A real Ferrari Laptop would have Carbon fiber pannels, a true performance CPU (battery life is for pussies!) a 19" display and a connely leather keyboard. Nobody would care that it cost $30,00 and has a 30 minute battery life..
I've had Dish Network for 4 years now.. In that time I can't remember a single outage.
Prevous to that I had AT&T cable.. If I went a month without a 1-2 hour loss of cable I was lucky.
What drove us over the edge to get Dish was a 1 week outage because they accidently dug up their own lines.
As for Weather, planes and whatever blocking the signal.. I live in Tacoma, Wa in the landing path for Sea-Tac airport. If anyone should have weather/plane signal related problems its me!! Still it works day after day without issue. Hell I've had birds sitting on the dish and didn't have any problems.
Worried about the equipment breaking?? $3 a month will get you a full warrenty for as long as you keep paying or go with the Dish Home plan and it's all covered.
All it does is disable the Auto video level function thats built into all VCR's made past the mid 80's.
Any pro level deck will allow you to control your video levels.
Macrovision works by adding a bar to the overscan (outside the "Safe area") of the video that pulses from black to bright white.
A consumer level VCR tries to use this bar as a refrence for it's video level. Thats why your VCR fades in and out when trying to record a signal with macrovision signal. DVD macrovision works the same way.. Some retailers sell boxes that allow you to watch DVD through your VCR by superimposing a solid unchanging white bar over the macrovision signal.
We tested a few here at work and picked the Matrox G550 Dual DVI It's a low profile AGP card that comes with both low profile and standard brackets so it'll mount in just about any case. It's $148 from CDW but only comed with a Dual VGA cable.. The Dual DVI is an extra $54. Our low buck DVI monitor pick is the NEC LCD 15460m It's a 15" LCD with a nice picture, decent speakers, DVI & VGA inputs and a USB 2.0 4 port hub in the base. CDW wants $370 but you can get em from Dell for $350. Get the 1560X if you don't need the USB hub.
For you Winders users snag Ultramon" to gain extra control over your new dual monitor setup.
I've been using Multi monitors at work for years. I can't go back!! When I got my Dell C840 laptop I noticed the Gforce card was showing 2 monitor support so I quickly moved the monitor off the docking station, junked the stand and opened up the laptop screen. Wow 2 monitors!
Throw on Ultramon or Multi-mon for complete control over the desktop (for the winders crowd)
Prople kept stoping as they walked by my pit( err cube) and saying how cool it was. We got the manager over helpdesk interested enough to spring for a Matrox G550 Dual DVI card to test out for the Help desk operators. They like it so much the desks for the new help desk office space are being designed for 2 monitors.
We tried 2 cards out.. We had an ATI Radion card but under Win2k it only works as 1 big desktop space over 2 monitors.. They Hydramon software they use to make it feel like 2 desktops really blows.. The G550 with Ultramon proved to be the way to go.
After the Big screwing Microsoft tried to hand NW schools I'm not supprised there is a bigger push for open source software in NW school districts.
You have a limited shoe string budget to keep the school running.. To the left we have MS asking for a cool half mill a year to license ALL your PC's regardless of OS they really run. On the right we have OSS software.. You make the call.
Contractors get about the same rap at Intel.. The only thing different is we have a green badge instead of orange..
When the president came to talk.. We didn't get invited.
Team building.. Hey where did all the blues go??
You had to be blue to use the on-site exersize room. Naturaly they held the blood drive in there so only blue badges could donate blood. I guess our blood just wasn't blue enough for them eh?
Contractors had to swipe in every time they left the building.. Blue could come and go without stopping.
Even with all that it was a great place to work.. It still made you feel like a 2nd class worker though.
Internal PC repairs over the phone
on
Family Tech Support
·
· Score: 3, Funny
We had just upgraded our home PC so my wife thought it would be a good idea to ship the old one off to her dad.. No problem..
We set it all up for him in advance and shipped out a monitor, PC, keyboard, ect via UPS..
Shortly after it arrived we got the call ( as expected). He has it all setup but nothing happens when he turns it on..
We go over the power cords but everything sounds ok..
My worst fear was the CPU fell out of the slot.. I figure since this guy is a master carpenter he can handle a screwdriver. I told him I thought the CPU might be loose and he'll need to open the case to check.. Just look around for the big silver heat sink with 2 fans on it when you get it open. No problem.. He'll get a screwdriver and call me back when he has the cover off..
10 minutes later he's back on the phone.. It's open but he can't find a silver heatsink with a fan on it anywhere.. hmmm
Me:What do you see?
Him: Well there's a bunch of wires, boards and a big tube.
Me:A tube???
Him: Yeah a tube.
Me: Did you open the monitor?
Him: Thats the PC isn't it?
Me: Umm no.. Don't touch anything in there.. Just put it back together. We need to open the big square box up that all the cables hook up to.
Him: ohh the power supply..
Me: Umm yeah sure thats it.
Him: ok I'll call you right back (click)
After he got "that other box" open he found the CPU and got it back in it's little slot.. After that everything was great.. till he bought a printer later that week at wall-mart..
It's possible to make a lifetime carrier in the IT world. The trick is to keep on top of your game and don't let the world pass you by.
My father started his IT carrier in 1968 and he's still at it today as a Senior Unix Administrator. He'll be retiring here in a few years. I fully intend to do the same.. only 40 more years to go.
The Computers may get better and more reliable but end users will always need our help to run them.
Don't get me started on their Transfer practices..
You gota love Verisignas idea of a domain transfer approval request..
It's a 2 page email thats 90% Please stay, here's a great deal!!.. nowhere in the subjet or the first 3/4 of the message does it mention anything about a request for approval.. only at the bottom in the fine print do you find the link to approve the transfer..
OpenSRS (Tucows) went out of their way to help me get away from Verisign and explain thier deceptive practices when it comes to domain transfers.
At 180 mph this thing is using 440KWh.. with it's 55KWh battery at full charge it can sustain max output for about 7 minutes.. You would be lucky to make it 20 miles running at peak power.
I forgot to factor in a few things like the cost of charging stations, time to charge and so on.. Don't think for a minute a high efficency 440v charger that can charge a 55KWh array of batteries in a hour is going to be cheep..
There's the other problem.. If I run my batteries low I get to twiddle my thumbs for an hour while it charges.
I'm sure some sharp people will be willing to invest in special parking lots for electric cars.. Pay a premium for haveing the chargers avaliable.. I'm sure they will be more than willing to tack on an extra 20-30% to the cost of charging you car.. It is a bussness after all.. They won't sell it to you at cost.
According to the Vehicle Data the Batteries hold a 55KWh charge.. The vehicle can maintain 100kph (62mph) for 300km (187miles) before needing a re-charge..
The Average Cost of a KWh in the us is $0.0693 so it'll cost $3.81 US pr charge. A high efficency charger may hit 96% so we'll tack on an extra 4% bringing us to $3.96 US.
The Average cost of Gas in the US is Currently $1.44 a gal.. so our $3.96 can buy 2.715 gallons of Gas.. or a rough equivlant of 68mpg for the electric car.. Not bad considering it'll haul 8 people
So say you drive this thing 12,000 miles a year at peak efficency. Each one will consume 3.5 megawats of power annually.
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First thing that poped in my head was a line from Time Bandits
"Mom! Dad! Don't touch it! It's EVIL!"
What's the deal with Terry Gilliam and clear plastic costumes anyway?
Funny, Redhat, IBM and others make lots of money making free cake.
The money comes from adding icing, decorations, delivery, setup and serving up that free cake..
Ohh ohhh The new Trabbent laptop is out..
Yeah it's a 386 with 640k and leaches toxins on the desk but it's soooo cheep!
This thing looks like a gussied up Fiero to me..
A real Ferrari Laptop would have Carbon fiber pannels, a true performance CPU (battery life is for pussies!) a 19" display and a connely leather keyboard. Nobody would care that it cost $30,00 and has a 30 minute battery life..
I've had Dish Network for 4 years now..
In that time I can't remember a single outage.
Prevous to that I had AT&T cable..
If I went a month without a 1-2 hour loss of cable I was lucky.
What drove us over the edge to get Dish was a 1 week outage because they accidently dug up their own lines.
As for Weather, planes and whatever blocking the signal.. I live in Tacoma, Wa in the landing path for Sea-Tac airport. If anyone should have weather/plane signal related problems its me!!
Still it works day after day without issue.
Hell I've had birds sitting on the dish and didn't have any problems.
Worried about the equipment breaking?? $3 a month will get you a full warrenty for as long as you keep paying or go with the Dish Home plan and it's all covered.
Yeah the magic switch is so basic it's silly..
All it does is disable the Auto video level function thats built into all VCR's made past the mid 80's.
Any pro level deck will allow you to control your video levels.
Macrovision works by adding a bar to the overscan (outside the "Safe area") of the video that pulses from black to bright white.
A consumer level VCR tries to use this bar as a refrence for it's video level. Thats why your VCR fades in and out when trying to record a signal with macrovision signal. DVD macrovision works the same way.. Some retailers sell boxes that allow you to watch DVD through your VCR by superimposing a solid unchanging white bar over the macrovision signal.
Find out more about Overscan
This is also true for Windows 2000 boxes that were upgraded from Win95 or 98.
In that case all existing user accounts on the 9x box are by default in the Administrators group when upgraded to Win2k.
Read the Q Article
Q182734
Yes I am an M.C.S.E., Would you like fries with that?
You are right and wrong..
on XP (pro and home) any accounts created during setup are part of the administrators group and have NO PASSWORD
Read the Q article
Q293834
You are right and wrong..
on XP (pro and home) any accounts created during setup are part of the administrators group and have NO PASSWORD
Read the Q article
Q293834
We tested a few here at work and picked the Matrox G550 Dual DVI
It's a low profile AGP card that comes with both low profile and standard brackets so it'll mount in just about any case.
It's $148 from CDW but only comed with a Dual VGA cable.. The Dual DVI is an extra $54.
Our low buck DVI monitor pick is the NEC LCD 15460m It's a 15" LCD with a nice picture, decent speakers, DVI & VGA inputs and a USB 2.0 4 port hub in the base.
CDW wants $370 but you can get em from Dell for $350. Get the 1560X if you don't need the USB hub.
For you Winders users snag Ultramon" to gain extra control over your new dual monitor setup.
I've been using Multi monitors at work for years. I can't go back!!
When I got my Dell C840 laptop I noticed the Gforce card was showing 2 monitor support so I quickly moved the monitor off the docking station, junked the stand and opened up the laptop screen. Wow 2 monitors!
Throw on Ultramon or Multi-mon for complete control over the desktop (for the winders crowd)
Or your favorite Linux setup
Prople kept stoping as they walked by my pit( err cube) and saying how cool it was. We got the manager over helpdesk interested enough to spring for a Matrox G550 Dual DVI card to test out for the Help desk operators.
They like it so much the desks for the new help desk office space are being designed for 2 monitors.
We tried 2 cards out.. We had an ATI Radion card but under Win2k it only works as 1 big desktop space over 2 monitors.. They Hydramon software they use to make it feel like 2 desktops really blows.. The G550 with Ultramon proved to be the way to go.
Ha.. If I asked 1000 people what a Kilothing was
5% (if I'm lucky) would ask say 1024..
15% will say 1000
60% will look confused and walk away.
20% will say they don't need that much but say "dude can I score a dime bag??"
OK explain your math then..
IPv4 is a 32 system..
every added bit doubles the number of addresses.
so where 32 bit addressing has 4294967295 addresses
A 33 bit system would have 8589934591 address.
IPV6 is a 128 bit system..
Do the math!
After the Big screwing Microsoft tried to hand NW schools I'm not supprised there is a bigger push for open source software in NW school districts.
You have a limited shoe string budget to keep the school running.. To the left we have MS asking for a cool half mill a year to license ALL your PC's regardless of OS they really run. On the right we have OSS software.. You make the call.
Free Lunch.. I'll put up with him talkin about his horse Pentium for free food.
Contractors get about the same rap at Intel..
The only thing different is we have a green badge instead of orange..
When the president came to talk.. We didn't get invited.
Team building.. Hey where did all the blues go??
You had to be blue to use the on-site exersize room. Naturaly they held the blood drive in there so only blue badges could donate blood. I guess our blood just wasn't blue enough for them eh?
Contractors had to swipe in every time they left the building.. Blue could come and go without stopping.
Even with all that it was a great place to work.. It still made you feel like a 2nd class worker though.
We had just upgraded our home PC so my wife thought it would be a good idea to ship the old one off to her dad.. No problem..
We set it all up for him in advance and shipped out a monitor, PC, keyboard, ect via UPS..
Shortly after it arrived we got the call ( as expected). He has it all setup but nothing happens when he turns it on..
We go over the power cords but everything sounds ok..
My worst fear was the CPU fell out of the slot.. I figure since this guy is a master carpenter he can handle a screwdriver.
I told him I thought the CPU might be loose and he'll need to open the case to check..
Just look around for the big silver heat sink with 2 fans on it when you get it open.
No problem.. He'll get a screwdriver and call me back when he has the cover off..
10 minutes later he's back on the phone.. It's open but he can't find a silver heatsink with a fan on it anywhere.. hmmm
Me:What do you see?
Him: Well there's a bunch of wires, boards and a big tube.
Me:A tube???
Him: Yeah a tube.
Me: Did you open the monitor?
Him: Thats the PC isn't it?
Me: Umm no.. Don't touch anything in there.. Just put it back together. We need to open the big square box up that all the cables hook up to.
Him: ohh the power supply..
Me: Umm yeah sure thats it.
Him: ok I'll call you right back (click)
After he got "that other box" open he found the CPU and got it back in it's little slot..
After that everything was great.. till he bought a printer later that week at wall-mart..
It's possible to make a lifetime carrier in the IT world. The trick is to keep on top of your game and don't let the world pass you by.
My father started his IT carrier in 1968 and he's still at it today as a Senior Unix Administrator.
He'll be retiring here in a few years. I fully intend to do the same.. only 40 more years to go.
The Computers may get better and more reliable but end users will always need our help to run them.
Don't get me started on their Transfer practices..
You gota love Verisignas idea of a domain transfer approval request..
It's a 2 page email thats 90% Please stay, here's a great deal!!.. nowhere in the subjet or the first 3/4 of the message does it mention anything about a request for approval.. only at the bottom in the fine print do you find the link to approve the transfer..
OpenSRS (Tucows) went out of their way to help me get away from Verisign and explain thier deceptive practices when it comes to domain transfers.
Just use SCSI drives, an external box and a 1m cable.. no big deal..
Hell I think I have the parts in the garage to do it right now! hmm I just might..
Last time I checked you could load perl and php modules into your IIS server and run all that free code.
If a brain dead MCSE like me can do it so can you.
At 180 mph this thing is using 440KWh..
with it's 55KWh battery at full charge it can sustain max output for about 7 minutes..
You would be lucky to make it 20 miles running at peak power.
I had to add a few more thoughts.
I forgot to factor in a few things like the cost of charging stations, time to charge and so on..
Don't think for a minute a high efficency 440v charger that can charge a 55KWh array of batteries in a hour is going to be cheep..
There's the other problem.. If I run my batteries low I get to twiddle my thumbs for an hour while it charges.
I'm sure some sharp people will be willing to invest in special parking lots for electric cars.. Pay a premium for haveing the chargers avaliable.. I'm sure they will be more than willing to tack on an extra 20-30% to the cost of charging you car.. It is a bussness after all.. They won't sell it to you at cost.
OK then.. lets play the numbers game..
According to the Vehicle Data the Batteries hold a 55KWh charge..
The vehicle can maintain 100kph (62mph) for 300km (187miles) before needing a re-charge..
The Average Cost of a KWh in the us is $0.0693 so it'll cost $3.81 US pr charge. A high efficency charger may hit 96% so we'll tack on an extra 4% bringing us to $3.96 US.
The Average cost of Gas in the US is Currently $1.44 a gal.. so our $3.96 can buy 2.715 gallons of Gas.. or a rough equivlant of 68mpg for the electric car.. Not bad considering it'll haul 8 people
So say you drive this thing 12,000 miles a year at peak efficency. Each one will consume 3.5 megawats of power annually.
There is a group out of seattle that does R/C combat.. A few of em run subs with torpedos.
You could prob meet up with them at the Northwest Model Expo in Puyallup Wa on Feb 1st & 2nd.