Damnit... I was already going to be wasting half my weekend building this battery meter thing and now you've gone and got me booked for at least the next 3 weekends.
You can do it for less than $1,000 if you really want to and if your landlord is cool with it. Honestly though, why bother? Suggest it to your landlord, he can pay for it and it'll be a good selling point for future tenants. Assuming your landlord isn't techno-phobic.
Invest your $7,000 in something else, like real estate.
Nope, you're still going to get hit by random dictionary spammers that way.
The only way to completely block spam is to blacklist everyone except those people who you want to receive mail from, and insist they obtain a PGP (or equivalent) key so you know if it's a forged e-mail address or not.
The rest of us just use decent spam blocking methods and live with the 1 or 2 spams a week that slide through. I use SpamAssassin coupled with RBL lookups and it is very effective.
When I was a kid I used to spend my summers at my Aunt and Uncle's who had the infamous "Place where we don't want the TV to be" in the corner of their living room. I'd spent my time there reading books, socialising and generally doing all the things people used to do before TV came along.
So, turn off your TV once in a while (preferably, turn it off and put it somewhere where you can't get at it) and take a vacation from it. You'll be surprised how little you miss it.
Let it go.. it's served its purpose (and what an amazing job it did!) but they're already planning a newer, better telescope to be launched in a few years. Plus, when we get on the moon we can build an even better one that will make the Hubble look insignificant in comparison.
Somewhat true. I am one half of a computer department in a large company, it's very rare my lunch doesn't get interrupted by someone asking me some silly computer question! Most of the time, I don't mind answering but yes, there are certain people who should not be allowed to own a computer! Knowing you made someone's day by getting their computer working is a good feeling.
Geoffery Chaucer is credited with inventing the English novel with his (alas, unfinished) collection of short stories "The Cantebury Tales". If you think this technical manual is tricky to understand, the book is written in prose! Fortunately, some excellent modern translations exist.
Outside of writing, he spent most of his life as a civil servant. He is buried in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.
If you've ever seen the movie, A Knights Tale there's an amusing (if not particularly historically correct!) portrayl of him by Paul Bettany. The movie also contains characters from The Cantebury Tales.
This is usually the case, there have been some awful sequels made years later. The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions are good cases in point: they didn't need to make any sequels, they could have left it how it ended in the first movie and let our imaginations fill in the rest. This is just my two cents.
Then you get movies like Terminator 2 and the new Star Wars prequels - made years after the first movies but where still excellent. Even Terminator 3 wasn't that bad, but again I think they should have left it at Terminator 2.
Then you have real turkeys like Robocop 2 and 3...:-)
Umm, old style video disk had one problem... after a while the disks would skip. The stylus got clogged just like on a regular vinyl player and your quality would degrade. And it wasn't like it was an easy task to pop it open and clean the head, hell no!
The other problem was they weighed a flipping ton:-)
Still, it was a nice cheap format that unfortunately was marketed poorly and just a little too late (Laserdiscs arrived shortly after).
Whilst I was a poor student I got a job at a pet supplier. I was presented with a broken garden fork and directed to a large shipping container in the back of the building.
What I spent the next few hours doing was shoving sawdust into a vacuum hose connected to a Silo. I stuck it out for a week then quit.
There are ways around this, you CAN lock down a Windows box to the point where a user can only run the programs you authorise them to but that's beyond the knowledge of the average NT admin. Plus, it tends to break other things if you're not careful.
If I could figure out a way to boot our public access Internet machines from a CD-ROM (alas, my employer won't let me put anything but Win2K on them - they did grudgingly allow me to replace IE with Mozilla, though) I would do so. That would solve almost all of my problems.
If you leave anything in a car in Florida in the middle of summer it's likely to either melt, explode or both. In the case of a laptop, melt, that battery will rupture or some kid'll steal it:-)
As a former Hell Desk employee I can categorically say that yes, I had quite a few drunks call me.
Horses, no - which is a shame because they'd have probably been a lot easier to deal with than some of the idiots that called. Many horses are smarter than the average PC user:-)
My first video games device was an Atari 2600. Not really a computer, but I loved it. A few years after I got it my aged cat peed on it and it never worked properly again.:-)
My first real computer was a ZX Spectrum 128 +2B [1], the funky non-standard thing Amstrad put out after they bought Sinclair Research. I still have it, and it still works perfectly!
After that I got a 486-33 PC. I requested an Acorn 3010 (remember those?) for Christmas this year but the asshole salesman talked my parents out of it:( Oh, well!
[1] +2A with the distorted sound problem fixed, says +2B on the underside and is in a black case.
I regularly got 98 to run for 4 months at a time before finally it simply stopped responding requiring a reboot. I used it at work every day, lots of word processing, spreadsheets, some graphic design, web browsing of course. Played Quake after hours too.
Comparison: My record uptime on an XP box is 3 weeks (similar usage). NT/2000 servers at my work stay up for months at a time.
Sure it doesn't beat my Linux boxes which have stayed up for years at a time, but it's no where near the "crashing all the time" reports that I've read.
I get informe by simpering users at least half a dozen times a day that the "modem thing" isn't working. They're referring to the large box under the desk that happens to be the PC.
None of our PC's have modems in them. I wish I had a dollar for every time I told a user that the big box thing isn't a modem, it's a PC.
The Acorn ruled supreme, at least for a short while in the late 1980's/early 1990's. Jealous PC owners where stuck with a DOS box or, worse, Windows 3.1 and slow 286's and 386's.
Such a shame Acorn couldn't market themselves out of a paper bag. The computer world would be a lot different (and a lot better) right now if they had only taken the time to market their products better.
After a couple of long weekends spent installing the RPC patches on several hundred machines I installed it on one of our servers. Works great, when I need a patch deployed I just approve it the machines update overnight. No problems so far (fingers crossed).
In spite of what MS may say about system requirements, the PIII-450/256Mb machine running Windows 2003 and SUS handles the the load very easily.
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Thinkpads are not rugged. I just spent the day rebuilding a Thinkpad (not mine) that was dropped, which in turn killed the hard drive and the CD-ROM.
:-)
Course, it gave me a good excuse to put Linux on it (was previously running XP *spit*) so not all bad.
Damnit... I was already going to be wasting half my weekend building this battery meter thing and now you've gone and got me booked for at least the next 3 weekends.
My wife's gonna kill you!
You can do it for less than $1,000 if you really want to and if your landlord is cool with it. Honestly though, why bother? Suggest it to your landlord, he can pay for it and it'll be a good selling point for future tenants. Assuming your landlord isn't techno-phobic.
Invest your $7,000 in something else, like real estate.
Let me back that post up with some numbers! Here is my mail statistics for yesterday:
(In case you're wondering, this is pulled from a pflogsumm report)
594 received
266 rejected (31%) [Spam blocked by RBL lists, or personal filters]
1 discarded (0%) [E-mail bourne viruses are discarded]
Out of the remaining e-mails that got through, 6 Spams where killed by SpamAssassin.
Nothing legitimate was blocked, as far as I can tell.
Nope, you're still going to get hit by random dictionary spammers that way.
The only way to completely block spam is to blacklist everyone except those people who you want to receive mail from, and insist they obtain a PGP (or equivalent) key so you know if it's a forged e-mail address or not.
The rest of us just use decent spam blocking methods and live with the 1 or 2 spams a week that slide through. I use SpamAssassin coupled with RBL lookups and it is very effective.
When I was a kid I used to spend my summers at my Aunt and Uncle's who had the infamous "Place where we don't want the TV to be" in the corner of their living room. I'd spent my time there reading books, socialising and generally doing all the things people used to do before TV came along.
So, turn off your TV once in a while (preferably, turn it off and put it somewhere where you can't get at it) and take a vacation from it. You'll be surprised how little you miss it.
Let it go.. it's served its purpose (and what an amazing job it did!) but they're already planning a newer, better telescope to be launched in a few years. Plus, when we get on the moon we can build an even better one that will make the Hubble look insignificant in comparison.
Somewhat true. I am one half of a computer department in a large company, it's very rare my lunch doesn't get interrupted by someone asking me some silly computer question! Most of the time, I don't mind answering but yes, there are certain people who should not be allowed to own a computer! Knowing you made someone's day by getting their computer working is a good feeling.
Geoffery Chaucer is credited with inventing the English novel with his (alas, unfinished) collection of short stories "The Cantebury Tales". If you think this technical manual is tricky to understand, the book is written in prose! Fortunately, some excellent modern translations exist.
Outside of writing, he spent most of his life as a civil servant. He is buried in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.
More information here.
If you've ever seen the movie, A Knights Tale there's an amusing (if not particularly historically correct!) portrayl of him by Paul Bettany. The movie also contains characters from The Cantebury Tales.
Far less migraine inducing than The Cantebury Tales. I found it pretty easy going compared to that!
This is usually the case, there have been some awful sequels made years later. The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions are good cases in point: they didn't need to make any sequels, they could have left it how it ended in the first movie and let our imaginations fill in the rest. This is just my two cents.
:-)
Then you get movies like Terminator 2 and the new Star Wars prequels - made years after the first movies but where still excellent. Even Terminator 3 wasn't that bad, but again I think they should have left it at Terminator 2.
Then you have real turkeys like Robocop 2 and 3...
Oh great, so if they find water on mars I can look forward to spending the day in the hospital
(I'm very allergic to seafood)
Umm, old style video disk had one problem... after a while the disks would skip. The stylus got clogged just like on a regular vinyl player and your quality would degrade. And it wasn't like it was an easy task to pop it open and clean the head, hell no!
:-)
The other problem was they weighed a flipping ton
Still, it was a nice cheap format that unfortunately was marketed poorly and just a little too late (Laserdiscs arrived shortly after).
Whilst I was a poor student I got a job at a pet supplier. I was presented with a broken garden fork and directed to a large shipping container in the back of the building.
What I spent the next few hours doing was shoving sawdust into a vacuum hose connected to a Silo. I stuck it out for a week then quit.
Just don't let go of the rope...
There are ways around this, you CAN lock down a Windows box to the point where a user can only run the programs you authorise them to but that's beyond the knowledge of the average NT admin. Plus, it tends to break other things if you're not careful.
If I could figure out a way to boot our public access Internet machines from a CD-ROM (alas, my employer won't let me put anything but Win2K on them - they did grudgingly allow me to replace IE with Mozilla, though) I would do so. That would solve almost all of my problems.
If you leave anything in a car in Florida in the middle of summer it's likely to either melt, explode or both. In the case of a laptop, melt, that battery will rupture or some kid'll steal it :-)
As a former Hell Desk employee I can categorically say that yes, I had quite a few drunks call me.
:-)
Horses, no - which is a shame because they'd have probably been a lot easier to deal with than some of the idiots that called. Many horses are smarter than the average PC user
My first video games device was an Atari 2600. Not really a computer, but I loved it. A few years after I got it my aged cat peed on it and it never worked properly again. :-)
:( Oh, well!
My first real computer was a ZX Spectrum 128 +2B [1], the funky non-standard thing Amstrad put out after they bought Sinclair Research. I still have it, and it still works perfectly!
After that I got a 486-33 PC. I requested an Acorn 3010 (remember those?) for Christmas this year but the asshole salesman talked my parents out of it
[1] +2A with the distorted sound problem fixed, says +2B on the underside and is in a black case.
[SPOILERS]
Sorry, got to disagree with you there. It was good up until they reached the military guys, then it got stupid.
The unfilmed alternative ending (which didn't have the military guys) on the DVD edition looked much more promising, but also had a silly ending.
If you want a really good most-of-England-just-got-killed story read Empty World by John Christopher.
A far cheaper option than building a MythTV box!
:( ("Soon" is what I keep getting told).
My cable company [1] gives out a fairly reasonable PVR box for $6 a month. No HDTV, though
Worth a look.
[1] Bright House networks, I do know Time Warner offer it, dunno about any other companies. Alternative is DirecTV.
I regularly got 98 to run for 4 months at a time before finally it simply stopped responding requiring a reboot. I used it at work every day, lots of word processing, spreadsheets, some graphic design, web browsing of course. Played Quake after hours too.
Comparison: My record uptime on an XP box is 3 weeks (similar usage). NT/2000 servers at my work stay up for months at a time.
Sure it doesn't beat my Linux boxes which have stayed up for years at a time, but it's no where near the "crashing all the time" reports that I've read.
Windows Me on the other hand....
I get informe by simpering users at least half a dozen times a day that the "modem thing" isn't working. They're referring to the large box under the desk that happens to be the PC.
None of our PC's have modems in them. I wish I had a dollar for every time I told a user that the big box thing isn't a modem, it's a PC.
The Acorn ruled supreme, at least for a short while in the late 1980's/early 1990's. Jealous PC owners where stuck with a DOS box or, worse, Windows 3.1 and slow 286's and 386's.
Such a shame Acorn couldn't market themselves out of a paper bag. The computer world would be a lot different (and a lot better) right now if they had only taken the time to market their products better.
After a couple of long weekends spent installing the RPC patches on several hundred machines I installed it on one of our servers. Works great, when I need a patch deployed I just approve it the machines update overnight. No problems so far (fingers crossed).
In spite of what MS may say about system requirements, the PIII-450/256Mb machine running Windows 2003 and SUS handles the the load very easily.