Google up CloneCD. It basically lets you rip a cd to an image and then mount the image as a virtual cdrom drive.
Not only does this make my desktop life much easier, I no longer have to haul a folder of CDs everywhere with my laptop - backpack space saved. (at the expense of hd space, but hd space is cheap.)
The only problems are with games that a) expect the game cd always to be in the drive letter it was installed from or, b) react badly to being alt-tabbed out of but need you to switch CDs (you can sometimes get around this by creating multiple virtual drives and mounting *all* the images)
> If somebody asks where IE went, tell them that it was removed for security reasons
And what if that's the pointy-haired CEO, who screams and bellows (and fires people) until he gets IE (with no security protection), Outlook Express, etc?
When you tell him it's a security risk, he says that's what he has computer staff for and implies you're incompetant if you can't make it completely secure. (IE he'll fire you and keep firing until he finds someone who just won't tell him the truth.)
Avant browser *is* IE, in all the ways that matter. It's just a wrapper around the same engine. So if you're feeling really good about throwing out IE... you didn't.
> As far as I can tell, all "centrino" is is a lower speed CPU notebook with a built in 802.11 board built in.
Nonononono. Centrino gooooooooood.
Yes, it's a lower mhz, but we all know about the mhz myth, right? What it is is a very efficient chip (much like an AMD one. Imagine that.) that runs very cool and with low power draw. (Unlike, say, a desktop P4 3.06ghz HT chip stuffed into a laptop; if you don't know why that's the dumbest idea since invading Russia in winter, you're beyond help.)
I just got my hands on a Dell Inspiron 600m, 1.5 ghz P-M. I could do without the Centrino sticker (what is that thing supposed to be, a squashed butterfly?); the built in 802.11b/g card is windows dressing (I'm usually on wired anyway); what I like about it is the 5lb travel weight (down from 8 with my last one), the battery life (4-5 hours with the screen brightness turned down) and the cool running chip (the thing barely even gets warm). Oh, and gaming about as well as my P4 1.6 did with a Geforce 3.
yeah, Centrino has a weird name and a relentless marketing campaign, but under all the hype, there is substance.
The reference to "enough microarchitectural tweaks to kill a horse" was bad enough, but now this:
We start with memory performance, because these benchmarks are synthetic [...] and not always indicative of real-world performance. They [...], however, [...] present the opportunity to make all sorts of colorful graphs.
The rules may have changed since I worked in the biz; it's been a few years.
As I recall...
The retailers have rules they have to abide to for selling these OEM version. I'm guessing they'll lose the right to sell them if it's discovered they sell them without systems.
You're sort of correct. MICROS~1 really likes it if OEM copies of Windows are sold with one-per-system type of hardware - IE CPU or board. Harddrive, like you cited, is borderline. Also, just because they need to sell you hardware X in order to sell you the OEM, doesn't mean they have to offer you the opportunity to buy an OEM copy with hardware X.
And yes, they probably will lose the right to sell them if it's discovered they sell them without *hardware*. However, if it's discovered they sell a complete system bare, they may also lose the right to the OEM versions.
I'll call my prices at all the local shops carrying parts, and buy the parts from the shop where the total for everything is the lowest, not drive around and spend 10 bucks of gas to save 5$ off my RAM. And they *will* sell me an OEM version.
The rest of your post indicates you're in Canada; I'm in California. There aren't that many shops of the kind you cite left here, where you can walk in and leave with everything you need. (And the last time I did this, the RAM was more like spend $5 of gas to save $50-$60.) If you buy everything at one place, you are definitely missing out on a deal or two.
And yes, they can sell you an OEM version under those circumstances. They don't have to offer it, nor do they have to force it on you. Unlike...
I've bought two computers in the last 8 months without windows, it is perfectly possible. I order all my parts, pick them up, pay for them and leave.
See, you didn't buy computers as in two complete system. You bought two complete system's worth of parts and put them together yourself. Subtle difference, but if you had the shop assemble it... well, remember when MICROS~1 basically told everyone they had an OEM deal with "You have two options. Either 100% of the systems you build go out with Windows licenses, or you lose your OEM version - and pricing - rights."? So therefore OEM had to put - and charge the customer for - Windows on every machine.
By just buying the parts, and not the system as assembled and software installed by the OEM, you probably ducked that bit of the language in their agreement.
Now, the anti-MICROS~1 view of this is that they abused their monopoly to ensure its dominance. If an OEM was to sell even one bare - or Linux - machine, the cost for the rest of their systems would pop up by $100+, and they faced the poisonous dilemma of absorbing the extra expense or raising prices.
The Microsoft sympathetic view is this: Linux on the desktop is far far in the minority now, and was even more so then. The great likelyhood was that any bare system would have pirated (cracked, warez, keygenned, corporate, take your pick) Windows installed.
Speaking of which,
The fact that a lot of people do used cracked copy of windows is spot-on for the conversation.
Yes, but I can't suggest that, just like I can't suggest hijacking a truck, as the AC exampled.
Skimmed the discussion so far and didn't see this:
Especially with long long cable runs, leave service loops - extra wire at each end - of maybe 2-10 extra feet of wire, depending upon how much you tend to use up when repairing a busted jack/plug/punchdown.
There is nothing worse than having to run a new 50' line because the person who did it first ran *exactly* the amount needed, and then someone tripped over a patch cable and ripped the cable out of the jack and the jack out of the wall and there's no spare cable to fix the punchdowns on the jack...
(Now, mind you, what I did *that* time was to put a new plug onto the in-wall wire, then attach a short length of spare cable to the jack, put a jack on the other end of *that*, and plug that into the in-wall. Kludge city.)
First, gamers Want the fastest possible speed on their platforms. They're the people driving the overclocking movement; who buy five grand, tricked out systems, and who also push the gaming industry. They're not going to buy games where there hardware and wideband net connections doesn't matter.
Beg to differ. Businesses buy expensive systems to use as servers. The only reason you'd use that much money is top-flight hard disks, gigs of RAM, RAID arrays, etc. (See ArsTechnica's insane "God" Box ($10k!))
It's eminently possible to put together the hardware for a very good gaming box for under a thousand, and an excellent one can be had with $1500-$2000.
Just as an example:
Abit NF7-S off Pricewatch, about $90-100, depending on whether you pay tax.
Fry's regularly has an ECS board + Athlon chip (usually in the 2000 - 2400 range) for very good prices - keep the chip and eBay off the board for $35 or so.[0]
2x512 of DDR333, about $100-$120.
Radeon 9600XT, $150 or so
It seems every week there's a CD-RW for next to nothing after MIR. Let's say $15.
Similiarly, it's usually possible to find something like a 160gb 7200RPM harddrive for $100 or so.
Not that a gaming box needs a DVD-ROM, but those run about $30.[1]
The onboard Soundstorm audio can work just fine, but so can a $50 card like the TBSC.
Case with decent 350w PSU, $50 or so.[2]
Maybe $150 or so for a good 17" CRT or even a 19" with rebate, if you find a nice one.
Allow $75 for misc stuff[3]
Throw in a $50 or so set of speakers.
There, that's about $850. I said "under a thousand" for the hardware, right? That's lots of wiggle room for a second drive or better video card or whatever you feel the need for.
Now, given that this is a gaming box, and the best OS for gaming on this hardware is Windows, I'm not going to zealot around and scream "Linux! Linux! Linux!" at you, but figure in an extra $200 even for XP Home non-update; Professional is $300. (But just because you run Windows doesn't mean you have to run Office - take a look at OpenOffice.) Add to that an antivirus program (NAV 2004 is $50 or so) and whatever else you consider necessary, and you're looking at about $1100-1200 done. A far far cry from $5000.
And as a final point, I get plenty of games where my broadband connection doesn't matter. Some people still play singleplayer / offline games, and when I play MP, it's usually LAN.
[0] The last one I saw was 2600 & board for $90. [1] Hell, a combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW runs about $60, if you have a minitower case. [2] Do not skimp on the case. Cheap ones both cut corners (I did a build the other week where the motherboard just barely fit in past the optidrives - there was less than a cm of room. $15 case, I should have known.) and have corners that cut. (/me shows off scars on hands from cheap cases) [3] Case fans, good cpuhsf, floppy drive if you want it, mouse, keyboard, etc.
Unfortunately, this conflicts with the goal of "keep the system patched without techie intervention", since windowsupdate requires IE.
What I usually do is throw the system behind a hardware firewall and then use Norton Internet Security Suite to block IE (and Windows Explorer) off the 'net. Remove the icon off the desktop, start menu, and wherever else it wants to hide. Install Firebird 0.7[0], and put it on the desktop, wearing the blue e as an icon, labeled INTERNET.
Oh, and don't ever give them the admin password. The last time I did, the guy had a modem problem - it was failing to handshake - so he went and installed AOL, thinking that would fix it, after I told him not to.
[0] I know Firefox 0.8 is out, but I've had some problems with it, among them losing my save files dialogue and an occasional prob with the back button, so I install 0.7 instead. Funny how people will tolerate almost any weird behavior out of IE, but if you install something else and you get one little "error" - even a popup about sending data over a non-https connection - they kick and scream and moan and whine until they get their IE back.
> My Dell Inspiron 600m is arriving today. Wheeeee...... Unfortunately, I just remembered that (in order to connect to the network at work, which uses AES, which the Intel 2100 miniPCI can't do) I got a TrueMobile 1300 b/g in it, which if memory serves is a Broadcom chipset.
Bah.
Then again, I just traded my Intel 2100 from my Insp 4100 for a Microsoft MN-520 PCMCIA...
Laptop alarms. HelLO. This isn't like a car alarm, where you have to be away and out of sight for hours on end. You can actually carry the thing with you.
I'm a college student. I've owned my Dell Inspiron 4100 for two years now. I follow a very simple policy to prevent it being stolen. If I'm not home, it's either in my locked house, in a drawer under some old shirts, (and if my house gets broken into, I will have bigger worries than whether they found my laptop) or it's in my possession, either in use or in my backpack. Not a huge black carrying case with the Dell logo on it, nor even a laptop bag of any sort - a $20 backpack from Target. And that backpack goes everywhere with me when I have it. I check it in with store security (and if they lose it, lawsuit!), I tuck it under the table in a restaurant, I quite simply do not let go of the thing or leave it anywhere.
> If anyone knows how to get [Privateer/Armada] running in Linux, or reliably in Windows, this is the place to post it... this info (especially for Linux) has proven difficult for me to find.
Apparently (although the CIC has been/.ed, so I can't find it anymore) someone wrote a wrapper for Privateer (and Righteous Fire) to run under Win9x. You could try that combination under Wine and see what happens... or just do what I did when I found all my old Origin/Sierra/Apogee etc. games in a box and got all nostalgic; throw together a Win9x system to play them.
I already had a P166 just sitting in a closet collecting dust. Upgraded it by digging through the "antique parts" drawers of both myself and a friend and going to parts forums. For less than the cost of a new game (the most expensive bits were a) a PCI NIC and b) stuffing the thing full of PC100) I got all my old ones back.
Of course, lucky for me that I have a dual-input monitor, or it would have taken a little more expense...
... because THEY want to cash in on selling the vanity numbers. A buddy of mine (let's call him Mike) has a number of the form ###-###-MIKE. If he ever wants rid of the number, the phone company doesn't want him selling it to some other Mike, they want to have it back so they can sell it to some other Mike.
> Check into Paul Soleri. He proposed high-density small-footprint city-buildings called "arcologies". His books even show how little room a city like L.A. would take if it were built as an arcology.
Yeah, but build too many of them and LA launches... off... into... space... HMM...
> Because the only phrase that should follow "Best viewed with " is "any browser".
Yes, but when two browsers render the page differently - and one does it according to the HTML standard and the other does it One Microsoft Way - you need the "Best viewed by " tag to indicate which one is closer to how you the webdesigner want it to look.
Actually, anything you type in the address bar that doesn't look like a valid address is sent to IFL.
Another one of those is a variation on the ctrl-enter ie thing:
Type "slashdot" in the address bar: [Enter] will feed it to IFL. [Ctrl-Enter] will add www. and.com [Shift-Enter] will add www. and.net [Ctrl-Shift-Enter] will add www. and.org
Any evidence stored on a computer on the net is suceptible to this kind of tampering. It would be much easier to crack into a police computer than to break into the police station and mess with things.
So the computer that they use for evidence storing should be unplugged from their network. I mean, what do you need a net connection for on it anyway, to IM with your friend while you digitally enhance the murder scene photos?
I got it off of ftp.mozilla.org, interestingly enough. Guess the slashdotting is starting to die down.
I wish they hadn't changed the name, much like many of the other posters here. They went from dinosaur (cool!) to a phoenix (leet!) to a panda... ? Why not a dragon? Imagine using a browser called Firewyrm!
What's next, 0.9 to be called Badger, and the default homepage to be BadgerBadgerBadger.com?
I can show you the two binders full of class assignments that show the lab troubleshooting experience, but if you dismiss my resume flat out because I have the cert on it, I'll never get to the interview stage and never have the opportunity to show you.
Oh, and it's a bad idea to hire someone for a networking position that needs to google for his answers. What'll he do if the network is just plain down?
Slashdot Mirror
No movie based on a video game has ever not sucked.
That one contained the only Wesley Crusher line ever to make me laugh. "Captain... we are receiving two hundred and eighty five thousand hails..."
Google up CloneCD. It basically lets you rip a cd to an image and then mount the image as a virtual cdrom drive.
Not only does this make my desktop life much easier, I no longer have to haul a folder of CDs everywhere with my laptop - backpack space saved. (at the expense of hd space, but hd space is cheap.)
The only problems are with games that a) expect the game cd always to be in the drive letter it was installed from or, b) react badly to being alt-tabbed out of but need you to switch CDs (you can sometimes get around this by creating multiple virtual drives and mounting *all* the images)
> If somebody asks where IE went, tell them that it was removed for security reasons
And what if that's the pointy-haired CEO, who screams and bellows (and fires people) until he gets IE (with no security protection), Outlook Express, etc?
When you tell him it's a security risk, he says that's what he has computer staff for and implies you're incompetant if you can't make it completely secure. (IE he'll fire you and keep firing until he finds someone who just won't tell him the truth.)
Been there, done that, gave up.
> replace my Winblows XP IE with Avant Browser
Avant browser *is* IE, in all the ways that matter. It's just a wrapper around the same engine. So if you're feeling really good about throwing out IE... you didn't.
HTH, HAND.
Yes, but if they know the test is useless, I'd rather they not do it just for the chance to make pretty graphs and add another page to their review.
> As far as I can tell, all "centrino" is is a lower speed CPU notebook with a built in 802.11 board built in.
Nonononono. Centrino gooooooooood.
Yes, it's a lower mhz, but we all know about the mhz myth, right? What it is is a very efficient chip (much like an AMD one. Imagine that.) that runs very cool and with low power draw. (Unlike, say, a desktop P4 3.06ghz HT chip stuffed into a laptop; if you don't know why that's the dumbest idea since invading Russia in winter, you're beyond help.)
I just got my hands on a Dell Inspiron 600m, 1.5 ghz P-M. I could do without the Centrino sticker (what is that thing supposed to be, a squashed butterfly?); the built in 802.11b/g card is windows dressing (I'm usually on wired anyway); what I like about it is the 5lb travel weight (down from 8 with my last one), the battery life (4-5 hours with the screen brightness turned down) and the cool running chip (the thing barely even gets warm). Oh, and gaming about as well as my P4 1.6 did with a Geforce 3.
yeah, Centrino has a weird name and a relentless marketing campaign, but under all the hype, there is substance.
As I recall...
You're sort of correct. MICROS~1 really likes it if OEM copies of Windows are sold with one-per-system type of hardware - IE CPU or board. Harddrive, like you cited, is borderline. Also, just because they need to sell you hardware X in order to sell you the OEM, doesn't mean they have to offer you the opportunity to buy an OEM copy with hardware X.
And yes, they probably will lose the right to sell them if it's discovered they sell them without *hardware*. However, if it's discovered they sell a complete system bare, they may also lose the right to the OEM versions.
The rest of your post indicates you're in Canada; I'm in California. There aren't that many shops of the kind you cite left here, where you can walk in and leave with everything you need. (And the last time I did this, the RAM was more like spend $5 of gas to save $50-$60.) If you buy everything at one place, you are definitely missing out on a deal or two.
And yes, they can sell you an OEM version under those circumstances. They don't have to offer it, nor do they have to force it on you. Unlike...
See, you didn't buy computers as in two complete system. You bought two complete system's worth of parts and put them together yourself. Subtle difference, but if you had the shop assemble it... well, remember when MICROS~1 basically told everyone they had an OEM deal with "You have two options. Either 100% of the systems you build go out with Windows licenses, or you lose your OEM version - and pricing - rights."? So therefore OEM had to put - and charge the customer for - Windows on every machine.
By just buying the parts, and not the system as assembled and software installed by the OEM, you probably ducked that bit of the language in their agreement.
Now, the anti-MICROS~1 view of this is that they abused their monopoly to ensure its dominance. If an OEM was to sell even one bare - or Linux - machine, the cost for the rest of their systems would pop up by $100+, and they faced the poisonous dilemma of absorbing the extra expense or raising prices.
The Microsoft sympathetic view is this: Linux on the desktop is far far in the minority now, and was even more so then. The great likelyhood was that any bare system would have pirated (cracked, warez, keygenned, corporate, take your pick) Windows installed.
Speaking of which,
Yes, but I can't suggest that, just like I can't suggest hijacking a truck, as the AC exampled.
Skimmed the discussion so far and didn't see this:
Especially with long long cable runs, leave service loops - extra wire at each end - of maybe 2-10 extra feet of wire, depending upon how much you tend to use up when repairing a busted jack/plug/punchdown.
There is nothing worse than having to run a new 50' line because the person who did it first ran *exactly* the amount needed, and then someone tripped over a patch cable and ripped the cable out of the jack and the jack out of the wall and there's no spare cable to fix the punchdowns on the jack...
(Now, mind you, what I did *that* time was to put a new plug onto the in-wall wire, then attach a short length of spare cable to the jack, put a jack on the other end of *that*, and plug that into the in-wall. Kludge city.)
sgfc, CCNA
Beg to differ. Businesses buy expensive systems to use as servers. The only reason you'd use that much money is top-flight hard disks, gigs of RAM, RAID arrays, etc. (See ArsTechnica's insane "God" Box ($10k!))
It's eminently possible to put together the hardware for a very good gaming box for under a thousand, and an excellent one can be had with $1500-$2000.
Just as an example:
There, that's about $850. I said "under a thousand" for the hardware, right? That's lots of wiggle room for a second drive or better video card or whatever you feel the need for.
Now, given that this is a gaming box, and the best OS for gaming on this hardware is Windows, I'm not going to zealot around and scream "Linux! Linux! Linux!" at you, but figure in an extra $200 even for XP Home non-update; Professional is $300. (But just because you run Windows doesn't mean you have to run Office - take a look at OpenOffice.) Add to that an antivirus program (NAV 2004 is $50 or so) and whatever else you consider necessary, and you're looking at about $1100-1200 done. A far far cry from $5000.
And as a final point, I get plenty of games where my broadband connection doesn't matter. Some people still play singleplayer / offline games, and when I play MP, it's usually LAN.
[0] The last one I saw was 2600 & board for $90.
[1] Hell, a combo DVD-ROM/CD-RW runs about $60, if you have a minitower case.
[2] Do not skimp on the case. Cheap ones both cut corners (I did a build the other week where the motherboard just barely fit in past the optidrives - there was less than a cm of room. $15 case, I should have known.) and have corners that cut. (/me shows off scars on hands from cheap cases)
[3] Case fans, good cpuhsf, floppy drive if you want it, mouse, keyboard, etc.
> somehow keep them from using IE.
Unfortunately, this conflicts with the goal of "keep the system patched without techie intervention", since windowsupdate requires IE.
What I usually do is throw the system behind a hardware firewall and then use Norton Internet Security Suite to block IE (and Windows Explorer) off the 'net. Remove the icon off the desktop, start menu, and wherever else it wants to hide. Install Firebird 0.7[0], and put it on the desktop, wearing the blue e as an icon, labeled INTERNET.
Oh, and don't ever give them the admin password. The last time I did, the guy had a modem problem - it was failing to handshake - so he went and installed AOL, thinking that would fix it, after I told him not to.
[0] I know Firefox 0.8 is out, but I've had some problems with it, among them losing my save files dialogue and an occasional prob with the back button, so I install 0.7 instead. Funny how people will tolerate almost any weird behavior out of IE, but if you install something else and you get one little "error" - even a popup about sending data over a non-https connection - they kick and scream and moan and whine until they get their IE back.
> My Dell Inspiron 600m is arriving today. Wheeeee... ... Unfortunately, I just remembered that (in order to connect to the network at work, which uses AES, which the Intel 2100 miniPCI can't do) I got a TrueMobile 1300 b/g in it, which if memory serves is a Broadcom chipset.
Bah.
Then again, I just traded my Intel 2100 from my Insp 4100 for a Microsoft MN-520 PCMCIA...
My Dell Inspiron 600m is arriving today. Wheeeee...
Laptop alarms. HelLO. This isn't like a car alarm, where you have to be away and out of sight for hours on end. You can actually carry the thing with you.
I'm a college student. I've owned my Dell Inspiron 4100 for two years now. I follow a very simple policy to prevent it being stolen. If I'm not home, it's either in my locked house, in a drawer under some old shirts, (and if my house gets broken into, I will have bigger worries than whether they found my laptop) or it's in my possession, either in use or in my backpack. Not a huge black carrying case with the Dell logo on it, nor even a laptop bag of any sort - a $20 backpack from Target. And that backpack goes everywhere with me when I have it. I check it in with store security (and if they lose it, lawsuit!), I tuck it under the table in a restaurant, I quite simply do not let go of the thing or leave it anywhere.
Worked fine so far.
Oh no. Imagine a million of those asinine little paperclips. "We've been waiting for you, Mr [fill in the blank]..."
Someone has *got* to port the xmatrix screensaver, though...
> If anyone knows how to get [Privateer/Armada] running in Linux, or reliably in Windows, this is the place to post it... this info (especially for Linux) has proven difficult for me to find.
/.ed, so I can't find it anymore) someone wrote a wrapper for Privateer (and Righteous Fire) to run under Win9x. You could try that combination under Wine and see what happens... or just do what I did when I found all my old Origin/Sierra/Apogee etc. games in a box and got all nostalgic; throw together a Win9x system to play them.
Apparently (although the CIC has been
I already had a P166 just sitting in a closet collecting dust. Upgraded it by digging through the "antique parts" drawers of both myself and a friend and going to parts forums. For less than the cost of a new game (the most expensive bits were a) a PCI NIC and b) stuffing the thing full of PC100) I got all my old ones back.
Of course, lucky for me that I have a dual-input monitor, or it would have taken a little more expense...
> Verizon has made the claim otherwise.
... because THEY want to cash in on selling the vanity numbers. A buddy of mine (let's call him Mike) has a number of the form ###-###-MIKE. If he ever wants rid of the number, the phone company doesn't want him selling it to some other Mike, they want to have it back so they can sell it to some other Mike.
> Check into Paul Soleri. He proposed high-density small-footprint city-buildings called "arcologies". His books even show how little room a city like L.A. would take if it were built as an arcology.
... off... into... space... HMM...
Yeah, but build too many of them and LA launches
Yeah! Good idea!
> Because the only phrase that should follow "Best viewed with " is "any browser".
Yes, but when two browsers render the page differently - and one does it according to the HTML standard and the other does it One Microsoft Way - you need the "Best viewed by " tag to indicate which one is closer to how you the webdesigner want it to look.
Actually, anything you type in the address bar that doesn't look like a valid address is sent to IFL.
.com .net .org
Another one of those is a variation on the ctrl-enter ie thing:
Type "slashdot" in the address bar:
[Enter] will feed it to IFL.
[Ctrl-Enter] will add www. and
[Shift-Enter] will add www. and
[Ctrl-Shift-Enter] will add www. and
So the computer that they use for evidence storing should be unplugged from their network. I mean, what do you need a net connection for on it anyway, to IM with your friend while you digitally enhance the murder scene photos?
Right click on the toolbar, hit customize, and drag the google box into the window that popped up.
I got it off of ftp.mozilla.org, interestingly enough. Guess the slashdotting is starting to die down.
I wish they hadn't changed the name, much like many of the other posters here. They went from dinosaur (cool!) to a phoenix (leet!) to a panda... ? Why not a dragon? Imagine using a browser called Firewyrm!
What's next, 0.9 to be called Badger, and the default homepage to be BadgerBadgerBadger.com?
I can show you the two binders full of class assignments that show the lab troubleshooting experience, but if you dismiss my resume flat out because I have the cert on it, I'll never get to the interview stage and never have the opportunity to show you.
Oh, and it's a bad idea to hire someone for a networking position that needs to google for his answers. What'll he do if the network is just plain down?