently, and ones that I had not read before. They weren't quite the same style, so I doubt they were the same artist.
Yeah. The page I was reading would have been better to say "Use only official Ubuntu repositories." From that page you linked to, they are obviously trying to improve those repositories in order to accomplish their goal.
Again, that'd be WONDERFUL if that's what they were planning to do. They said they are not adding any packages. That includes custom builds of stuff that's already in there, as that would be a new package.
I am not an artist, I'm a programmer, so I can't really say exactly what needs to be done to make Linux handle audio/video/graphics for professionals, but simple re-arranging the packages isn't much of a step. I'll agree that it's in the right direction, but it seems a LOT of work for nearly no benefit. It's not as if you can't just apt-get everything they are including from a standard install.
If the apps were all top-notch already, I could see it being worthwhile. I prefer Kubuntu over straight Ubuntu myself, and I realize I could just use Ubuntu and apt-get the packages. But I think there's a lot more to setting up Ubuntu to be KDE rather than Gnome than there is to get all the audio apps.
Even making an exact list of what needs to be done to make Linux audio/video/graphics production better would be a better step, in my eyes. At least some programmer can look at the list and say 'Oh, that's needs doing? I can do that.'
Did you read their page at all? Their wiki says their plan includes "Use only packages in official Ubuntu repositories"... That'd make it just plain Ubuntu, but with certain packages preloaded, rather than the current defaults. Just like Kubuntu and Xubuntu do.
Maybe a neat idea, but I wouldn't put much effort into it if it was my baby, and I certainly don't approve of the slashvertising of it before it's really even started. Vaporware is a BAD thing for Linux.
"But had the same money been used to, say, help elderly people on fixed incomes heat their houses?"
Then 90% of it would have been misappropriated and used for personal projects of the administrators, and the other 10% would have gone to people who didn't really need it, but felt they were entitled to it.
Consider this an investment in science. It's expensive, and rarely pays out immediately. They probably learned quite a bit about how to manufacture and install these items through the mistakes found in the process. You won't see the improvements immediately, but you will within your lifetime. And no, I don't know what they'll be yet. I'm not psychic enough. Some research doesn't have a specific goal.
I liked the first half of Halo 1. The parts where you could jump on a jeep (whatever) and a guy would climb in and drive, or gun, or whatever you didn't do. It really felt like a war game where there was some tactics and such.
The last half completely dropped that and was boring.
Halo 2... I never bothered with it. My nephews played it, and I heard a little on the web about it, but not much. So I left it alone.
I'm hoping Halo 3 really DOES have the 'polish time' they need to make it right and fun in single player. (I don't give a rat's ass about multi, despite liking the 'work together' stuff with the NPCs.) I'm not really holding my breath, though.
As an old 8-bit player, I disagree. At that point, the gaming market was small and you had to truly impress people to make a buck. It also wasn't seen as 'cool'. Now, it's 'cool' to develop games, and more people that have no idea what they are doing are trying it.
There will be the same amount of good games, it's just that the signal to noise ratio is going to go way, way down now that you don't have limits that are as strict.
While I don't use ", problems" on my search, this is basically exactly how I judge products now. I search for the "productx review" on Google, then I open all the links with reviews. I read a few good user reviews, a couple paid reviews, and then I read a TON of bad reviews. If nobody can find anything bad to say about the product, then I know I've found the one I want. If anyone can find bad things to say, I weigh those failings against what I want the product for and whether it will affect me.
Example: I recently decided I needed a toaster oven. Instead of rushing down to kmart and buying just any old oven, I went online and started doing reviews. Everyone I have told this to basically called me crazy. ("You searched for reviews for a TOASTER OVEN!?") I found that Euro Pro makes an amazing $80 (Macy's) oven. I then looked it up at local stores and found that KMart carries that brand. Unfortunately, the 'best' model was on sale that week for only $5 more than the cheapest Euro Pro, and they were sold out of it and the middle one, too. ($35, $40 and $50 normal prices.) I bought the cheap one anyhow, because I didn't feel like waiting. (KMart doesn't bother to restock things they put on sale because they'll have to honor their rainchecks.)
It's an amazing toaster oven. I absolutely love it.
I've used this technique for years. The only downside to it is that you tend to start thinking negatively first, and many products that had you hyped, you will end up not buying them. Kind of a downer. (But at least you didn't waste your money, which is more of a downer.)
I think if many people started using this method, either product quality would get a lot better, or there'd be a hell of a lot of astroturfing.
I definitely felt the lack of weapons and armor, and the lack of houses and temples for side-quests was missed, but the rest of the game was better in my opinion. Especially the magic system.
My first attempt at Morrowind:
Make a spell caster. Find a rat. Try to cast a spell. Run out of mana in 1 spell. Die.
After a short while, I totally gave up. A year later, my friend said to just use my fists. So I made a warrior, and had fun. Not as much as I would have as a mage if the magic system was worth a crap, but fun.
Oblivion was MUCH better to mages. We could actually fight with magic and expect to win.
I miss that game. I should get that running again. I think there's a web version of it. It was 1 of 2 games I actually liked enough to register when I had my 2-line BBS. The other was only because it was the first multiplayer game I'd ever seen for a BBS, and I just had to have it.
If they truly wish to have this 'agreement', then they need to state it. Without, the law 'protects' their works.
As much as I hate the RIAA, they probably did not notice this guy on their own. Most likely, one of the artists that got mixed didn't like it and complained.
Good for you. And I'm glad you've got a company that let you. There's plenty of companies would see this as some kind of sign and fire you before you had a chance to somehow screw them over.
I've been called 'unambitious' enough that I know I don't have a choice. If I fail to take a position in a job, or heaven forbid! step down, I know the kind of chaos that will follow.
It's not true. I'm actually quite ambitious, it's just in things that normal people can't see. I love learning, and new languages are my toy. I find plenty of challenges in new coding ideas, like Ajax. I simply have no interest in managing. I expect there will come a point that I have to either steadfastly refuse and take a chance on being fired, or quit and find another job that already has a 'manager' type. I'm not looking forward to that decision.
Well, I know what you mean, but I disagree with you. A nutter did blow up a major city... Twice. That nutter was us. (The United States.) Thankfully, we suddenly got some sense and stopped. We passed through quite a few years that if the USSR had launched a missile at us, we'd have launched everything we had, and they'd have follow suit. And probably several other countries.
Everyone WAS scared of it, and to a certain extent, still are. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't happen. There's plenty of people in the US screaming "Nuke Iraq!" as it is. How long until some nutter actually DOES start nuking again? The world has plenty of suicide bombers. It's that kind of attitude that makes the perfect nutter to launch a nuke.
The cat's out of the bag now. The same with lasers, if China really is testing them. (And maybe if they aren't, now that the rumor is out.)
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, we did, actually. I agree that it's a severe downside, but we send a ton of mail (mostly in-company) and running our own server was getting to be insane. After weighing options and looking at email hosting companies, GMail was still the best choice, even disregarding price.
It's only free while it's in Beta. Afterwards, they intend to charge. (Apparently they don't intend to charge the beta testers, though... Very nice of them.)
My company has just finished switching all their domains to GMail. While it's got -great- spam filtering, and their servers are extremely fast, the lack of folders and their shitty pop implementation and lack of IMAP sucks.
Shitty pop: If you pop mail, even if you say 'leave on server', you can't pop it from another client afterwards. If anyone has a workaround that doesn't involve repeatedly clicking 'enable all mail for pop' then I'd love to hear it.
As for the spam filtering, I signed up my personal domain as well and used a catchall. The domain is over 10 years old, and some of the addresses have been used for countless stupid things like porn mail. It catches about 10,000 spam a month and only about 10-20 a week get through to the inbox. After I dropped the catchall, it is down to around 5000 spam a month and maybe 5-10 a week get through. I think those are pretty impressive numbers.
GMail DOES have to be trained, though. Our work emails have already dropped a few legit emails into the SPAM folder, and as we planned to POP the mails, this is a problem. Someone has to go in and check daily to see if there's anything good in the spam folder for each user. Annoying.
True, but that assume IPv4. With IPv6 slowly becoming more and more standard, this idea will have merit. The only issue I see with it is that it can take 48 hours for cache information to die. So really, you'd have 2 IPs at a time for the server and slowly rotate them:
Jan
IP 1
IP 2
Feb
IP 2
IP 3
Mar
IP 3
IP 4
etc. This would rotate them nicely. Of course, then the problem is that eventually, the spammers will have all the IPs you use in their database and you're screwed anyhow. Nice idea, though.
"Or unless you can't get your title approved on the other consoles due to being a small company, right?"
How would this make it a 'cool feature?' Even MS throwing a wad of cash my way doesn't make it a cool feature, it merely makes me more wealthy.
I find it amazingly stupid as well. He actually gets hyped about a game because it's only on 1 system? WTF? In my list of 'cool features' for the game I'll never actually make but will perpetually plan, that is NOT in my list.
As a gamer, every time I hear 'exclusive' I cringe. I have way too many consoles on my rack at home as it is. At this point, it looks like if PS3 has any exclusives, I'm either going to find a sucker to borrow a PS3 from for a week, or just do without. Do without is much more likely. (I did the borrow thing with the 360 and ended up buying one, though. Haven't regretted it.)
Well, actually, 'slickest' is the biased bit. 'window manager' is the ignorant bit.
I haven't tried XFCE yet, but 'slickest', unless you are measure how slippery it is, is a subjective thing. That's bias.
No, but I think it should be noted that Viva Pinata for the x360 does. It also has 'realtime tool change'. I kid you not. You can talk to the characters and one of them states that you can hit Seedos' weakpoint for massive damage and that it has realtime tool change. (If you hit him with a shovel, he drops seeds.) It's got to be one of the funniest references in that game.
lol Crap, I somehow missed the links in that article to examples. Yeah, they are the same ones. Interesting.
I read the wikipedia link, but it's not clear... Did he create those little 4" x 2" pamphlets you used to see in every restaurant that had a bright single-color front, and explain different aspects of Christianity? I used to read those as a kid and found them both entertaining and educational, even as someone who wasn't really Christian. (My parents had tried to drag us to a Methodist church for a while. They eventually gave up. I never really figured out why.)
I've seen a few of these pamphlets again recently, and ones that I had not read before. They weren't quite the same style, so I doubt they were the same artist.
Yeah. The page I was reading would have been better to say "Use only official Ubuntu repositories." From that page you linked to, they are obviously trying to improve those repositories in order to accomplish their goal.
Again, that'd be WONDERFUL if that's what they were planning to do. They said they are not adding any packages. That includes custom builds of stuff that's already in there, as that would be a new package.
I am not an artist, I'm a programmer, so I can't really say exactly what needs to be done to make Linux handle audio/video/graphics for professionals, but simple re-arranging the packages isn't much of a step. I'll agree that it's in the right direction, but it seems a LOT of work for nearly no benefit. It's not as if you can't just apt-get everything they are including from a standard install.
If the apps were all top-notch already, I could see it being worthwhile. I prefer Kubuntu over straight Ubuntu myself, and I realize I could just use Ubuntu and apt-get the packages. But I think there's a lot more to setting up Ubuntu to be KDE rather than Gnome than there is to get all the audio apps.
Even making an exact list of what needs to be done to make Linux audio/video/graphics production better would be a better step, in my eyes. At least some programmer can look at the list and say 'Oh, that's needs doing? I can do that.'
Did you read their page at all? Their wiki says their plan includes "Use only packages in official Ubuntu repositories" ... That'd make it just plain Ubuntu, but with certain packages preloaded, rather than the current defaults. Just like Kubuntu and Xubuntu do.
Maybe a neat idea, but I wouldn't put much effort into it if it was my baby, and I certainly don't approve of the slashvertising of it before it's really even started. Vaporware is a BAD thing for Linux.
"But had the same money been used to, say, help elderly people on fixed incomes heat their houses?"
Then 90% of it would have been misappropriated and used for personal projects of the administrators, and the other 10% would have gone to people who didn't really need it, but felt they were entitled to it.
Consider this an investment in science. It's expensive, and rarely pays out immediately. They probably learned quite a bit about how to manufacture and install these items through the mistakes found in the process. You won't see the improvements immediately, but you will within your lifetime. And no, I don't know what they'll be yet. I'm not psychic enough. Some research doesn't have a specific goal.
I liked the first half of Halo 1. The parts where you could jump on a jeep (whatever) and a guy would climb in and drive, or gun, or whatever you didn't do. It really felt like a war game where there was some tactics and such.
The last half completely dropped that and was boring.
Halo 2... I never bothered with it. My nephews played it, and I heard a little on the web about it, but not much. So I left it alone.
I'm hoping Halo 3 really DOES have the 'polish time' they need to make it right and fun in single player. (I don't give a rat's ass about multi, despite liking the 'work together' stuff with the NPCs.) I'm not really holding my breath, though.
As an old 8-bit player, I disagree. At that point, the gaming market was small and you had to truly impress people to make a buck. It also wasn't seen as 'cool'. Now, it's 'cool' to develop games, and more people that have no idea what they are doing are trying it.
There will be the same amount of good games, it's just that the signal to noise ratio is going to go way, way down now that you don't have limits that are as strict.
While I don't use ", problems" on my search, this is basically exactly how I judge products now. I search for the "productx review" on Google, then I open all the links with reviews. I read a few good user reviews, a couple paid reviews, and then I read a TON of bad reviews. If nobody can find anything bad to say about the product, then I know I've found the one I want. If anyone can find bad things to say, I weigh those failings against what I want the product for and whether it will affect me.
Example: I recently decided I needed a toaster oven. Instead of rushing down to kmart and buying just any old oven, I went online and started doing reviews. Everyone I have told this to basically called me crazy. ("You searched for reviews for a TOASTER OVEN!?") I found that Euro Pro makes an amazing $80 (Macy's) oven. I then looked it up at local stores and found that KMart carries that brand. Unfortunately, the 'best' model was on sale that week for only $5 more than the cheapest Euro Pro, and they were sold out of it and the middle one, too. ($35, $40 and $50 normal prices.) I bought the cheap one anyhow, because I didn't feel like waiting. (KMart doesn't bother to restock things they put on sale because they'll have to honor their rainchecks.)
It's an amazing toaster oven. I absolutely love it.
I've used this technique for years. The only downside to it is that you tend to start thinking negatively first, and many products that had you hyped, you will end up not buying them. Kind of a downer. (But at least you didn't waste your money, which is more of a downer.)
I think if many people started using this method, either product quality would get a lot better, or there'd be a hell of a lot of astroturfing.
Oooh, very nice. Thank you!
BTW, your 'online game scores' page is borked.
"Comment Submitted. There will be a delay before the comment becomes part of the static page."
'nuff said.
I definitely felt the lack of weapons and armor, and the lack of houses and temples for side-quests was missed, but the rest of the game was better in my opinion. Especially the magic system.
My first attempt at Morrowind:
Make a spell caster.
Find a rat.
Try to cast a spell.
Run out of mana in 1 spell.
Die.
After a short while, I totally gave up. A year later, my friend said to just use my fists. So I made a warrior, and had fun. Not as much as I would have as a mage if the magic system was worth a crap, but fun.
Oblivion was MUCH better to mages. We could actually fight with magic and expect to win.
Which was which again?
I miss that game. I should get that running again. I think there's a web version of it. It was 1 of 2 games I actually liked enough to register when I had my 2-line BBS. The other was only because it was the first multiplayer game I'd ever seen for a BBS, and I just had to have it.
If they truly wish to have this 'agreement', then they need to state it. Without, the law 'protects' their works.
As much as I hate the RIAA, they probably did not notice this guy on their own. Most likely, one of the artists that got mixed didn't like it and complained.
Good for you. And I'm glad you've got a company that let you. There's plenty of companies would see this as some kind of sign and fire you before you had a chance to somehow screw them over.
I've been called 'unambitious' enough that I know I don't have a choice. If I fail to take a position in a job, or heaven forbid! step down, I know the kind of chaos that will follow.
It's not true. I'm actually quite ambitious, it's just in things that normal people can't see. I love learning, and new languages are my toy. I find plenty of challenges in new coding ideas, like Ajax. I simply have no interest in managing. I expect there will come a point that I have to either steadfastly refuse and take a chance on being fired, or quit and find another job that already has a 'manager' type. I'm not looking forward to that decision.
Well, I know what you mean, but I disagree with you. A nutter did blow up a major city... Twice. That nutter was us. (The United States.) Thankfully, we suddenly got some sense and stopped. We passed through quite a few years that if the USSR had launched a missile at us, we'd have launched everything we had, and they'd have follow suit. And probably several other countries.
Everyone WAS scared of it, and to a certain extent, still are. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't happen. There's plenty of people in the US screaming "Nuke Iraq!" as it is. How long until some nutter actually DOES start nuking again? The world has plenty of suicide bombers. It's that kind of attitude that makes the perfect nutter to launch a nuke.
The cat's out of the bag now. The same with lasers, if China really is testing them. (And maybe if they aren't, now that the rumor is out.)