Interesting that Aopen is showing off another Tube Audio Board. This one with a three tube design for even more powerful sound.
I wonder if this trend is going to continue on more of aopen's boards. There must be a demand for the original tube board if they play on making a more powerful 3 tube version in the future.
Must Be Anti Microsoft Day here at slashdot. 4 articles in one day.
As for the article, So what else is new. it's not like microsoft never said Linux was competition. if Linux Competition makes Windows better and vice versa, isn't that a good thing?
"The focus of his new company is to "simplify programming by representing programs in ways other than in the text syntax of conventional programming languages,"
This is almost Laughable that this made Slashdot. It's Even more Laughable that people are defending this piece of Trash Review.
First of all, Using OEM Restore Disks NOT = OEM Win2k CD. The only ones that are somewhat good are the Gateway, Compaq and eMachines disks.
Second, There are not 8 reboots in Win2k install. Theres one after Text install, after Graphical Install, after a Service pack, After IE6, and After all the patches, Making it 5.
Third, If it takes 2 Hours to install win2k on a modern day machine, then that is the worst, most overbloated restore CD I have Ever Heard of. I can install Win2k completely from blank drive to fully patched in under 1 hour. It could Probably take me 2 hours if I wore a Blindfold. Hell it only takes me three hours to install Win2k, fully patched, install MS office and all of my files, settings, Drivers and programs I use.
Forth, What CD Swap, there is only 1 CD in the entire OS installiation. You put it in the Drive, turn the PC on, and get the little bobbing bird and set it so it presses the Enter key.
Let me say one thing however. I recently Installed Red Hat 7.2. They have definetly came a long way since 5.0, which was a total pain in the ass. 7.2 is definetly a step in the right direction when it comes to Linux installs. I dont think it's as easy as a windows install, but it's very close.
I'm Waiting for the NForce2 Shuttle.
on
Shuttle SS51 Reviewed
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Although this is a good P4 machine, I'm an AMD fan, so this machine really doesn't interest me too much.
The one I'm waiting for is the Nforce2 Shuttle that will be released soon. It's for AMD, it's Onboard Video and Audio is very good so you wont need to replace it as soon unlike other onboard components, where it's almost necessary, and it's upgradeable just like the SS51 is.
The Nforce2 Shuttle wil be a good LAN gaming machine out of the box, whereas the SS51 needs a Video and Possibly an audio card right off the bat
I would have to agree that most virus stories were overblown at best, but at least it gives Joe Consumer the Head's up when it comes to viruses. Unfortunatly no one seems to listen to them.
For Example, I work at a university, and we have been recently blocking LAN ports form students that we find to be transmitting a virus. I have already had a loveletter and a klez come in today, and have had 22 nimda viruses come in over the past month. Im sure that theres more out on our network but we dont find out until their machine attempts to infect the server.
Most of the machines have had either Norton on it but not updated to the latest defs, Mcafee activeshield, which is basicially useless, or Mcafee Virusscan that was either not updated becasue no one wants to fill out the 1 page form for it, or is version 4.0 or earlier, which has no def updates.
Lately we've been pointing people to http://www.grisoft.com to get AVG for free from their site, and it helps, but im still getting machines in at a steady pace.
Frankly, I dont think anybody cares if they get a virus until it forces them to format and reinstall, then it gets their attention.
This Box set is something I'll most likely be adding to my growing collection of crack gunslingers, bounty hunters and bandit killers
Of course, having monsters destroying a major city is cool, but nothing makes it more worthwile when Tokyo is being destroyed by a Zebra Beach Ball of Death or the Acidic Daddy longlegs of doom or my personal favorite, the Diamond of Destruction.
That's how most of our laws are, right now. Ex post facto -- you break them, you do the punishment. The RIAA/MPAA wants to undermine this situation, and prevent people from breaking the law. We already tried this once.
It was called prohibition.
I can already see it now
Bill Gates being a Notiorious mob boss running a speakeasy in the middle of Washington state with Cops trying in vain to stop his illegal activities.
Being the NVidiot that I am, I bought the Visiontek Xtasy Everything Nvidia Personal Cinema instead of the AIW, Primarialy because of the Never ending Driver Issues ATI seems to have.
So far I haven't had any hardware problems with it. It has great video and sound, and since it's an external box, upgrading to a newer card shouldn't be a problem as long as the new card has vivo.
The Only problem that I have with it is the WinDVR software can't be upgraded without messing up the remote control buttons, but the version that came with the card works fine with no problems.
another thing is that it's a GeForce2 MX400, but that still fast enough for most games out there, and it's faster than an 7500.
My current primary machine when I first built it, had an IBM 34GXP drive in it on a Abit KT7A motherboard.
I had the machine for 2 days and the hard drive corrupted. RAN DFT, which found no errors and low leveled the drive. the second install it happened again, two of the three techs where i worked swore up and down it was the Drive going bad and that I should put a different drive in it, to which I would reply there's no way cause it's IBM and it's not clicking or producing any DFT errors. later On I found out that the VIA 686B had problems corrupting drives. after 7 Bios flashes, 6 or so 4in1 drivers, and windows XP, the system finally got stable.
Currently, I have a 20GB 60GXP in it. (the 34GXP is being used in my secondary) i've had it since they released the series and i've yet to hear anything from the drive that would suggest it failing. I also test it monthly using DFT to see if it's generating bad sectors and it hasn't yet. It currently is not breaking the 333 per month limit yet however. it's probably used at least 6-8 hours a day.
I have seen 2 IBM SCSI drives go bad, and a 75GXP, but that about it for them.
WD were basicially Crash test dummies. I lost count sometime after 25. they would always spin out, click, or whine. We even had them coming in dead in new boxes.
Seagates, although I never seen a 'Dead in the box' one, would tend to fail over time. They tended to fail a little less than WD. I had at least 15 of these fail. Their SCSI end, however, was the exact opposite. their SCSI drives are some of the most reliable drives in the industry.
JTS just sucked. if a machine was crashing and it had a JTS, 99% of the time it was the drive. thats why they went out of business.
Samsung, fujitsu and conner, I never seen a dead one of these. they are a little less common though and conner got bought out by WD.
Maxtors are probably the most reliable to get right now for ATA. I had a maxtor for three years and had no problems with it. I have yet to see one die. We started using them for the machines we built and they were just reliable. They weren't the fastest drive out there however. The clocest thing I have seen to a Maxtor death was one drive that would SMART error. I ran powermax on it, which said it failed, So I low leveled and recertified the drive. after I did that there were no errors. it's been working for 2 months now with no problems whatsoever. right now Maxtor seems to be the reliability leader.
If I remember correctly, the NForce does Dual channel DDR right now for the Athlon platform, and is being planned to be released to the Intel platform soon.
Of course the E7500 is in a different league than the Nforce, but the Dual Channel Idea is pretty much the same.
unfortunatly the Voyage 200 has the same stereo jack plug that the previous Ti calculators had. it only now comes with the usb version of the link instead of having to go out and buy the serial link.
The Best remedy that they could choose to breakup the Windows monopoly is to force them to open source everything (That includes IE, WMP and anything else bundled into the Windows OS) in previous, current and future Versions of Windows and allow it to be freely downloadable. This takes the Windows Monopoly out of Microsoft's Hands because anyone now can make changes to the Windows Kernel and software and sell their version as a Windows Distrubution (Much like Linux is distrubuted now)
Once you take the Windows Monopoly out of Microsoft's Hands and allow other companies to make Windows Distributions, you will get a more competitive marketplace for Operating Systems, more Choices, Less Bullying, Higher quality software overall, and a much higher quality operating system than you could ever get with just MS supplying the OS code.
Where I used to work we bought 25 Brand new Dell Dimension PC for a computer Lab. After we Distributed the Image around the Machines, we found that one of the machines had a bad Video card. I spend a Whole day to get Dell to send me a card to replace the bad one.
Here is what I found out. There are Two Dell Tech Support Centers. one for Home and Small Business Support and one for Gov, Edu and large business. Here is my experience with Both of them.
Called Home Support (denoted as HS)
Me: We bought 25 machines from you but are having a problem with one machine, We installed Windows 2000 on this machine but it is giving us some wierd lines in the bios screen and the computer is freezing at bootup
HS: Ok
Me: I have narrowed it down to the video Card. I have spapped the video card from the machine which has the problem with one from a good working machine. the problem machine is now working but the one I swapped it with is doing the same thing as the problem machine. So I need a new video Card for this machine
HS: Ok I need you to check to see if the monitor is plugged in.
Me: Huh. It is plugged in.
HS: is the light on in front of the monitor
Me: Yes
HS: Ok. I want you to go into windows and...
Me: I cant get into windows, the system crashes before then
HS: OK. I want you to restart the machine and press F8
Me:(I know he thinks it's win98 at this point but I follow him anyway) Ok
HS: I want you to select Safe Mode Command Prompt Only
Me: the system froze up at the windows 2000 screen.
HS: it shouldn't have dont that, it should have gone to the command prompt
Me: Windows 2000 doesn't have dos like win98 used to.
HS: Can you give me the Serial No of the monitor
Me: it's and the monitor is working fine on another system.
HS: well. from what you are telling me. it looks like you have a video problem. your going to have to ship the machine back to us for repair
Me: wait a second. we have had four brands of machines here and when a component goes bad we never had to send it in
HS: Well Think of it as a Car. the Car Dealership doesn't send you a new engine. they want you to bring the car in so they can fix the engine.
Me: yes, but you don't understand, we ARE the car dealer! Look. just give me the government and education no.
HS:
Me: ok bye
GS:thank you for calling Dell.
Called Gov and Edu Support (denoted as GS)
Me: We bought 25 machines from you but are having a problem with one machine, We installed Windows 2000 on this machine but it is giving us some wierd lines in the bios screen and the computer is freezing at bootup
GS: Ok
Me: I have narrowed it down to the video Card. I have spapped the video card from the machine which has the problem with one from a good working machine. the problem machine is now working but the one I swapped it with is doing the same thing as the problem machine. So I need a new video Card for this machine
GS: will send you a card right away. do you need a tech to install it for you
Me: Nope
GS: thank you for calling Dell.
This is a Hard Drive Crash Leaderboard that we had where I Used to work. It's probably changed since I left in July but the Idea is still there.
Hard Drive Crash Leaderboard: July 2001
WD: 12
Seagate: 10
Quantum: 06
JTS: 03 -Out of Business
Samsung: 01
IBM: 01
Fujitsu: 00
Conner: 00 -Out of Business
IBM: 00
Maxtor: 00
We used to use it to decide which drives we should by for the systems we built. We decided to use Maxtor Drives because they were a good performer and reliable for the price. Never had a major problem with them. Before we were using WD and that was a disaster as you can see.
I really want to know why Not Breaking Up Microsoft is a bad thing.
Obviously the DOJ Finally realized that the worse thing they could do is break up Microsoft.
For example, they were talking about breaking up MS into a Windows division and an Office Division. If they would have done that, then all they would have done is break up the one big monopoly and split it up into 2 Big monopolies which would put them in the same boat two to three years from now fighting two Microsoft's over monopolistic practices.
Keep in mind that the DOJ is still on the MS case, they have only ruled out the Breakup because they realized that it was just not the logical way to deal with the Windows Monopoly.
The Best remedy that they could choose to breakup the Windows monopoly is to force them to open source everything in current and future Versions of Windows and allow it to be freely downloadable. This takes the Windows Monopoly out of Microsoft's Hands because anyone now can make changes to the Windows Kernel and software and sell their version as a Windows Distrubution (Much like Linux is done now)
Once you take the Windows Monopoly out of Microsoft's Hands and allow other companies to make Windows Distributions, you will get a more competitive marketplace for Operating Systems, more Choices, Less Bullying, Higher quality software overall, and a much higher quality operating system than you could ever get with just MS supplying the OS code.
From what the article says, MS is blatently adding this stuff in order the supposidely "Kill" outside software vendors, but thats not why MS is bundling it with the OS
MS is bundling these things in their software because the Computer Industry has evolved to the point where a majority of the Programs (Excluding the IM Of course) is needed to make the majority of hardware work out of the box
For example, when win98 was released, very few people had CD burners to justify adding support for CD burners out of the box. By the time Cd burners got popular to the point that they are bundled frequently with OEM machines, it was too late to incorporate that functionality in Win2k and WinME without delaying the product further. In the case of XP however, they had enough time to incorporate it into the OS.
The same thing lies true with the DVD player. (Which was in win2k and beyond, it just didn't have a software decoder) Theres enough DVD-ROM's out there to justify putting the player in WinXP.
As for the Firewall. It's in there because of Customer demand for more security in windows and the fact that many people today have always on connections to the internet now. Honestly, does anyone here think that Symantec is going to go out of business because of this thing? I dont remember them Screaming Foul when Scandisk was included in Dos 6 and scandisk didn't slow down sales of Norton Utilities. And I doubt that this firewall is going to stop sales of Norton Internet security simply because NIS has more features and Has a Virus scanner, and last I checked, there isn't a (Crucial) virus scanner in XP.
As for the IM, it has no purpose other than the fact that pepole like instant messangers. but just because it's bundled doesn't mean that people will not download AIM. For example. People who use AOL have AIM "Bundled" with Their Internet package. Since millions of people use AOL, and they wont touch MSN IM simply becasue they already have an account with AIM because Of AOL, most likely their Friends who want to talk to them that do not have AOL will get AIM too simply because they want to talk to the friend who is on AOL.
As for Browser Intregreation. If I could put this on a 30 foot blinking sing in the middle of Times Square I would, but since i cant do that let me put it in big words so it will be noticed...
*****MICROSOFT DID NOT KILL NETSCAPE. NETSCAPE KILLED NETSCAPE*****
The Reason Netscape died is because their product was INFERIOR to Microsoft's. They started losing market share way before win98 came out. As soon as IE4 came out and AOL adopted IE as their browser, Netscape share went into the toilet. this was a good three months before win98 was released. And as for "Well Netscape was charging for the Browser but MS wasn't..." Bull then you must have forgotten that since Netscape 3, it was praticially free to everyone except a business. and their share was in the 90's for a good year after the Free IE3 was released. Even today, Linux Distros are turning down netscape in favor of Konqueror and Mozilla so thats got to be telling you something about the quality of the product.
They COULD say "We own 90% of the top 40 stations in the US, if you want your song added to the play list you'll incure 'marketing costs' of 5K per song/per station
More like DO
Our Local "Wolf" station (Clearchannel has set Nicknames that you can call your station. They Range from The Wolf, Kiss, The Beat, ETC) about three months ago went insane for about a month and basicially played Sammy Hagger's "Let Sally Ride" Non stop as a "New Rock Exclusive" (IE: "We've been paid to play it into the Ground Exclusively").
It got to the point where I was predicting when they were going to play it based on what "The Wolf" Promo they would play. Usually it was the Promo where Homer Simpson (another Thing that for some reason Clearchannel worships: Any "The Simpsons" soundbyte) would say "Yah there always tryin to screw ya!" Which I also thought was pretty ironic in a sense. I drove some of my friends insane doing this, simply because they A) Hated the song and B) Were annoyed that I knew it was on before They did and would shut the radio off before it played.
So how do I know they were paid to play the song to death. Because on the next month, the song mysterously disappeared, and was never heard from again. It's been three months now, so you would think at least one person would have requested it by now, right.
Im curious. How many "Wolf" stations are playing "Aerosmith - Jaded" and "Arron Lewis - Outside" As a "New Rock Exclusive" Or basicially Playing it into the ground. Just about every non hip-hop or talk radio Clearchannel station I've listened to have buried Aerosmith into the ground. and I've noticed that the've started working on Arron Lewis as of late.
...Does anyone Truly Beleive that the XBox could NOT do this graphic in True 3D Realtime.
Whether you like Microsoft or not you got to realize that the Xbox does have a lot of power behind it. and it could most likely render this scene in real time with ease. Especially since I have seen the Dreamcast do effects that are somewhat Similar to what they are trying to do here.
And this is nothing new. I remember when the N64 first debuted as Project Reality they had all the graphics for the Ultra 64 running on $10000 SGI Onyx machines.
Every time I hear how banner ads are failing drives me completely insane. Let me make it really clear...
BANNER AD'S ARE NOT FAILING! IT'S THE AD PLACEMENT THAT IS NOT WORKING!!!
Lets put it in a more Proven ground for an example of why banner ad's fail. Your 5 year old brother (or son) Is watching Nick Jr.'s Blues Clues. When the commercials come on. You see the Beer WaZZup Guys. A strong Investment Profolio. and Bob dole Selling Viagra instead of commercials with products that the kid could buy and get the five year old to go insane and drive his parents nutz over a toy or food or something. This is how it currently is on the internet. How many sites have you seen today with the stupid $20 punching monkey on it. I can count everything from a hardware review site, a software company and a site selling kids toys.
A perfect example of how it should be done is slashdot itself. Notice that all of the ad's have something that would most likely interest the users of slashdot, not to mention that there's a variety of them and they are updated rather frequently. Most likely the banners on this site have been more successful than most sites on the net simply because they target their audience more directly than most other sites I've seen.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting that Aopen is showing off another Tube Audio Board. This one with a three tube design for even more powerful sound.
I wonder if this trend is going to continue on more of aopen's boards. There must be a demand for the original tube board if they play on making a more powerful 3 tube version in the future.
Must Be Anti Microsoft Day here at slashdot. 4 articles in one day.
As for the article, So what else is new. it's not like microsoft never said Linux was competition. if Linux Competition makes Windows better and vice versa, isn't that a good thing?
"The focus of his new company is to "simplify programming by representing programs in ways other than in the text syntax of conventional programming languages,"
So it's Like Visual Basic?
This is almost Laughable that this made Slashdot. It's Even more Laughable that people are defending this piece of Trash Review.
First of all, Using OEM Restore Disks NOT = OEM Win2k CD. The only ones that are somewhat good are the Gateway, Compaq and eMachines disks.
Second, There are not 8 reboots in Win2k install. Theres one after Text install, after Graphical Install, after a Service pack, After IE6, and After all the patches, Making it 5.
Third, If it takes 2 Hours to install win2k on a modern day machine, then that is the worst, most overbloated restore CD I have Ever Heard of. I can install Win2k completely from blank drive to fully patched in under 1 hour. It could Probably take me 2 hours if I wore a Blindfold. Hell it only takes me three hours to install Win2k, fully patched, install MS office and all of my files, settings, Drivers and programs I use.
Forth, What CD Swap, there is only 1 CD in the entire OS installiation. You put it in the Drive, turn the PC on, and get the little bobbing bird and set it so it presses the Enter key.
Let me say one thing however. I recently Installed Red Hat 7.2. They have definetly came a long way since 5.0, which was a total pain in the ass. 7.2 is definetly a step in the right direction when it comes to Linux installs. I dont think it's as easy as a windows install, but it's very close.
Although this is a good P4 machine, I'm an AMD fan, so this machine really doesn't interest me too much.
The one I'm waiting for is the Nforce2 Shuttle that will be released soon. It's for AMD, it's Onboard Video and Audio is very good so you wont need to replace it as soon unlike other onboard components, where it's almost necessary, and it's upgradeable just like the SS51 is.
The Nforce2 Shuttle wil be a good LAN gaming machine out of the box, whereas the SS51 needs a Video and Possibly an audio card right off the bat
I would have to agree that most virus stories were overblown at best, but at least it gives Joe Consumer the Head's up when it comes to viruses. Unfortunatly no one seems to listen to them.
For Example, I work at a university, and we have been recently blocking LAN ports form students that we find to be transmitting a virus. I have already had a loveletter and a klez come in today, and have had 22 nimda viruses come in over the past month. Im sure that theres more out on our network but we dont find out until their machine attempts to infect the server.
Most of the machines have had either Norton on it but not updated to the latest defs, Mcafee activeshield, which is basicially useless, or Mcafee Virusscan that was either not updated becasue no one wants to fill out the 1 page form for it, or is version 4.0 or earlier, which has no def updates.
Lately we've been pointing people to http://www.grisoft.com to get AVG for free from their site, and it helps, but im still getting machines in at a steady pace.
Frankly, I dont think anybody cares if they get a virus until it forces them to format and reinstall, then it gets their attention.
Why mess With Perfection?
if you want to see what research Microsoft is up to, go to http://research.microsoft.com/
They are working on some intresting stuff.
This Box set is something I'll most likely be adding to my growing collection of crack gunslingers, bounty hunters and bandit killers
Of course, having monsters destroying a major city is cool, but nothing makes it more worthwile when Tokyo is being destroyed by a Zebra Beach Ball of Death or the Acidic Daddy longlegs of doom or my personal favorite, the Diamond of Destruction.
That's how most of our laws are, right now. Ex post facto -- you break them, you do the punishment. The RIAA/MPAA wants to undermine this situation, and prevent people from breaking the law. We already tried this once.
It was called prohibition.
I can already see it now
Bill Gates being a Notiorious mob boss running a speakeasy in the middle of Washington state with Cops trying in vain to stop his illegal activities.
Wait a minute...
Being the NVidiot that I am, I bought the Visiontek Xtasy Everything Nvidia Personal Cinema instead of the AIW, Primarialy because of the Never ending Driver Issues ATI seems to have.
So far I haven't had any hardware problems with it. It has great video and sound, and since it's an external box, upgrading to a newer card shouldn't be a problem as long as the new card has vivo.
The Only problem that I have with it is the WinDVR software can't be upgraded without messing up the remote control buttons, but the version that came with the card works fine with no problems.
another thing is that it's a GeForce2 MX400, but that still fast enough for most games out there, and it's faster than an 7500.
My current primary machine when I first built it, had an IBM 34GXP drive in it on a Abit KT7A motherboard.
I had the machine for 2 days and the hard drive corrupted. RAN DFT, which found no errors and low leveled the drive. the second install it happened again, two of the three techs where i worked swore up and down it was the Drive going bad and that I should put a different drive in it, to which I would reply there's no way cause it's IBM and it's not clicking or producing any DFT errors. later On I found out that the VIA 686B had problems corrupting drives. after 7 Bios flashes, 6 or so 4in1 drivers, and windows XP, the system finally got stable.
Currently, I have a 20GB 60GXP in it. (the 34GXP is being used in my secondary) i've had it since they released the series and i've yet to hear anything from the drive that would suggest it failing. I also test it monthly using DFT to see if it's generating bad sectors and it hasn't yet. It currently is not breaking the 333 per month limit yet however. it's probably used at least 6-8 hours a day.
I have seen 2 IBM SCSI drives go bad, and a 75GXP, but that about it for them.
WD were basicially Crash test dummies. I lost count sometime after 25. they would always spin out, click, or whine. We even had them coming in dead in new boxes.
Seagates, although I never seen a 'Dead in the box' one, would tend to fail over time. They tended to fail a little less than WD. I had at least 15 of these fail. Their SCSI end, however, was the exact opposite. their SCSI drives are some of the most reliable drives in the industry.
JTS just sucked. if a machine was crashing and it had a JTS, 99% of the time it was the drive. thats why they went out of business.
Samsung, fujitsu and conner, I never seen a dead one of these. they are a little less common though and conner got bought out by WD.
Maxtors are probably the most reliable to get right now for ATA. I had a maxtor for three years and had no problems with it. I have yet to see one die. We started using them for the machines we built and they were just reliable. They weren't the fastest drive out there however. The clocest thing I have seen to a Maxtor death was one drive that would SMART error. I ran powermax on it, which said it failed, So I low leveled and recertified the drive. after I did that there were no errors. it's been working for 2 months now with no problems whatsoever. right now Maxtor seems to be the reliability leader.
If I remember correctly, the NForce does Dual channel DDR right now for the Athlon platform, and is being planned to be released to the Intel platform soon.
Of course the E7500 is in a different league than the Nforce, but the Dual Channel Idea is pretty much the same.
unfortunatly the Voyage 200 has the same stereo jack plug that the previous Ti calculators had. it only now comes with the usb version of the link instead of having to go out and buy the serial link.
http://www.humanclock.com/webserver.php
It's a webserver on a Tandy 100 Portable computer
The Best remedy that they could choose to breakup the Windows monopoly is to force them to open source everything (That includes IE, WMP and anything else bundled into the Windows OS) in previous, current and future Versions of Windows and allow it to be freely downloadable. This takes the Windows Monopoly out of Microsoft's Hands because anyone now can make changes to the Windows Kernel and software and sell their version as a Windows Distrubution (Much like Linux is distrubuted now)
Once you take the Windows Monopoly out of Microsoft's Hands and allow other companies to make Windows Distributions, you will get a more competitive marketplace for Operating Systems, more Choices, Less Bullying, Higher quality software overall, and a much higher quality operating system than you could ever get with just MS supplying the OS code.
Where I used to work we bought 25 Brand new Dell Dimension PC for a computer Lab. After we Distributed the Image around the Machines, we found that one of the machines had a bad Video card. I spend a Whole day to get Dell to send me a card to replace the bad one.
Here is what I found out. There are Two Dell Tech Support Centers. one for Home and Small Business Support and one for Gov, Edu and large business. Here is my experience with Both of them.
Called Home Support (denoted as HS)
Me: We bought 25 machines from you but are having a problem with one machine, We installed Windows 2000 on this machine but it is giving us some wierd lines in the bios screen and the computer is freezing at bootup
HS: Ok
Me: I have narrowed it down to the video Card. I have spapped the video card from the machine which has the problem with one from a good working machine. the problem machine is now working but the one I swapped it with is doing the same thing as the problem machine. So I need a new video Card for this machine
HS: Ok I need you to check to see if the monitor is plugged in.
Me: Huh. It is plugged in.
HS: is the light on in front of the monitor
Me: Yes
HS: Ok. I want you to go into windows and...
Me: I cant get into windows, the system crashes before then
HS: OK. I want you to restart the machine and press F8
Me:(I know he thinks it's win98 at this point but I follow him anyway) Ok
HS: I want you to select Safe Mode Command Prompt Only
Me: the system froze up at the windows 2000 screen.
HS: it shouldn't have dont that, it should have gone to the command prompt
Me: Windows 2000 doesn't have dos like win98 used to.
HS: Can you give me the Serial No of the monitor
Me: it's and the monitor is working fine on another system.
HS: well. from what you are telling me. it looks like you have a video problem. your going to have to ship the machine back to us for repair
Me: wait a second. we have had four brands of machines here and when a component goes bad we never had to send it in
HS: Well Think of it as a Car. the Car Dealership doesn't send you a new engine. they want you to bring the car in so they can fix the engine.
Me: yes, but you don't understand, we ARE the car dealer! Look. just give me the government and education no.
HS:
Me: ok bye
GS:thank you for calling Dell.
Called Gov and Edu Support (denoted as GS)
Me: We bought 25 machines from you but are having a problem with one machine, We installed Windows 2000 on this machine but it is giving us some wierd lines in the bios screen and the computer is freezing at bootup
GS: Ok
Me: I have narrowed it down to the video Card. I have spapped the video card from the machine which has the problem with one from a good working machine. the problem machine is now working but the one I swapped it with is doing the same thing as the problem machine. So I need a new video Card for this machine
GS: will send you a card right away. do you need a tech to install it for you
Me: Nope
GS: thank you for calling Dell.
This is a Hard Drive Crash Leaderboard that we had where I Used to work. It's probably changed since I left in July but the Idea is still there.
Hard Drive Crash Leaderboard: July 2001
WD: 12
Seagate: 10
Quantum: 06
JTS: 03 -Out of Business
Samsung: 01
IBM: 01
Fujitsu: 00
Conner: 00 -Out of Business
IBM: 00
Maxtor: 00
We used to use it to decide which drives we should by for the systems we built. We decided to use Maxtor Drives because they were a good performer and reliable for the price. Never had a major problem with them. Before we were using WD and that was a disaster as you can see.
MS Vs Linux.
You can use An Icon of Tux with boxing Gloves punching a Windows Logo.
I really want to know why Not Breaking Up Microsoft is a bad thing.
Obviously the DOJ Finally realized that the worse thing they could do is break up Microsoft.
For example, they were talking about breaking up MS into a Windows division and an Office Division. If they would have done that, then all they would have done is break up the one big monopoly and split it up into 2 Big monopolies which would put them in the same boat two to three years from now fighting two Microsoft's over monopolistic practices.
Keep in mind that the DOJ is still on the MS case, they have only ruled out the Breakup because they realized that it was just not the logical way to deal with the Windows Monopoly.
The Best remedy that they could choose to breakup the Windows monopoly is to force them to open source everything in current and future Versions of Windows and allow it to be freely downloadable. This takes the Windows Monopoly out of Microsoft's Hands because anyone now can make changes to the Windows Kernel and software and sell their version as a Windows Distrubution (Much like Linux is done now)
Once you take the Windows Monopoly out of Microsoft's Hands and allow other companies to make Windows Distributions, you will get a more competitive marketplace for Operating Systems, more Choices, Less Bullying, Higher quality software overall, and a much higher quality operating system than you could ever get with just MS supplying the OS code.
...I'll Be able to buy a PS2 :)
Still cant find one anywhere although I can find the games all over the place
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From what the article says, MS is blatently adding this stuff in order the supposidely "Kill" outside software vendors, but thats not why MS is bundling it with the OS
MS is bundling these things in their software because the Computer Industry has evolved to the point where a majority of the Programs (Excluding the IM Of course) is needed to make the majority of hardware work out of the box
For example, when win98 was released, very few people had CD burners to justify adding support for CD burners out of the box. By the time Cd burners got popular to the point that they are bundled frequently with OEM machines, it was too late to incorporate that functionality in Win2k and WinME without delaying the product further. In the case of XP however, they had enough time to incorporate it into the OS.
The same thing lies true with the DVD player. (Which was in win2k and beyond, it just didn't have a software decoder) Theres enough DVD-ROM's out there to justify putting the player in WinXP.
As for the Firewall. It's in there because of Customer demand for more security in windows and the fact that many people today have always on connections to the internet now. Honestly, does anyone here think that Symantec is going to go out of business because of this thing? I dont remember them Screaming Foul when Scandisk was included in Dos 6 and scandisk didn't slow down sales of Norton Utilities. And I doubt that this firewall is going to stop sales of Norton Internet security simply because NIS has more features and Has a Virus scanner, and last I checked, there isn't a (Crucial) virus scanner in XP.
As for the IM, it has no purpose other than the fact that pepole like instant messangers. but just because it's bundled doesn't mean that people will not download AIM. For example. People who use AOL have AIM "Bundled" with Their Internet package. Since millions of people use AOL, and they wont touch MSN IM simply becasue they already have an account with AIM because Of AOL, most likely their Friends who want to talk to them that do not have AOL will get AIM too simply because they want to talk to the friend who is on AOL.
As for Browser Intregreation. If I could put this on a 30 foot blinking sing in the middle of Times Square I would, but since i cant do that let me put it in big words so it will be noticed...
*****MICROSOFT DID NOT KILL NETSCAPE. NETSCAPE KILLED NETSCAPE*****
The Reason Netscape died is because their product was INFERIOR to Microsoft's. They started losing market share way before win98 came out. As soon as IE4 came out and AOL adopted IE as their browser, Netscape share went into the toilet. this was a good three months before win98 was released. And as for "Well Netscape was charging for the Browser but MS wasn't..." Bull then you must have forgotten that since Netscape 3, it was praticially free to everyone except a business. and their share was in the 90's for a good year after the Free IE3 was released. Even today, Linux Distros are turning down netscape in favor of Konqueror and Mozilla so thats got to be telling you something about the quality of the product.
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They COULD say "We own 90% of the top 40 stations in the US, if you want your song added to the play list you'll incure 'marketing costs' of 5K per song/per station
More like DO
Our Local "Wolf" station (Clearchannel has set Nicknames that you can call your station. They Range from The Wolf, Kiss, The Beat, ETC) about three months ago went insane for about a month and basicially played Sammy Hagger's "Let Sally Ride" Non stop as a "New Rock Exclusive" (IE: "We've been paid to play it into the Ground Exclusively").
It got to the point where I was predicting when they were going to play it based on what "The Wolf" Promo they would play. Usually it was the Promo where Homer Simpson (another Thing that for some reason Clearchannel worships: Any "The Simpsons" soundbyte) would say "Yah there always tryin to screw ya!" Which I also thought was pretty ironic in a sense. I drove some of my friends insane doing this, simply because they A) Hated the song and B) Were annoyed that I knew it was on before They did and would shut the radio off before it played.
So how do I know they were paid to play the song to death. Because on the next month, the song mysterously disappeared, and was never heard from again. It's been three months now, so you would think at least one person would have requested it by now, right.
Im curious. How many "Wolf" stations are playing "Aerosmith - Jaded" and "Arron Lewis - Outside" As a "New Rock Exclusive" Or basicially Playing it into the ground. Just about every non hip-hop or talk radio Clearchannel station I've listened to have buried Aerosmith into the ground. and I've noticed that the've started working on Arron Lewis as of late.
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...Does anyone Truly Beleive that the XBox could NOT do this graphic in True 3D Realtime.
Whether you like Microsoft or not you got to realize that the Xbox does have a lot of power behind it. and it could most likely render this scene in real time with ease. Especially since I have seen the Dreamcast do effects that are somewhat Similar to what they are trying to do here.
And this is nothing new. I remember when the N64 first debuted as Project Reality they had all the graphics for the Ultra 64 running on $10000 SGI Onyx machines.
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Every time I hear how banner ads are failing drives me completely insane. Let me make it really clear...
BANNER AD'S ARE NOT FAILING! IT'S THE AD PLACEMENT THAT IS NOT WORKING!!!
Lets put it in a more Proven ground for an example of why banner ad's fail. Your 5 year old brother (or son) Is watching Nick Jr.'s Blues Clues. When the commercials come on. You see the Beer WaZZup Guys. A strong Investment Profolio. and Bob dole Selling Viagra instead of commercials with products that the kid could buy and get the five year old to go insane and drive his parents nutz over a toy or food or something. This is how it currently is on the internet. How many sites have you seen today with the stupid $20 punching monkey on it. I can count everything from a hardware review site, a software company and a site selling kids toys.
A perfect example of how it should be done is slashdot itself. Notice that all of the ad's have something that would most likely interest the users of slashdot, not to mention that there's a variety of them and they are updated rather frequently. Most likely the banners on this site have been more successful than most sites on the net simply because they target their audience more directly than most other sites I've seen.
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