Windows Server 2008, oh the pain

Morning all

How's this for infuriating. You're running windows server 2008 and you want to download linux. Not for the server, but because you're going to stick it on the netbook. Sounds reasonable, right?

Well, there's a slight catch. You see, Server has an "enhanced security configuration" for its built in internet explorer.

This means that every time you try and download something that's even vaguely risky - like, say, linux - it asks you to add the site to a list of exceptions. Fine, yes, you can add thee site.

But places like ubuntu have mirrors - that is, multiple sites that take it in turns to download the file to you - because they're fairly hefty files. But every time you click it gives you another, different mirror.

So I think fine, sod this - I'm downloading firefox. A browser that I can use. But.... no. Instead I get exactly the same problem. So I end up running my main machine overnight, when one of the explicit reasons I have it is to manage large downloads like this because it uses next to no power.

But no.

Server.

FAIL!

Telepathy - What would it really be like?

You see it in many science fiction stories, fantasy programs - heck, every now and again it makes it into mainstream fiction!

But what would it be like, to be with someone who could read your mind? And what if you could read theirs?

I don't have to guess. I know.

For, you see, I'd taken Little Miss Giggles to a games weekend at her parents place. And there was a gentleman by the name of Bester.

Now, I've never actually played with Bester before, except while approaching that point of tiredness during which I can fall asleep in the 30 seconds between someone starts shuffling cards and dealing them.

So we started playing a game of "God's Playground" with him. Now, there's a secret bidding mechanic in this game. And if you both bid the same amount, you have to bid again - and all the extra resources are lost.

This is a four round game. So, we should have had 4 silent bids - but we didn't.

We had more than 20.

Every single time the deadlock wasn't broken by one of us making a mistake, the other out thinking us or by some fluke. It was by the other person deciding this was getting silly and deliberately not playing.

This is different from the (3? 5?) times when we both decided, at the same time, to bid 0.

Still, eventually the game ended and we went onto another, called Carson City.

By this point we were firmly in each others heads. We knew what the other player was doing. What he was thinking. Why he was doing everything.

We had to waste actions not because we wanted to do something. But because we'd seen things the other player could not be allowed to do, so they had to be stopped. And we knew that they had seen this option - because they had.

Yes, that paragraph was confusing. It was confusing because we were thinking in lines so similar that the other player of the game just didn't know what we were talking about.

At the end we were talking about what his final moves should be in semi-code. Not because we wanted to be secretive, but because the other player already knew. All you had to do was mention that "The hidden four pointer was better".

That is, the 4 point move that was hidden because the 3rd player had covered it with their hand.

So I know what telepathy is like.

It's damned annoying.