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Spyware Removal: Drop PC in Dumpster
morganx writes "The New York Times is reporting that some users prefer throwing out their PCs and buying new ones to actually removing their spyware. Does this mean lots of free hardware for the dumpster-divers among us?"
And the dupes they just keep a coming.
It's Americium-241.
For more info on americium, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americium
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
it takes the exact same power as the other drives, though it'd be prudent to look up which order they are, i don't have them memorized
Is one of the benefits of being a Slashdot subscriber NOT having to see duplicate stories on the front page?
As a subscriber I can answer this with an authoritive "no fscking way".
You do get to see articles before they "go live" to the hoi-polloi, and you can even e-mail the editor if you think there's a problem with the article (say, if you know it's a dupe from about 48 hours ago).
You can see for yourself just how well this all works out.
because the geek squad @ Best Buy is charging little old ladies $300 to "fix" thier PC (when it needs rescueing from spyware) and simply add a spyware detector but not actually use it.
"He's a real midnight golfer"
They can't ship an OEM copy of XP; if they ship a CD, which most makers do, they have to ship a recovery disc locked to that model of computer.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
I have had to set up several new Dell's from scratch that lack a floppy drive, yet use SATA harddrive's. I have found that the easiest way is just to find the sata drivers and slipstream them into a SP2 installation disc.
Instructions can be found all over google, and it typically takes less than an hour or so to make a good slipstream that you can use on most every computers' installation.
Some links i had bookmarked: Here and here.
Check out NLite to slipstream service packs, hotfixes, answer files, and drivers. It works really well for all my custom windows disks. Get it here: http://www.nliteos.com/
Colleges don't get any of your property taxes, and their computers are paid for directly by the students, often with a separate IT fee. The older computers often go to departments which don't have enough grant money to afford newer ones. If you go to a university surplus auction, you probably won't find anything faster than a P-II.
Not to mention that new computers actually end up costing less, because they do not require as much repairs and attention from the IT people. Fans, power supplies, and hard drives start to crap out in massive quantities after a couple of years and are not very economical to replace when there are hundreds of machines.
As far as the best buy thing: stupid people deserve to get ripped off. If you don't know anything about computers, you probably shouldn't be buying one.
oh, dell still sends an actual OS cd. that's the only plus to buying from dell that i see...
This is what really ticked me off when I worked for higher ed. We had a site license for every OS we used, but still had to pay the MS tax on new machines.
If you have a "campus agreement" licence then you didn't have a site licence.
You had a site upgrade licence.
What that means is you were entitled to upgrade any OEM version of Windows, to any other version of Windows.
So, you could upgrade a bunch of 98 machines to XP, or "save" some money ordering XP Home on your Dells rather than XP Pro, but you aren't allowed to install XP on a white box with no existing MS Operating System.
It is a misunderstanding many people have about the more common versions of MS site licences. It's foolish to think MS don't cover all the bases when creating such purchasing agreements. They didn't become that rich by allowing people to bypass the Windows Tax legally.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein