sorry... I can't proof read - I mean to say NOT wanting to mention WD. Their IDE drives used to fail on me quite regularly but I've seen very few fail lately except in the case of mishandled externals. I've also seen more Seagates fail in the last year than all other brands combined.
It is ok. I am 25 and I can still remember when Seagate was the brand of choice for hard drives, but yes, that was a long time ago. I have had much better luck with Samsung and WD lately (despite me wanting to mention the latter due to historic experience...) I've seen Hitachi and IBM death stars, Maxtor magnets (that's all they are good for), and Fujitsu failures (recent apple notebooks primarily).
Slashdotters: what drives have you had luck with lately (please specify scsi, desktop, or notebook as manufacturers vary from type to type in my experience).
Our company had the original issue of not being able to open.docx with office 2000 and started a plan to migrate to open office. I think this was pretty common and what prompted the microsoft move to add the compatibility pack to office 2000. Unfortunately for Microsoft our plans were ahead of the compatibility pack and we moved 95% of our computers over to Open office 3. The only computer left on office are ones using the Access database from hell (which will be rewritten at some point in the future to use Sql instead of jet, at which time we can switch them to OOo as well) and a few which use excel/word documents that OOo won't handle the macro support for. That said, I haven't tried the Novell version on these machines, but I will be giving that a try.... the fewer Microsoft apps in the office the better. Now if we could just get adobe to offer Indesign and InCopy for Linux (besides macs)...
Not to mention medical billing... Reynolds & Reynolds bought out Fiscal Information a number of years back - a small company that once had a huge share of the medical billing market. It got sold off several times and is now Amicas, but they still use Unix, Linux, or AIX for most of their backends as far as I know.
Um... wtf do you mean by that? If you buy a USB 2.0 drive from best buy, then yes it might fail, but you can buy a drive enclosure with any interface you'd like and put any drive you want in it - even SCSI. Or do what others have said and get another inexpensive computer with raid and do a backup, or dump a tar ball with cron to a desktop or NAS every night. Heck even making a tar of the database to the SAME drive once a week would have made this problem recoverable. This isn't rocket science.
If you have the money, go natural gas. If not you should consider the following:
Start up watts - WAY more important than running watts. Most appliances use most energy when starting up. A gas camping stove (ovens and stoves use tons of energy. If you can cook on gas you save your generator for things like the furnace. In fact, you may be better off with space heaters - they are cheaper than trying to get a generator big enough to run the whole house.
Remember that bigger isn't better with gas - those high wattage generators use lots more gas which means needing to refill it more often and having more gas on hand - can you get more gas if you need it in an emergency?
Do it right - have an electrician wire it up or just run electrical extension cords to appliances as needed. Doing otherwise could kill the guys trying to get your power back on due to backfeeding if you screw up.
Keep the generator in a temperature controlled location (above freezing or you won't be able to start it) away from you, your family, pets, and anything combustible. This sounds obvious, but many people die each year by forgetting to do just this.
Run the generator at least every 2 weeks for at least 10 minutes. This will keep everything lubricated and prevents buildup of contaminants and failure.
Use fuel stabilizer! Use it in all the gas you use and store or you will have a real problem when you go to start it in an emergency...
Remember to run the generator for the specified time before hooking it up to your appliances (usually 5 to 10 minutes) if you don't wait for the power to stabilize you will fry everything in your house.
Things to consider when purchasing a generator:
-Get an electric start generator. You will thank me later.
-Engine makes more of a difference than generator brand. Look for an engine made by Honda, Briggs&Stratton, Cummins, or CAT (diesel for the 2 latter).
-Look for an engine with Over head valves (OHV) they are more reliable and last longer.
-Make sure you check whether it comes with oil or not - many are shipped with no or inadequate oil (just enough to keep the valve seals lubricated).
-Make sure it is a size that you can handle (weight wise). If it is going to be moved from storage for use, can you actually lift or roll it there?
Other considerations:
-Get some lamps with compact florescent bulbs so you don't waste all your wattage on lights
- start large appliances one at a time and keep them running constantly to prevent surges (for example, turn on the fridge, then after a minute or two turn on the deep freeze, then turn on the heaters, etc). This allows you to get a unit with a lower starting wattage.
I ran into this problem at first to, and while I will blame Microsoft for many things, can't really blame them for not supporting closed hardware that manufacturers won't provide drivers for... strangely enough, many devices now have 64 bit XP drivers thanks to Vista's requirement of having both 32-bit and 64-bit available for certification. Many manufacturers released an XP version too since they had already done the 64-bit port.
Re:DOOMED: Now, who can carry that many quarters?
on
Are Newspapers Doomed?
·
· Score: 1
Try buying one or the other. If being versed in what is going on in the world around you isn't worth carrying 7 quarters around, then I would say it is your problem, not the problem of the NYT or WSJ. That said, if they are smart they will either improve their distribution network to cover your area or install credit card swipes to make purchasing easier. Also, you could try a grocery store - I know many in my area carry all the major papers.
because it is a real f*^kin pain in the ass to get up and walk clear across the house to change discs. That's why.
It makes way more sense to have them stored in a central location on mass storage where any of them can be streamed on demand to any other location in the house...
Or, how about this scenario: oops, I dropped it and it scratched. What now, you want me to buy another blu-ray/DVD/flying-saucer-drm-machine? Why can't I use the "license" from this one?
There is good evidence that humans are adapting to the frame rate and that for along time 30 FPS was enough to not notice the flicker... this is a ongoing problem, but it doesn't mean that some people still don't notice while others (such as gamers) may be more apt to notice.
I know google is amazing, but how are they going to host photos dating from the 1750s from a magazine started in 1936 that showcased images created using a technology invented in 1826. This makes no sense at all.
I'm right there with you.. how will they feel when the discover global warming is caused by littering the oceans with millions of rubber ducks?
Oh, and to grand-son: they call them rubber, but they are mostly artificial petrol-chemical duckies nowadays... not sure that is better though.
What Cave? The famous wintel cave of course! It connects Redmond, WA to Santa Clara, CA via large underground 'tubes' (volcanic I think, but they run the internet either way).
I agree that reinstalling generally takes less time in a corporate environment, but when you have someone with old hardware, hard-to-find drivers, no backups or install disks and personal data scattered all over the drive it is better to try and remove than to wipe it out, hope you can find the right drivers and hope you got everything backed up that they will need.
I can run a virus scanner unattended for the most part, but on OS reinstall has prompts unless you have an image or OEM setup pre-configured which you usually won't have for an individual.
Besides, removing a virus by wiping out a system and reinstalling does no good if you are just going to put the same old data back on that may in fact be the original culprit. Sure you can scan it, but then you are back to spending time going over a bunch of data by running several scanners.
Moral of the story: make backups of your data, drivers, and config files (or even better make an OS image and backups)
Moral of the Moral: people who get viruses also tend to be the same people who won't have those things.
I agree. As someone deals with viruses on an almost daily basis I suggest avast and spybot to detect (if not remove) viruses. These two don't catch them all, but they usually make the system usable enough to remove the rest (the pre-boot avast check is especially useful). Also from my own experience: beware kaspersky! While it is good at preventing infections, my experience with virus ridden systems is that it makes them unbootable. Various other anti-malware/virus tools are hit and miss, and while detection has improved in programs like mcafee, I have found they still require manual removal.
I agree completely, but we do get freshman that don't know what their limit is. I don't know about you, but if I were a parent I would be scared shitless and would want my kid who was living on their own for the first time to feel safe and not fearful. Even the best of us have lapses of judgment. Again, not condoning drinking, but overdose can happen - let's treat it if it does. If someone speeds and gets in a car accident and needs medical help we might give them a ticket for reckless driving, but we don't kick them out of school. This shouldn't be any different.
Reagan would have expected the economy to run on jelly beans. He was a sufferer of Alzheimer and had no idea what was going on most of the time he was in the white house. That said, his aids did a pretty good job.
Apparently you don't understand the dangers of drinking beer... this guy requires that all students go through a "drinking will kill you" temperance test to enroll in classes. And to his credit, it is true. If you attend U.F. and go to the hospital for alcohol poisoning you will be expelled from school, so instead of getting medical care students risk possible death to avoid being kicked out of school.
With guys like this running amuck, it is no wonder they look for students drinking on facebook - it is a public health risk to drink if you go to school in Gainesville.
I'm right with you. My first car was an 88 accord. It was about 480lbs. lighter than other years the accord was made, had a carburated engine, and didn't have an airbag or any other 'modern' safety features. It did however get 31-36mpg in 1999-2001 when I drove it. It was reliable and could go much faster than the speed limit if you had a reasonable amount of road....
That said, with over 190,000 miles it ran needing nothing but an oil change while I owned it. The only thing that killed it was a side impact at 40+ mph. The car had 4 people in it some wearing seatbelts and some not. There were no injuries.
We really need to reconsider what we put in cars and how we can get better mileage with what we have. Diesel would be nice too, but lets trim some fat! I'm all for airbags etc. but the T.V. satellite, leather vibrating seat with baby bumbers built in needs to go. It is plastic crap!
Lighter stronger materials and less junk please.
I second that. I work with a video site with a very large number of viewers and blip handles out traffic just fine. we've only had an issue maybe 2 or 3 times for a couple hours or less including the time we were using them while they were in beta. They offer encoding to several formats, support high resolution and have a great flash player based on jeroen wijering's player.
Slashdot Mirror
sorry... I can't proof read - I mean to say NOT wanting to mention WD. Their IDE drives used to fail on me quite regularly but I've seen very few fail lately except in the case of mishandled externals. I've also seen more Seagates fail in the last year than all other brands combined.
It is ok. I am 25 and I can still remember when Seagate was the brand of choice for hard drives, but yes, that was a long time ago. I have had much better luck with Samsung and WD lately (despite me wanting to mention the latter due to historic experience...) I've seen Hitachi and IBM death stars, Maxtor magnets (that's all they are good for), and Fujitsu failures (recent apple notebooks primarily).
Slashdotters: what drives have you had luck with lately (please specify scsi, desktop, or notebook as manufacturers vary from type to type in my experience).
Our company had the original issue of not being able to open .docx with office 2000 and started a plan to migrate to open office. I think this was pretty common and what prompted the microsoft move to add the compatibility pack to office 2000. Unfortunately for Microsoft our plans were ahead of the compatibility pack and we moved 95% of our computers over to Open office 3. The only computer left on office are ones using the Access database from hell (which will be rewritten at some point in the future to use Sql instead of jet, at which time we can switch them to OOo as well) and a few which use excel/word documents that OOo won't handle the macro support for. That said, I haven't tried the Novell version on these machines, but I will be giving that a try.... the fewer Microsoft apps in the office the better. Now if we could just get adobe to offer Indesign and InCopy for Linux (besides macs)...
Not to mention medical billing... Reynolds & Reynolds bought out Fiscal Information a number of years back - a small company that once had a huge share of the medical billing market. It got sold off several times and is now Amicas, but they still use Unix, Linux, or AIX for most of their backends as far as I know.
Um... wtf do you mean by that? If you buy a USB 2.0 drive from best buy, then yes it might fail, but you can buy a drive enclosure with any interface you'd like and put any drive you want in it - even SCSI. Or do what others have said and get another inexpensive computer with raid and do a backup, or dump a tar ball with cron to a desktop or NAS every night. Heck even making a tar of the database to the SAME drive once a week would have made this problem recoverable. This isn't rocket science.
If you have the money, go natural gas. If not you should consider the following: Start up watts - WAY more important than running watts. Most appliances use most energy when starting up. A gas camping stove (ovens and stoves use tons of energy. If you can cook on gas you save your generator for things like the furnace. In fact, you may be better off with space heaters - they are cheaper than trying to get a generator big enough to run the whole house. Remember that bigger isn't better with gas - those high wattage generators use lots more gas which means needing to refill it more often and having more gas on hand - can you get more gas if you need it in an emergency? Do it right - have an electrician wire it up or just run electrical extension cords to appliances as needed. Doing otherwise could kill the guys trying to get your power back on due to backfeeding if you screw up. Keep the generator in a temperature controlled location (above freezing or you won't be able to start it) away from you, your family, pets, and anything combustible. This sounds obvious, but many people die each year by forgetting to do just this. Run the generator at least every 2 weeks for at least 10 minutes. This will keep everything lubricated and prevents buildup of contaminants and failure. Use fuel stabilizer! Use it in all the gas you use and store or you will have a real problem when you go to start it in an emergency... Remember to run the generator for the specified time before hooking it up to your appliances (usually 5 to 10 minutes) if you don't wait for the power to stabilize you will fry everything in your house. Things to consider when purchasing a generator: -Get an electric start generator. You will thank me later. -Engine makes more of a difference than generator brand. Look for an engine made by Honda, Briggs&Stratton, Cummins, or CAT (diesel for the 2 latter). -Look for an engine with Over head valves (OHV) they are more reliable and last longer. -Make sure you check whether it comes with oil or not - many are shipped with no or inadequate oil (just enough to keep the valve seals lubricated). -Make sure it is a size that you can handle (weight wise). If it is going to be moved from storage for use, can you actually lift or roll it there? Other considerations: -Get some lamps with compact florescent bulbs so you don't waste all your wattage on lights - start large appliances one at a time and keep them running constantly to prevent surges (for example, turn on the fridge, then after a minute or two turn on the deep freeze, then turn on the heaters, etc). This allows you to get a unit with a lower starting wattage.
I had that problem once before, but it was from the flu. Thanks Microsoft.
I ran into this problem at first to, and while I will blame Microsoft for many things, can't really blame them for not supporting closed hardware that manufacturers won't provide drivers for... strangely enough, many devices now have 64 bit XP drivers thanks to Vista's requirement of having both 32-bit and 64-bit available for certification. Many manufacturers released an XP version too since they had already done the 64-bit port.
actually it did run on AMD64... Aka x86-64. In fact I ran it on AMD 64 when it first came out.
XP can do 64-bit just fine, and has been able to for several years; even before Vista came out.
Try buying one or the other. If being versed in what is going on in the world around you isn't worth carrying 7 quarters around, then I would say it is your problem, not the problem of the NYT or WSJ. That said, if they are smart they will either improve their distribution network to cover your area or install credit card swipes to make purchasing easier. Also, you could try a grocery store - I know many in my area carry all the major papers.
because it is a real f*^kin pain in the ass to get up and walk clear across the house to change discs. That's why. It makes way more sense to have them stored in a central location on mass storage where any of them can be streamed on demand to any other location in the house... Or, how about this scenario: oops, I dropped it and it scratched. What now, you want me to buy another blu-ray/DVD/flying-saucer-drm-machine? Why can't I use the "license" from this one?
There is good evidence that humans are adapting to the frame rate and that for along time 30 FPS was enough to not notice the flicker... this is a ongoing problem, but it doesn't mean that some people still don't notice while others (such as gamers) may be more apt to notice.
I know google is amazing, but how are they going to host photos dating from the 1750s from a magazine started in 1936 that showcased images created using a technology invented in 1826. This makes no sense at all.
I'm right there with you.. how will they feel when the discover global warming is caused by littering the oceans with millions of rubber ducks? Oh, and to grand-son: they call them rubber, but they are mostly artificial petrol-chemical duckies nowadays... not sure that is better though.
What Cave? The famous wintel cave of course! It connects Redmond, WA to Santa Clara, CA via large underground 'tubes' (volcanic I think, but they run the internet either way).
dutch oven.
I agree that reinstalling generally takes less time in a corporate environment, but when you have someone with old hardware, hard-to-find drivers, no backups or install disks and personal data scattered all over the drive it is better to try and remove than to wipe it out, hope you can find the right drivers and hope you got everything backed up that they will need. I can run a virus scanner unattended for the most part, but on OS reinstall has prompts unless you have an image or OEM setup pre-configured which you usually won't have for an individual. Besides, removing a virus by wiping out a system and reinstalling does no good if you are just going to put the same old data back on that may in fact be the original culprit. Sure you can scan it, but then you are back to spending time going over a bunch of data by running several scanners. Moral of the story: make backups of your data, drivers, and config files (or even better make an OS image and backups) Moral of the Moral: people who get viruses also tend to be the same people who won't have those things.
I agree. As someone deals with viruses on an almost daily basis I suggest avast and spybot to detect (if not remove) viruses. These two don't catch them all, but they usually make the system usable enough to remove the rest (the pre-boot avast check is especially useful). Also from my own experience: beware kaspersky! While it is good at preventing infections, my experience with virus ridden systems is that it makes them unbootable. Various other anti-malware/virus tools are hit and miss, and while detection has improved in programs like mcafee, I have found they still require manual removal.
I agree completely, but we do get freshman that don't know what their limit is. I don't know about you, but if I were a parent I would be scared shitless and would want my kid who was living on their own for the first time to feel safe and not fearful. Even the best of us have lapses of judgment. Again, not condoning drinking, but overdose can happen - let's treat it if it does. If someone speeds and gets in a car accident and needs medical help we might give them a ticket for reckless driving, but we don't kick them out of school. This shouldn't be any different.
Reagan would have expected the economy to run on jelly beans. He was a sufferer of Alzheimer and had no idea what was going on most of the time he was in the white house. That said, his aids did a pretty good job.
Apparently you don't understand the dangers of drinking beer... this guy requires that all students go through a "drinking will kill you" temperance test to enroll in classes. And to his credit, it is true. If you attend U.F. and go to the hospital for alcohol poisoning you will be expelled from school, so instead of getting medical care students risk possible death to avoid being kicked out of school. With guys like this running amuck, it is no wonder they look for students drinking on facebook - it is a public health risk to drink if you go to school in Gainesville.
You really should take your pills in the morning before posting on slashdot. Thanks though, that was entertaining.
I'm right with you. My first car was an 88 accord. It was about 480lbs. lighter than other years the accord was made, had a carburated engine, and didn't have an airbag or any other 'modern' safety features. It did however get 31-36mpg in 1999-2001 when I drove it. It was reliable and could go much faster than the speed limit if you had a reasonable amount of road.... That said, with over 190,000 miles it ran needing nothing but an oil change while I owned it. The only thing that killed it was a side impact at 40+ mph. The car had 4 people in it some wearing seatbelts and some not. There were no injuries. We really need to reconsider what we put in cars and how we can get better mileage with what we have. Diesel would be nice too, but lets trim some fat! I'm all for airbags etc. but the T.V. satellite, leather vibrating seat with baby bumbers built in needs to go. It is plastic crap! Lighter stronger materials and less junk please.
I second that. I work with a video site with a very large number of viewers and blip handles out traffic just fine. we've only had an issue maybe 2 or 3 times for a couple hours or less including the time we were using them while they were in beta. They offer encoding to several formats, support high resolution and have a great flash player based on jeroen wijering's player.