Comment Re:Abstract... (Score 1) 314
Bingo!
Comment Re:NOOOOOOO (Score 1) 583
Um. I set up a IPv6 environment in my Cisco classes, and it turns out that XP doesn't do DHCPv6. That's a Vista / Windows 7 thing. I went far enough to ping addresses, but you'd have to manually set the addresses and routing information.
Worthless.
Facebook Says It Owns 'Book' 483
An anonymous reader writes "The Chicago Tribune is reporting that Facebook has sued a tiny start-up called Teachbook.com over the use of 'book' in its name. The start-up, which has two employees, aims to provide tools for teachers to manage their classrooms and share lesson plans and other resources. 'Effectively they're bombing a mosquito here, and we're not sure why they want to do that,' Teachbook.com co-director Greg Shrader told the Tribune. Facebook said its use of 'book' in its name is 'highly distinctive in the context of online communities and networking websites.' Facebook apparently is alleging that no other online 'network of people' can use the word 'book' in its name without violating its trademark."
Comment Re:Flamebait (Score 4, Interesting) 1003
When I talked to a Google recruiter a couple of years ago, they said that although you had a choice between Linux, OSX, and Windows, you would have a hard time as an engineer if you used Windows, as about the only people who used it were managers that were running Microsoft Project.
Comment How about old software? (Score 1) 543
We've got a Debian 3.0 and Red Hat 7.2 box still running - we keep meaning to move the scripts and data on them, but there's so much to do at work, I can't deal with it all...
OTOH, the Debian box is dead-reliable, and after moving the RH 7.2 hard drive to more stable hardware, it's stayed up for a while as well...
Final Fight Brings Restrictive DRM To the PS3 240
Channard writes "As reported by Joystiq, the PS3/PlayStation Network version of Final Fight Double Impact features a rather restrictive piece of digital rights management. In order to launch the game, you have to be logged into the PlayStation Network and if you're not, the game refuses to launch. This could be written off as a bug of some kind except for the fact that the error message that crops up tells you to sign in, suggesting Sony/Capcom intentionally included this 'feature.' Granted, you do have to log into the PlayStation Network to buy the title but as one commentator pointed out, logging in once does not mean you'll be logged in all the time. Curiously, the 360 version has no such restrictions, so you can play the game whether you're online or offline. But annoying as this feature may be, there may be method in Sony's madness. "
64-Bit Flash Player For Linux Finally In Alpha 172
Luchio writes "Finally, a little bit of respect from Adobe with this alpha release of the Adobe Flash Player 10 that was made available for all Linux 64-bit enthusiasts! As noted, 'this is a prerelease version,' so handle with care. Just remove any existing Flash player and extract the new .so file in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins (or /usr/lib/opera/plugins)."
Comment Re:Bugs are an error in the... (Score 1) 596
I tend to apologize in the comments when I throw a hack in some code - along with an explanation of why the ugliness is there, and what it solved.
In a perfect world, that would be documented in unit tests, but in 35,000 lines of ten year old Perl? Comments. Lots of them.
Designing the Computer UIs In Movies 371
xandroid points out an NPR interview with Mark Coleran, who
"...designs the fancy-but-fake graphics that flash across computers in the movies. He has worked on a laundry list of blockbusters: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Ultimatum, Children of Men, Mission Impossible III, and many more. He says a lot of the inspiration for computer screens comes from video games." The main point of these fake movie UIs is different than that of real UIs: to tell a story very quickly, not to reveal and enable function.
Former Exec Says Electronic Arts "Is In the Wrong Business" 180
Mitch Lasky was the executive vice president of Mobile and Online at Electronic Arts until leaving the publisher to work at an investment firm. He now has some harsh things to say about how EA has been run over the past several years, in particular criticizing the decisions of CEO John Riccitiello. Quoting:
"EA is in the wrong business, with the wrong cost structure and the wrong team, but somehow they seem to think that it is going to be a smooth, two-year transition from packaged goods to digital. Think again. ... by far the greatest failure of Riccitiello's strategy has been the EA Games division. JR bet his tenure on EA's ability to 'grow their way through the transition' to digital/online with hit packaged goods titles. They honestly believed that they had a decade to make this transition (I think it's more like 2-3 years). Since the recurring-revenue sports titles were already 'booked' (i.e., fully accounted for in the Wall Street estimates) it fell to EA Games to make hits that could move the needle. It's been a very ugly scene, indeed. From Spore, to Dead Space, to Mirror's Edge, to Need for Speed: Undercover, it's been one expensive commercial disappointment for EA Games after another. Not to mention the shut-down of Pandemic, half of the justification for EA's $850MM acquisition of Bioware-Pandemic. And don't think that Dante's Inferno, or Knights of the Old Republic, is going to make it all better. It's a bankrupt strategy."
Comment Taxes. (Score 1) 297
And that's only because I moved, and the slightly dippy IRS rules don't let you e-file if you moved the previous year.
Everything else is done over the Internet, nowadays.
Comment Re:Long Distance Rail (Score 1) 809
$1 million per mile? That's all?
You know, for the cost of one aircraft carrier, we could have high speed rail from Chicago to Dallas. For the cost of one nuclear sub, we could have the DC-Richmond-Charlotte-Atlanta corridor built. Why, in the name of the gods, hasn't this been done? We need to get off of so much oil, and planes are really, really inefficient. Fast, but without the subsidies from the government, and regular bailouts, trains would be faster and more efficient than both automotive and air travel.
Comment Just got a Core i7... (Score 1) 408
I'm not going to have to upgrade for a while. Maybe when 4 GB DDR3 DIMMs aren't absurdly expensive, I'll bump to 24 GB, and may put in a couple more drives, but I'm good.
I've had 7 VMs running on this thing at once, and it didn't blink... It's as powerful as most of the servers at my old job.
Comment I have as well (Score 1) 970
We had a pile of useless office all-in-ones that were donated to our radio station that did the same thing. We ended up hauling them off to an electronics recycling event - they were all useless, and half of them required special power supplies that didn't always get included with the machine. At least the laser printers use standard 110/220V power cords.
I've actually got a few old inkjets sprinkled around that use cheap reman'd cartridges, and a ancient beast of a LaserJet 4 as the primary printer. One Brother PSC/Fax, that is more trouble than the rest of the printers combined. I pray for the day when that thing chokes on its own vomit and dies - we've got the money for a HP laser all-in-one waiting...
Comment Please let it be so... (Score 1) 468
I'd love to get my morning Google News fix without getting a face full of ultra-paranoid right-wing wing-wang from any of the Murdoch-owned properties. It's like someone putting the goatse guy in the newspaper, on the fourth page...
