Going to 'tools, windows update' in internet explorer takes you to a redir site on microsoft.com, which attempts to forward you to windowsupdate.com NOT windowsupdate.microsoft.com.. even still (~3PM EST). you'd think they'd at least fix that if they were fuckin with the dns..
You may not know this, but when you change an entry in DNS, it is not available to everyone for a while. This is due to caching (all ISP DNS servers are caching servers, of course). For instance, the AOL servers may have gotten the ip for the domain at 8am, and if it doesnt expire for
You may not know this, but you are incorrect... the redirection has nothing to do with DNS dns enteries propagating and everything to do with MS's web site/server. It's redirecting to the old URL and not the new one.
When and if MS rearchitects the Windows kernel so device drivers run in user space, or some protected space, I think that the so-called reliability gap between UNIX/UNIX workalikes and Windows will be very, very small indeed.
Actually Windows(tm) NT(tm) from version 3.1 through 3.51 the device drivers ran outside of kernel space in a different ring (one or two I think). Microsoft(tm) used to market NT as being more reliable than OS/2 at the time because device drivers under OS/2 ran in ring 0 with the real kernel and could take it down. After MS killed OS/2 in the marketing department MS moved the device drivers to ring 0 in NT 4.0 for "ehansed performance".
So MS has already rearchitected windows already, not that they can't change their mind and go back the other way for longhorn....
ATI has only ever "Officially" supported Linux Drivers for their FireGL series of products. These drivers "unoffically" support the 8500 and beyond consumer grade products.
The MX-70 had 7 pins. The MX-80 had 9, but only used 8 for graphics. I had a TX-80, noisy, non-graphical, unidirectional monster, and it still runs and is almost 25 years old (purchased it in '79). It uses regular spool typewriter ribbons that you still can get, though finding them is getting hard now that typewriters have basically gone the way of the dodo. Fine old hardward.;-)
I've started considering using 32-128MB compact flash carts for drives on DOS systems. The IDE compact flash adapters are cheap, and for old DOS systems is more than enough storage.
1996 is six, seven years ago. It doesn't surprise me that Windows XP doesn't support that. It wouldn't surprise me if no recent operating system supported it.
I don't know, I'm still using older hardware because it still works. I've found my old scanner and other hardware is not supported by Win2k or XP. I still use several old Busslogic SCSI controllers for running multiple CD-ROM drives off of, but these are not supported under Win2K/XP either from what I can tell. My anchient S3 PCI card works fine under linux for my extra system.
Hardware support is much better for older products than Win2K or XP. I scavange from auctions an out of dumpsters perfectly fine functional hardware that just is not supported by the latest MS release. If your happy running 98 or linux there is lots of cheap old hardware.
I'm actually waiting for the day when computers get like major appliances where you buy one and you keep it for 15 years because there is no significant difference between old and new except over such a time scale. The current lifecycle is far too wasteful.
Our users are smart people, not nitwits. Most of them are experts in their fields, including the administrative assistants. Many of them know a lot about their computers, too, which helps.
Well our situation is totally different than yours, 80% of our users are lucky they can find the print in the file menu, or accidentily drag/delete a shortcut off of their desktop and say the computer "doesn't work right". They are not experts in any particular field, and main skill is the phone or putting parts together.
I would say that our evironment is probably more like the orginal poster's and you should not flame him for having an attitude like that. Your environment is different and appears to more techinally oriented and so you have user that are more computer skilled. His is obviously different.
With a Windows machine, they can get the hardware and software they need to do their jobs and install it themselves without a lot of kludging and emulating and scrounging for freebie knockoffs, simply following the instructions in the box, with occasional help from us. That's what they need to get their work done, and that's what IT should make happen.
Point one, how the hell do you make sure you have proper licences if allow your users to install software? I would love to see a BSA audit at your company... we just went though a Microsoft Software audit, and came up a bit short and found all kinds of crapware on some PCs.
Groups are allowed to pick sofware, but with input from IT as to if it's a good fit, and IT manages the licences and installs the application.
Point two, there is group in IT here looking into switching the desktops to Linux because it could save us millions in licencing fees with microsoft for desktop systems. For the vast majority of users here that only use e-mail, word proccessing, spread sheets, presentations, web browsing, and telnet to access erp ssytems linux looks to be "good enough".
Point three, your environment is different from ours and some other companies and so Linux is not a proper solution for your environment right now. This if fine, the decision needs to be based on reducing the over-all cost of running the buisness.
Point four, companies that are early adopters of new technologies, usually do better in the market place than ones that just follow the pack. There are risks involved with adopting new technolgoies, but if you are careful, you can pick the ones that give you the most advantage.
Do I expect my garbage men to go through my trash, yes. Do I expect them to analyze my trash, test blood samples, look for suspect criminal activities? NO. Unreasonable, i dont think so.
So if they find a severed limb or torso in the trash they should just ignore it?
So your wife's tampons become gerbil bedding? How about old bandaids of yours that they could use to test for diseases you might have. Maybe you need an partially organic waste shredder too. Cut that DNA up.
I'll conceed that that is a valid point, though if you say that is off-limits, where you draw the line?
If somebody wants to do that, all they have to do is assault me and get a blood sample that way. Or pickup a sample from a glass I've taken a drink out of. Though the first one is a petty obvious violation of my rights, the second is less than clear.
Not in Portland buddy.
How would you like it if I went through your trash every week and published all your cancelled checks, love notes, hate speech you printed out from the web, and your CD-R's with dirty movies?
Well my CD-R disks are all cut in half at least and I own and use a cross-cut shredder, so you would not likely find much useful. I consider what I put out on the curb for collection fair game, and if somebody finds some old piece of furnature or hardware useful, more power to them. Anything that I consider sensitive gets shredded and put in recycling or used for gerbil bedding.
My understanding was that all of them today do that...
Errr, no picture a 5 1/4" floppy with an extra set of holes 180 degrees around the dist from the original set... I tried posting an ascii picture but the lame lameness filter prevented. === (o) ===
Would it be possible to have multiple lasers all burning at once to increase speed? Like dual lasers working on opposite sides of the disk.
Well I suppose it's possible, it kinda reminds me of the floppy drives on the orginal Apple Lisa, it had two sets of head on opposite ends of the disk. It was the only computer that used that kind of the arrange ment. From what I remember it was not a sucess, you never see any computers using any such drives now adays?
The commercial interests do not want to be compatible with "truely free" clients because their business model is based completely on bundling spyware with their application. If a spyware-free program that has access to the same network exists, who'd download their spyware?
IDIOT you have it backwards, Shareaza/Gnutella2 is not open source open protocol or anything, developers of two of the three clients opposing this (LimeWire & gtk-gnutella) are GPLed the thrid one Bearshare is closed source. This is not about evil closed source companies trying to keep a new open protocol from being implemented, but something else.
This is more like a newcommer trying to trump everybody out they by comming up with a new incompatible proto and shouting "New Gnutell 2.0, now even better than ever".
The people that moderated your commented your comment up
You're right. Search and replace "privacy" with "security".
OK a more reasonable issue, though a bunch of PCs with 20GB drives are not terribly secure. That is unless the cases are welded shut and to the desk with the legs of the anchored in cement and all cables run through rigid metal conduit. Then you need mines and a perimeter fence with armed guards and anti-aircraft guns.
Now your secure, but only sort-of, because someone will still breach your security and steal your information if they want to bad enough.
There are trade-offs with every system, it's the job of system architects to decide what's reasonable and to evaluate it on a ongoing basis.
Great. Now you've got to abstract the network reliability and performance problems. Abstract the lack of privacy, too, while you're at it.
Network reliability should not be a problem within one building. Performance problems may be an issue, but can be fixed. What the heck privacy problems?? We are talking a business, and a business's computer systems, what privacy do you expect?
OK that last comment will get me modded to oblivion because of the idiots that thin they should get to play CS, download MP3s, have cybersex, etc at work.
I would agree with grounding one end... the general rule is to ground all signal lines to just one point so that you don't end up with any ground loops. This is the rule we followed here when we were running 10base-2 and grounded the cables at the coax hub.
In addition, I live on a houstboat, and I have ethernet run in the same conduits as AC power carring 5 to 15 amps on 4 different circuits, and don't experience any problems (max cable length is probably 20 meteres)
Well the electrical inspector would thow a fit over running low voltage in the same conduit as AC power. It's a big no no and should never be done for safety reasons (besides inducing AC current in the ethernet).
My favorite keyboad is the the BTC 8110M, it's a compact "ergo" keyboard kinda like the MS wave keyboard. It has a nice feel with a really good tactile feedback, had cursor keys on both sides of the keyboard snuggled in below the shift keys, and the left split spacebar is a backspace key.
Shame they are not made any more... at least I was able to a buy a couple surplus before they became unobtainium. Check out here
for the specs.
I guess I can see where there is room for some useful compression on your average 3D game screen. Especially with some sort of delta compression. A truely photorealistic scene probably has less room for compression, but I guess I agree that it could more than make up for the difference in bandwidth.
... The 16 GB/sec memory bandwidth (which is also quite a big jump from existing machines) is made even more impressive by a lossless compression that can achieve 4:1 ratios.
Well the ATI Radeon 9700 has 19.3GB/sec memory bandwidth, but I agree the lossless memory compression is a cool idea, but I doubt the 4:1 ratio in anything but synthetic tests.
> the Japanese government is considering abandoning Microsft Windows
I struggle with the idea of a whole country, or even a whole administration, changing OS at midnight one Saturday. Surely this sort of thing is going to happen one department at a time, and, probably, one office at a time in a lot of cases. Most government departments have a significant amount of bespoke software that would need tweaking, if not rewriting. Even if the decision was taken on a nationwide basis, I would expect the changeover to take at least the lifetime of the average corporate PC, ie 2-4 years.
I remember reading somewhere about sweden swiching from driving on the left to the right side... one night changing all the signs, lights, etc. and everybody starting driving on the right. From what I heard the switchover was pretty painless. Of course it took several years of planning up-front to pull this off. With enough planning you can pull-off just about any change.
That is true, but if you had read the article you would have read that there are 30 states in the coalition of the 45 states that collect sales/use taxes.
Clause 2: No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.
States can tax sales within their borders, but interstate commerce is up to the federal government. States have no right
The key phase is No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress,. The states are seeking the consent of congress to do this by making the sales/use taxes the same accross them rather than the 7000 different sales/use taxes we have now.
Internet sales are just like mail-order catalogs, and the same tax rules apply. We have no need for new laws on this.
This legislation is aimed at both mail-order and online sales. The reson they want a federal law passed is that only the federal government can force companies to participate.
The reason in the past that they have not succeded in the past (and so far now) is that it's impossible for any company to follow all the rules for the 7000+ different taxing athorities in the U.S. The idea is that the 30 states will pass laws setting the sales taxes for the whole state to be the same and the same accross participating states. They would then get congress to pass a law forcing all e-tailers and mail-order houses to collect taxes when shipping to somebody living in a particpating state.
I still don't think it's fair or easy, especially since they are suggesting strict requirments on only using approved tax packages.
Slashdot Mirror
-1 Overrated for that on a +5 post
So MS has already rearchitected windows already, not that they can't change their mind and go back the other way for longhorn....
Nothing new here
Xerox laser printers are rather nice too, and least the ones I've played with.
The MX-70 had 7 pins. The MX-80 had 9, but only used 8 for graphics. I had a TX-80, noisy, non-graphical, unidirectional monster, and it still runs and is almost 25 years old (purchased it in '79). It uses regular spool typewriter ribbons that you still can get, though finding them is getting hard now that typewriters have basically gone the way of the dodo. Fine old hardward. ;-)
I've started considering using 32-128MB compact flash carts for drives on DOS systems. The IDE compact flash adapters are cheap, and for old DOS systems is more than enough storage.
Hardware support is much better for older products than Win2K or XP. I scavange from auctions an out of dumpsters perfectly fine functional hardware that just is not supported by the latest MS release. If your happy running 98 or linux there is lots of cheap old hardware.
I'm actually waiting for the day when computers get like major appliances where you buy one and you keep it for 15 years because there is no significant difference between old and new except over such a time scale. The current lifecycle is far too wasteful.
Well our situation is totally different than yours, 80% of our users are lucky they can find the print in the file menu, or accidentily drag/delete a shortcut off of their desktop and say the computer "doesn't work right". They are not experts in any particular field, and main skill is the phone or putting parts together.
I would say that our evironment is probably more like the orginal poster's and you should not flame him for having an attitude like that. Your environment is different and appears to more techinally oriented and so you have user that are more computer skilled. His is obviously different.
Point one, how the hell do you make sure you have proper licences if allow your users to install software? I would love to see a BSA audit at your company
Groups are allowed to pick sofware, but with input from IT as to if it's a good fit, and IT manages the licences and installs the application.
Point two, there is group in IT here looking into switching the desktops to Linux because it could save us millions in licencing fees with microsoft for desktop systems. For the vast majority of users here that only use e-mail, word proccessing, spread sheets, presentations, web browsing, and telnet to access erp ssytems linux looks to be "good enough".
Point three, your environment is different from ours and some other companies and so Linux is not a proper solution for your environment right now. This if fine, the decision needs to be based on reducing the over-all cost of running the buisness.
Point four, companies that are early adopters of new technologies, usually do better in the market place than ones that just follow the pack. There are risks involved with adopting new technolgoies, but if you are careful, you can pick the ones that give you the most advantage.
If somebody wants to do that, all they have to do is assault me and get a blood sample that way. Or pickup a sample from a glass I've taken a drink out of. Though the first one is a petty obvious violation of my rights, the second is less than clear.
Errr, no picture a 5 1/4" floppy with an extra set of holes 180 degrees around the dist from the original set... I tried posting an ascii picture but the lame lameness filter prevented.
=== (o) ===
Well I suppose it's possible, it kinda reminds me of the floppy drives on the orginal Apple Lisa, it had two sets of head on opposite ends of the disk. It was the only computer that used that kind of the arrange ment. From what I remember it was not a sucess, you never see any computers using any such drives now adays?
This is more like a newcommer trying to trump everybody out they by comming up with a new incompatible proto and shouting "New Gnutell 2.0, now even better than ever".
The people that moderated your commented your comment up
I actually liked the 7-up Spot game, but I'm a bit weird, and wish they would make a 3D version.
OK a more reasonable issue, though a bunch of PCs with 20GB drives are not terribly secure. That is unless the cases are welded shut and to the desk with the legs of the anchored in cement and all cables run through rigid metal conduit. Then you need mines and a perimeter fence with armed guards and anti-aircraft guns.
Now your secure, but only sort-of, because someone will still breach your security and steal your information if they want to bad enough.
There are trade-offs with every system, it's the job of system architects to decide what's reasonable and to evaluate it on a ongoing basis.
Network reliability should not be a problem within one building. Performance problems may be an issue, but can be fixed. What the heck privacy problems?? We are talking a business, and a business's computer systems, what privacy do you expect?
OK that last comment will get me modded to oblivion because of the idiots that thin they should get to play CS, download MP3s, have cybersex, etc at work.
Shame they are not made any more ... at least I was able to a buy a couple surplus before they became unobtainium. Check out here
for the specs.
I guess I can see where there is room for some useful compression on your average 3D game screen. Especially with some sort of delta compression. A truely photorealistic scene probably has less room for compression, but I guess I agree that it could more than make up for the difference in bandwidth.
subsolar
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That is true, but if you had read the article you would have read that there are 30 states in the coalition of the 45 states that collect sales/use taxes.
subsolar
subsolar
The reason in the past that they have not succeded in the past (and so far now) is that it's impossible for any company to follow all the rules for the 7000+ different taxing athorities in the U.S. The idea is that the 30 states will pass laws setting the sales taxes for the whole state to be the same and the same accross participating states. They would then get congress to pass a law forcing all e-tailers and mail-order houses to collect taxes when shipping to somebody living in a particpating state.
I still don't think it's fair or easy, especially since they are suggesting strict requirments on only using approved tax packages.
subsolar