I wanted an Atari - my father got me a CoCo 1 with 16KB of memory... I was so mad - how was I going to play missile command on this!

Anyways, what a great starting machine for the day. It forced me to program, as I didn't have the recorder to save my work or load other peoples programs. A little later on, as I moved up in models, I was introduced to OS-9 and one of its programming languages Basic09. There was some jealousy over some of my friends with C64 - they had a way better game catalog. In the end though, the CoCo I think fostered a better learning experience, at least for myself. Plus Dungeons of Daggorath still has to be one of the best games I ever played back then... I even ran my first BBS off a CoCo. When I did finally get my first IBM compatible (another Tandy) - I was a little dismayed at the assembly language being "broken" and how hard it was to multi-task with MS-DOS (unless something like deskview was installed, and that was unstable at best)...

I still have a CoCo 3 laying around... I should replace my wifes computer with it as an April Fool.....
 

Umm, how is a display server and compositing window manager a flavor of Linux?

or a youporn description

I don't get all the Ubuntu spin-offs. Canonical is obviously going far, far away from what these spinoffs are doing - why not just use Debian as the base distribution instead of Ubuntu, which is based on Debian itself?

sounds good - but sometimes people don't see ice. Sometimes traffic backs up in front of you and you end up further in the intersection then you'd like to be. Sometimes there are utility workers working at an intersection temporarily and they flag you to stop when you are already crossing the white line. Sometimes there are lousy road markings and you can't always tell where the white line is.

I guess those are all exotic reasons for getting a ticket when maybe you shouldn't... But the biggest thing I can think of is people often just cross the white line a little, and even if there is a Cop right there, they aren't getting a ticket for human error. There are instances where human error needs to be punished - but this is a fucking annoyance and a scam as the judge said. People sometimes go slightly over the speed limit --- cops wouldn't necessarily just pull you over for that either (unless they were really looking for a reason to pull you over). There are times when human judgment is necessitated so the rules of society (and in this case traffic) isn't overbearing to the point it hinders the public rather then help it. In this case, technology is taking over that judgment and it is overbearing. People can end up with a ticket or two to remind them to follow the rules closer. They can afford to pay for a few mistakes... But if the system becomes rigged to the point were every mistake is now instantly a fine this will go from just being an annoyance to financially burdening the public.. Kudos to the Judge for calling bullshit on this and stopping it - it will get out of hand, and before you know it, something put in with maybe some iota of good intentions will eventually become a norm and there is already enough of government micro managing peoples lives.

I think there are plenty of games with meat on them. The Witcher series has been excellent from a story telling perspective ... Skyrim, while predictable had a deep backstory - even some of the MMO's out there have good story telling and deep back stories. I think they just get lost because the market is so flooded now a days...

With that said, Planescape: Torement has to be one of the most memorable games I've ever played. I still remember the Nameless One and Morte - and I haven't played it in ages...

Looking at Cisco from a hardware perspective, yes they are overvalued and there are less expensive, comparable options out there.

However, I will say a few things in Cisco's defense - I've worked with Cisco, Dell PowerConnect, ProCurve, Avaya and Nortel -- hands down, when I do run into problems, Cisco is the easiest to troubleshoot for. Mainly finding documentation/community help is much easier. Finding technicians that actually know what they are doing is easier.

The other thing I would like to say is that Cisco is not always as expensive as people want to portray them. A lot of time, things like West Virginia happen - the options aren't investigated properly, and you end up with a 20K router... A great example is before I got to my job, they were buying all 3550 switches for the wiring closets.. We didn't need a layer 3 switch in a closet, so we started ordering 2560 (the next gen model in that series) and significantly cut costs.

Another example of ours, we had implemented Cisco Wireless in one of our locations, but for another location were sold an Avaya on the promise that it performed just as well and would be cheaper. The later proved true - but by a small margin. Performance and support has been an issue since day 1. Trying to find engineers inside Avaya that know their own devices like a comparable Cisco engineer is few and far between.

The last thing people don't realize - you don't always need a smartnet.. We don't order them for all our wiring closet switches anymore - we just keep our latest round of switches on SmartNet. Cisco Catalyst does have a LIFETIME warranty on the hardware... The same thing that HP Procurve tries to sell customers hard... Core switches, we absolutely keep on 24/7 4 hour Smartnet ... Wiring closets, and branch routers... nah... we can just keep a spare or two, they are cheap enough. Replace when needed, send back for lifetime warranty...

With this said, I'm not always rosy on Cisco. We did a VoIP project about 3 years ago, and going with another vendor (Mitel in our case) gave us significant savings. I'm just saying that they get the overvalued label a lot, and yes, if you are just looking from a hardware perspective yes. If you are looking at the whole training, support, community and logistics angle - Cisco definitely has the leg up on any other networking company.

I agree... Maybe someone should look at WV's IT Networking staff. What a waste of stimulus money.

I work in a data center.. Try purchasing a drive (even without the enclosure) for lets say a EMC CX-320... About $800 for a standard 600GB SaS drive... Now take the enclosure off of that $800 drive, and it's basically a commodity drive in proprietary dressing...

Same with Equallogic... Same with NetApp... Most of the drives come out of the same manufacturing in Thailand... I'm sure you remember what happened with the flooding a little over a year ago... Consumer drives went up... Enterprise drives went up.... Why?

I'm not saying all of a data center needs to be off the shelf components. It does pay to have support - but there is nothing wrong with choice. Our backup centers are actually using equipment we phase out of our main clusters and SAN's and are maintained with off the shelf components where we can. For the rest of our backend, we've built pretty nice arrays using commodity components and open source software like OpenDedup...

Lastly, I've been in this industry for 20 years now. I've build shops with little money, then saw the boom and tons of cash get thrown at IT. Right now the budgets I'm getting are starting to dwindle - so I need to do more with less. I can't always afford a Netapp on every project that comes on my plate. So it's nice to have choice - and I am actually comfortable building solutions with $100 drives (that perform pretty damn well). If you are getting all the money you need thrown at you for your IT needs, go for the best with every project. Not everyone has that luxury in today's market conditions.

I thought it was cool that you could use the Gamepad to play (certain) titles just on the gamepad - but the range really isn't that good. We are in a smaller apartment, and I couldn't move past the living room and get a decent connection. annoying.

I had the Sonic Racing game as well, and while we liked it, the same game is available on Steam and Xbox cheaper than it was on the Wii U.. The gamepad didn't add much to it to warrant $20 more.

That's the other big issue moving forward (for all the next gen consoles). The current generation has a ton of games available, and buying either new or used saves so much money and gives so much variety over what we will get from a next gen console (I'm still not convinced the Wii U is next gen). The biggest advantage I see the next gen Xbox 720 having is it might actually finally have the horsepower to overcome the lag issue with the kinect.... I will really be watching --- it should be an interesting battle for the living room - but I somehow get the feeling that the Wii U may get lost in the mix...

I just traded my Wii U for a comparable Xbox/kinect system. My kids are already getting more enjoyment and use from the Xbox.

The Wii U is half baked. Maybe the hardware gets figured out by developers, and even Nintendo, but right now the shortcomings are to visible. Right from system menu navigation being so slow and frustrating that it made me not want to boot up the system. So yeah, Nintendo doesn't do well with the system software designed for their own System.

I was one of the unfortunate ones to get a system that kept locking up - luckily after over a week being sent from the East to West then back East, I got a working system - but while the system didn't crash anymore, it was still a pain to navigate, and the games were underwhelming.

It actually wasn't an easy decision to trade the system. Nintendo may work everything out... The gamepad was a unique feature, but not so unique now that Microsoft seems committed to "SmartGlass." But my final decision to give up on the Wii U came down to the kids --- do I get a system they can have fun and variety with now, or do I pay $60 - $70 for half baked ports that may or may not play properly and cross my fingers the kids can have a comparable experience 6 months, a year, 2 years down the road... Nintendo dropped the ball on this system...

On the other side of things -- maybe they do work it out. I had an Xbox 360 up until about 3 years ago - and the experience on the one I just traded for is much better than the one I got rid of. But I have a hard time thinking Nintendo can fully recover from this one with the PS4 and the next gen Xbox right around the corner... Add in the Steambox and the explosion of tablet gaming and it doesn't look good for the Wii U.

Because what would be horrible is to be able to build my own storage devices and be able to spend $100 on a hard drive (with overnight shipping), instead of $800 I would pay to Dell or EMC or NetApp when my support contracts go stale because they want exorbitant amounts of money to keep support on older proprietary systems.

It's too bad that publishers just don't start offering games at reasonable prices right from the get-go. I've built my Steam library almost solely on deals on got on games - in fact, the only new release I bought at full price was Skyrim. For the 40 or so titles in my library, I maybe spent $600 - an average of $15 per games. My library has a good cross section of cheaper indie titles (Trine, Limbo) to "premium" titles (Batman AA & AC).. If first run games were offered at say half the price, I think it would cut way down on used games (profit margin would be way to low at that point), and maybe some piracy. Right now, I can't spend $60 on a game just coming out. I wait until they drop the price. Unfortunately I got my kids a Wii U, so bargain shopping may be a ways off...

Don't worry, we are working on some advanced ballistics capabilities of our own!

Steam has great sales - that's usually when I buy most of my games.

A few years back I got Batman: Arkham Asylum with Lego Batman bundled in for $20 - a great steal for myself and my son.

This past holiday sale - I got 12 games, ranging from Trine 2 and Torchlight, to Serious Sam 3 and Arkham City for $65 for everything - that's 12 games for a little over what I just spent on 1 game for the Wii U. And I can access them anywhere... Oh yeah, and a great active gaming community that I have instant visibility to while I'm playing on a proven platform. I don't know how many times I've tried games that come with a "social" component that is more a hindrance rather than something useful. Steam takes care of that problem.

My biggest complaint about steam isn't the fact that I can't resell games - I like my collection in tact. It's the fact that they make it so hard for two people to play. I have a family of 4 - and it becomes a royal pain if my son wants to play Grid racing and I want to play Torchlight. Valve really needs to take a look at introducing a family account. Especially if they are going to start pushing Steam Boxes. What a nightmare it will be to have compartmentalized games for each user that has to be purchased for each individual that wants to play it. Yes, there is offline mode, and yes there are ways around most games for single player mode - but they are band-aides to a much more annoying issue.