My personal favorite is when one botches a new hardware install in just the right way. On the first boot, in glorious grey-on-black 40-column text mode appears the following:
NO ROM BASIC SYSTEM HALTED
The first time I saw this was on a relatively fast, modern machine, back in 2003. I'm just barely old enough to remember the concept of Microsoft's BASIC being available for PCs in ROM form, but far too young to have ever actually put my hands on one. To have seen this come up on a fire-breathing Athlon box and be so garishly-proportioned on a 19" CRT was really one of the funniest fucking things I've ever seen.
It may have taken you a week to learn it, now you have to do it.
Security holes being discovered leading to forced installs of new versions of various mail server componentry, causing issues for other components, which then need upgraded, even though they'd been working just fine. But now, the configuration file is different, so all of that needs redone. Over and over.
And then, you find out that you need a new kernel. So you install it, it doesn't boot correctly, and much time is wasted.
What happens when the datacenter burns, is hit by an earthquake, or knocked apart by a tornado?
And, the big question: Is your time so useless as to be worth nothing?
I can maintain a good, proper, redundant, and secure mail server (and, indeed, it is part of my day job to do so). I even enjoy some aspects of it.
But there's a long list of other stuff that I'd rather be doing instead of playing system administrator just for one lousy email address, especially since Google does that stuff for free.
I used to run my own mail server at home, too. It wasn't very hard, it didn't cost much, and it was very fast and responsive, eating spam like a champ with Amavis.
It was all very hands-off and worked just great, until the hard drive crashed.
And then, I realized I had to put it all back together. And, then, I realized that I needed to also put together and use a backup system. And then, I asked myself, "What happens if my house burns down?" And then I thought about carrying backups off-site, or automating backups to a box at someone else's house. I carefully considered all of the extra expense and ongoing maintenance that all this stuff would require.
And then, I said "fuck it," switched my MX entries over to Google, and haven't looked back.
Couldn't one (on a stock 40GB PS3) dedicate 30GB to GameOS, 10GB to Linux, and plug in an external USB drive to pick up the slack?
Seems reasonable to me. It's not as if Linux software is particularly huge; 10 gigs should be plenty for Linux program data. Local content can be stored on the external device, and with an appropriate filesystem, shared between Linux and GameOS.
You, sir, are the reason why I don't bother hiring professionals to do work for me.
I expected more from you, #12016. With claims like that, I'm sitting here waiting for you and your journeyman card to loudly proclaim that the next level in this conspiracy involves Romex Corporation bribing the publisher of the NEC to increase copper sales.
Just because the wires go to the same place, does not mean that they do the same thing. If you cannot understand this, you need to go back to school and learn about earth grounds again, and remember this time that over here in the real world, nothing has an impedance of 0, including neutral.
If that's too inconvenient, then just do this: Plug a toaster into a properly grounded and wired outlet somewhere in your house. Turn it on. At that same outlet, measure the voltage between neutral and ground. Observe that this voltage is not zero and that the wires are therefore NOT accomplishing the same thing. Then, come back and explain to me in greater detail that it still doesn't matter. I'll be here. If you're game, we can then have a shocking discussion about loose neutrals and bad grounds, and maybe about Murphy and his Law.
P.S. if I DID hire a home inspection, AND it found those problems, I'd still have bought that house, at that time, in that market, for that price. No question about that. The problems it had, though -- those are the sins of of the professionals that committed them, not mine. That I went ahead and bought the thing does not somehow absolve them of their transgressions.
P.P.S. oh jeebus dude - this is really farking basic safety stuff.
Check for a loose neutral, neutral tied to ground outside the panel, or (*much* worse, but probably more likely) a split neutral tying into your dryer. At absolute worst (VERY unlikely) you have an issue at the service not being tied into the panel correctly where one of the phases is loose.
Good suggestions. I still own that house, but I'm not interested in fixing it anymore (it was ruined in a flood).
The "neutral tied to ground outside the panel" reminds me of what I found when I moved into my new house:
In the process of replacing the plumbing, I cut the water main near where it entered the basement using a Sawzall. As I separated the pipes, sparks jumped between them (!). Turns out the furnace, installed and inspected in 2002, was using the water line as a neutral return (!!!!!), and there was no earth connected to the chassis. So, only one wire out of a 14-3 Romex was connected to the furnace at all with the rest clipped off.
Scary shit, though it had apparently been running the furnace just fine until I fixed the plumbing. (needless to say it is not like that any more.)
And if you don't read a resource like that you won't know what you're doing! Eg: You can have a single outlet above the fridge tied to the fridge outlet (which otherwise MUST be on it's own independent circuit and MAY NOT IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCES be GFCI protected, BY LAW). Or that you may (nay, MUST) use a single neutral when running two phases to a SPLIT duplex outlet (you may use this configuration for kitchen outlets, but you'll need GFCI breakers). Bedrooms MUST be protected by AFCI breakers, etc, etc.:-)
Interesting. Why would I want an outlet on top of my fridge?
And I never understood the whole split-phase duplex outlet thing. Why do you Canadians do that?:) (And doesn't it lead to an overloaded neutral?)
And, AFCI breakers. I've seen those for sale, and shudder at the expense. And while I'm all for cheap insurance, nobody here is telling me that I need them.
Besides, I'd have had so much less fun as a kid if my bedroom had AFCI protection. There wouldn't have been any meaningful fireworks from sticking a pair of needlenose pliers into the cord for a boombox, nor from driving the mounting screws into a 120V Erector Set motor so far that I'd shorted the windings. It'd have been so much harder to learn what not to do.
I'll look up the book -- thanks for the reference. The wiring here isn't quite done (downstairs, yes - upstairs, no), and I'm all for learning new stuff.
I'll be flamed for this, but: I think it's better to just do it yourself.
I've owned two houses, both of them ancient. The first, which was small, appeared to be done; new flooring throughout, new paint inside, good siding outside, all new plumbing, new exterior doors, some new windows, mostly new wiring... Everything looked good. So we bought it and moved in.
The drain for the kitchen sink ran uphill. The water heater (complete with recent inspection sticker) was plumbed backward. There was no attempt at plumbing venting. The office had 3-prong outlets, which lead to 2-conductor wire. The living room also had 3-prong outlets, which did appear to be actually grounded, but which were miswired somewhere, such that 60-cycle hum would emanate from the stereo -unless- the clothes drier was running, which I still haven't figured out. The new vinyl windows in the kitchen were overstuffed with insulation, such that the frame bowed to such an extent that it was nearly impossible to fully close and latch the things.
This was all done, supposedly, by professionals.
The second house is a bit different. About the same price, about the same age, the same quality of neighborhood, much larger (used to be a triplex), and totally trashed inside. Scary wiring, bad plumbing (every single pipe leaked, every single one), no heat upstairs, tired floor coverings, lousy exterior doors, etc. So we bought it, and began work. Once we had a functional bathroom and shower, we moved in.
It's been an adventure, but at least I have an opportunity to do everything right the first time, instead of finding and fixing a million things that were done wrong. Including, of course, wiring, basement stairs, plumbing, flooring, kitchen cabinets, plaster where needed, drywall where practical...
Plumbing is easy. I ripped out all of the old copper, galvanized, and black iron drain pipe, since it was all shit. Running new pressure lines is bloody easy these days thanks to the virtue of snap-on PEX fittings and manifolds with individual outlets for each room or fixture -- it's pretty hard to fuck up a line to a sink if it only has two connections. The drain lines are also pretty easy to figure out (shit goes downhill). Venting is harder to get right, but still not bad.
Electrical wiring is easy. Drill up from below, or down from above, into the stud cavity. Pull the romex in. Black wire to the little side of the outlet, white to the big, and copper to the ground screw. Give the fridge and the sump pump their own circuits, so that something else in the house failing short and blowing a breaker doesn't result in a freezer full of spoiled food or a flood. Permanent lighting gets its own circuits, so that tripping a breaker doesn't result in darkness. Don't daisy-chain too many outlets, don't send too many wires into a single junction box, and always use a GFCI wherever there might ever be water, always ground metal boxes... So on, so forth. It's easy to overbuild with lots of independent circuits, and so one might as well do so.
Even cutting in a 36" (up from 30") front door was easy.
And real, honest-to-God 3/4"-thick solid oak flooring is both cheap to buy and easy (even fun) to install and finish, and truly wonderful when done.
I've run ductwork professionally in the past, which is about the most braindead task in the world even with correct size reductions and consideration for laminar flow, and will probably tackle installing a high-efficiency gas furnace upstairs in the next month or two (before it gets really cold out).
There's no way I'd have been able to hire someone else to do all of this work. And, given the quality of the "improvements" at the last last house, there's still no way I'd have hired any of it done even if I could afford to.
Now, I didn't go about any of this lightly. I spent a long time studying plumbing before I even considered doing it myself, but it's not at all rocket science. I also spent some time brushing up on the NEC bef
I thought I was being quite clear by saying further specifying a new computer system, as in inclusive of both hardware AND software, FRESH OUT OF THE BOX, but I guess not.
Now go away. I have nothing to add, and you're not actually reading this shit anyway.
The context here is not XP, or Linux, but Vista. Have another look at the titlebar in your browser window if you're still confused.
But that doesn't even matter.
When a new computer system (system == a combination of both hardware and software) comes up, out of the box, it ought to be able to do useful work without churning the swapfile forever. If it can't, it is broken. For the purpose of this very simple point, it doesn't matter what OS it has.
The fix (more RAM) is cheap. In the case of Vista it is likely even cheaper to upgrade RAM than to pay someone clued to dig up appropriate drivers and put a good install XP on the box.
Hell, more RAM, in general, helps out everything. With today's prices on DDR2, I cannot conceive of any good reason for any modern personal computer with any modern OS to have less than two gigabytes of RAM, irrespective of what that operating system might actually consist of.
(Next, I suppose I'll be accused of just being wasteful. If anyone really wants to make that argument, I'd like to submit in advance that you're quite welcome to go back to using Lotus 123 and Wordperfect 4.2 on a 386, all of which work just fine even in 2008. Myself, I think that byte efficiency is a stupid goal, and that over here in the real world the only meaningful comparison is based on features and performance vs. total dollars and pain expended.)
IIRC, whence last I checked, Apache was smaller than Firefox. (Feel free to interchange "apache" or "firefox" with probably bloody any other respective programs.)
FYI, FWIW, HTH, etc. But it seems to me that web servers have been forking new processes forever.
Are you complaining about the wireless card, its drivers, or Vista itself? You're not very clear in your verbiage about whether or not the card works at all, in any OS.
If you're complaining about Vista, then, nothing you've done should ever have any impact on anything related to WiFi, and the time you've wasted so far is simply symptomatic of being victimized by the clueless masses on random web forums.
I'd hate to be Captain Obvious here, but: Have you tried simply installing new drivers for your card? Dell has the occasional bad habit of shipping shit drivers with their (generally great) computers. If it has a Broadcom chipset (which is likely to be the case, unless you paid extra for an Intel card), this is more difficult than it should be because Broadcom has a long history of offering nothing but disdain for their end-users, but you might find something newer on Dell's support site. If it's an Intel card, just go to Intel and download new drivers -- they're updated pretty regularly.
Whatever the case: Bad drivers on any OS are the never the fault of the OS, but the fault of the idiot who certified the broken driver as ready for prime-time. Blaming Microsoft for bad drivers under Vista is like blaming Linus for nVidia or ATI's shortcomings in Linux. Blaming lack of RAM or Superfetch or some other random thing instead of drivers is like blaming the car stereo in your new car for the failings of its motorized seats -- lunacy, at best.
So, feel free to blame Broadcom for writing shitty drivers, or blame Dell for accepting them and selling them to you as functional, but don't blame the OS.
I helped a lady with a Dell laptop, after Best Buy's Geek Squad scared her to death. She was nice, but mostly non-clued about computers. It was an old and infected machine, D600 or somesuch, but more than adequate for what she wanted to be doing with it. Reinstalled Windows for her, recovered her photos, gave her a working computer, and told her that it'd work way better if it had more RAM. She asked how hard it was to install, and I pulled the cover off of the bottom and showed her the clips that hold the DIMMs in place. I showed her the virtues of Newegg, and she carefully wrote down the type of RAM that it needed, and I went on my way expecting her to call for help if she ever decided to buy more RAM.
I didn't hear anything for several months when I ran into her again, and heard nothing but glowing praise. She accomplished the RAM upgrade smoothly, and the computer is still working better than ever.
Please allow me to submit that if someone can afford a $500 laptop, they can probably afford to swap in 2 gigs of DDR2. They just need someone to either a) help them do so, either by instruction, consultation, or gift or b) guide them toward a computer which includes at least a couple of gigs of RAM out of the box.
The problem, as I see it, is not that Vista wants lots of memory, but that OEMs continue to sell computers which, unmodified, are completely unsuitable for any computing purpose. This problem isn't new, having existed since Windows became the defacto installed OS with Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and it is very clearly an abomination bordering on fraud, but at least a problem that is cheap and easy for folks to rectify these days (once it's pointed out to them).
Again, RAM is cheap. What has long been the overall best upgrade for any multitasking computer, is now quite likely also the least expensive and easiest to perform. So do your part, kid[1]: Quit whining and start coaching the people you meet about getting more RAM into their PCs.
[1]: Yep, I said it. It's not my fault that you're the one with the 7-digit UID.
Total non-problem. Just check e-mail once, twice, maybe three times a day - no problem. Then, the context switch between e-mail and whatever else isn't very expensive because it simply doesn't happen very often. I keep my mail reader closed until I'm prepared to spend some time using it.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned (and indeed, I've been using the deprecated, hyphenated form of "e-mail" here on purpose), but that's what works for me. I treat e-mail as a non-realtime medium for things which needn't happen instantaneously.
For conversations or questions that need to happen in a more real-time fashion and that are worthy of interrupting either myself or someone else, I pick up the phone, or send an SMS.
I had a 2.5 gig Seagate roll over about 2 years into its 3-year warranty. Seagate was cheerful enough with getting me a quick replacement -- a 6.3 gig replacement.
A few years later, a 30-gig Maxtor went south. I had a remanufactured 40-gig model within a week, which is still going strong after more than 4 years.
No complaints from me. If it were really a problem, I could have either partitioned or jumpered around the issue, or lied to BIOS, but I instead opted to fill the extra space with (of course) additional porn.
That all said, I also maintain a small business selling parts and service as a means of helping folks out and making a little extra cash. Every new part I sell gets a 1-year (parts/labor) warranty, from me. In most cases, I'd even be willing to replace the item on-site -- again, on my own time.
So far, nobody has needed to exercise the warranty. We'll see how long that lasts, but it seems like a reasonable thing to do for my customers at this point.
If you're arguing over price, yes, that is exactly what I (as an additional vocal Blu-Ray proponent) suggest.
I buy Blu-Ray movies. (I also download films from places like TPB.) When I buy a movie on Blu-Ray instead of DVD, or instead of downloading it for free, it is because it is what I expect to be a special movie to be cherished forever, complete with graphic details of the veins in the actors' teeth and the individual particles of sand in the beach, or more frequently, a fine representation of the original film grain.
When I buy a movie on DVD, I do so because I do not expect any particularly artistic cinematography, don't care very much about quality, but still feel like rewarding those who created the film (and the store which stocks it) with my money. (I buy kids movies on DVD.)
When I download a movie, it is because I really don't care about quality, and don't want to reward the creators for their trash, but want to see it anyway. (Exceptions for rare films which are difficult to find, but that doesn't happen often.)
But, at no point does price enter the game as a primary bargaining point. For Blu-Ray or not Blu-Ray, the decision is simply based on whether I feel that owning a 1080p rendition of a film is worthy of the superior format. If a work meets this mark, I don't really care what it costs.
(I'm trying to avoid bragging here, but: It really helps to have an audio system which is good enough to make regular Dolby Digital sound like shit compared to the uncompressed PCM on a Blu-Ray disc, along with a TV which is both large enough and has seating close enough to it that the extra video resolution is worthwhile. When I had a 36" 4x3 Sony HDTV, Blu-Ray was frankly boring and mostly meaningless to me with the titles I'd used. With a 16x9 52" 1080p Samsung LCD, it is simply without equal. YMMV.)
This is 2008. -Everything-, from my cable TV box to my iPod to my 1TB drive has Ethernet, in one form or another, although I'd be hesitant to call any of them "computers.". You can even boot over it.
*shrug*
Besides, you're ruining a perfectly good joke with all that seriousness.
Of course. I'm sure that my (Google's, rather) broken Dutch does detract from the content of my message, but then that really was the point that I was attempting to convey.
It's important to communicate clearly, and in a language people understand. There's no reason to beat a topic to death, but there's also no reason to use wording which is so vague, broken, or succinct as to leave big, gaping questions for interested readers to try to figure out for themselves.
Had the offer to buy the domain not been so terse, this Ask Slashdot would never have had to happen.
Natuurlijk. Maar ik zou ook graag van uitgaan dat de potentiële koper is misschien een beetje meer verbose.
Hoe komt u tot in de punt is een ding, maar de zeer pregnante karakter van deze brief maakt het lezen van spam, in plaats van een aanbod tot aankoop van iets.
Dit doet me denken aan alle all ur bass are belong to us.
Pardon me, but I'm a bit stunned that anyone might think this is the real reason Google might make a browser.
Cuz, I mean, we all remember how well it worked for Netscape. Don't we?
First, this happened to the world's most popular browser, as it grew to include a kitchen sink. Then, a little over a year later, AOL happened to Netscape. Mere days later, it was revealed what AOL's real intentions were. They later disbanded what was left of Netscape. And today, nobody gives a shit about AOL's $4,200,000,000.00 start page. (I've intentionally omitted the parts about "source code" and "JWZ," as they don't seem relevant to the point.)
Really: If this history shows us anything, it is that the web portal game is a joke. Tying it into software (and thus making it even less universal) just makes it even more laughable.
Needs arise at odd times. I don't want want to worry about climbing around in the attic with a 2-man pulling crew just because I've picked up a uPnP media player for the bedroom, or whatever -- I want it to plug in and work. I'd also like my patch panels to be nice, neat, and obvious in their layout; these goals range from difficult to impossible when cabling only happens on an as-needed basis. Further, given a choice, I'd really prefer to only visit each location one time, instead of at least two times. And, given a choice, I'd always rather spend less money than spend more money. And if/when new needs arise they are easily solved with the installed pull string.
It helps my situation in that the wiring was free -- I've been collecting short boxes of Berk-Tek Cat5e from work that were on their way to the dumpster.
For me, I don't really see the purpose of smurf tube or any other conduit when it comes to low-voltage cabling. It doesn't make the wire work any better, and it doesn't save any time. I'd still have avoided the smurf tube method even if I'd had to pay for all that copper. The pull string, on the other hand, is positively a no-brainer -- it's cheap, and comes in a bucket that is bloody easy to feed out of. Just tape the string into the bundle of wires, and pull the whole bundle (2 or 3 Cat5, one coax, one string) from the basement to the wall plate.
Really, the only time I can see using smurf tube smurf tube is in the event that the walls are insulated with batting. At my place, the walls are empty for now, which makes cabling a breeze. Later on, they'll be stuffed with blow-in, but the pull string will still work just fine afterward.
And don't forget microwave ovens. It's likely that everyone reading this has a 2.4GHz radio, of power levels ranging from several hundred Watts to over a kiloWatt, in the form of a small microwave oven in a nearby kitchen. Yeah, sure, it's shielded and lead screened and whatnot. But it doesn't take much leakage to completely trash the signal from a common Linksys WRT54G, which only has a 28milliWatt transmitter.
Further, at these high frequencies, RF can act a little strange -- my own microwave didn't cause any noticeable interference, until I moved to a different house. After the move, with the same microwave, the same access point, the same laptop, and similar SNR, everything ground to a halt whenever the microwave was in use. Both houses have modern wiring and good grounding. The only real difference is that the microwave is now rotated 180 degrees relative to the portions of the house where there is WiFi gear, which seems to indicate that the oven leaks more in some directions than in others. Switching channels seems to have worked around this issue.
For reasons like this, as part of the ongoing remodel and rewire, every room gets at least two Cat5e, at least one RG6, and a polyester pull string to some accessible area. (I'd have run some multimode fiber, but currently don't have anything which needs it, don't have any problems which can be solved with it, and don't have any experience terminating it. The pull string should make it easy to install later if the need ever arises.) The wiring, including coax, terminates at a couple of ICC keystone patch panels in an otherwise-useless alcove next to the basement steps, which is also where the switch, routers, and cable modem live.
Some rooms have more drops than others, like the game room and the library. The office has about a dozen RJ45 jacks, mounted both along the baseboard at regular outlet height and midway on the wall (just above the height of a monitor on a desk) for plugging all manner of things in temporarily for servicing or toying or whatever.
People think I'm nuts, too, but I'll have more bandwidth available to more independent points than any wireless technology will be able to provide for the foreseeable future. I can plug in new gaming systems, or analog/IP telephones, whatever audio or video gear, or about anything else, wherever I want, without worrying about coverage issues, while keeping my WiFi spectrum clean for those tasks that need it, like listening to Pandora way out in the back yard next to the fire ring with an iPod Touch.
Structured cabling isn't a problem which needs solved, but a solution for all manner of things which need connected.
Slashdot Mirror
s/csnnot/has\ not\ been/
Just because no one ever has, doesn't mean that no one ever can.
My personal favorite is when one botches a new hardware install in just the right way. On the first boot, in glorious grey-on-black 40-column text mode appears the following:
NO ROM BASIC
SYSTEM HALTED
The first time I saw this was on a relatively fast, modern machine, back in 2003. I'm just barely old enough to remember the concept of Microsoft's BASIC being available for PCs in ROM form, but far too young to have ever actually put my hands on one. To have seen this come up on a fire-breathing Athlon box and be so garishly-proportioned on a 19" CRT was really one of the funniest fucking things I've ever seen.
One week?
It may have taken you a week to learn it, now you have to do it.
Security holes being discovered leading to forced installs of new versions of various mail server componentry, causing issues for other components, which then need upgraded, even though they'd been working just fine. But now, the configuration file is different, so all of that needs redone. Over and over.
And then, you find out that you need a new kernel. So you install it, it doesn't boot correctly, and much time is wasted.
A week, you say. Hah.
What happens when the datacenter burns, is hit by an earthquake, or knocked apart by a tornado?
And, the big question: Is your time so useless as to be worth nothing?
I can maintain a good, proper, redundant, and secure mail server (and, indeed, it is part of my day job to do so). I even enjoy some aspects of it.
But there's a long list of other stuff that I'd rather be doing instead of playing system administrator just for one lousy email address, especially since Google does that stuff for free.
I used to run my own mail server at home, too. It wasn't very hard, it didn't cost much, and it was very fast and responsive, eating spam like a champ with Amavis.
It was all very hands-off and worked just great, until the hard drive crashed.
And then, I realized I had to put it all back together. And, then, I realized that I needed to also put together and use a backup system. And then, I asked myself, "What happens if my house burns down?" And then I thought about carrying backups off-site, or automating backups to a box at someone else's house. I carefully considered all of the extra expense and ongoing maintenance that all this stuff would require.
And then, I said "fuck it," switched my MX entries over to Google, and haven't looked back.
YMMV.
Dumb question, but:
Couldn't one (on a stock 40GB PS3) dedicate 30GB to GameOS, 10GB to Linux, and plug in an external USB drive to pick up the slack?
Seems reasonable to me. It's not as if Linux software is particularly huge; 10 gigs should be plenty for Linux program data. Local content can be stored on the external device, and with an appropriate filesystem, shared between Linux and GameOS.
You, sir, are the reason why I don't bother hiring professionals to do work for me.
I expected more from you, #12016. With claims like that, I'm sitting here waiting for you and your journeyman card to loudly proclaim that the next level in this conspiracy involves Romex Corporation bribing the publisher of the NEC to increase copper sales.
Just because the wires go to the same place, does not mean that they do the same thing. If you cannot understand this, you need to go back to school and learn about earth grounds again, and remember this time that over here in the real world, nothing has an impedance of 0, including neutral.
If that's too inconvenient, then just do this: Plug a toaster into a properly grounded and wired outlet somewhere in your house. Turn it on. At that same outlet, measure the voltage between neutral and ground. Observe that this voltage is not zero and that the wires are therefore NOT accomplishing the same thing. Then, come back and explain to me in greater detail that it still doesn't matter. I'll be here. If you're game, we can then have a shocking discussion about loose neutrals and bad grounds, and maybe about Murphy and his Law.
P.S. if I DID hire a home inspection, AND it found those problems, I'd still have bought that house, at that time, in that market, for that price. No question about that. The problems it had, though -- those are the sins of of the professionals that committed them, not mine. That I went ahead and bought the thing does not somehow absolve them of their transgressions.
P.P.S. oh jeebus dude - this is really farking basic safety stuff.
Check for a loose neutral, neutral tied to ground outside the panel, or (*much* worse, but probably more likely) a split neutral tying into your dryer. At absolute worst (VERY unlikely) you have an issue at the service not being tied into the panel correctly where one of the phases is loose.
Good suggestions. I still own that house, but I'm not interested in fixing it anymore (it was ruined in a flood).
The "neutral tied to ground outside the panel" reminds me of what I found when I moved into my new house:
In the process of replacing the plumbing, I cut the water main near where it entered the basement using a Sawzall. As I separated the pipes, sparks jumped between them (!). Turns out the furnace, installed and inspected in 2002, was using the water line as a neutral return (!!!!!), and there was no earth connected to the chassis. So, only one wire out of a 14-3 Romex was connected to the furnace at all with the rest clipped off.
Scary shit, though it had apparently been running the furnace just fine until I fixed the plumbing. (needless to say it is not like that any more.)
And if you don't read a resource like that you won't know what you're doing! Eg: You can have a single outlet above the fridge tied to the fridge outlet (which otherwise MUST be on it's own independent circuit and MAY NOT IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCES be GFCI protected, BY LAW). Or that you may (nay, MUST) use a single neutral when running two phases to a SPLIT duplex outlet (you may use this configuration for kitchen outlets, but you'll need GFCI breakers). Bedrooms MUST be protected by AFCI breakers, etc, etc. :-)
Interesting. Why would I want an outlet on top of my fridge?
And I never understood the whole split-phase duplex outlet thing. Why do you Canadians do that? :) (And doesn't it lead to an overloaded neutral?)
And, AFCI breakers. I've seen those for sale, and shudder at the expense. And while I'm all for cheap insurance, nobody here is telling me that I need them.
Besides, I'd have had so much less fun as a kid if my bedroom had AFCI protection. There wouldn't have been any meaningful fireworks from sticking a pair of needlenose pliers into the cord for a boombox, nor from driving the mounting screws into a 120V Erector Set motor so far that I'd shorted the windings. It'd have been so much harder to learn what not to do.
I'll look up the book -- thanks for the reference. The wiring here isn't quite done (downstairs, yes - upstairs, no), and I'm all for learning new stuff.
I'll be flamed for this, but: I think it's better to just do it yourself.
I've owned two houses, both of them ancient. The first, which was small, appeared to be done; new flooring throughout, new paint inside, good siding outside, all new plumbing, new exterior doors, some new windows, mostly new wiring... Everything looked good. So we bought it and moved in.
The drain for the kitchen sink ran uphill. The water heater (complete with recent inspection sticker) was plumbed backward. There was no attempt at plumbing venting. The office had 3-prong outlets, which lead to 2-conductor wire. The living room also had 3-prong outlets, which did appear to be actually grounded, but which were miswired somewhere, such that 60-cycle hum would emanate from the stereo -unless- the clothes drier was running, which I still haven't figured out. The new vinyl windows in the kitchen were overstuffed with insulation, such that the frame bowed to such an extent that it was nearly impossible to fully close and latch the things.
This was all done, supposedly, by professionals.
The second house is a bit different. About the same price, about the same age, the same quality of neighborhood, much larger (used to be a triplex), and totally trashed inside. Scary wiring, bad plumbing (every single pipe leaked, every single one), no heat upstairs, tired floor coverings, lousy exterior doors, etc. So we bought it, and began work. Once we had a functional bathroom and shower, we moved in.
It's been an adventure, but at least I have an opportunity to do everything right the first time, instead of finding and fixing a million things that were done wrong. Including, of course, wiring, basement stairs, plumbing, flooring, kitchen cabinets, plaster where needed, drywall where practical...
Plumbing is easy. I ripped out all of the old copper, galvanized, and black iron drain pipe, since it was all shit. Running new pressure lines is bloody easy these days thanks to the virtue of snap-on PEX fittings and manifolds with individual outlets for each room or fixture -- it's pretty hard to fuck up a line to a sink if it only has two connections. The drain lines are also pretty easy to figure out (shit goes downhill). Venting is harder to get right, but still not bad.
Electrical wiring is easy. Drill up from below, or down from above, into the stud cavity. Pull the romex in. Black wire to the little side of the outlet, white to the big, and copper to the ground screw. Give the fridge and the sump pump their own circuits, so that something else in the house failing short and blowing a breaker doesn't result in a freezer full of spoiled food or a flood. Permanent lighting gets its own circuits, so that tripping a breaker doesn't result in darkness. Don't daisy-chain too many outlets, don't send too many wires into a single junction box, and always use a GFCI wherever there might ever be water, always ground metal boxes... So on, so forth. It's easy to overbuild with lots of independent circuits, and so one might as well do so.
Even cutting in a 36" (up from 30") front door was easy.
And real, honest-to-God 3/4"-thick solid oak flooring is both cheap to buy and easy (even fun) to install and finish, and truly wonderful when done.
I've run ductwork professionally in the past, which is about the most braindead task in the world even with correct size reductions and consideration for laminar flow, and will probably tackle installing a high-efficiency gas furnace upstairs in the next month or two (before it gets really cold out).
There's no way I'd have been able to hire someone else to do all of this work. And, given the quality of the "improvements" at the last last house, there's still no way I'd have hired any of it done even if I could afford to.
Now, I didn't go about any of this lightly. I spent a long time studying plumbing before I even considered doing it myself, but it's not at all rocket science. I also spent some time brushing up on the NEC bef
You, sir, cannot read.
I thought I was being quite clear by saying further specifying a new computer system, as in inclusive of both hardware AND software, FRESH OUT OF THE BOX, but I guess not.
Now go away. I have nothing to add, and you're not actually reading this shit anyway.
The context here is not XP, or Linux, but Vista. Have another look at the titlebar in your browser window if you're still confused.
But that doesn't even matter.
When a new computer system (system == a combination of both hardware and software) comes up, out of the box, it ought to be able to do useful work without churning the swapfile forever. If it can't, it is broken. For the purpose of this very simple point, it doesn't matter what OS it has.
The fix (more RAM) is cheap. In the case of Vista it is likely even cheaper to upgrade RAM than to pay someone clued to dig up appropriate drivers and put a good install XP on the box.
Hell, more RAM, in general, helps out everything. With today's prices on DDR2, I cannot conceive of any good reason for any modern personal computer with any modern OS to have less than two gigabytes of RAM, irrespective of what that operating system might actually consist of.
(Next, I suppose I'll be accused of just being wasteful. If anyone really wants to make that argument, I'd like to submit in advance that you're quite welcome to go back to using Lotus 123 and Wordperfect 4.2 on a 386, all of which work just fine even in 2008. Myself, I think that byte efficiency is a stupid goal, and that over here in the real world the only meaningful comparison is based on features and performance vs. total dollars and pain expended.)
IIRC, whence last I checked, Apache was smaller than Firefox. (Feel free to interchange "apache" or "firefox" with probably bloody any other respective programs.)
FYI, FWIW, HTH, etc. But it seems to me that web servers have been forking new processes forever.
*shrug*
Are you complaining about the wireless card, its drivers, or Vista itself? You're not very clear in your verbiage about whether or not the card works at all, in any OS.
If you're complaining about Vista, then, nothing you've done should ever have any impact on anything related to WiFi, and the time you've wasted so far is simply symptomatic of being victimized by the clueless masses on random web forums.
I'd hate to be Captain Obvious here, but: Have you tried simply installing new drivers for your card? Dell has the occasional bad habit of shipping shit drivers with their (generally great) computers. If it has a Broadcom chipset (which is likely to be the case, unless you paid extra for an Intel card), this is more difficult than it should be because Broadcom has a long history of offering nothing but disdain for their end-users, but you might find something newer on Dell's support site. If it's an Intel card, just go to Intel and download new drivers -- they're updated pretty regularly.
Whatever the case: Bad drivers on any OS are the never the fault of the OS, but the fault of the idiot who certified the broken driver as ready for prime-time. Blaming Microsoft for bad drivers under Vista is like blaming Linus for nVidia or ATI's shortcomings in Linux. Blaming lack of RAM or Superfetch or some other random thing instead of drivers is like blaming the car stereo in your new car for the failings of its motorized seats -- lunacy, at best.
So, feel free to blame Broadcom for writing shitty drivers, or blame Dell for accepting them and selling them to you as functional, but don't blame the OS.
I helped a lady with a Dell laptop, after Best Buy's Geek Squad scared her to death. She was nice, but mostly non-clued about computers. It was an old and infected machine, D600 or somesuch, but more than adequate for what she wanted to be doing with it. Reinstalled Windows for her, recovered her photos, gave her a working computer, and told her that it'd work way better if it had more RAM. She asked how hard it was to install, and I pulled the cover off of the bottom and showed her the clips that hold the DIMMs in place. I showed her the virtues of Newegg, and she carefully wrote down the type of RAM that it needed, and I went on my way expecting her to call for help if she ever decided to buy more RAM.
I didn't hear anything for several months when I ran into her again, and heard nothing but glowing praise. She accomplished the RAM upgrade smoothly, and the computer is still working better than ever.
Don't underestimate people.
RAM is cheap.
Please allow me to submit that if someone can afford a $500 laptop, they can probably afford to swap in 2 gigs of DDR2. They just need someone to either a) help them do so, either by instruction, consultation, or gift or b) guide them toward a computer which includes at least a couple of gigs of RAM out of the box.
The problem, as I see it, is not that Vista wants lots of memory, but that OEMs continue to sell computers which, unmodified, are completely unsuitable for any computing purpose. This problem isn't new, having existed since Windows became the defacto installed OS with Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and it is very clearly an abomination bordering on fraud, but at least a problem that is cheap and easy for folks to rectify these days (once it's pointed out to them).
Again, RAM is cheap. What has long been the overall best upgrade for any multitasking computer, is now quite likely also the least expensive and easiest to perform. So do your part, kid[1]: Quit whining and start coaching the people you meet about getting more RAM into their PCs.
[1]: Yep, I said it. It's not my fault that you're the one with the 7-digit UID.
Total non-problem. Just check e-mail once, twice, maybe three times a day - no problem. Then, the context switch between e-mail and whatever else isn't very expensive because it simply doesn't happen very often. I keep my mail reader closed until I'm prepared to spend some time using it.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned (and indeed, I've been using the deprecated, hyphenated form of "e-mail" here on purpose), but that's what works for me. I treat e-mail as a non-realtime medium for things which needn't happen instantaneously.
For conversations or questions that need to happen in a more real-time fashion and that are worthy of interrupting either myself or someone else, I pick up the phone, or send an SMS.
*shrug*
It's the same with the manufacturer's warranty.
I had a 2.5 gig Seagate roll over about 2 years into its 3-year warranty. Seagate was cheerful enough with getting me a quick replacement -- a 6.3 gig replacement.
A few years later, a 30-gig Maxtor went south. I had a remanufactured 40-gig model within a week, which is still going strong after more than 4 years.
No complaints from me. If it were really a problem, I could have either partitioned or jumpered around the issue, or lied to BIOS, but I instead opted to fill the extra space with (of course) additional porn.
That all said, I also maintain a small business selling parts and service as a means of helping folks out and making a little extra cash. Every new part I sell gets a 1-year (parts/labor) warranty, from me. In most cases, I'd even be willing to replace the item on-site -- again, on my own time.
So far, nobody has needed to exercise the warranty. We'll see how long that lasts, but it seems like a reasonable thing to do for my customers at this point.
If you're arguing over price, yes, that is exactly what I (as an additional vocal Blu-Ray proponent) suggest.
I buy Blu-Ray movies. (I also download films from places like TPB.) When I buy a movie on Blu-Ray instead of DVD, or instead of downloading it for free, it is because it is what I expect to be a special movie to be cherished forever, complete with graphic details of the veins in the actors' teeth and the individual particles of sand in the beach, or more frequently, a fine representation of the original film grain.
When I buy a movie on DVD, I do so because I do not expect any particularly artistic cinematography, don't care very much about quality, but still feel like rewarding those who created the film (and the store which stocks it) with my money. (I buy kids movies on DVD.)
When I download a movie, it is because I really don't care about quality, and don't want to reward the creators for their trash, but want to see it anyway. (Exceptions for rare films which are difficult to find, but that doesn't happen often.)
But, at no point does price enter the game as a primary bargaining point. For Blu-Ray or not Blu-Ray, the decision is simply based on whether I feel that owning a 1080p rendition of a film is worthy of the superior format. If a work meets this mark, I don't really care what it costs.
(I'm trying to avoid bragging here, but: It really helps to have an audio system which is good enough to make regular Dolby Digital sound like shit compared to the uncompressed PCM on a Blu-Ray disc, along with a TV which is both large enough and has seating close enough to it that the extra video resolution is worthwhile. When I had a 36" 4x3 Sony HDTV, Blu-Ray was frankly boring and mostly meaningless to me with the titles I'd used. With a 16x9 52" 1080p Samsung LCD, it is simply without equal. YMMV.)
This is 2008. -Everything-, from my cable TV box to my iPod to my 1TB drive has Ethernet, in one form or another, although I'd be hesitant to call any of them "computers.". You can even boot over it.
*shrug*
Besides, you're ruining a perfectly good joke with all that seriousness.
Either you're new here, or you've misspelt "ethernet."
Of course. I'm sure that my (Google's, rather) broken Dutch does detract from the content of my message, but then that really was the point that I was attempting to convey.
It's important to communicate clearly, and in a language people understand. There's no reason to beat a topic to death, but there's also no reason to use wording which is so vague, broken, or succinct as to leave big, gaping questions for interested readers to try to figure out for themselves.
Had the offer to buy the domain not been so terse, this Ask Slashdot would never have had to happen.
Natuurlijk. Maar ik zou ook graag van uitgaan dat de potentiële koper is misschien een beetje meer verbose.
Hoe komt u tot in de punt is een ding, maar de zeer pregnante karakter van deze brief maakt het lezen van spam, in plaats van een aanbod tot aankoop van iets.
Dit doet me denken aan alle all ur bass are belong to us.
Pardon me, but I'm a bit stunned that anyone might think this is the real reason Google might make a browser.
Cuz, I mean, we all remember how well it worked for Netscape. Don't we?
First, this happened to the world's most popular browser, as it grew to include a kitchen sink. Then, a little over a year later, AOL happened to Netscape. Mere days later, it was revealed what AOL's real intentions were. They later disbanded what was left of Netscape. And today, nobody gives a shit about AOL's $4,200,000,000.00 start page. (I've intentionally omitted the parts about "source code" and "JWZ," as they don't seem relevant to the point.)
Really: If this history shows us anything, it is that the web portal game is a joke. Tying it into software (and thus making it even less universal) just makes it even more laughable.
That's nice, and all. But:
Needs arise at odd times. I don't want want to worry about climbing around in the attic with a 2-man pulling crew just because I've picked up a uPnP media player for the bedroom, or whatever -- I want it to plug in and work. I'd also like my patch panels to be nice, neat, and obvious in their layout; these goals range from difficult to impossible when cabling only happens on an as-needed basis. Further, given a choice, I'd really prefer to only visit each location one time, instead of at least two times. And, given a choice, I'd always rather spend less money than spend more money. And if/when new needs arise they are easily solved with the installed pull string.
It helps my situation in that the wiring was free -- I've been collecting short boxes of Berk-Tek Cat5e from work that were on their way to the dumpster.
For me, I don't really see the purpose of smurf tube or any other conduit when it comes to low-voltage cabling. It doesn't make the wire work any better, and it doesn't save any time. I'd still have avoided the smurf tube method even if I'd had to pay for all that copper. The pull string, on the other hand, is positively a no-brainer -- it's cheap, and comes in a bucket that is bloody easy to feed out of. Just tape the string into the bundle of wires, and pull the whole bundle (2 or 3 Cat5, one coax, one string) from the basement to the wall plate.
Really, the only time I can see using smurf tube smurf tube is in the event that the walls are insulated with batting. At my place, the walls are empty for now, which makes cabling a breeze. Later on, they'll be stuffed with blow-in, but the pull string will still work just fine afterward.
To each his own, I guess.
And don't forget microwave ovens. It's likely that everyone reading this has a 2.4GHz radio, of power levels ranging from several hundred Watts to over a kiloWatt, in the form of a small microwave oven in a nearby kitchen. Yeah, sure, it's shielded and lead screened and whatnot. But it doesn't take much leakage to completely trash the signal from a common Linksys WRT54G, which only has a 28milliWatt transmitter.
Further, at these high frequencies, RF can act a little strange -- my own microwave didn't cause any noticeable interference, until I moved to a different house. After the move, with the same microwave, the same access point, the same laptop, and similar SNR, everything ground to a halt whenever the microwave was in use. Both houses have modern wiring and good grounding. The only real difference is that the microwave is now rotated 180 degrees relative to the portions of the house where there is WiFi gear, which seems to indicate that the oven leaks more in some directions than in others. Switching channels seems to have worked around this issue.
For reasons like this, as part of the ongoing remodel and rewire, every room gets at least two Cat5e, at least one RG6, and a polyester pull string to some accessible area. (I'd have run some multimode fiber, but currently don't have anything which needs it, don't have any problems which can be solved with it, and don't have any experience terminating it. The pull string should make it easy to install later if the need ever arises.) The wiring, including coax, terminates at a couple of ICC keystone patch panels in an otherwise-useless alcove next to the basement steps, which is also where the switch, routers, and cable modem live.
Some rooms have more drops than others, like the game room and the library. The office has about a dozen RJ45 jacks, mounted both along the baseboard at regular outlet height and midway on the wall (just above the height of a monitor on a desk) for plugging all manner of things in temporarily for servicing or toying or whatever.
People think I'm nuts, too, but I'll have more bandwidth available to more independent points than any wireless technology will be able to provide for the foreseeable future. I can plug in new gaming systems, or analog/IP telephones, whatever audio or video gear, or about anything else, wherever I want, without worrying about coverage issues, while keeping my WiFi spectrum clean for those tasks that need it, like listening to Pandora way out in the back yard next to the fire ring with an iPod Touch.
Structured cabling isn't a problem which needs solved, but a solution for all manner of things which need connected.