Serial Port -- For backup modem connection (firmware includes ppp dial up protocol).
This is important. DSL/Cable connections are not invincible. You WILL have downtime. Trust me. Having that failover modem connection is a Very Good Thing (tm).
In fact, right now I am using this very box with a modem only. (DSL is prohibitively expensive when you are between jobs and I don't trust cable modem) And it works beautifully. If anything, the modem connection is more tenacious than on any of my computers. It will not yield the line unless you issue it a reset command. Then you'd better yank the phone line quick, before the box redials the phone after the reset.
Anyway, I'm happy with the little box. It plays well with my Addtron 8-port switch. It plays well with my very eclectic network. It's sweet. Unless you have some really esoteric requirements for firewalling (and I don't) it's great.
Well, certainly if you are replacing DOS-based Windows with it it's a step up. But 2K is just so much more elegant than XP. 2K Pro is like a Jaguar XKE. It's very high-maintenance and picky about what you put into it, but it rewards you with swift performance and an elegant look and feel. XP is like that car Homer designed in "The Simpsons." It's got every gew-gaw and contraption and it weighs a fsckn ton and it's so damn ugly nobody but a moron would love it.
However...both are better than DOS-based Windows anyday. Less crashy. Nobody can deny that.
The biggest problem with XP Home is how they neutered networking support.
For instance, with my W98SE box, I can login to my Windows 2000 Server box and join the domain I set up there. It's not the same support as my W2K Pro box, but the differences are technical minutiae.
You won't be able to do that with XP Home. The only networking XP Home will be able to do is peer-to-peer, NetBEUI over TCP/IP. XP Home will NOT be able to join a domain, period. They're doing this to force companies with 2K domains to buy Pro rather than Home.
One good thing: W2K Pro CDs will drop down in price at the computer fairs when XP arrives. It's faster and better than XP and it makes 9x feel like the toy OS it is. So far, no BSODs here at Catseye Labs with W2K.
One day, we will be able to stand back and see that 2K was the high-water mark for M$ operating systems. With all the unnecessary crap that M$ is loading into XP, the ugly interface, Product Activation, phoning home, etc. etc. etc, M$ is basically doing to itself what the DOJ couldn't do. Now is the time for Linux to get its act together and make a desktop experience that is easier, better and faster than XP. Shouldn't take much. Mandrake with KDE is almost there, IMHO.
IE for Linux? Maybe not, but this is better:
on
Netscape 6.1
·
· Score: 1
One word: Konqueror. It does the IE thang better than the Beast of Redmond ever will. A better browser, a better file manager.
And Konqui not only works under KDE, but under several other window managers, including Ice. The combo of Konqui and Ice is pretty studly if you ask me. And slimmer than Konqui+KDE.
Yeah, I'm posting from a Windozer right now...sue me. But when I'm in Linux, it's Konqui all the way.
Every damn shipment of Dells we got, even if they were a couple weeks apart, had different hardware (yea, they were all the same 'make'). New drivers. New Issues. Don't even think about using ghost with a windoz platform and these things, you'll need a dozen ghost images for each damn box type
Might as well build 'em yourself then. I'm a total believer in building boxen myself. You can spec the parts yourself and get a machine you completely expect. Also helps when something breaks...just go to the Friendly Neighborhood Screwdriver Shop or the next computer fair and grab what you need, cheap.
Now, Apple hardware...that's a completely different story. Built to last, built to very exacting specs. I have old Macs that I'm still using which first saw the light of day in the late 1980s/early 1990s. And my G3 Blue-and-white, aka Yosemite, aka The Fisher-Price computer (the latter nickname was bestowed by my hubby) still looks and feels like it came from the future, even though I've had it since 1999.
If you want a PC, go generic. If you want a PC laptop, go IBM Thinkpad. If you want a computer which will have an awesome lifespan and will remain useful for literally decades, go Macintosh.
Weird Stuff Warehouse is great...wish there was one about 400 miles south, but yeah, great place.
There are some places like that around Torrance and Gardena, in the "South Bay" area of Southern California. However, they aren't as big and the stuff they have isn't as interesting.
The BSA will orchestrate a raid that will force you to upgrade to Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
At the risk of being flamed, W2K still does NetBEUI. It can support not only NT4 but anything from DOS on up.
There are fancy things which require everything running W2K to be able to do, but as far as basic connectivity W2K supports everything. Even SAMBA, because SAMBA operates like SMB did in NT4.
I have no idea about XP because I don't even want to touch that mess when it comes out.
Just the other day, someone's NT got screwed up because she deleted files like NTLDR to free up space, and someone had to come and dig her out of that mess. With Unix, users don't get root, nor do they need to.
Sounds like that luser is a tool, if you know what I mean.
In NT/2K, you don't have to give lusers the equivalent of root access, which would be to put them in the Admin group. The Power User group is almost as dangerous. Chuck the luser into plain generic "Users" and lock that group down tight. Jane Luser wouldn't have been able to delete NTLDR and others.
Agreed, xNIXen are more secure from the word go. But if you take the effort you can lock down an NT/2K box, at least from stupid luser tricks like that.
(not putting a hotlink here so the goat sex traumatized won't have to worry about following it, just copy and paste into a new window)
This has built-in just about everything, but for a teeny web server or NAT box it would work. Actually my plans for this puppy are more ambitious...drop a DVD-ROM into it, shove a huge HD into it, a better sound card and a Hollywood decoder card...voila, instant TIVO box/Super-DVD player.
It's MicroStar...it's made to better standards than those evil PC Chips "Book PC" boxen.
The box is $239. It includes a mobo with built in video, (no shared RAM...4MB VRAM on the mobo) NIC and audio. The audio prolly sucks so I'll use an Ensoniq card I have lying around. It'll take a Celery or a PIII. I suggest Celery due to heat issues. It also takes standard components: standard CD-ROM, standard floppy, no "slim" or "low profile" nonsense.
I wonder how hard it would be to install a notebook HD right into that cube. The Linux Devices article says that the cube is mostly hollow.
Does the thing have capabilities for adding an EIDE controller to it? If you can, it would mean one of these Bitty Boxes could be used as a full-fledged server.
But women are not very good problem solvers. When confronted with some task which they don't have Cliff Notes for, they invariably panic and end up in tears.
You don't know how fsckn wrong you are.
Two of the best troubleshooters in my class are female.
. Whats sad is how/. has turned into a rabid bitching about others while turning a blind eye to itself and Linux issues. If MS has been down for a day, it wouldn't matter what the reason was, they'd be flamed all over the web. Slashdot goes down and they blame some girl who can't even defend herself. Assuming of course its the real reason/. went down
I think they're lying. I was able to ping the router they said was a smoking heap of wreckage during the "blackout." I think they just got DDoSed and they don't want to admit it.
Real smooth blaming a grrl tech, too. They could have just said "the tech was incompetent" rather than bringing gender into the discussion.
We'll know for sure if they're being straight with us if this happens again.
Is there really that much of a difference between Mandrake and OSX??
Yes there is. Try them both and then come back to the class and report what you have learned.
This makes an important point. OSX is a great standard of desktop ease of use which we should all be shooting for. The fact of the matter is that OSX and Linux aren't that far removed in regards to internals. If we can take Linux and create an environment that is as comforting and easy as OSX for newbies, we'll have something.
Mandrake running with KDE is about halfway there. I urge the folks at The Kompany to look very closely at OSX and its advantages, while retaining the good things that make KDE one of the more usable window managers of the bunch.
When we get to the point where the newbie Linux user can be as insulated from the console as the average OSX or Win2KPro user is, Linux will have arrived. With the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field (tm) and the Microsoft Foot Bullet Brigade (Activation, Hardware Fingerprinting, BSA Jackbooted Thugs, Ballmer calling Linux "Communist") making things easy for us, Linux can triumph in the end.
Damn right. Just because Daria is on MTV doesn't make it corporate pop culture.
The first episode of the current season, "Fizz-Ed", was a criticism of everything MTV stands for. And this was not the first Daria episode to critique MTV and the rest of corporate pop culture.
It has always been my view that the reason why MTV plays games with Daria's schedule is that it has been trying to kill the show. However, it remains one of MTV's most popular shows, and is only now leaving the air at the end of this current season because Glenn Eichler wants to move on and end the show before the ideas run out.
However, what will become of the show after the end of the series? It will probably disappear just as shows like Beavis and Butt-Head, Aeon Flux, The Maxx and Downtown did. MTV is not very savvy about syndication, never mind that it's a subsidiary of syndication kings Viacom. They have syndicated The Real World and that's about it.
Oddly, MTV has been more forthcoming about releasing videotapes of Daria in Europe and Australia than in the US.
Anyway, my point is that Daria has been an effective critique of corporate pop culture from inside corporate pop culture itself. Discounting the Trent/Daria "shippers" and the Fashion Club wannabes, Daria fandom "gets" this.
When Daria finally leaves the air, MTV's reason for existence will be gone.
Here are a few good links to Daria fan sites:
http://www.outpost-daria.com/
http://www.lawndale-commons.com/
http://paperpusher.simplenet.com/
(no live links for the goatsex-wary...copy and paste)
It's going to be Very Bad (tm) for Fair Use if the other four of the Five Families of the International Music Industry sign on. It's also going to be Very Bad (tm) for Ahead Software GMBH, Veritas Software and hundreds of little shareware companies too. I smell a cartel forming. It doesn't smell too good. ----
http://www.msgeek.org/html/
I have had several Imation CD-Rs go south on me over the past two years. It's as if the information on them just evaporates...the CD will seek and seek and seek and report back that there's nothing on it.
Fuji CD-Rs are made for Fuji by TAIYO YUDEN. Taiyo Yuden manufactured CD-Rs are the only CD-R blanks that are worth it nowadays.
99.999% of all Taiwanese CD-Rs are crap. And yes, Imation is made in Taiwan.
Actually SLASHcode is buggy, horribly opaque to the newbie, and absolutely a bear to set up and maintain.
I spent 4 months of HELL trying to get SLASH to work, and then got turned on to PHP-Nuke by the company which was hosting my SLASH site. I had my PHP-Nuke site up and running in TWO DAYS.
Yeah, there were a few holes which I had to tell the hosting company to patch, but other than that PHP-Nuke is the simplicity and functionality leader for discussion sites. Yeah, it's still a little slow on the scalability front, but Francisco is busy changing that.
If you want to create a news-discussion site, try PHP-Nuke first. You'll like it.
What nobody is mentioning is that **PEOPLE DON'T HAVE TO UPGRADE THEIR OPERATING SYSTEMS***. News flash, folks! If Windows95 or 98 or NT4 or 2K is working for you, DON'T UPGRADE. There are still many enterprise-level shops that still use W3.11 and NT3.51, imagine that!
When people don't instantly adopt XP and MICROS~1 winds up with a non-saleable OS, they will be down the crapper. Remember (Unhappy)DIVX? That took about a year to die.
If MICROS~1 takes the weasel way out and suddenly finds ways to break DOS-based Windows and/or NT-based Windows with the Latest And Greatest software or hardware, there will be third-party fixes popping up like a hundred flowers blooming.
And if it gets REALLY bad it will drive people right into the arms of Linux, particularly if emulation significantly improves under Linux.
So really, don't see this as a bad thing. This will anger third-party developers like Sonic Foundry because the new OS may break their audio apps. (fine way to treat the guy who wrote the multimedia code for Windows9x!) This will make these companies advise their customers NOT to "upgrade" to XP.
Fearless Prediction: XP will last just about as long as Microsoft BOB did.
...was that the MSOffice site didn't give "Death Row" as an option for that stupid fsckn paperclip.
I suspect the only reason the paperclip survived so long was that Melinda Gates was one of the people who wrote the code to lay the groundwork for this atrocity.
First off...great article. I'd love it if you wrote for my site.
PC ownership is MUCH lower in Japan than in other nations because many Japanese don't have the space for a PC in their homes
Well, you can blame Apple for not making a PowerPC followup to their Color Classic. Back in the day when the classic-format Macintosh was actually a fairly well powered machine, the Mac ruled Japan. Now that Apple no longer makes a compact Mac, and the Japanese see the alternatives, I think they are more inclined to sit this out. The Mac's Kanji support is still better than Windows' support for Kanji, although who knows if Kanjitalk exists in MacOS X. There are whole groups of people in Japan who are dedicated to hot-rodding Color Classics...here's a link to The Club For Creating The Strongest Color Classic, a place where Japanese computer geeks trade ideas for souping up Color Classics. And on the PC side there's always Sony's VAIO offerings, which seem to do a hell of a lot better in Japan than in the US.
Gore and Lieberman wanted the same thing...they are both very pro-censorship. You'd hear the very same rhetoric coming from them as you do from the Duh!bya administration.
Slashdot Mirror
This is important. DSL/Cable connections are not invincible. You WILL have downtime. Trust me. Having that failover modem connection is a Very Good Thing (tm).
In fact, right now I am using this very box with a modem only. (DSL is prohibitively expensive when you are between jobs and I don't trust cable modem) And it works beautifully. If anything, the modem connection is more tenacious than on any of my computers. It will not yield the line unless you issue it a reset command. Then you'd better yank the phone line quick, before the box redials the phone after the reset.
Anyway, I'm happy with the little box. It plays well with my Addtron 8-port switch. It plays well with my very eclectic network. It's sweet. Unless you have some really esoteric requirements for firewalling (and I don't) it's great.
Well, certainly if you are replacing DOS-based Windows with it it's a step up. But 2K is just so much more elegant than XP. 2K Pro is like a Jaguar XKE. It's very high-maintenance and picky about what you put into it, but it rewards you with swift performance and an elegant look and feel. XP is like that car Homer designed in "The Simpsons." It's got every gew-gaw and contraption and it weighs a fsckn ton and it's so damn ugly nobody but a moron would love it.
However...both are better than DOS-based Windows anyday. Less crashy. Nobody can deny that.
For instance, with my W98SE box, I can login to my Windows 2000 Server box and join the domain I set up there. It's not the same support as my W2K Pro box, but the differences are technical minutiae.
You won't be able to do that with XP Home. The only networking XP Home will be able to do is peer-to-peer, NetBEUI over TCP/IP. XP Home will NOT be able to join a domain, period. They're doing this to force companies with 2K domains to buy Pro rather than Home.
One good thing: W2K Pro CDs will drop down in price at the computer fairs when XP arrives. It's faster and better than XP and it makes 9x feel like the toy OS it is. So far, no BSODs here at Catseye Labs with W2K.
One day, we will be able to stand back and see that 2K was the high-water mark for M$ operating systems. With all the unnecessary crap that M$ is loading into XP, the ugly interface, Product Activation, phoning home, etc. etc. etc, M$ is basically doing to itself what the DOJ couldn't do. Now is the time for Linux to get its act together and make a desktop experience that is easier, better and faster than XP. Shouldn't take much. Mandrake with KDE is almost there, IMHO.
And Konqui not only works under KDE, but under several other window managers, including Ice. The combo of Konqui and Ice is pretty studly if you ask me. And slimmer than Konqui+KDE.
Yeah, I'm posting from a Windozer right now...sue me. But when I'm in Linux, it's Konqui all the way.
Might as well build 'em yourself then. I'm a total believer in building boxen myself. You can spec the parts yourself and get a machine you completely expect. Also helps when something breaks...just go to the Friendly Neighborhood Screwdriver Shop or the next computer fair and grab what you need, cheap.
Now, Apple hardware...that's a completely different story. Built to last, built to very exacting specs. I have old Macs that I'm still using which first saw the light of day in the late 1980s/early 1990s. And my G3 Blue-and-white, aka Yosemite, aka The Fisher-Price computer (the latter nickname was bestowed by my hubby) still looks and feels like it came from the future, even though I've had it since 1999.
If you want a PC, go generic. If you want a PC laptop, go IBM Thinkpad. If you want a computer which will have an awesome lifespan and will remain useful for literally decades, go Macintosh.
There are some places like that around Torrance and Gardena, in the "South Bay" area of Southern California. However, they aren't as big and the stuff they have isn't as interesting.
At the risk of being flamed, W2K still does NetBEUI. It can support not only NT4 but anything from DOS on up.
There are fancy things which require everything running W2K to be able to do, but as far as basic connectivity W2K supports everything. Even SAMBA, because SAMBA operates like SMB did in NT4.
I have no idea about XP because I don't even want to touch that mess when it comes out.
Sounds like that luser is a tool, if you know what I mean.
In NT/2K, you don't have to give lusers the equivalent of root access, which would be to put them in the Admin group. The Power User group is almost as dangerous. Chuck the luser into plain generic "Users" and lock that group down tight. Jane Luser wouldn't have been able to delete NTLDR and others.
Agreed, xNIXen are more secure from the word go. But if you take the effort you can lock down an NT/2K box, at least from stupid luser tricks like that.
Ms. Geek
----
http://www.msgeek.org/html/
http://www.directron.com/ms6215.html
(not putting a hotlink here so the goat sex traumatized won't have to worry about following it, just copy and paste into a new window)
This has built-in just about everything, but for a teeny web server or NAT box it would work. Actually my plans for this puppy are more ambitious...drop a DVD-ROM into it, shove a huge HD into it, a better sound card and a Hollywood decoder card...voila, instant TIVO box/Super-DVD player.
It's MicroStar...it's made to better standards than those evil PC Chips "Book PC" boxen.
The box is $239. It includes a mobo with built in video, (no shared RAM...4MB VRAM on the mobo) NIC and audio. The audio prolly sucks so I'll use an Ensoniq card I have lying around. It'll take a Celery or a PIII. I suggest Celery due to heat issues. It also takes standard components: standard CD-ROM, standard floppy, no "slim" or "low profile" nonsense.
No, I don't work for Directron.
----
http://www.msgeek.org/html/
Does the thing have capabilities for adding an EIDE controller to it? If you can, it would mean one of these Bitty Boxes could be used as a full-fledged server.
The possibilities are indeed interesting.
----
http://www.msgeek.org/html/
You don't know how fsckn wrong you are.
Two of the best troubleshooters in my class are female.
----
http://www.msgeek.org/html/
I think they're lying. I was able to ping the router they said was a smoking heap of wreckage during the "blackout." I think they just got DDoSed and they don't want to admit it.
Real smooth blaming a grrl tech, too. They could have just said "the tech was incompetent" rather than bringing gender into the discussion.
We'll know for sure if they're being straight with us if this happens again.
----
http://www.msgeek.org/html/
Not to make this a platform religious war or anything like that, but The Blue Man Group doesn't use Intel...it uses Macs.
Just a little irony where it's needed...
----
http://www.msgeek.org/html/
Yes there is. Try them both and then come back to the class and report what you have learned.
This makes an important point. OSX is a great standard of desktop ease of use which we should all be shooting for. The fact of the matter is that OSX and Linux aren't that far removed in regards to internals. If we can take Linux and create an environment that is as comforting and easy as OSX for newbies, we'll have something.
Mandrake running with KDE is about halfway there. I urge the folks at The Kompany to look very closely at OSX and its advantages, while retaining the good things that make KDE one of the more usable window managers of the bunch.
When we get to the point where the newbie Linux user can be as insulated from the console as the average OSX or Win2KPro user is, Linux will have arrived. With the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field (tm) and the Microsoft Foot Bullet Brigade (Activation, Hardware Fingerprinting, BSA Jackbooted Thugs, Ballmer calling Linux "Communist") making things easy for us, Linux can triumph in the end.
----
http://www.msgeek.org/html/
Damn right. Just because Daria is on MTV doesn't make it corporate pop culture.
The first episode of the current season, "Fizz-Ed", was a criticism of everything MTV stands for. And this was not the first Daria episode to critique MTV and the rest of corporate pop culture.
It has always been my view that the reason why MTV plays games with Daria's schedule is that it has been trying to kill the show. However, it remains one of MTV's most popular shows, and is only now leaving the air at the end of this current season because Glenn Eichler wants to move on and end the show before the ideas run out.
However, what will become of the show after the end of the series? It will probably disappear just as shows like Beavis and Butt-Head, Aeon Flux, The Maxx and Downtown did. MTV is not very savvy about syndication, never mind that it's a subsidiary of syndication kings Viacom. They have syndicated The Real World and that's about it.
Oddly, MTV has been more forthcoming about releasing videotapes of Daria in Europe and Australia than in the US.
Anyway, my point is that Daria has been an effective critique of corporate pop culture from inside corporate pop culture itself. Discounting the Trent/Daria "shippers" and the Fashion Club wannabes, Daria fandom "gets" this.
When Daria finally leaves the air, MTV's reason for existence will be gone.
Here are a few good links to Daria fan sites:
(no live links for the goatsex-wary...copy and paste)
----
http://www.msgeek.org/html/
It's going to be Very Bad (tm) for Fair Use if the other four of the Five Families of the International Music Industry sign on. It's also going to be Very Bad (tm) for Ahead Software GMBH, Veritas Software and hundreds of little shareware companies too. I smell a cartel forming. It doesn't smell too good.
----
http://www.msgeek.org/html/
----
http://www.msgeek.org/
Fuji CD-Rs are made for Fuji by TAIYO YUDEN. Taiyo Yuden manufactured CD-Rs are the only CD-R blanks that are worth it nowadays.
99.999% of all Taiwanese CD-Rs are crap. And yes, Imation is made in Taiwan.
----
http://www.msgeek.org/
I think I'm going to be wanting to get more...my G3 feels left out.
Support Micron/Crucial! Buy lots of RAM!!! Rambus sucks!!!
Ms. Geek (no, I was not paid for this endorsement!)
----
http://www.msgeek.org/
Tell that to the people suffering with rolling blackouts in California.
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http://www.msgeek.org/
I spent 4 months of HELL trying to get SLASH to work, and then got turned on to PHP-Nuke by the company which was hosting my SLASH site. I had my PHP-Nuke site up and running in TWO DAYS.
Yeah, there were a few holes which I had to tell the hosting company to patch, but other than that PHP-Nuke is the simplicity and functionality leader for discussion sites. Yeah, it's still a little slow on the scalability front, but Francisco is busy changing that.
If you want to create a news-discussion site, try PHP-Nuke first. You'll like it.
----
http://www.msgeek.org/
When people don't instantly adopt XP and MICROS~1 winds up with a non-saleable OS, they will be down the crapper. Remember (Unhappy)DIVX? That took about a year to die.
If MICROS~1 takes the weasel way out and suddenly finds ways to break DOS-based Windows and/or NT-based Windows with the Latest And Greatest software or hardware, there will be third-party fixes popping up like a hundred flowers blooming. And if it gets REALLY bad it will drive people right into the arms of Linux, particularly if emulation significantly improves under Linux.
So really, don't see this as a bad thing. This will anger third-party developers like Sonic Foundry because the new OS may break their audio apps. (fine way to treat the guy who wrote the multimedia code for Windows9x!) This will make these companies advise their customers NOT to "upgrade" to XP.
Fearless Prediction: XP will last just about as long as Microsoft BOB did.
----
http://www.msgeek.org/
I suspect the only reason the paperclip survived so long was that Melinda Gates was one of the people who wrote the code to lay the groundwork for this atrocity.
----
http://www.msgeek.org/
PC ownership is MUCH lower in Japan than in other nations because many Japanese don't have the space for a PC in their homes
Well, you can blame Apple for not making a PowerPC followup to their Color Classic. Back in the day when the classic-format Macintosh was actually a fairly well powered machine, the Mac ruled Japan. Now that Apple no longer makes a compact Mac, and the Japanese see the alternatives, I think they are more inclined to sit this out. The Mac's Kanji support is still better than Windows' support for Kanji, although who knows if Kanjitalk exists in MacOS X. There are whole groups of people in Japan who are dedicated to hot-rodding Color Classics...here's a link to The Club For Creating The Strongest Color Classic, a place where Japanese computer geeks trade ideas for souping up Color Classics. And on the PC side there's always Sony's VAIO offerings, which seem to do a hell of a lot better in Japan than in the US.
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http://www.msgeek.org/
I'm glad I voted Libertarian.
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http://www.msgeek.org/