Man, here I was hoping helm's deep would reinvigorate LOTRO. And yes, I had even pre-ordered it.

Hehe,

A friend said the fight got on Slashdot, so I just though I should mention that /. user number 42, got some kills in this fight ;)

Click here, for a free 21-day trial :) https://secure.eveonline.com/trial/?invc=e3af1093-bced-4da3-969a-c5788532ed93&action=buddy

Fly safe, guys! :)

VZW appeared heavily overloaded and calls were not going through. Additionally, text messages also appeared to be throttled or heavily delayed. If this was a result of jamming or some other technology to throttle the network, calls were being placed, they were not however providing audio. I received about 20 calls from my girlfriend who lives in the area and her calls were ringing through and "completing", but no audio was making it over the line. Calls I was placing appeared to ring through (five or six rings?) and made it to voicemail in most cases, although I did get a couple Verizon messages instead of the voicemail box.

Text messages we were sending each other were either extremely delayed or never made it at all (some did). I would go with the disaster norm of badly overloaded. We resorted to email via wifi instead of relying on the cell networks. When she took to the car to pick up her sister in South Boston (T services were shutdown in and around Boston), she was able to start completing calls and texts were making it through.

I see the Linux Fault Threshold is just as powerful today as it was in 2001.

As a never-went through age 22, I wore skipping college as a badge of pride while I tolled away at various dot coms and consulting companies. I did attempt to go back at 23, but did not appreciate the challenge and went back to work. I decided to restart my college education in my 30s and I have found a new appreciation for the courses taught. If a lesson is learned by a kid going to college, I believe it should not simply be how to buckle down and get work done, but how to critically think and logically examine the many sides of an issue. Personally, I was a pretty black and white thinker through my mid 20s---perhaps I just greyed out of that a little---and I do believe that college education helped me to recognize and analyze multiple opinions and viewpoints on a myriad of issues without being too quick to rush to judgement.

The conversion of a college degree into an MCSE style mill is undermining most of the value that a college diploma would add to a resume. In my initial college venture I encountered a lot of undergrads that seemed to believe that if you just showed up, you would get your diploma and upon graduation be rewarded with your new six figure job (pre-recession). I am not sure where that idea came from, but I felt bad for them. Tens of thousands of dollars of student debt, and limited post-college career prospects often netted well under 40k a year pay, for years, while they learned their actual career skills.

IMHO, the system has turned into a racket. There are a decreasing minority of students who try and make the most of the education and they are the ones who are most likely rewarded on a long-term timeline by their hard work. There also seems to be an increasing majority that treat it as High School Round 2. They simply show up physically, incur huge amounts of debt with no takeaway other than a piece of paper, and then move on to the next hurdle (law or grad school) and repeat the process. Having either type of student coming out into the workforce with massive amounts of debt doesn't seem like a great economy builder to me... Perhaps I am overreaching, but it seems like for-profit education and wreck-less fiscal accountability in the state schools has undermined the entire reason higher education exists, to internalize critical thinking, Socratic methods, and mold well rounded people that help the economy and civilization as a whole positively evolve.

Just my two cents

Slashdot has been a daily read for many years, I think I have barely missed more than a few days of stories after all these years. Many thanks for years of news and entertainment (comments). Best of luck in your future endeavors.

Holy crap that brings back the memories! I think my path was very similar.

*waves to Dan*

Been here since the beginning!

One of the things slashdot rarely gets credit for is that it was among the first blogging platforms (yes, everyone could create their own blog within /. with slash), and also among the first social networks. Those two things definitely influenced the early thoughts behind Multiply.

Got me by one....

Do you remember how you first heard of /. or Chips & Dips? I've been trying to remember, but haven't got a clue.

I still read /. almost every day, but I'm an infrequent commenter. This post is quite nostalgic for me, as well as many of the other 2, 3 and 4-digit IDs who still hang around. I can still see those icons in the left rail of "Chips and Dips" and the distorted ROB MALDA lettering on CmdrTaco's home page.

Rob, you were an absolue inspiration to so many of us. I'm sorry to see you go, but thank you for the many years of entertainment and education.

Spot on analogy, Tackhead. +1, you.

Hahaha. I had forgotten about the LBs. Hope you are doing well soon.