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  1. Fowarding this to your boss, good idea? on Sysadmin Day. Yay. · · Score: 2

    I want to hear if someone fowarded a Sysadmin day story to his boss to bring some awareness and got a positive or negative reply/feedback in return or no answers at all? :)

  2. Re:200 GB on Western Digital Announces 200 Gig Drives · · Score: 2

    Yeah, just wait and see in 2-3 months when people will return their drives because of failure like one of their previous models that got a recall.

    200 gigs is a lot to lose, the only place I was game enough to do it is on my datacenter with an escalade 7850 since I can make a raid-5 out of them (1TB+ goodness), now if 2 drives decide to fail at the same time... I'm screwed :)

  3. NT7, NT and YEARS before crashing? paradox... on A Rock Moves In Space · · Score: 2



    NT7, 16 years before crashing?
    ha.. haha.... bwahahahahha. Good one Slashdot, you made my day :)

  4. Or another :) on WebTV/MSNTV Virus Dials 911 · · Score: 2

    Talk about efficient AI...Microsoft probably didn't look at that code after stealing it, heh... "hello 911, this is the Box reporting Microsoft frauded my owner for selling him overpriced underfeatured and buggy hardware, thank you."

  5. It's sad to count on FUD to rally the population.. on Schmidt Predicts Digital Sky Is Falling · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When all your sheeps are going in every direction, what to you do to put them all tightly together? FEAR (dog, barking and looking menacing, drives the sheep back with the gang)

    When all of the population starts to see all your little practices and schemes, criticize your every move, and notice you are not representing them but you're representing the whole mighty $ and corporatism, what could be more "welcomed" than a terrorist attack?

    ALl the "sheeps" lose focus, are scared, and WANT help, seeing this, after, the gov uses this tactic to lever just about every single agenda he can. And then they preach how free they are, when their objective is to become the second China.

    Of course I might be pessimistic and reading too much slashdot that mostly show the negative content when it comes to your rights online, but I've yet to see any form of government that is still 100% there for the VOTERS and not for the companies or mighty $. at some point the $ will fail, look at how much US is in debts, look at how much debts the average american has, look at how many bankruptcy/year, at some point, unfortunately, this system will all crash because it relies on continual expansion.

  6. Cool... or Uncool? on .NET for Apache · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft actually validating apache as a competitor big enough to not crush them (right away) by closing their .NET framework only to IIS?

    Question is, is it good to see Apache embrassing a Microsoft framework so that it remains in the race of the .NET deployment... ...or is (history repeating) a "good thing" only in the short run:

    "Hey! Apache runs .NET stuff, let's learn .NET. God! it's so simple and easy, and object-oriented to the bones, I'll stay on that for all of my applications"

    1-2 years later Microsoft closes the .NET2 to IIS-only, and since a lot of developpers moved or learned from scratch on .NET, they will migrate on IIS to continue or update their work.

    Usually, this scenario is typical of MS... so what would be different here? They have everything to gain right now to broaden their .NET framework because they NEED people to USE it and gain acceptance... once they get that, they apply.monopoly(.NET);

  7. Re:Prior Art? on JPEG Committee On The Ball, Seeks Prior Art · · Score: 3, Funny

    Pamella pre-silicone age...

    Oh wait... bad idea. that would kill the art in prior art :)

  8. Re:Nothing new here... on Hot-Rod Your CD-RW Drive · · Score: 2

    Sweet, just tested it with my Ricoh MP7040A, updated it to 7060A (4x to 6x)

    While I don't see the use of going from 32x to 40-48X (you'll get into buffer problems, cd compatibility, and all this to save 30 seconds) going from 4x to 6 or 8x to 12 is a nice speed increase, in my case I'll save quite a few minutes so this is a welcomed move :)

    Yes i've tested it before writing this, and it does work and the copied CD works just fine... while it's not a 12x CD-R, it's still faster than 4X :) for free :)

  9. Re:Windows Programming: A related question on SSH Secure Services on Windows 2K/XP? · · Score: 2

    Obviously the parent is a flamebait.

    Yes microsoft switched MSDN to DVD and even offers a substancial rebate for people to switch to DVD subscription.

    Depending on which kind of subscription you want, MSN can be in the 3 or 4 digits. The Universal subscription is huge and most of the people don't need it for simple application, as a matter of fact, having only the MSDN library on cd and a copy of visual studio is enough for most people. Unless you are writting huge-ass datacenter application or you need evey single microsoft product (server and client) readily installable, well usually you can shell out the money that will be needed to get such a package. No it's not open source, no it's not free, yes it's microsoft. While I don't really agree with some of their ways of doign things, if you don't like it, don't buy it and go find something else; if you can't, well now you know what it's going to cost you and you'll appreciate the litterature of the MSDN subscription. I find it very immature and non professional to post such biased comments, and even worse, people modding this up like mad.., when it's completely OT to the current subject and not helping in any case.

    The only negative thing I have to say about MSDN is when you get a universal subscription, they are trying to SELL you a magazine on top of that, and the Technet library isn't included, with all of the stuff they give, this is really lame :), aside from that, if you need MS documentation, grab the MSDN cd, it's not THAT expensive, and most of the stuff there is loaded with samples and it's more readable than most unix HOWTOs for the newbies.

  10. 1 screen = obsolete. on Gaming on the IMAX · · Score: 2


    We all know that true 3l33t gamers will say something like "Screw Imax, monoscreen gaming sucks, I use a parhelia and I *need* 3 displays, does IMAX offers 3 screens gameplay? no! so it's already obsolete HA!".

  11. Re:Awsome! on Symantec to Acquire SecurityFocus · · Score: 2

    >Now Symantec can screw up SecurityFocus like they've screwed up everything else that was useful until they bought it!

    Atguard is the perfect example of this...

    Tried systemworks with internet security 2002? well "DUDE you need a GHZ DELL" to run this thing, and what more does it give than the original atguard? well.. list updates, and some automated features that punches holes left and right therough the firewall, for "user's simplicity"'s sake... Everything slowed down to molasse and it's a shame.

    At least ghost is still working well and the improvements are nice, but that's the only product that I can only say good things about since it got acquired.

  12. Re:Conflict of Interest? on Symantec to Acquire SecurityFocus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd be more worried about them *NOT* releasing some security issues of those 800 pounds gorilla that promotes security through obscurity instead of writing safer code.

    Symantec is a corporation after all. If let's say, a certain company would cut them vital information required for the lowlevel of the system so that their antivirus technology work effectively (on their future OS), well I can see a very *VERY* persuasive effort that could just work.

    I am happy for the people at security focus if it pays off their hard work, but I am worried about the quality and most importantly, the neutrality of the service that will result from this acquisition.

  13. Money isn't a problem, obviously... on Weta Digital's Render Farm Upgrade · · Score: 2

    Because if it would/could have been, they would probably have gone for a dual AMD system.

    You pay a lot more per XEON CPU, you pay a bit more for RAM (and the bit more adds up pretty quickly with 200 machines with 4GB), you pay a LOT more for the motherboard. I've had do to a renderfarm with budget restrictions, I got twice as much machines for the same price if that intel-based setup (and almost twice as much power).

    Stability? not any unusual issues that I wouldn't have got also with Intel-based stuff. I bought TYAN TIGER MPs, with dual athlon XP, and the hardware is top notch. The only issue I could see is if everything is heavily optimized for SSE2 and money isn't a problem, then it would make sense to grab P4 XEONs, but that's the only case I'd see (aside from marketting or direct rebates from intel for free exposure, etc etc) that could make someone take such a decision.

    My 0.02 cents.

  14. Re:Eh? on Metropolis Reconstructed · · Score: 2

    >ould someone explain to me what the hell this article is about? It's just words, man!

    It's about a Peasant needing additional lumber.

  15. Re:OpenGL's future on A Lawyer's View on the OpenGL Patent Mess · · Score: 2

    >I'm sure there's other reasons, but I wonder if the CAD vendors and other vendors are going to
    >consider DirectX in the future, especially with so many vendors shifting more focus towrads Windows in the last couple of years. What about
    >other markets that use OpenGL extensively?

    Well not that I really like 3DS but 3D Studio Max 5's press release brags about directX acceleration... So here's one going that way...

    from the site 3ds max 5 also has the best Direct 3D workflow available (it's already DirectX 9 enabled), allowing you to easily add custom hardware Shaders that reflect the world you need to simulate in real time

  16. Still slow with faster CPU... here's why... on POV-Ray 3.5 Rendered · · Score: 2

    Back when I was on my amiga, rendering (raytracing) let's say "a typical nice image" back then would require me ~30min-1h per frame without trying to optimize the scene and all.

    Today you get 200X faster processors, yes, but at the same time, you get caustics, radiosity, Subsurface Scattering, Volumetrics and loads of plugins/shaders that are sometimes *very* Cpu intensive. These things are an evolution of the rendering pipeline that arrived because of a lot of R&D but also because more power is available to plug these new features in (rendering hair 10 years ago was a simple polygon with hair texture on it, or polygon strands that looked terrible :) ).

    So while the CPUs right now are going faster and faster, the evolution of the quality and complexity of the images also went up at the same time, thus cancelling the speed increase for mid to high-end work.

    Production houses still require a renderfarm, testing some specific scenes still requires to reduce the resolution to something very small or to sample limited region in the camera viewport.

    Of course if you don't want to do any raytracing and do simple model and lighting and make it look quake-like, you won't need a renderfarm, for a flying logo with nothing fancy, it's hell of a lot faster, but for most 3D artists, they still have a good excuse to go to the coffee machine :).

    I don't know about POVRay, I've always been a lightwave user, but if they've catched up with the new rendering algorythms for the above features I mentionned, they are going to tax the cpu as much as raytracing taxed machines in the mid 80s.

  17. New name for a P2P application on RIAA to Sue You Now · · Score: 5, Funny

    SeeUsueMe

  18. I was about to buy one on Nexland Pro800Turbo Load Balancing Router Review · · Score: 2

    Until I went to their technical support forum and saw that in some cases, the router would simply lock-up. I accept lock-ups on computer software with great difficulty, I won't tolerate it in firmware/appliances. I went for a sonicwall SOHO-3 instead, the downside is that everything is more expensive with the sonicwall, but the upside is that every add-on you get, you get your money for it (exept the content filtering which utterly sucks).

  19. Re:Corporate Imperialism on WorldCom CFO Accused of $3.6 Billion Fraud · · Score: 2

    ----
    People are running around crying about how awful capitalism is because this happened. This sort of thing is exactly what should happen. You fuck-up an lie, and your company is screwed. Good.
    ----

    Go tell that to the people who bought mutual funds with those stocks, go tell that to all the small shareholders that don't go inside the company and hire a private investigator for their 5 or 10K$ investment, go tell that to the people like your neighbour who probably lost a few months of raw salary because of those assholes.

    What are you going to say, they should deserve this as well? so are the analysts? I mean, to some extent, maybe... but in real life, when you buy mutual funds or anything that isn't DIRECT stocks in DIRECT trading, when it's offered by banks or other legitimate 3rd parties, which people trust and we all know that banks usually aren't fooling around and messing up when it comes to profit and managing, you expect them to have done their Due dilligence for you, that's why you pay an extra fee and all... So where do you go from here? a lot of people will pull out their stocks market will probably be even more unstable, and if you are very very unlucky, another lunatic will do something stupid in the name of allah and wreak havoc in the stock markets.

    This really is a sad time for economy... :(

    And the worst of it is the top execs will probably not learn anything from this.

  20. Bla bla bla No numbers! c'mon people. on New Open Video Codec From Xiph/On2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I read the discussions here, the interresting subject is the licensing, the FUD subject is how it will take over and so on.

    First, before even talking about taking over Divx, please point me to a site that has a codec study, not on the theorical, not on lame useless "tom's hardware" numbers, but on a scientific or scientific-like approach with proper setup and testing.

    Nothing like an example to clear things up:

    Codec usage, yes it can crunch more than divx for "similar" quality that is "similar" to DVD, which is "similar" to uncompressed video... heh. no, this is totally wrong, what I want to see is uncompressed video, original sequence, then compress Divx with best quality at X bitrate, do the same with that new codec, try at least 3 different kind of video that are abusing codecs differently: High contrast (black and white with sharp edges being the most evil), smooth colors (4:1:1 DV videos can show some serious color bending when you look at it closely, for example) so how is the color bending affecting each codecs?, and finally, motion, low speed, high speed, repeat with the last two example and make all the different mix, and then try different bitrates, then check the results, if they are similar, zoom in, check the pixelization, I don't want just words or lame tests with no numbers, I want a half-decent scientific approach, I wish I had time to make such a thing like I did before with mpeg/mjpg/mpeg4 V1.

    Of course we all know that you don't have to be the best to win, there are other factors to consider as well, but in my case, QUALITY will make me switch from a codec to another for my video presentation, so far, I still use DIVX for video-only movies, a good optimized MJPEG codec for software playback of home-made multimedia cd-roms on PC only (divx needs too much cpu juice that I require for other realtime tasks on my video display software for slower machines), and I just wish I would find that perfect codec that wouldn't look like thrash when I display the colors and motion on a plasma screen.

    I will jump on anything new if it does the job better than what I have right now, but please, don't just say it's so much better because of [blabla], say actual facts and numbers, it will be very interresting to read.

  21. 911 calls? for what? on Canadian Government to Jam Radio Signals · · Score: 2

    This is a good one.

    Dude, welcome to Canada, EVEN IF YOU HAVE A CELL PHONE you'll still DIE if you were due to die simply because the healthcare system in Canada is going down the drain. I am Canadian, this isn't a troll, it's a well known fact here.

    Just 2 days ago in Quebec there was yet another story about how a guy that had a stroke died because one of the emergency that was 2 blocks from his house was closed and he needed to be transfered 50 miles further to get assistance, and he died during the trip. You guys in united states get "everyday news" about Israel and Terrorists" here we get the struggle between the prime minister and his ex-minister of finance goign for a powertrip, AND "how our healthcare system sucked today (tm)".

    So even if you'd get your Cell phone, I'll still go with the previous comment saying that either cell or toll phone, if you are in a critical state, heh, you're toated.

  22. I had both good and bad experience. on Is it Wrong to Accept an Employment Counter-Offer? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The company I went to that offered me 50% salary increase got me going from a very good company to a new startup, at that time I was ready to take the risk of being "screwed" in the worse case scenario. Job stability wasn't my main concern back then so I could afford "experimenting". What an experimentation it was, I got screwed big time, promises promises and after 6 months I've lost my job with some lawyers letter (the ceo there was a total freak and liar). After fighting to get my last week of pay and my overtime... anyways all this to say, this wasn't worth the 50% increase, the other place wasn't paying as much but I had a "name" and potential title to put on my resume. Worse, after I left and some other did the same, they re-ajusted their salary brackets and while it wasn't matching what I got, it was still good enough to consider the type of work and the stability for the little difference it gave.

    So basically, if you are looking for stability, and want to risk it in a startup that offers good salary so you they can start up properly with the good people, it's a risk, and depending on how much you are willing to risk and where you live, there are tools that you can use to protect yourself.

    The other thing when you stay at a company that makes a counter-offer, some CEOs are dumbasses, especially in startup. They will take the fact that you looked elsewhere personnally "what, you think I am not treating you well? you think blablablabla? how dare you!", and they will always have that little irrationnal something caught between how professionnal you are and their judgment, some (very few) bosses understand this and respond in a good way, but most are very idiotic about it. That's one thing I like about some bigger companies, if you did a good job and leave because you got better pay, they reajust, and offer you to come back if it doesn't succeed, that way you'll have gained extra experience and if you get back chances are you'll be a more stable ressource and etc etc and they will rely on you more.

    One thing you can do to be sure when you get a counteroffer, it shows that he really wants to keep you and you can ask more, like a one year contract so that way if shit breaks loose, you'll still get 1 year of salary for sure and he won't be able to fire you under normal circumstances. One thing I often saw is the CEO acts like if nothing happened and it's normal life going, he hires somebody with a different function but can overlap yours and ends up kicking you out. This is very common and "buisness is buisness" they'll say.

    I also had a good experience going into another company with a bit higher salary, but it was people I already knew for a long time and all, so I guess this wouldn't count :).

  23. Obligatory pun jokes... on AOpen Debuts The Funniest Motherboard Ever · · Score: 3, Funny


    VACUUM tubes? isn't that the new name for Rambus memory that sucks even more?

  24. Interresting but still missing a few things. on Mobile Gaming At Desktop Speeds · · Score: 2

    I have a Dell 8100, it rocks, but you know what would rock even more on these beasts? It's almost a workstation replacement, I can do most 3D setup that I need prior to rendering, I can even do some test rendering on it too with heavy features like radiosity and caustics, I never though I'd see the day when a company would have such decent 3d performance on a mobile platform, for both previewing (opengl) and rendering.

    One thing that I would kill for, and that's about the only "workstation" thing missing, (and don't laugh) would be a IDE raid-0. Battery consumption is not an issue, IDE drives doesn't consume near as much as the CPUs, neither would a raid-0 chipset (or who cares about the chipset, I could live with a software stripeset as long as it's on 2 distinct channels), and besides, if it would require more cells on the battery, so be it. They make batteries last for 3 hours on inspiron 2500 laptop (8 cell battery option), of course for number crunching and all it wouldn't last as much, but the point is, I'd take the floppy space and cramp in another 40GB ide drive in there, 2 channels, double the space, double the speed and tripple the fun ;).

    Right now you can get a gig of ram in your laptop, you can get firewire, you can get wireless connectivity, CD-Writers, dvd players, you name it, the IDE raid feature is the only thing missing. Since the 2.5" drives aren't as big as their 3.5" cousins, it could be a good tradeoff, and I'd gladly take the performance too.

  25. [Insert sarcasm here] on Win32/Linux Cross-Platform Virus · · Score: 2

    Well, the Wine team should hire this guy for their V3 release, he could add up the remaining (dis)functionnality missing to close the gap between linux and windows compatibility :)