1.a.) Why are you using access for a database for anything but the simplest information? 1.b.) No one is holding a gun to your head and making you buy a new copy of office. You like what you've got? Keep using it.
2.) Get windows XP SP2, and stop downloading spyware. Plus, it's only the power users that notice it. Most of my clients when I was consulting had their origional install of windows XP and it was running slightly slower than it used to, but they didn't really care. Also: try using linux as a desktop for 2 years and see if it doesn't start slowing down when you install a new program once every week or two, new hardware every 6 months, and new graphics drivers and security patches once a month. Most people that use linux on the desktop are careful about how they treat it, but on the windows side, most of us punish our OS. In the past week, I've installed DivX 6, Tivo Desktop, Quake 4, video lan client, and WinDVD. Do this enough and it bogs down.
3.) What? What takes half a day on windows that doesn't take half a day in Linux? The things that take a long time in windows (copying files to the hard drive for install) must be done in linux, too. Installing Linux (especially things like ubuntu and Fedora) have gotten easier, by a good bit, but it's still not as easy as windows.
4.) Hidden features? Dude, Windows Registry == Linux/etc. Config files have to go somewhere. Yes, you can get to them easier in linux, and yes I prefer it that way, but if programs are coded properly, there shouldn't be a need to go poking around in the windows registry, ever. Everything should be adjustable from inside the program, or shouldn't need user adjusting. The only thing you can say here is Linux lets you try and clean up bad programs' config files easier than windows, but I mean... that's hardly something Microsoft can be blamed for.
5.) Get Windows XP SP2, or Windows server 2003.
6.) Get Windows XP SP2, or Windows server 2003.
7.) Yeah, Windows is 5 years behind. Except... gaming. Oh, and desktop usability (For the LOVE OF GOD, can someone create a universal clipboard for ANY linux windowing system? ALL I EVER WANTED was to cut and paste between apps). And hardware support. Also: Linux and Mac both defrag in the background, as does Windows XP and Server2003.
God. I use linux, and I use windows, and there are things that both are suited for. Linux = any internet service. Windows = user and computer management, gaming. Do whatever suits you; use whatever you're comfortable with, but let's not make shit up.
Blacksburg, VA. Home of virginia tech. There's a company in Roanoke (~35 minutes away, but it's not I-95) that I hope is going to offer me a Network Admin job later this week; if not, my old job at a linux webhosting company is looking for a company manager that I've been offered as a backup.
Here's the thing - I didn't choose where I am living now, and I'm moving to somewhere where the cost of living is lower and better healthcare can be found. But, I just graduated from college a couple of years ago, and lacking anywhere to go, my wife, myself, and our 1 year old moved in with my parents, who have a giant house they bought before the dot-com bubble. The only problem is they live in Fredericksburg, VA, which is a suburb of DC (if you can call 40 miles outside the beltway a suburb). The jobs here don't pay enough to live here, so everyone works in DC, but I don't want to commute 3 hours a day and miss all that time with my young kid - i think this time is important to be with him.
So, I'm taking my own advice and packing up and moving (this will probably be the last slashdot post for 2 or 3 days; i'm sitting in the middle of a room full of boxes). The place I'm moving too is much better, I think, but it's been hard to get by working and living here.
I have a question, and I hope you read your slashdot responses...
As someone who graduated from college post-dot-com-boom, and who is currently (i hope) about to be offered a position with a company... How do you negotiate? How do you ask for more than they offer? Not to mention, if I set out to find a job, and I think in my head, I'll take $X as a minimum, and they offer me $1.25*X, should I ask for more?
Way to be callous, man. A 2% raise... adjusted for cost of living, that's actually a pay cut.
Health care costs are up, gas costs twice as much as it did a year ago, houses are unaffordable - up 85% in the past year - in any location where there are jobs, but you can't live far away because you can't afford to commute, and yet you can't work for some small town company with no health benefits...
I didn't get a piece of the Dot-Com bubble, and now that we're on the downside of it, there are no jobs that pay a living wage, and lots of us are looking for other ways to make a living. It'll come back around, and salaries will become more consistant with cost of living... but in the mean time, I wonder about whether or not I should take my 1 year old to the hospital or if his cough is going to get better on its own with time and generic robitussin, because the emergency room doctors here don't participate with my independant keycare health plan and I really can't afford it.
Save your harsh words for the realtors, man. All I'm trying to do is scrape by and take care of my family.
Not to mention - the technology is so phenomenal, and yet executed so beautifully, that it takes the breath away.
For years, most of us have been thinking "The more people downloading the file, the slower it goes for every user", and have been trying to solve this delima.
Bram looked at the problem and said, "What if... the more people downloading the file, the faster it went?" And then he coded it.
I understand the technology, but I'm still in awe of its seeming ability to just shrug off the confines of the known universe in order to solve the problem. It's like someone walking into Boeing and saying, "Hey, instead of building these planes to carry people... what if gravity pulled people upward?" and then proceeded to make it happen.
This is the programming revolution of the decade, mark my prophetic words - BitTorrent and subsequent derivative technologies will be the biggest thing to happen to information technology this decade. If it doesn't awe you, you're just too jaded.
I really don't see what's so hard to grasp about this.
Remote Desktop == Terminal Services.
Every XP copy sold comes with the ability to have one user at a time connect via Remote Desktop (TS).
Every 2003 server copy sold (well, at least small business server, which is most economical for almost all the companies I consult for) comes with the ability to have 2 users connect simultaneously via Remote Desktop (TS), plus the currently logged in local user.
If you want more than 2 people to connect to your Server, you install the Terminal Services service stuff, and pay for the license to have X number of people connect. If you want more than 1 person to connect to your XP machine, buy a 2003 SBServer.
It's not that hard, and it's really not that sinister. I've never seen any of this BS about what OS you have to be running for your CAL provided by WinXP or any of that shit. If your OS has Remote Desktop built in (XP Pro), use it to go into another XP Pro or 2003 machine. If not, go to microsoft's site, or google 'msrdpcli.exe site:microsoft.com' and download the remote desktop client - it works all the way back to Windows 98. Let your sysadmin take care of the licensing based on the number of people that need to simultaneously connect remotely.
The right way to get more engineers into circulation would be better pay...
I think most engineers can "cope" with their $70,000 straight out of college salaries, thank you. There are MANY other fields which could use a hike in the average rate of pay before engineer.
For example, try being a public school teacher. Go to 4 years of undergraduate school and a year and a half of graduate school to get your teaching certificate, graduate with $60,000 in student loans, and then have people think they're doing you a favor offering you a starting position at $18,000/yr.
The problem becomes that everyone I know who uses Outlook specifically for the calendar in a corporate sense uses it because it's a *shared* calendar. We use it where I work, and it works really well for what we do (schedule jobs for techs).
In order to take away the corporate calendar market from outlook, they'll need to somehow make it centralized; and then you're just talking evolution.
Right, but you do get people like me going into the ER at 23 years old thinking they have had a heart attack, when come to find out it's just heartburn due to pizza consumption.
I was laying on the couch, when my chest started hurting; so I go upstairs to check the interwebs to see if I did have the symptoms of a heart attack. Lo and behold, I had chest pains, tingling in my arm, and lightheadedness!
Turns out it was just due to the aforementioned pizza, the fact that I was laying on my arm, and the fact that I jumped off the couch after laying there for like an hour. Well, a thousand-dollar lidocane and mylanta cocktail later, I'm fine.
A heart attack isn't rare, either, but the internets still cause people to find things wrong with them that aren't really wrong.
VCR and VHS Recordings : 1980's broadcast TV:: DVD-R's and Tivo : 2005 Broadcast Cable
I completely agree with you, and furthermore, I think it should be taken into account that the "Oh, but DVDs are a better quality medium, and thus should be regulated" idea is complete baloney due to the fact that it's ludicrous to increase the quality of the broadcast (a result of customer demand), and expect the quality of recording equipment to remain static. The recording quality is only a reflection of the broadcast quality. It's just plain dumb.
The "RIGHT WAY" (tm), if you ask me, would be to have a bt site that offers a subscription to whatever "channel" you want to get distributions from. For example, if you want to make sure that you get in on the ground floor when the next Ubuntu stable is released, you should go to Ubuntu's site, download a tiny little file, and drop it into your hypothetical RSS/Bittorrent hybrid program (or even better yet, just cut and paste a URL or whatever into the program, which it then checks for updates). Then, when the new version is released, ubuntu updates the feed. When your hypothetical program sees the new rss news, it will use what is found in the RSS release to connect to a tracker and start downloading off the torrent.
The same, of course, could be done for channel "Family Guy Episodes" or "XXX Anime" or whatever.
Hey, if they're only willing to pay us to build the machine and deliver and plug it in, there's not much we can do.
We told them that their firewall was not doing anything, and that half their computers had viruses, and the other half did too, but they didn't want us to clean it up - they thought we were selling snake oil.
Ive contacted MS support 3 times (expensive if you dont have a contact..lol) They are more then compentant, not like your normal call center.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
Ahem. Hrm.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
OK.
About a week or two ago, I was working on a server for a client in the area. I work for a consulting firm; we do everything from initial planning to wiring to building computers to support. This client had a 2003 Small Business Server, which basically ran as a file and MS-SQL server for their accounting software.
Well, dumbasses got hacked. The machine was on a public IP, and they saw fit to change their administrator password to "admin" while we weren't looking (with remote access enabled). Anyway, rootkits galore. The crux of the issue is that they basically needed a Wipe and Reload; BUT, their accounting software cost them $10,000 to have someone flown in from the software provider and install the software. So, wipe and reload is not an option - they can't afford to reinstall the financial software.
Oh, and their backups are corrupted. That's what they get for keeping them on the hard drive with the OS, but who's counting? Oh, plus, we set it up for daily backups, and then a weekly one - so it has 7 days, plus weeklys for a month, plus monthlys for a year. I had to go back 3 weeks before I even found a partial backup without the r00tkit, and they can't lose 3 weeks of financial data.
So, I take the server back to the shop, put it on the tech bench, and try to clean out the rootkit. Nothin' doin - it's got its fingers into everything. Luckily, I was able to get the Cam screener of "The Cave" that had been uploaded from efnet. Anyway... I can't get rid of the rootkit. I boot up off of ERD Commander, attach to the install, and flush the pre-fetch directory. Reboot. Can't log in. I do this and that. Can't log in.
So - I call Microsoft. Not only do I call Microsoft, but the shop I work for is a Preferred Partner, so we call the super secret number. Not only do we call the super secret number, but we call the super secret "BUSINESS CRITICAL OUTAGE / SERVER DOWN 24 HOUR AVAILABILITY" line. Granted, it costs $250 per incident, which you have to pre-purchase in packs of 10 ($2500 at a time)...
And get someone in india. Who takes down our information and puts us on hold for an hour.
And then someone else in india picks up. He has us try this and that until he realizes we have 2003 Small Business Server, and he says that the receptionist told him we had Enterprise Server (we told her Small Business, but who knows if she understood a word I said), and that's not his department (are they really that different, if you can't even get a login prompt?). He transfers us to SBS, where we sit on hold for another hour. So now we're at 3 hours, and we just got ahold of the right person.
Then, Habib (or whatever) talks us through the same steps. Then he tells us to install a 2nd windows install (in C:\Windows2\). Then pull files out of that install. That doesn't work, so we install SBS SP1. Same thing - doesn't work. Nothing works. But, we've spent another 3+ hours on the phone installing and configuring SBS and SP1.
SIX HOURS. I didn't once talk to a native english speaker in SIX HOURS on their BUSINESS CRITICAL OUTAGE phone line. My problem didn't get fixed.
The Plural of Anecdote is Data, but Microsoft's tech support still SUCKS.
Oh, I certainly agree. But, I was just going on a couple of quick ideas, 1.) it has to be cheap, and 2.) it has to sound "good enough", i.e. good enough that if I pop in Blade or The Matrix or whatever hot 3d sound movie is out now, i'm going to like how it sounds.
I said sony front towers because they make (or made) a decent tower that's got 2x6.5", a midrange that's like 3 inches, and a tweeter for $250/pr. JBL has one, too, but it's like $500 for a pair, and if I was going to add a good center channel (~$200 range), decent-but-cheap rears (~$150-$200), and a sub (~$250), and keep it under the lifestyles system, i had to make compromises. $250 + $250 + $200 + $150 = $850, and you'll get a much richer sound and satisfying system than the lifestyles, and pocket $400. You could still do it with all JBL speakers, for under $1300, and have a massive, awesome sound.
As another responder pointed out, though - you can't compete with the "smallness" and "cuteness" factor. I have to conceed that.
Have you ever tried comparing a Bose system with anything else? You know, actually do listening tests?
I have. I worked in the Audio department for about a year at Best Buy.
For starters, bose dictated sale prices to best buy - best buy couldn't just choose to put them on sale; they had to put them on sale when Bose corporate said to, which is why the circulars always said "All Speakers Onsale*" *except bose.
And the no highs, no lows, must be Bose does hold true. I am by no means an audiophile, but even my damn-near deaf due to rock concerts ears can tell they suck. I mean, the 201's and 301's aren't terrible speakers, but they are a bit muddy and much more expensive than, say, a pair of JBL bookshelfs that sound better.
The crux of the matter is the Lifestyles systems, though. The bass tube with the little cubes? Ugh. You're not going to get good bass out of a 6.5" woofer, especially if it's the unpowered one. If you do a sound sweep from like 50 hz to 50 khz, you're going to hear huge dropoff points all over the place. They just sound bad. Which would be acceptable for consumer electronics, if they were cheap, but they're upwards of $1000! The one with the dual cubes and the powered sub was $1300 when I worked there, and I bet it hasn't gotten cheaper. Give me $1300, and I'll get you some relatively inexpensive Sony tower speakers for front and rear, and a JBL center channel and 10" sub, and give you $400 back, and it'll sound vastly better (just going off of the brands that were there when I worked there). I know that sony and JBL aren't excellent names in home theater, but jesus, they're a far cry better than Bose.
It's not an audiophile thing. It's a listen to it and say ugh thing.
Ok, so, according to wikipedia, if something happened in the universe 78 billion light years away, it would just now be reaching earth, and if it happened 79 billion light years away from earth, we wouldn't know about it yet.
And then, it's argued that everything beyond this horizon doesn't exist? So, the universe (according to our understanding) is a constantly growing sphere with earth in the center?
It just seems wierd. I mean, I know that scientifically, if you can't observe something, for your given system, that thing doesn't exist. However, if you drove your Heart of Gold, or USS Enterprise, or whatever, to 78 billion light years from earth, and then went 10 feet further, the Universe is still there...
The distance is only barely within the reaches of the observable universe.
I remember hearing this phrase before, and hearing an explanation, but it didn't make sense. Can you explain this in idiot terms? Something about some things are never actually going to get to us because they're too far away, and that represents the boundries of our reachable universe?
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
The word "Islamist" didn't exist until September 11th, 2001, and after, when the U.S. had to find a politically correct way to differentiate between Muslims and Muslim extremists. Islamist gives this a connotation that the ideals derive from the religion, not from the political ideology. Zionist Judiasm is different because zionism describes the desire to go home to zion; not because of religious reasons.
Slashdot Mirror
1.a.) Why are you using access for a database for anything but the simplest information?
1.b.) No one is holding a gun to your head and making you buy a new copy of office. You like what you've got? Keep using it.
2.) Get windows XP SP2, and stop downloading spyware. Plus, it's only the power users that notice it. Most of my clients when I was consulting had their origional install of windows XP and it was running slightly slower than it used to, but they didn't really care. Also: try using linux as a desktop for 2 years and see if it doesn't start slowing down when you install a new program once every week or two, new hardware every 6 months, and new graphics drivers and security patches once a month. Most people that use linux on the desktop are careful about how they treat it, but on the windows side, most of us punish our OS. In the past week, I've installed DivX 6, Tivo Desktop, Quake 4, video lan client, and WinDVD. Do this enough and it bogs down.
3.) What? What takes half a day on windows that doesn't take half a day in Linux? The things that take a long time in windows (copying files to the hard drive for install) must be done in linux, too. Installing Linux (especially things like ubuntu and Fedora) have gotten easier, by a good bit, but it's still not as easy as windows.
4.) Hidden features? Dude, Windows Registry == Linux
5.) Get Windows XP SP2, or Windows server 2003.
6.) Get Windows XP SP2, or Windows server 2003.
7.) Yeah, Windows is 5 years behind. Except... gaming. Oh, and desktop usability (For the LOVE OF GOD, can someone create a universal clipboard for ANY linux windowing system? ALL I EVER WANTED was to cut and paste between apps). And hardware support. Also: Linux and Mac both defrag in the background, as does Windows XP and Server2003.
God. I use linux, and I use windows, and there are things that both are suited for. Linux = any internet service. Windows = user and computer management, gaming. Do whatever suits you; use whatever you're comfortable with, but let's not make shit up.
~Will
Blacksburg, VA. Home of virginia tech. There's a company in Roanoke (~35 minutes away, but it's not I-95) that I hope is going to offer me a Network Admin job later this week; if not, my old job at a linux webhosting company is looking for a company manager that I've been offered as a backup.
~Will
Technically, I'm not getting less money. But, without a 2.4% or greater raise, I am getting less purchasing power.
Here's the thing - I didn't choose where I am living now, and I'm moving to somewhere where the cost of living is lower and better healthcare can be found. But, I just graduated from college a couple of years ago, and lacking anywhere to go, my wife, myself, and our 1 year old moved in with my parents, who have a giant house they bought before the dot-com bubble. The only problem is they live in Fredericksburg, VA, which is a suburb of DC (if you can call 40 miles outside the beltway a suburb). The jobs here don't pay enough to live here, so everyone works in DC, but I don't want to commute 3 hours a day and miss all that time with my young kid - i think this time is important to be with him.
So, I'm taking my own advice and packing up and moving (this will probably be the last slashdot post for 2 or 3 days; i'm sitting in the middle of a room full of boxes). The place I'm moving too is much better, I think, but it's been hard to get by working and living here.
~Will
I have a question, and I hope you read your slashdot responses...
As someone who graduated from college post-dot-com-boom, and who is currently (i hope) about to be offered a position with a company... How do you negotiate? How do you ask for more than they offer? Not to mention, if I set out to find a job, and I think in my head, I'll take $X as a minimum, and they offer me $1.25*X, should I ask for more?
~Will
Way to be callous, man. A 2% raise... adjusted for cost of living, that's actually a pay cut.
Health care costs are up, gas costs twice as much as it did a year ago, houses are unaffordable - up 85% in the past year - in any location where there are jobs, but you can't live far away because you can't afford to commute, and yet you can't work for some small town company with no health benefits...
I didn't get a piece of the Dot-Com bubble, and now that we're on the downside of it, there are no jobs that pay a living wage, and lots of us are looking for other ways to make a living. It'll come back around, and salaries will become more consistant with cost of living... but in the mean time, I wonder about whether or not I should take my 1 year old to the hospital or if his cough is going to get better on its own with time and generic robitussin, because the emergency room doctors here don't participate with my independant keycare health plan and I really can't afford it.
Save your harsh words for the realtors, man. All I'm trying to do is scrape by and take care of my family.
~Will
Not to mention - the technology is so phenomenal, and yet executed so beautifully, that it takes the breath away.
For years, most of us have been thinking "The more people downloading the file, the slower it goes for every user", and have been trying to solve this delima.
Bram looked at the problem and said, "What if... the more people downloading the file, the faster it went?" And then he coded it.
I understand the technology, but I'm still in awe of its seeming ability to just shrug off the confines of the known universe in order to solve the problem. It's like someone walking into Boeing and saying, "Hey, instead of building these planes to carry people... what if gravity pulled people upward?" and then proceeded to make it happen.
This is the programming revolution of the decade, mark my prophetic words - BitTorrent and subsequent derivative technologies will be the biggest thing to happen to information technology this decade. If it doesn't awe you, you're just too jaded.
~Will
I really don't see what's so hard to grasp about this.
Remote Desktop == Terminal Services.
Every XP copy sold comes with the ability to have one user at a time connect via Remote Desktop (TS).
Every 2003 server copy sold (well, at least small business server, which is most economical for almost all the companies I consult for) comes with the ability to have 2 users connect simultaneously via Remote Desktop (TS), plus the currently logged in local user.
If you want more than 2 people to connect to your Server, you install the Terminal Services service stuff, and pay for the license to have X number of people connect. If you want more than 1 person to connect to your XP machine, buy a 2003 SBServer.
It's not that hard, and it's really not that sinister. I've never seen any of this BS about what OS you have to be running for your CAL provided by WinXP or any of that shit. If your OS has Remote Desktop built in (XP Pro), use it to go into another XP Pro or 2003 machine. If not, go to microsoft's site, or google 'msrdpcli.exe site:microsoft.com' and download the remote desktop client - it works all the way back to Windows 98. Let your sysadmin take care of the licensing based on the number of people that need to simultaneously connect remotely.
~Will
5 and a half years being 4 years getting an undergraduate degree and 1.5 to get the teaching cert.
The right way to get more engineers into circulation would be better pay...
I think most engineers can "cope" with their $70,000 straight out of college salaries, thank you. There are MANY other fields which could use a hike in the average rate of pay before engineer.
For example, try being a public school teacher. Go to 4 years of undergraduate school and a year and a half of graduate school to get your teaching certificate, graduate with $60,000 in student loans, and then have people think they're doing you a favor offering you a starting position at $18,000/yr.
~Will
The problem becomes that everyone I know who uses Outlook specifically for the calendar in a corporate sense uses it because it's a *shared* calendar. We use it where I work, and it works really well for what we do (schedule jobs for techs).
In order to take away the corporate calendar market from outlook, they'll need to somehow make it centralized; and then you're just talking evolution.
~will
Right, but you do get people like me going into the ER at 23 years old thinking they have had a heart attack, when come to find out it's just heartburn due to pizza consumption.
I was laying on the couch, when my chest started hurting; so I go upstairs to check the interwebs to see if I did have the symptoms of a heart attack. Lo and behold, I had chest pains, tingling in my arm, and lightheadedness!
Turns out it was just due to the aforementioned pizza, the fact that I was laying on my arm, and the fact that I jumped off the couch after laying there for like an hour. Well, a thousand-dollar lidocane and mylanta cocktail later, I'm fine.
A heart attack isn't rare, either, but the internets still cause people to find things wrong with them that aren't really wrong.
~
I'd even go further and say
VCR and VHS Recordings : 1980's broadcast TV
I completely agree with you, and furthermore, I think it should be taken into account that the "Oh, but DVDs are a better quality medium, and thus should be regulated" idea is complete baloney due to the fact that it's ludicrous to increase the quality of the broadcast (a result of customer demand), and expect the quality of recording equipment to remain static. The recording quality is only a reflection of the broadcast quality. It's just plain dumb.
The "RIGHT WAY" (tm), if you ask me, would be to have a bt site that offers a subscription to whatever "channel" you want to get distributions from. For example, if you want to make sure that you get in on the ground floor when the next Ubuntu stable is released, you should go to Ubuntu's site, download a tiny little file, and drop it into your hypothetical RSS/Bittorrent hybrid program (or even better yet, just cut and paste a URL or whatever into the program, which it then checks for updates). Then, when the new version is released, ubuntu updates the feed. When your hypothetical program sees the new rss news, it will use what is found in the RSS release to connect to a tracker and start downloading off the torrent.
The same, of course, could be done for channel "Family Guy Episodes" or "XXX Anime" or whatever.
~Will
Hey, if they're only willing to pay us to build the machine and deliver and plug it in, there's not much we can do.
We told them that their firewall was not doing anything, and that half their computers had viruses, and the other half did too, but they didn't want us to clean it up - they thought we were selling snake oil.
You can't protect them from themselves.
Ive contacted MS support 3 times (expensive if you dont have a contact..lol) They are more then compentant, not like your normal call center.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
Ahem. Hrm.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
OK.
About a week or two ago, I was working on a server for a client in the area. I work for a consulting firm; we do everything from initial planning to wiring to building computers to support. This client had a 2003 Small Business Server, which basically ran as a file and MS-SQL server for their accounting software.
Well, dumbasses got hacked. The machine was on a public IP, and they saw fit to change their administrator password to "admin" while we weren't looking (with remote access enabled). Anyway, rootkits galore. The crux of the issue is that they basically needed a Wipe and Reload; BUT, their accounting software cost them $10,000 to have someone flown in from the software provider and install the software. So, wipe and reload is not an option - they can't afford to reinstall the financial software.
Oh, and their backups are corrupted. That's what they get for keeping them on the hard drive with the OS, but who's counting? Oh, plus, we set it up for daily backups, and then a weekly one - so it has 7 days, plus weeklys for a month, plus monthlys for a year. I had to go back 3 weeks before I even found a partial backup without the r00tkit, and they can't lose 3 weeks of financial data.
So, I take the server back to the shop, put it on the tech bench, and try to clean out the rootkit. Nothin' doin - it's got its fingers into everything. Luckily, I was able to get the Cam screener of "The Cave" that had been uploaded from efnet. Anyway... I can't get rid of the rootkit. I boot up off of ERD Commander, attach to the install, and flush the pre-fetch directory. Reboot. Can't log in. I do this and that. Can't log in.
So - I call Microsoft. Not only do I call Microsoft, but the shop I work for is a Preferred Partner, so we call the super secret number. Not only do we call the super secret number, but we call the super secret "BUSINESS CRITICAL OUTAGE / SERVER DOWN 24 HOUR AVAILABILITY" line. Granted, it costs $250 per incident, which you have to pre-purchase in packs of 10 ($2500 at a time)...
And get someone in india. Who takes down our information and puts us on hold for an hour.
And then someone else in india picks up. He has us try this and that until he realizes we have 2003 Small Business Server, and he says that the receptionist told him we had Enterprise Server (we told her Small Business, but who knows if she understood a word I said), and that's not his department (are they really that different, if you can't even get a login prompt?). He transfers us to SBS, where we sit on hold for another hour. So now we're at 3 hours, and we just got ahold of the right person.
Then, Habib (or whatever) talks us through the same steps. Then he tells us to install a 2nd windows install (in C:\Windows2\). Then pull files out of that install. That doesn't work, so we install SBS SP1. Same thing - doesn't work. Nothing works. But, we've spent another 3+ hours on the phone installing and configuring SBS and SP1.
SIX HOURS. I didn't once talk to a native english speaker in SIX HOURS on their BUSINESS CRITICAL OUTAGE phone line. My problem didn't get fixed.
The Plural of Anecdote is Data, but Microsoft's tech support still SUCKS.
~Will
Can you link to the page (hit the "link to this" on google maps) - I'm not sure how to convert those numbers into a location google maps understands.
~W
And, they do; however, I just was never as impressed by is as I was with the northridge JBL center.
But, looking back, I'm quite sure that the sony center channel of the same series probably matched the auditory charastics of the sony speakers.
In which case, we're just back to buy whatever makes your ears, wallet, and decoration happy.
~W
Oh, I certainly agree. But, I was just going on a couple of quick ideas, 1.) it has to be cheap, and 2.) it has to sound "good enough", i.e. good enough that if I pop in Blade or The Matrix or whatever hot 3d sound movie is out now, i'm going to like how it sounds.
I said sony front towers because they make (or made) a decent tower that's got 2x6.5", a midrange that's like 3 inches, and a tweeter for $250/pr. JBL has one, too, but it's like $500 for a pair, and if I was going to add a good center channel (~$200 range), decent-but-cheap rears (~$150-$200), and a sub (~$250), and keep it under the lifestyles system, i had to make compromises. $250 + $250 + $200 + $150 = $850, and you'll get a much richer sound and satisfying system than the lifestyles, and pocket $400. You could still do it with all JBL speakers, for under $1300, and have a massive, awesome sound.
As another responder pointed out, though - you can't compete with the "smallness" and "cuteness" factor. I have to conceed that.
~W
I got it.
Have you ever tried comparing a Bose system with anything else? You know, actually do listening tests?
I have. I worked in the Audio department for about a year at Best Buy.
For starters, bose dictated sale prices to best buy - best buy couldn't just choose to put them on sale; they had to put them on sale when Bose corporate said to, which is why the circulars always said "All Speakers Onsale*" *except bose.
And the no highs, no lows, must be Bose does hold true. I am by no means an audiophile, but even my damn-near deaf due to rock concerts ears can tell they suck. I mean, the 201's and 301's aren't terrible speakers, but they are a bit muddy and much more expensive than, say, a pair of JBL bookshelfs that sound better.
The crux of the matter is the Lifestyles systems, though. The bass tube with the little cubes? Ugh. You're not going to get good bass out of a 6.5" woofer, especially if it's the unpowered one. If you do a sound sweep from like 50 hz to 50 khz, you're going to hear huge dropoff points all over the place. They just sound bad. Which would be acceptable for consumer electronics, if they were cheap, but they're upwards of $1000! The one with the dual cubes and the powered sub was $1300 when I worked there, and I bet it hasn't gotten cheaper. Give me $1300, and I'll get you some relatively inexpensive Sony tower speakers for front and rear, and a JBL center channel and 10" sub, and give you $400 back, and it'll sound vastly better (just going off of the brands that were there when I worked there). I know that sony and JBL aren't excellent names in home theater, but jesus, they're a far cry better than Bose.
It's not an audiophile thing. It's a listen to it and say ugh thing.
~Will
Ok, so, according to wikipedia, if something happened in the universe 78 billion light years away, it would just now be reaching earth, and if it happened 79 billion light years away from earth, we wouldn't know about it yet.
And then, it's argued that everything beyond this horizon doesn't exist? So, the universe (according to our understanding) is a constantly growing sphere with earth in the center?
It just seems wierd. I mean, I know that scientifically, if you can't observe something, for your given system, that thing doesn't exist. However, if you drove your Heart of Gold, or USS Enterprise, or whatever, to 78 billion light years from earth, and then went 10 feet further, the Universe is still there...
Wierd.
Thanks for the article links, too.
The distance is only barely within the reaches of the observable universe.
I remember hearing this phrase before, and hearing an explanation, but it didn't make sense. Can you explain this in idiot terms? Something about some things are never actually going to get to us because they're too far away, and that represents the boundries of our reachable universe?
~Will
In other news... CRAAAAB-PEOPLE, CRAAAAB-PEOPLE.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
The word "Islamist" didn't exist until September 11th, 2001, and after, when the U.S. had to find a politically correct way to differentiate between Muslims and Muslim extremists. Islamist gives this a connotation that the ideals derive from the religion, not from the political ideology. Zionist Judiasm is different because zionism describes the desire to go home to zion; not because of religious reasons.