At the same time, we’ve had (more) bushfires in various places.
The rain we’ve had locally is good - we need it. I could easily forgo the hail though.
We really need to tell the Federal Government that they need to pull their heads in and get the carbon trading scheme up and running at least as a starting point. IMO - Howard’s reliance on “Clean Coal” technology is a cop-out. For starters, the technology doesn’t exist yet (I haven’t heard of anything which is getting towards the end of the R&D phase yet), and according to other reports, it won’t exist for another 5 or quite probably 10 more years.
I only discovered the comic about 18 months ago, upon referral by someone (I forget who, probably Brett or Paul). It only took a little while before I was hooked - I read the entire back archive too.
Anyway, When in December last year Tim mentioned there would be an animated series, I got interested - very interested. Since I liked the comic well enough, I thought it’d be an interesting experiment. Plus, the 1-year sign up discount was pretty nice too.
The Animated Series was to be the crown jewel of a new “CAD Premium” service - we’d get exclusive comics, wallpapers, and concept art drawn especially for us “Premium” people.
Well, it’s been about 10 months on, we’ve got episode 10 delivered (a bit over a week late), and to be honest - I’m not finding it so great.
The first four or five episodes were great - well written, funny, and leaving me wanting more. However, it seems like Tim (or whomever is writing them) got bored - and decided to just do anything.
No where was this more obvious than last months episode - Episode 9, which was several minutes of a random character getting run over repeatedly in (I presume) Battlefield.
With the other items - well, they did keep their promise, technically.
Exclusive Comics - Two. (One seems like it was an ad for PC Gamer, the other for WoW). And they were only added recently.
Exclusive Wallpapers - Twelve Although, I think all but three or four were actually released on the public website previously.
Art - Nine collections Admittedly, One of them is a 10 strip Comic for “Analog and D-Pad” - basicly CAD but with different hair colour. The others are all pretty lame half hearted attempts, or things from abandoned projects.
Other Stuff - I think there was one Video Cast from Tim about how he was going to be doing more “soon”.
Honestly - I think the Penny Arcade folks are doing a far better job - Yeah, they have a bigger audience, and there are two of them - but they provide it all for free. (And when they had a “Pay” thing- their PA Presents was a pretty good deal, from what I hear - you actually got mailed out exclusive bits of art).
Then there’s this:
The developer managed to figure out the “toLower” function for the “please enter…” message, but not for the actual authentication portion of code - very smart. It took more effort to write the error message, than to just correct the input.
All in all, unless the last two months are seriously kick ass, or there’s some really compelling other content, I won’t be re subscribing. Tim - You’ve had your run - you havn’t delivered.
Om is apparently a pretty nice guy, and I’ve really got nothing against him personally - for all I know, he was probably tired and half asleep when he wrote this post.
So, Om, if you read this - don’t take it too hard, it’s just me ranting, ok? Put it down to a crazy aussie.
“How fast can data travel over Ethernet? If you answered 10 Gigabit per second, then you would be off by about 90 gigabits per second.”
This statement has several problems with it: The product Infinera demonstrated isn’t Ethernet. It’s ten 10Gbit ethernet (presumably) bonded links.
Secondly, making up your own propriatary bonding protocol that happens to use Ethernet, doesn’t make it Ethernet. (I’ll leave the “about”, and “per second” alone - they just annoyed me more.)
Ethernet is an IEEE standard - All of which fall under IEEE 802.3. From what I can tell, Infinera arn’t even implementing a draft of an IEEE 100Gbit Ethernet protocol. Heck, the IEEE only met last month to discuss goals for 100Gbit ethernet.
This would mean that Infinera’s product is probably proprietary, and won’t be compatible with other vendor’s products*. So, if your company invests heavily in switching to 100Gbit Ethernet in their datacentre/peering centre/whatever, you’re stuck with them unless you’re prepared to switch the entire network over at once.
- end of rant -
I’m tired and half asleep, so I’m off to bed. G’night.
* = That is, unless the other vendor implements Infinera’s protocol exactly. Given the volume of data flowing through these connections, probably a lot of the hardware would need to be identical too.
I’m not sure if where I work is unique, but they seem to have a knack for coming up with new job titles - even if they’re no way related to what you do, or even an official job title.
For most of last year, I was an Analyst - which was great, since I could apply the skills I learned in my Year 11 1U Maths in Practice class. Just checking, 1+1 = 11, right? (According to Javascript, yes — alert(’1′ + ‘1′);). Admittedly, most of my day was spent pulling data from system, and then writing up reports - so I guess it was analysis, of a sort.
After that, I was temporarily a “Data and Applications Specialist” — but that was a little too close to the truth, so it was quickly changed to “Process Specialist”. Lest anyone actually figure out we’re doing application development. I’m not sure quite what process I’m a specialist on, but apparently I am. So, Ssshh.
I’ve just had someone call me a “Build Manager” — I think that means I need to get the architect and builders on site…
Perhaps, instead, I need to organise the cleaners and security guys. Maybe this will also mean I can say who can and can’t park in the building… Wow, I guess I could turn this into real money spinner, given that parking spaces are at a premium.
Posted in TV / Movies by Will on November 13, 2006.
Very cool trailer, Watch it here (Lower Res) - or over Here (higher res). (Both are in Flash, so no quicktime needed, unless you want to watch the HD version)
