I understand that the purpose of Slashdot is to encourage discourse. Unfortunately, when many posts are obvious and flame-bait replies, it's not encouraging discourse, it's wasting time (although you and others may not see it that way).
For example, several posters told me to get rid of my girlfriend. Despite what those posters may have believed, and despite whatever good intentions they may have had, dumping my girlfriend of several years is not a great solution to my problem, nor can I imagine it's a good or reasonable solution for many people out there. To the very few who would choose this path, please, speak up, and prove me wrong.
I have to disagree as well on whether the original questioner is the primary audience; when it comes to Ask Slashdot, I think the primary audience is the original poster, not the readers, since it is the original poster whose curiosity is seeking satisfaction. We differ there, but don't believe I'm attempting to say you're wrong. You do make a good point.
I hope I didn't come across as slamming every reply; I tried to make general replies across the board, some serious and some not, and while I certainly did slam some, I attempted to keep it within the realm of those posts whose replies were completely worthless. Those that replied but didn't apply to my question I tried to give gentler replies in the negative.
As an example for the above, the silent Mac mouse poster, while giving a good reply for someone who may be interested in a silent Mac mouse didn't address his reply very well. Instead of saying "get yourself a macintosh then buy this mouse," the poster could have said, "for those with a Mac, you may enjoy this mouse." Maybe I'm being a little too heavy-handed in how I think polite and relevant replies should be made. It's just my opinion.
You're right, I did have a pretty good feeling there was no such thing. I checked a number of hardware sites and online stores for such a mouse, but was unable to come up with a hit. It was something I was serious about, otherwise I wouldn't have spent the time on it. Being serious, I was hoping my serious question would garner serious replies. That turned out not to be the case, and it seems like the most serious reply (yours), while not assisting me in locating such a mouse, was only spurned on by my second attempt to be serious. Go figure.
I think where we differ most is in what we see as a "decent discussion." I've read a lot of slashdot articles, and always read the Ask Slashdot questions to try to learn new things and keep abreast of what sometimes outsmarts some very smart people, and can be heartily impressed by the level of discourse available. Unfortunately, the negative reply to positive reply ratio here seemed way too out of whack for me. Most replies consisted of either "Dump your girlfriend, she sux0rz," or "What a dumb question, who's feeding the monkeys that accept these questions?" Maybe it's my fault for not asking the most engaging question. Or maybe, since there was no such mouse, there wasn't much to discuss. All I noticed was that there were quite a few more single posts than replies to posts.
Thanks for your honest and thought out answer, nonetheless. For everyone else that posted worthwhile replies, thanks as well. For everyone who was a total dick, I hope you enjoy sucking it when the day comes you have a non-mechanical mouse.
Thanks, but I'm more interested in a mouse than a trackball. I've had a few different Microsoft mice over the years, and the noise has never been that low for me.
Thank you all for the well thought-out and insightful replies. Especially the first poster. I'd like to address some of the replies, but rather than hit them one at a time, I'll give it a single go.
Yes, I am serious. Don't look at me shocked and appalled, regarding me as some retarded freak of nature. If you think the question's stupid, don't reply. I think that if someone should stand over your shoulder and everytime you ask a question whose answer you don't know insult you and degrade you, you'd grow a little tired of it. So to all insightful posters, thanks. To all trolls, fuck off.
While I understand it's possible to modify my existing mouse, my question mainly centered on whether or not there are silent mice manufactured. Notably, I'm looking to get rid of a mouse that uses mechanical parts, because since optical mice have come about I've gone through several simply by breaking the buttons or having the cables die. So while it's possible, that's not the focus of my inquiry.
Yes, I'm happy with a scroll mouse and not a three-button mouse.
If you re-read my post, you'll see I'm not interested in using the keyboard as my mouse. For example, the ThinkGeek keyboard replaces a mouse, but I'm not interested in doing that. I simply want to have a mouse that does not make noise, not relearn how to use a keyboard as a mouse.
I don't go to bed when my SO goes to bed because I have to work for a living. Sometimes my work requires me to work at home, and sometimes into the night. But you're right, I should say "Fuck work!" go to bed, and worry about getting fired some other time!
And for those times when it's not because I'm working into the night, but rather because I worked into the evening at my actual place of business, I should just say to hell with my relaxation time, go to bed, and worry about having no time to unwind some other time!
Yes, I *was* talking about my girlfriend, not my sister, as one poster pointed out (and another corrected).
To the poster who recommended the simple steps of:
1) Buy a Mac
2) Buy a wireless Mac mouse
3) Quiet!!!!!!
Thanks, but as I mentioned in the question, the ThinkGeek keyboard is too expensive, so I don't think getting an Apple is going to help me.
I did not sing "Silent Night" when writing either this or the question.
I know a lack of feedback can cause people to press too hard, which is why I'm looking for something like the buttons on the iPod on a mouse. Pushing too hard breaks keys, which is why I don't have a mechanical mouse. The adaptation to a non-mechanical mouse and not pressint too hard should be a non-issue for someone serious about it.
It's not a foreign concept not to use the keyboard in Windows. I'm rather adept at using the keyboard only in Windows. The point is there are many things that cannot be done without a mouse, and even if I could do everything with the mouse, that wouldn't resolve the question I posed: is there a silent mouse? That's like saying "Use a banana!" when someone asks for an apple to make apple juice. You cannot make apple juice no matter how many bananas you have.
To the person who recommended I learn how to use the keyboard, please note that I already know how to use a keyboard, as you may have noticed from me typing this reply and the original question up.
I also cannot move the computer out of the room. Again, that doesn't answer the question of "is there a silent mouse?" If someone were to ask how to make their garage door quieter, you wouldn't tell them to move their garage somewhere else, would you? Unlike some people, I don't live with mommy and daddy and must make do with the space available in my 600 sq. ft. apartment. With two people living here, that means the computer goes in the bedroom.
And just in case you're planning on telling me to move, I suggest that you note what I said above and note the fact that l
No, you're not crazy, and don't listen to any of these retards who try to tell you otherwise. I experience the exact same thing.
If I open a story with 400 comments, find the bottom ten comments and immediately click to page 2, I'll see the last ten plus twenty more on page 2, even if the page is three weeks old.
Sorry, but people are not posting comments at the rate of one per second on three week old stories.
My take is that in any normal society not perverted by a system that requires children and adolescents to remain under an oppressive rule of persons older than them to maintain a steady and rigid education and employment system for the purposes of a particular market system, children of that age would be considered burgeoning adults.
In particular, take the 15 year old; in any normal society where human social systems weren't distorted, that person would already be considered an adult and would already be doing all the things that make them an adult. Why do people think adolescents rebel against authority and parents? Is it because it's ingrained in them? No, not at all. It's because they see themselves, instinctively, genetically, and as humans, as no longer being children, as having attained adulthood. Are they permitted, then, to choose what they wish, grow how they wish, and be who they wish? No, they're forced, through oppression, to follow the whims of those older than them until they are, at least, eighteen years old, for some a full nine years after they began going through the change into adulthood.
And you wonder why your kids hide things from you? Do you think that your kids act the same at school and around their friends as they act around you? Do you think that in any way your kids don't hide their true selves and their true thoughts from you at every turn?
All those pretty kids who share everything with their parents and who think of their parents as their best friends and closest confidants are the exception, not the rule. Your kids are no different, you just don't want to see that. You want to keep them under your thumb, ostensibly to "protect" them. I say you're not protecting anything except your conscience and perhaps your standing in the community. I say you're ruining them and teaching them the same vicious cycle in which you're currently engaged.
You're a hop skip and jump away from being hated by your kids. And no, it's not a phase. It's something you cause.
Check PC-Rdist out. We used them in about five labs to sync about 200-300 PCs running from Windows 95 to 98 to 2000 to XP. It's really fast, works extremely well, and has a lot of options that will let you customize how it runs. For example, if they're computers for students and students are prone to accidentally leaving their files on the PC, you can set it so when it runs it will save all.DOC files less than 1 MB (or whatever size) in a particular folder of your choosing, and after a week of being there they will be deleted.
Remarkably, it's pretty extensible. And it runs (for 2000 and XP) as a startup script through group policy, so there's no getting around it.
Unless you just so happened to leave for work at 7:30 am every day. Wow, so does the guy three blocks away! Wow, you both end up at the same stop light pretty much at the same time, five times a week! Wow, now you're in pound-you-in-the-ass camp when some guy you've never met who liked to stick to his schedule as well continues to use his red-light fixer!
One of the features touted by Apple is that when you buy from iTMS, you can copy that file to an unlimited number of iPods and unlimited number of times and it will always play on those iPods no matter what.
How exactly are the iPods getting around the DRM and what's to stop someone from making any of the iTMS files think they're actually being played on an iPod and not on a computer?
I can't agree more. I bought a murse (rhymes with purse) recently. I carry it everywhere, and believe it or not, getting my keys, wallet, cell phone, book, iPod, footbag, glasses and chewing gum out of my pockets and hands is the greatest thing ever.
I swore for years that men should have purses too, and that women got a better deal than men in that category. I started noticing murses around, but didn't pay them much mind because in my head all I could think was "backpack." I finally came around to my senses and realized that it was now fashionable and acceptable for men to carry a purse, or in the case of a man purse, a murse.
In other words, you have a vested interest, thus your complete lack of objectivity should not surprise me...
No, I do not have a vested interest. I work in IT at the hospital, and it just so happens that my customers are those very doctors, nurses, and all of the administrators. If the doctor force were to drop off by 80% (or is it 90%? You seem to change your number), I'd only end up supporting MORE computers, these miracle machines that you portend will come about that can diagnose someone after they tap on the keyboard.
Someone else makes an excellent point that you seem to overlook in your thought process on the subject: who is going to actually put their hands on the patient and listen to the patient and figure out what's wrong with the patient? Not a computer; if I complain to a computer that my back hurts, and it asks me "At what lumbar do you experience pain?" I'm not going to have any clue. The doctor who can touch my back and ask me "Here? Here? Here?" can tell me in ten seconds, and ask me all the follow up questions to diagnose me.
To go even a step further, I can't imagine a scenario (given that I'm not trying very hard, either) where patients would be allowed to come in, type their symptoms into a computer and get an accurate diagnosis without actually having a doctor or nurse take a look at them. What if the computer says you have chronic neck pain, prescribes Tylenol, and six weeks later you die from meningitis? What accountability does a computer have, especially if all the computers are the same, using the same information? You can take action against a doctor, but if you've fired 80% of your doctors and the one computer with the one database kills someone, how do you take 80% of your workforce offline during an investigation?
RTFP. I didn't say that each doctor would see more patients. The whole point is that most patients do not need to see a doctor at all! The job performed by most doctors can be easily performed by a machine.
In case you haven't been paying attention, yes, everyone who is ill enough to come to a hospital needs to see a person. Check the last few lines of the last paragraph in case you missed it.
As for your comment on the restrictions placed on nurses, in many places nurses CAN be PCPs, and further there are people called PAs, Physician Assistants, who have completed quite a bit of education but are not doctors, who also can be PCPs. They often are able to treat patients that come in and spare the doctors from seeing the patients, but also often have to refer the patients to doctors for specialized treatment.
You seem to be genuinely lacking knowledge about the bulk of what happens in hospitals. You've probably gone to your private physician for checkups and maybe a few specialized treatments in your life. If you actually walk into clinics in a real hospital, you'll see that a lot of what happens needs to be seen by a doctor. Doctors are specialized for a reason; even GPs of Internal Medicine are specialized. They do more than take blood pressure and heart rates and temperatures and read the patient's list of symptoms. They actually have to interact with the patients to determine what is wrong because patients, quite often, know less about their bodies than they know about the last season of Friends.
It may sound like I hate doctors, but that is not true at all. They are just too expensive, given the services provided by most of them. I have nothing against paying a surgeon a lot, but hundres of thousands a year to say "turn your head and cough"... um hello...
I don't think you hate doctors, I think you just misunderstand the role doctors play in the health care industry. Some are too expensive, and it's also symptomatic of high insurance premiums, charged by... insurance companies! Believe it or not, doctors aren't all after the bottom line and instead are actually interested in their
I get the impression you don't work in the health care industry. As someone who does work for a city and county run hospital in a very large metropolitan area, I can tell you that your lines about hospitals operating with "maybe 20% the number of doctors they currently employ" is a big hunking wad of crap.
If you actually visit a hospital and work with doctors and nurses on a daily basis, you will see that those who are not currently doing pure research work, but instead clinical work, are constantly in contact with patients or administering the programs they work with. Doctors and nurses are acutely involved in the care of patients spend a huge amount of time with them. Having one doctor take on five times as many patients is not going to work simply because he has access to an online database. In fact, there has been research done, especially after mortality rates increase in individual hospitals in an effort to improve the care given at those hospitals, which shows that as the number of patients each nurse is responsible for increases, the mortality rate increases by double-digit percentages, especially in ICUs.
You seem to be greatly confused about just how weighed down with information doctors and nurses are; doctors, for one, go to school that long for a reason. The human body is a very large and complex set of systems that isn't easily mastered. It's simple to sit at a terminal and type in a list of symptoms; it's quite another thing to know how the diagnosis pertains to the patient, whether or not the diagnosis is correct, and how the treatment will affect the patient. Doctors aren't simple databases that accept symptoms and wads of cash as an input and spit out diagnoses and treatments.
You betray your own argument with this line, as well:
Many hospitals are owned by corporations and they will not be able to resist moving to technology to increase their bottom line, much to the dismay of the AMA and medical schools
By removing doctors to increase their bottom line, wouldn't they then still be charging the same, or at least a similar, amount? You state that "technology," this magical panacea, will cause the demand for doctors to go down (wrong, because care-provider to patient ratios are definitely linked to the health of patients), and again cause the salaries for existing doctors to go down (in some weird scenario of yours, because it seems to me that when a field becomes more specialized, the salaries of the specialists goes up), which will drive down the demand for medical education (which doesn't make sense either because of the above and because people enter health care, every now and then, out of the pure pleasure of helping others, not out of obligation), which will drive down the price (which again doesn't make sense because universities are either private or public: public tuition rates generally do not fluctuate in that manner, and private schools are going to charge private school costs, the same as they always have; you don't think that Art History majors pay significantly less than Biology/Pre-Med majors at private schools, do you? Why then would the cost of post-grad private education go down?). If what you say is true and those costs do go down and the hospitals do remove doctors, how can they increase their bottom line by any way except charging more than the care costs?
It seems to me that what you're saying is it's the insurance companies and the health care institutions that are over-charging and that they will continue to do that no matter what happens with the number of docs out there. So who's to blame? The doctor who puts in 80 hour weeks and has to juggle 20 patients a day, and as a reward for improving the health of people is given the opportunity to own a Porsche, or the executive of a health insurance company who said little Jimmy couldn't get the liver transplant he needs to survive because mommy's health plan doesn't cover that, and is given the opportunity to own a Porshe a
Maybe I'm missing something, but if you hand out little wireless enabled gadgets to the audience that are not securely tethered to the location where they'll be used, aren't you asking for them to be stolen?
Obligatory: anyone want to get ahold of these and get ahold of a free wireless device?
Yes, if you set your voice mail message to use the triple tone indicating that the number has been disconnected then it will take you off their list.
I've gone one better and found an entire WAV of the "We're sorry" message online, and have that for my voice mail message. Now, not only do telemarketers not have me on any lists, but only the people I know and want to have call me leave me messages.
If you'd like the WAV or can't find just the three tone WAV (you can have just the three tones then put in your real voice mail message; the telemarketing systems won't notice), post a reply here and I'll work out a way to get it to you.
Sorry, but Zone Alarm and Sygate are not real firewalls. They're cheap hooks. A real firewall doesn't run in your system tray; it runs in a room, by itself.
Here's a question that I've wanted answered for a long time, which I've been unable to get answered adequately:
What is the difference between a class A, class B and class C address/block?
I read several answers to this question, one of which was on howstuffworks.com (which I now cannot find), and that one said that it depended on the numbering: anything that began with 1-12(?) was class A, 12-190(?) was class B, and anything above that was class C. Other answers said it depended on how many subnets you have, for example 10.x.x.x would be class A, 128.218.x.x would be class B, and 66.54.12.x would be class C (those are all made up addresses, the numbers had nothing to do with it).
What's most embarrassing is that it was a question on a post-interview questionairre (for a job I subsequently got). I still don't know if I got that answer right though. Can someone answer that question authoritatively for me?
...it sounds like you have a great way to get high schoolers to have an understanding and maybe an interest in computer programming. You already know what to present, because it's something you've been doing for years. What you need to figure out is that when it comes to children of the ages you mention it's going to take much less of what you like and much more of what they like.
Judging by what you wrote, you don't have any plan for presenting the material. You have an idea of what to present to each, but no plan on how to present it. I suggest you speak to the teachers of these students about how best to interact with them. Children are the worst critics and the easiest audience to lose. If what you do isn't interesting to children, they're going to make it known by either falling asleep, biting you, or biting their neighbor.
Bottom line is the best person to tell you how to engage these kids is the person who spends eight hours a day in front of them.
On a mildly related note, I don't think you have a chance in hell of getting the kindergarteners to provide even a modicum of interest. "Look kids! See how I'm typing even though none of your hands are big enough to use a keyboard? Look kids! See the words I'm typing that you lack the ability to read? Look kids! See how I'm putting strange characters around the words you can't read to change the syntax into a broken mess? Look kids! See how I'm trying to get you to understand nested functions which is a mathematical concept you won't learn for another four years?"
I could go on forever, but I won't. I just advise you to know your audience. The youngest won't care or be able to follow, the third-graders probably won't care or be able to follow, and the few fifth graders who care and follow will be at the level of an adult user who doesn't understand computers but without all the other worldly knowledge to enable them.
You have a very tough crowd with very low chances of being anything but a total bore. Good luck. And remember: know your audience.
First, require PPPoE. I know it sounds terrible, but in the long run it will save you problems (because you'll be able to trace network issues not only back to a port, not only to a MAC address, but back to a student record). That should solve the "they've already put an infected device on the network" problem.
For the "something else," you have to get creative. I know I'm probably overlooking some well-devised currently existing system, but if you created a system whereby the PPPoE client would not function with that particular computer until you (or one of your student flunkies) manually entered an OK password or token, you would be able to stop the devices from getting on the network.
The reason why I mention the above is if it requires a visit from someone to connect it to the network, you have the opportunity to verify the patch is installed. There should be a get-around mechanism as well, though, to allow certain clients (by MAC address connected to that one particular port only) to be excluded from this requirement (for all the non-MS computers, like Macs and Linux, and the occasional person running BSD who probably shouldn't be allowed on the network anyway because you know that motherfucker's just going to learn everything he possibly can about the place). If the issue ever arose that someone running something other than Windows switched to Windows on that PC and caused blaster havoc (which shouldn't be the case, since nearly every client should already be patched and you're doing filtering at the router), it would be easy to track them down.
I imagine you likely have an install faire every year or semester for all the new and incoming students, so you can sell them network cards and install them for them if they've never been on a network, and to briefly orient them to network policies like no-Kazaa, no haxoring, etc. This would be the perfect opportunity 1) to patch 90% of the incoming Windows computers and 2) to configure the client on the stations so when they take it to their room they can just sign on (likely with their campus email account and password).
You show me someone who uses DeCSS to rip DVDs and I'll show you someone who uses a pacifier to crack open eggs.
Show me someone who uses DeCSS to rip DVDs released in the last two years and I'll show you someone who has a pacifier and no egg. DeCSS can't even decrypt most DVDs.
Most DVD ripping programs make DeCSS look like crap, which it is.
I'll be honest: I'm stuck in a Windows shop with a bunch of people whose prevalent attitude is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." As a result, since I'm the only one who's had experience dealing with getting the shit out there to the clients to prevent this sort of thing, I've been tasked with getting a solution made so we can roll out the patch remotely.
Here are the restrictions: we don't have (and won't pay for/setup) SMS, and we are using Active Directory. I've already got a GPO setup so we can distributed SP4 via Group Policy, but does anyone know of a way to distribute security updates by a GPO? Unfortunately, Microsoft only provides an EXE, no.MSI file for the GPO.
I know it's a long shot, but I'm interested in what other shops are doing. Sadly, WinINSTALL LE for making MSIs doesn't function. Anyone have any ideas?
Obviously not. But you are the one claiming that God doesn't exist, not me. Are you able to justify your claim or not?
You don't seem to realize that I'm not in a position to prove that. One cannot prove a negative; you're attempting to get me to say "I can't prove it," and you're right, I can't. It's not possible. The next step is likely "If you can't prove it, you can't discount it." Bzzt. I have no reason to believe it, and as I already said, the only way I'd believe it is with hard, solid proof.
And what might that be? Get god to look me in the eye and say "UnrefinedLayman, I do exist. Watch me smite someone!"
Nothing like it at all. At least I threw in some support for my arguments before I called on you.
By the way, I don't have to disprove god's existence. I'm not the one claiming god exists.
Look! Invisible sky fairies! What, you don't believe me? Prove they're not there!
It's the fantastic lack of evidence that leads one to disregard the possibility of god, just like sky fairies.
I think it's safe to say at this point that unless you can prove the existence of god, I'm not interested. Interpretations, perceptions, and faith won't prove anything. I need the hard solid proof -- and you can rag on me all you want for that.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand that the purpose of Slashdot is to encourage discourse. Unfortunately, when many posts are obvious and flame-bait replies, it's not encouraging discourse, it's wasting time (although you and others may not see it that way).
For example, several posters told me to get rid of my girlfriend. Despite what those posters may have believed, and despite whatever good intentions they may have had, dumping my girlfriend of several years is not a great solution to my problem, nor can I imagine it's a good or reasonable solution for many people out there. To the very few who would choose this path, please, speak up, and prove me wrong.
I have to disagree as well on whether the original questioner is the primary audience; when it comes to Ask Slashdot, I think the primary audience is the original poster, not the readers, since it is the original poster whose curiosity is seeking satisfaction. We differ there, but don't believe I'm attempting to say you're wrong. You do make a good point.
I hope I didn't come across as slamming every reply; I tried to make general replies across the board, some serious and some not, and while I certainly did slam some, I attempted to keep it within the realm of those posts whose replies were completely worthless. Those that replied but didn't apply to my question I tried to give gentler replies in the negative.
As an example for the above, the silent Mac mouse poster, while giving a good reply for someone who may be interested in a silent Mac mouse didn't address his reply very well. Instead of saying "get yourself a macintosh then buy this mouse," the poster could have said, "for those with a Mac, you may enjoy this mouse." Maybe I'm being a little too heavy-handed in how I think polite and relevant replies should be made. It's just my opinion.
You're right, I did have a pretty good feeling there was no such thing. I checked a number of hardware sites and online stores for such a mouse, but was unable to come up with a hit. It was something I was serious about, otherwise I wouldn't have spent the time on it. Being serious, I was hoping my serious question would garner serious replies. That turned out not to be the case, and it seems like the most serious reply (yours), while not assisting me in locating such a mouse, was only spurned on by my second attempt to be serious. Go figure.
I think where we differ most is in what we see as a "decent discussion." I've read a lot of slashdot articles, and always read the Ask Slashdot questions to try to learn new things and keep abreast of what sometimes outsmarts some very smart people, and can be heartily impressed by the level of discourse available. Unfortunately, the negative reply to positive reply ratio here seemed way too out of whack for me. Most replies consisted of either "Dump your girlfriend, she sux0rz," or "What a dumb question, who's feeding the monkeys that accept these questions?" Maybe it's my fault for not asking the most engaging question. Or maybe, since there was no such mouse, there wasn't much to discuss. All I noticed was that there were quite a few more single posts than replies to posts.
Thanks for your honest and thought out answer, nonetheless. For everyone else that posted worthwhile replies, thanks as well. For everyone who was a total dick, I hope you enjoy sucking it when the day comes you have a non-mechanical mouse.
Peace
Thanks, but I'm more interested in a mouse than a trackball. I've had a few different Microsoft mice over the years, and the noise has never been that low for me.
Thanks though.
Thank you all for the well thought-out and insightful replies. Especially the first poster. I'd like to address some of the replies, but rather than hit them one at a time, I'll give it a single go.
Yes, I am serious. Don't look at me shocked and appalled, regarding me as some retarded freak of nature. If you think the question's stupid, don't reply. I think that if someone should stand over your shoulder and everytime you ask a question whose answer you don't know insult you and degrade you, you'd grow a little tired of it. So to all insightful posters, thanks. To all trolls, fuck off.
While I understand it's possible to modify my existing mouse, my question mainly centered on whether or not there are silent mice manufactured. Notably, I'm looking to get rid of a mouse that uses mechanical parts, because since optical mice have come about I've gone through several simply by breaking the buttons or having the cables die. So while it's possible, that's not the focus of my inquiry.
Yes, I'm happy with a scroll mouse and not a three-button mouse.
If you re-read my post, you'll see I'm not interested in using the keyboard as my mouse. For example, the ThinkGeek keyboard replaces a mouse, but I'm not interested in doing that. I simply want to have a mouse that does not make noise, not relearn how to use a keyboard as a mouse.
I don't go to bed when my SO goes to bed because I have to work for a living. Sometimes my work requires me to work at home, and sometimes into the night. But you're right, I should say "Fuck work!" go to bed, and worry about getting fired some other time!
And for those times when it's not because I'm working into the night, but rather because I worked into the evening at my actual place of business, I should just say to hell with my relaxation time, go to bed, and worry about having no time to unwind some other time!
Yes, I *was* talking about my girlfriend, not my sister, as one poster pointed out (and another corrected).
To the poster who recommended the simple steps of:
1) Buy a Mac
2) Buy a wireless Mac mouse
3) Quiet!!!!!!
Thanks, but as I mentioned in the question, the ThinkGeek keyboard is too expensive, so I don't think getting an Apple is going to help me.
I did not sing "Silent Night" when writing either this or the question.
I know a lack of feedback can cause people to press too hard, which is why I'm looking for something like the buttons on the iPod on a mouse. Pushing too hard breaks keys, which is why I don't have a mechanical mouse. The adaptation to a non-mechanical mouse and not pressint too hard should be a non-issue for someone serious about it.
It's not a foreign concept not to use the keyboard in Windows. I'm rather adept at using the keyboard only in Windows. The point is there are many things that cannot be done without a mouse, and even if I could do everything with the mouse, that wouldn't resolve the question I posed: is there a silent mouse? That's like saying "Use a banana!" when someone asks for an apple to make apple juice. You cannot make apple juice no matter how many bananas you have.
To the person who recommended I learn how to use the keyboard, please note that I already know how to use a keyboard, as you may have noticed from me typing this reply and the original question up.
I also cannot move the computer out of the room. Again, that doesn't answer the question of "is there a silent mouse?" If someone were to ask how to make their garage door quieter, you wouldn't tell them to move their garage somewhere else, would you? Unlike some people, I don't live with mommy and daddy and must make do with the space available in my 600 sq. ft. apartment. With two people living here, that means the computer goes in the bedroom.
And just in case you're planning on telling me to move, I suggest that you note what I said above and note the fact that l
No, you're not crazy, and don't listen to any of these retards who try to tell you otherwise. I experience the exact same thing.
If I open a story with 400 comments, find the bottom ten comments and immediately click to page 2, I'll see the last ten plus twenty more on page 2, even if the page is three weeks old.
Sorry, but people are not posting comments at the rate of one per second on three week old stories.
With the ultimate goal being that you have nothing of which to be ashamed, meaning you shouldn't do certain things because they're shameful.
Shame as a weapon.
My take is that in any normal society not perverted by a system that requires children and adolescents to remain under an oppressive rule of persons older than them to maintain a steady and rigid education and employment system for the purposes of a particular market system, children of that age would be considered burgeoning adults.
In particular, take the 15 year old; in any normal society where human social systems weren't distorted, that person would already be considered an adult and would already be doing all the things that make them an adult. Why do people think adolescents rebel against authority and parents? Is it because it's ingrained in them? No, not at all. It's because they see themselves, instinctively, genetically, and as humans, as no longer being children, as having attained adulthood. Are they permitted, then, to choose what they wish, grow how they wish, and be who they wish? No, they're forced, through oppression, to follow the whims of those older than them until they are, at least, eighteen years old, for some a full nine years after they began going through the change into adulthood.
And you wonder why your kids hide things from you? Do you think that your kids act the same at school and around their friends as they act around you? Do you think that in any way your kids don't hide their true selves and their true thoughts from you at every turn?
All those pretty kids who share everything with their parents and who think of their parents as their best friends and closest confidants are the exception, not the rule. Your kids are no different, you just don't want to see that. You want to keep them under your thumb, ostensibly to "protect" them. I say you're not protecting anything except your conscience and perhaps your standing in the community. I say you're ruining them and teaching them the same vicious cycle in which you're currently engaged.
You're a hop skip and jump away from being hated by your kids. And no, it's not a phase. It's something you cause.
You must be a time traveler also, because the build of Windows 2000, build 2195, that went gold, didn't go gold until December 17th, 1999.
The version available in summer of 99 was build 2151.
Whatever you had, it wasn't what you think.
Check PC-Rdist out. We used them in about five labs to sync about 200-300 PCs running from Windows 95 to 98 to 2000 to XP. It's really fast, works extremely well, and has a lot of options that will let you customize how it runs. For example, if they're computers for students and students are prone to accidentally leaving their files on the PC, you can set it so when it runs it will save all .DOC files less than 1 MB (or whatever size) in a particular folder of your choosing, and after a week of being there they will be deleted.
Remarkably, it's pretty extensible. And it runs (for 2000 and XP) as a startup script through group policy, so there's no getting around it.
At least give it a look.
Unless you just so happened to leave for work at 7:30 am every day. Wow, so does the guy three blocks away! Wow, you both end up at the same stop light pretty much at the same time, five times a week! Wow, now you're in pound-you-in-the-ass camp when some guy you've never met who liked to stick to his schedule as well continues to use his red-light fixer!
Good thing there're scapegoats!
One of the features touted by Apple is that when you buy from iTMS, you can copy that file to an unlimited number of iPods and unlimited number of times and it will always play on those iPods no matter what.
How exactly are the iPods getting around the DRM and what's to stop someone from making any of the iTMS files think they're actually being played on an iPod and not on a computer?
I can't agree more. I bought a murse (rhymes with purse) recently. I carry it everywhere, and believe it or not, getting my keys, wallet, cell phone, book, iPod, footbag, glasses and chewing gum out of my pockets and hands is the greatest thing ever.
I swore for years that men should have purses too, and that women got a better deal than men in that category. I started noticing murses around, but didn't pay them much mind because in my head all I could think was "backpack." I finally came around to my senses and realized that it was now fashionable and acceptable for men to carry a purse, or in the case of a man purse, a murse.
Download the WAV here
No, I do not have a vested interest. I work in IT at the hospital, and it just so happens that my customers are those very doctors, nurses, and all of the administrators. If the doctor force were to drop off by 80% (or is it 90%? You seem to change your number), I'd only end up supporting MORE computers, these miracle machines that you portend will come about that can diagnose someone after they tap on the keyboard.
Someone else makes an excellent point that you seem to overlook in your thought process on the subject: who is going to actually put their hands on the patient and listen to the patient and figure out what's wrong with the patient? Not a computer; if I complain to a computer that my back hurts, and it asks me "At what lumbar do you experience pain?" I'm not going to have any clue. The doctor who can touch my back and ask me "Here? Here? Here?" can tell me in ten seconds, and ask me all the follow up questions to diagnose me.
To go even a step further, I can't imagine a scenario (given that I'm not trying very hard, either) where patients would be allowed to come in, type their symptoms into a computer and get an accurate diagnosis without actually having a doctor or nurse take a look at them. What if the computer says you have chronic neck pain, prescribes Tylenol, and six weeks later you die from meningitis? What accountability does a computer have, especially if all the computers are the same, using the same information? You can take action against a doctor, but if you've fired 80% of your doctors and the one computer with the one database kills someone, how do you take 80% of your workforce offline during an investigation?
In case you haven't been paying attention, yes, everyone who is ill enough to come to a hospital needs to see a person. Check the last few lines of the last paragraph in case you missed it.
As for your comment on the restrictions placed on nurses, in many places nurses CAN be PCPs, and further there are people called PAs, Physician Assistants, who have completed quite a bit of education but are not doctors, who also can be PCPs. They often are able to treat patients that come in and spare the doctors from seeing the patients, but also often have to refer the patients to doctors for specialized treatment.
You seem to be genuinely lacking knowledge about the bulk of what happens in hospitals. You've probably gone to your private physician for checkups and maybe a few specialized treatments in your life. If you actually walk into clinics in a real hospital, you'll see that a lot of what happens needs to be seen by a doctor. Doctors are specialized for a reason; even GPs of Internal Medicine are specialized. They do more than take blood pressure and heart rates and temperatures and read the patient's list of symptoms. They actually have to interact with the patients to determine what is wrong because patients, quite often, know less about their bodies than they know about the last season of Friends.
I don't think you hate doctors, I think you just misunderstand the role doctors play in the health care industry. Some are too expensive, and it's also symptomatic of high insurance premiums, charged by... insurance companies! Believe it or not, doctors aren't all after the bottom line and instead are actually interested in their
If you actually visit a hospital and work with doctors and nurses on a daily basis, you will see that those who are not currently doing pure research work, but instead clinical work, are constantly in contact with patients or administering the programs they work with. Doctors and nurses are acutely involved in the care of patients spend a huge amount of time with them. Having one doctor take on five times as many patients is not going to work simply because he has access to an online database. In fact, there has been research done, especially after mortality rates increase in individual hospitals in an effort to improve the care given at those hospitals, which shows that as the number of patients each nurse is responsible for increases, the mortality rate increases by double-digit percentages, especially in ICUs.
You seem to be greatly confused about just how weighed down with information doctors and nurses are; doctors, for one, go to school that long for a reason. The human body is a very large and complex set of systems that isn't easily mastered. It's simple to sit at a terminal and type in a list of symptoms; it's quite another thing to know how the diagnosis pertains to the patient, whether or not the diagnosis is correct, and how the treatment will affect the patient. Doctors aren't simple databases that accept symptoms and wads of cash as an input and spit out diagnoses and treatments.
You betray your own argument with this line, as well:
By removing doctors to increase their bottom line, wouldn't they then still be charging the same, or at least a similar, amount? You state that "technology," this magical panacea, will cause the demand for doctors to go down (wrong, because care-provider to patient ratios are definitely linked to the health of patients), and again cause the salaries for existing doctors to go down (in some weird scenario of yours, because it seems to me that when a field becomes more specialized, the salaries of the specialists goes up), which will drive down the demand for medical education (which doesn't make sense either because of the above and because people enter health care, every now and then, out of the pure pleasure of helping others, not out of obligation), which will drive down the price (which again doesn't make sense because universities are either private or public: public tuition rates generally do not fluctuate in that manner, and private schools are going to charge private school costs, the same as they always have; you don't think that Art History majors pay significantly less than Biology/Pre-Med majors at private schools, do you? Why then would the cost of post-grad private education go down?). If what you say is true and those costs do go down and the hospitals do remove doctors, how can they increase their bottom line by any way except charging more than the care costs?
It seems to me that what you're saying is it's the insurance companies and the health care institutions that are over-charging and that they will continue to do that no matter what happens with the number of docs out there. So who's to blame? The doctor who puts in 80 hour weeks and has to juggle 20 patients a day, and as a reward for improving the health of people is given the opportunity to own a Porsche, or the executive of a health insurance company who said little Jimmy couldn't get the liver transplant he needs to survive because mommy's health plan doesn't cover that, and is given the opportunity to own a Porshe a
Maybe I'm missing something, but if you hand out little wireless enabled gadgets to the audience that are not securely tethered to the location where they'll be used, aren't you asking for them to be stolen?
Obligatory: anyone want to get ahold of these and get ahold of a free wireless device?
Yes, if you set your voice mail message to use the triple tone indicating that the number has been disconnected then it will take you off their list.
I've gone one better and found an entire WAV of the "We're sorry" message online, and have that for my voice mail message. Now, not only do telemarketers not have me on any lists, but only the people I know and want to have call me leave me messages.
If you'd like the WAV or can't find just the three tone WAV (you can have just the three tones then put in your real voice mail message; the telemarketing systems won't notice), post a reply here and I'll work out a way to get it to you.
Here's a question that I've wanted answered for a long time, which I've been unable to get answered adequately:
What is the difference between a class A, class B and class C address/block?
I read several answers to this question, one of which was on howstuffworks.com (which I now cannot find), and that one said that it depended on the numbering: anything that began with 1-12(?) was class A, 12-190(?) was class B, and anything above that was class C. Other answers said it depended on how many subnets you have, for example 10.x.x.x would be class A, 128.218.x.x would be class B, and 66.54.12.x would be class C (those are all made up addresses, the numbers had nothing to do with it).
What's most embarrassing is that it was a question on a post-interview questionairre (for a job I subsequently got). I still don't know if I got that answer right though. Can someone answer that question authoritatively for me?
...it sounds like you have a great way to get high schoolers to have an understanding and maybe an interest in computer programming. You already know what to present, because it's something you've been doing for years. What you need to figure out is that when it comes to children of the ages you mention it's going to take much less of what you like and much more of what they like.
Judging by what you wrote, you don't have any plan for presenting the material. You have an idea of what to present to each, but no plan on how to present it. I suggest you speak to the teachers of these students about how best to interact with them. Children are the worst critics and the easiest audience to lose. If what you do isn't interesting to children, they're going to make it known by either falling asleep, biting you, or biting their neighbor.
Bottom line is the best person to tell you how to engage these kids is the person who spends eight hours a day in front of them.
On a mildly related note, I don't think you have a chance in hell of getting the kindergarteners to provide even a modicum of interest. "Look kids! See how I'm typing even though none of your hands are big enough to use a keyboard? Look kids! See the words I'm typing that you lack the ability to read? Look kids! See how I'm putting strange characters around the words you can't read to change the syntax into a broken mess? Look kids! See how I'm trying to get you to understand nested functions which is a mathematical concept you won't learn for another four years?"
I could go on forever, but I won't. I just advise you to know your audience. The youngest won't care or be able to follow, the third-graders probably won't care or be able to follow, and the few fifth graders who care and follow will be at the level of an adult user who doesn't understand computers but without all the other worldly knowledge to enable them.
You have a very tough crowd with very low chances of being anything but a total bore. Good luck. And remember: know your audience.
First, require PPPoE. I know it sounds terrible, but in the long run it will save you problems (because you'll be able to trace network issues not only back to a port, not only to a MAC address, but back to a student record). That should solve the "they've already put an infected device on the network" problem.
For the "something else," you have to get creative. I know I'm probably overlooking some well-devised currently existing system, but if you created a system whereby the PPPoE client would not function with that particular computer until you (or one of your student flunkies) manually entered an OK password or token, you would be able to stop the devices from getting on the network.
The reason why I mention the above is if it requires a visit from someone to connect it to the network, you have the opportunity to verify the patch is installed. There should be a get-around mechanism as well, though, to allow certain clients (by MAC address connected to that one particular port only) to be excluded from this requirement (for all the non-MS computers, like Macs and Linux, and the occasional person running BSD who probably shouldn't be allowed on the network anyway because you know that motherfucker's just going to learn everything he possibly can about the place). If the issue ever arose that someone running something other than Windows switched to Windows on that PC and caused blaster havoc (which shouldn't be the case, since nearly every client should already be patched and you're doing filtering at the router), it would be easy to track them down.
I imagine you likely have an install faire every year or semester for all the new and incoming students, so you can sell them network cards and install them for them if they've never been on a network, and to briefly orient them to network policies like no-Kazaa, no haxoring, etc. This would be the perfect opportunity 1) to patch 90% of the incoming Windows computers and 2) to configure the client on the stations so when they take it to their room they can just sign on (likely with their campus email account and password).
You show me someone who uses DeCSS to rip DVDs and I'll show you someone who uses a pacifier to crack open eggs.
Show me someone who uses DeCSS to rip DVDs released in the last two years and I'll show you someone who has a pacifier and no egg. DeCSS can't even decrypt most DVDs.
Most DVD ripping programs make DeCSS look like crap, which it is.
I'll be honest: I'm stuck in a Windows shop with a bunch of people whose prevalent attitude is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." As a result, since I'm the only one who's had experience dealing with getting the shit out there to the clients to prevent this sort of thing, I've been tasked with getting a solution made so we can roll out the patch remotely.
.MSI file for the GPO.
Here are the restrictions: we don't have (and won't pay for/setup) SMS, and we are using Active Directory. I've already got a GPO setup so we can distributed SP4 via Group Policy, but does anyone know of a way to distribute security updates by a GPO? Unfortunately, Microsoft only provides an EXE, no
I know it's a long shot, but I'm interested in what other shops are doing. Sadly, WinINSTALL LE for making MSIs doesn't function. Anyone have any ideas?
Obviously not. But you are the one claiming that God doesn't exist, not me. Are you able to justify your claim or not? You don't seem to realize that I'm not in a position to prove that. One cannot prove a negative; you're attempting to get me to say "I can't prove it," and you're right, I can't. It's not possible. The next step is likely "If you can't prove it, you can't discount it." Bzzt. I have no reason to believe it, and as I already said, the only way I'd believe it is with hard, solid proof.
And what might that be? Get god to look me in the eye and say "UnrefinedLayman, I do exist. Watch me smite someone!"
Then we'll talk.
Nothing like it at all. At least I threw in some support for my arguments before I called on you.
By the way, I don't have to disprove god's existence. I'm not the one claiming god exists.
Look! Invisible sky fairies! What, you don't believe me? Prove they're not there!
It's the fantastic lack of evidence that leads one to disregard the possibility of god, just like sky fairies.
I think it's safe to say at this point that unless you can prove the existence of god, I'm not interested. Interpretations, perceptions, and faith won't prove anything. I need the hard solid proof -- and you can rag on me all you want for that.