the fiddlers are the ones who don't call me, because
they think they can figure it out on their own, which
is perfectly fine by me.
...And by the time they do call for help, they've
mangled their system to the point where it won't even boot -
meaning that instead of going through the tedious process
of tracking down exactly what they broke, you can just
re-RIS it and tell them not to try whatever they did last
again.;-)
Actually, I didn't quite answer one of your questions...
My Epia machines have almost no upgradeability, but their job will
basically never change (my internet gateway will work fine until the
day I get fiber-to-the-home, and my file server has one PCI slot
which will suffice to fill it with more drives than the case itself
will hold).
My desktop machines currently have single-core Athlon 64s, but support
X2s (though socket 939 has apparently neared the end of its life, so...).
They also have at least one PCI x16 slot.
My own personal desktop machine will probably break 100W under
load when I eventually drop an X2 in it... Though DarkWhite's suggestion
of a 7600GS might balance out the difference enough to keep me in the
high 90s.
one important thing you forgot to mention for those who want a decent video
card with a good performance/power ratio is that NVIDIA just recently came out
with the G71/G73 cores
Wow? I actually hadn't seen a comparison of those in terms of energy efficiency
yet.
Having just looked it up, I see the 7600GS draws a mere 32W - Fully 20W
(give or take a few between implementations) less than the 6600!
And it comes in dual-DVI versions. Aww man - Now I need a reason to justify
the upgrade!;-)
How did you do it? Which components did you choose,
and what tools are available to test things like power
consumption and heat output?
Just a little meta-comment first... If you log in to
post, you can have Slashdot tell you when someone replies.
But since you asked, I'll presume you plan to check back
in the near future.:)
For measurement, I use a simple kill-a-watt meter. WONDERFUL
little toy, and pretty cheap. Unless you have access to dozens
of samples, though, you'll need to do your research up-front
and the measurement just confirms your success. The below
suggestions you should take as BROAD generalizations, you
really need to look up each component of your system and
pick ones that work together and give you what you need, all
while minimizing power.
For your first critical decision (even if you put CPU as the #1 constraint), graphics. Do you just want desktop productivity
with only the most basic 3d acceleration? Go for on-board
Unichrome or (a bit older) Radeon Xpress (which tend to
include the whole chipset, not just video). If you want
some "real" 3d power for gaming, but don't rank that as
the sole reason you own a PC, try to get one of the newer
mobile GPUs. Personally, I went with a GeForce 6600, which
draws low enough power to work in a passively-cooled config,
but has enough horsepower to play previous-gen games at
full res and highest quality (and most current games at
the default quality). You might also consider driver
support for it first - Many GPUs now offer a wide range
of performance, dynamically selectable, so you can run
in low performance (and thus low power) mode most of
the time, then kick it up to play a game.
For the motherboard, if you don't need a ton of peripherals,
uATX boards tend to consider power draw as a design
constraint whereas most MBs seem to assume you'll just
get a bigger power supply if necessary. And now we see
that chipset makes a big difference as well - I'll apparently
need to research this topic far more for my next build.;-)
Which brings me to power supply... Most people don't think
anything of it, and get the cheapest, biggest one they can
find. I currently run all SeaSonic S-12s (well, one older
SeaSonic, the model of which I forget but the same basic
design as the S-12s). Nice quiet 12cm fan, and 85% efficient.
They cost a little more, but keep your total power budget
in mind - When I say I don't have a single system drawing
over 100W at-the-wall, I mean it. I have one 380W in my
file-server (spinning up four drives will most likely
represent the biggest load your system sees), and the rest
have 220W (the lowest SeaSonic makes), with not even a
hint of instability. And don't neglect what a difference a
few percent more efficient makes - On a high-end rig
that draws 400W internally, going from 70 to 85%
efficient will save a whopping 60W at-the-wall.
Currently, the biggest difference you can make comes from
the CPU. Go with a P4, and you might as well abandon
power consumption as a design constraint. On the opposite
end of that spectrum, if you don't need a lot of horsepower,
the Via Epia boards (of which you can now get a dual-CPU
model, the DP-310) absolutely rock and have everything
on-board - I run a passively cooled single-CPU Dual-NIC Epia
as my internet gateway, with a CF drive, and the whole thing
draws 26W (IIRC); yet, when necessary, I can use it as a
low-end desktop machine fully capable of doing just about
any common task short of gaming or video editing. For my
"real" machines, I currently have Athlon64s (one RS400
chipset and one NForce4, the latter of which I now regret
after reading the FP link). Though spec'd at a TDP of 65W,
in practice they draw 30-35W under load, and 7-11W idle. A
Pentium-M would give more bang-per-watt, but they cost a
hell of a lot more. And as I mentioned, the next-gen
Core Duos look very promising.
For memory, running one gig stick instead of two 512MB sticks
(otherwise ide
when the material detection shows an illegal, controlled
substance - like anthrax or uranium
Uranium, in itself, does not count as a "controlled"
substance. You can, legally, go online and buy anything
from uranium metal to large quantities of ore samples
MUCH "hotter" than you should ever spend much time near.
However, although you might poison yourself, you can't
actually use those (in any realistic quantity) to build
an explosive device.
Now, enriched uranium, plutonium, and very-hot
fissile byproducts such as cesium-137, you can't get
without jumping through legal hoops.
But using the fact that someone has low levels of radiation
coming from their car or home should most certainly NOT
count as "probably cause".
For comparison, here in New England, we have plain
ol' grantite outcroppings hotter than U238 metal
(not unrelated, we also have a lot of Radon gas problems,
but, not the point).
Seeing as the ATI board doesn't have a built-in ethernet
controller (which honestly seems a little crappy
I'll agree with you there, but...
It seems to me that you're really limited to just
1-2 additional cards, and not having an in-built ethernet
controller really limits flexibility
Except for graphics cards (which have typically had
their own bus since the days of VL - And even though
anything can theoretically use x16, nothing does
except graphics) and network, what more do you really
need?
TV tuner? That falls into the "graphics card" category.
WiFi, okay, I did mention network above. PCMCIA? C'mon,
seriously? And sound cards... Yeah, AC93 used to suck,
but current onboard sound systems do well enough that
very few people even have speakers capable of
resolving the difference.
I don't think I've needed more than two cards in any
system I've built since the early '90s (back when things
like HDDs and 2S1P1G didn't come built into every
motherboard). I have two machines running today that
have no expansion cards in them (and two more
that only have graphics cards as an add-in).
I see your concern, but I really don't think it will
hurt all that much. Also, don't forget USB2 - You can
run just about anything short of a video card over that
at full speed, even HDD and sound. I highly doubt more
than a tiny minority of people will suffer from a shortage
of expansion slots. And for those who do need more...
Some MB manufacturer will continue to serve that niche, so
no need to worry about that.:)
I've recently started trying to build my new systems
to draw as little power as possible. I've done fairly
well at it, too (largely thanks to the 90nm Athlon 64s,
although I'll keep my eyes on Intel's new offerings),
with not a single system in my house sucking over 100W
at the wall.
But I have to admit, it never even occurred to
me that the chipset alone could account for (over) 20W
difference between systems - And that only considers
the difference between the two, not the absolute
draw. I had previously focused on the CPU, then the GPU,
then HDDs, in that order.
With the current trend in power consumption, it looks
like my next system will focus on the GPU first, then
Northbridge, then CPU, then HDDs! Holy reversals,
Batman!
What next - Should I worry just how much power my fans and
ever-growing number of parts with numerous LEDs draw?
I never considered them as a significant draw,
either...
I have no idea why they are looking at this in
a desktop centric way.
Because even if AMD didn't prove the clock-rate-only wars
as a sham, Intel destroying the P4 with a chip sucking a
quarter the power did.
Modern machines run dozens, if not hundreds, of processes
simultaneously. Even if not running multithreaded apps,
the average user will benefit from going multi-core.
In no way is x64 bit or duel core processing support
available for important desktop applications(games).
64 bit (easily) allows more than 4GB memory, end of story. Currently that doesn't matter. Wait until Vista comes
out.
Multi-core kicks serious butt entirely on its own
merits. If you ONLY play CPU-intensive single-threaded
games, for now, a faster single-core will give
you more bang for your buck. If you do anything
more than just gaming, you'll very quickly see that
dual core gives a HUGE speedup for considerably less
money than continuing to play the clock-speed war. Now,
I suspect going from two to four cores won't make nearly as
much difference as going from one to two, until more
CPU-intensive apps (including games) start making use of
them. But that will happen, and probably within
the next two or three years. Now that dual-core has
gone from "extremely rare" to "the majority of new
machines", developers will use them.
As someone who runs as a non-admin, I'll share a few tips
I've learned on how best to make everything work...
1) Download CPAU,
which works somewhat like RunAs but will let you create "job"
files so you don't need to type a password each time.
2) Make three accounts, a "guest" (don't use the built-in
guest account for this) user, a "poweruser", and an "admin"
(don't use the built-in admin account for this). For the rest
of this post, I'll call your real account "fred", the
lower-permissioned account "barney", and the
higher-permissioned account "gazoo".
3) Set the root of all drives to explicitly "deny" all
permissions to "gazoo". This wouldn't even slow down an
interactive attacker, but few hostile programs expect
to need to take ownership and change permissions from
an account already having admin privs.
4) Give "fred" write permission on "Documents and
Settings\barney". Give "barney" read permission on
"Documents and Settings\fred". Give "fred" read
permission on "Documents and Settings\gazoo". That
alone will solve 99% of permission problems you'll
have.
5) Use CPAU to set up job files to run all your networking
programs (browser, email, IM, etc) as "barney". Do the
same for all programs that legitimately need admin access
(many CD/DVD rippers, for example) to run as "gazoo".
6) To install most software (even well-behaved software that
doesn't require admin to run), log in as admin (the real one,
not "gazoo") and create its directory under Program Files,
giving "fred" (or "barney" if it will run with reduced
permissions) write permission to that dir. Then, install
it while logged in as "fred" (or, again, as "barney" if
applicable). Also, some pesky software will work best if
you install it first as the user it will run as, and then
as "fred". Firefox and Thunderbird fall into this category,
because of the way they handle user profiles (Using the
highly-recommended "Portable" versions
of both will completely avoid this problem, btw).
The above will take care of most common problems you might
have. Other problems will still pop up, however.
For example,
good luck printing from your web browser - you can use
Microsoft's TweakUI to edit the relevant ACLs, but that
seems like about a 50/50 shot of working. I curently have
two machines at home set up more-or-less as described above,
and basically identical. One of them can print from "barney"
and one can't. Wierd.
Also, get used to using UNC names. Mapped drives, even if
mapped under all three accounts, will not show up
for programs running as anyone but the currently logged-in
user.
And some "experts" wonder why so many Windows users
still run as admin.
Seriously, the summary lacks something... like "how does this
differ from Emacs/VI"? I can edit HTML or XML just fine in Emacs
or VI. I can run them on just about any platform in existance.
The results (at least, with me as the creator) support every browser
that at least basically conforms to the W3 standards.
I think you may be confusing an alleged lack of comedy value in the article
with the wholesale inability of Americans to grasp anything remotely humorous
unless it contains the word "beaver" in it.
We've used Symantec's corporate edition for 4-5 years now
and have never run into such an issue.
Have you moved to v10 yet?
If not - Don't.
v9 worked just fine for us as well. No fuss, no muss, much like you
described. Then we switched to 10... Initially it looked good,
until we discovered that some of our older laptops (not ancient,
just older) had gone from "a bit slow" to "unuseable" the moment we
installed the AV client.
SAV has been just about as close to painless as we could want
For most of our users, it doesn't cause problems (that they notice) either.
But like I said, the big problems we see occur during intense disc I/O... Most
noticeably, it kills the power-to-(useable)-desktop time and makes DVD
underruns all but certain. And on servers... Ouch! Our poor NAS sits there with
rtvscan constantly sucking at least a quarter of the CPU - And that just
with on-demand scanning, no "active" scanning at all.
And yes, we know about the problem with the default configuration where it
tries to actively scan network drives, as well as always running rather
than waiting for the machine to idle. Even fixing those, it still causes a
drastic slowdown.
Thats strange, AntiVir was the only one out of
the 3 I could install on Windows Server 2003.
Did they perhaps start allowing it with v7? At least
on v6, I even went so far as to trick the installer into
going ahead with the setup, and then the actual AntiVir
service would also check and kill itself.
I would very much like it if v7 works on Server, I'll have
to try it again this weekend.
In other words, the government only needs warrants
for unreasonable searches and seizures.
Of course, in your explanation, the government decides
what counts as "reasonable", effectively striking out
the entire amendment. Somehow I don't think the
Founding Fathers just wanted to put little bits of
meaningless prose at the end of the Constitution for
fun. People don't need protection from "reasonable"
searches - they need protection from an abusive
government.
And unreasonable can either mean 'beyond normal
limits' or 'not showing good judgement'.
Don't play semantic games. "Unreasonable" means,
both literally and from common use in that time period,
"without reason". That would make the meaning of that
particular clause essentially "The government can't go
on evidence-fishing trips, nor can it harass people with
searches it knows won't find anything".
And if you still want to deliberately misread a fairly
obvious statement, I can make my point without relying
on that particular word... The next part, after the
subordinate clause, forms a conjunction with the
main clause that ends with "shall not be violated".
Read that way, the fourth amendment outright forbids any
"unreasonable" searches; for those deemed reasonable, it
requires "probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched". Which an
indiscriminate collection of data does not satisfy.
Lets just conjecture for the moment that this equipment
*is* there. Is there anything that leads us to beleive the
government is using it for any kind of searching that is
unreasonable?
You mean, any reason beside Klein's statement and the papers
backing him up; AT&T protesting that ducuments anyone "with
a little knowledge of networking technology could not have
written" could cause them irreparable harm; and the
president himself admitting to the existance of such
a program (despite his PR lacky saying "yes" means "no"
in a later press conference)? Nope. No reason at all.
cynicism is not a good basis for an assertion.
"blahyawn"
Or do you prefer "Kthxbye"?
You rhetorically asked as though I just parroted what the
talking heads have told me, without stopping to consider
if this actually does violate the constitution.
Now, whether or not you want to continue our debate on
the meaning of "is", I found your opening volley somewhat
insulting, and responded in kind.
Is it just me or is that article summary complete
and utter nonsense?
Well, technically "yes", but as the entire article reads
like that summary, I suppose that actually makes the
summary a fairly good one.
Now, as for why this made the Slashdot FP... I dunno.
Slow news day? It doesn't even belong in the "It's funny,
laugh" section, since it completely fails at coming off
as even remotely funny (despite trying soooooo
hard).
I am curious,could you point me to which sentence or
statement from the U.S. Constitution has been violated ?
I'll do better than that - I'll even quote it
here for you:
"The right of the people
to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue,
but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be
seized.
That comes from the fourth
amendment, from a little-known part of the US
Constitution called the "Bill of Rights". The
current administration should try giving it a
read before wiping their asses with it
every morning.
Maybe it's OK if you get the information from a third
party - as if that removes the classification of the
information.
It doesn't remove the classification, but it removes
the legal obligation to not disclose it, an obligation
which a person has to willingly take upon themselves
as part of accepting a given security clearance.
Now, the afforementioned "third party" would still have
broken the law, but that falls into a whole different
ballpark as far as infringing on our freedom of the press
goes.
That of not only protection but saving the time
wasting recovery from infections?
If "free" meant "less effective" then you would have a
good point. But it doesn't - The three mentioned in the
FP all perform comparably to Symantec, and (from at least
one independant review I've seen) considerably better than
McAfee.
Not to mention, they consume FAR lower system resources. At
work we run Symantec corporate edition, and I actually need
to disable it to burn a DVD rather than a coaster (and I don't
run on old or low-end hardware). At home, AntiVir chugs away
without making a nuissance of itself or reducing all disc
access to a crawl. It also doesn't install six
services, two autoruns, and a handfull of TCP/IP stack
hijacks, which Symantec does.
Personally, I long for Clam to support on-demand scanning.
But until then... AntiVir wins, with AVG a close second (and
the only free on-demand choice for server versions of Windows).
I use AntiVir on 2000 Workstation and XP boxes. I chose
it specifically because it catches viruses the big names
(Symantec and McAfee) deliberately ignore, such as the
FBI's "Magic Lantern" (or whatever they've renamed it
this month). As a perk, it really does run well and
consumes a minimum of system resources.
Unfortunately, AntiVir refuses to run on any "servers"
(meaning NT4 server, 2000 server, and any form of 2003).
On those, I run AVG, which works almost as well,
IMO, but has a slightly less friendly updater.
Check out the photos of the "secret doors". Now, I
understand that networking can get a bit messy, but
that doesn't justify keeping a needlessly unsafe work
area. That place looks like a nightmare! And not
even remotely handicap-accessible.
For shame, AT&T... Blatantly violating the US constitution
we can overlook, but a dangerously messy work environment?
Tsk tsk tsk.
Ah well... on the bright side, if they nailed Al Capone
for tax evasion, perhaps we plebes will eventually see
some form of justice done in this case.
The presence of strange white fibers, also knowns as "poly-fill" in the
other 98% of cases leads researchers to the much more obvious
conclusion...
I would say the majority of SIDS cases represent nothing more than
the combination of a social stigma against medical abortion and the
standard primate behavior of performing "fourth trimester" abortions
via suffocation.
Doesn't take a genius... Pillow over face, baby lacks the muscle
strength in the first week or so to thrash around leaving any
evidence of a struggle, baby suffocates. Nothing to see here,
move along. Good of these researchers to keep up the "plausible
deniability" facade (even if only in a whopping 2% of cases),
though.
I don't consider this a simple matter of using an IDE or not...
Most modern IDEs include "wizards" that write 90% of the framework code
of a given project. The programmer just needs to plug in a few callbacks
and call it a day.
Now, although I personally think I can write better framework code, I
don't have a problem with someone using a wizard, once they already
understand exactly what it does for them.
Put bluntly - Someone taking a college-level programming course should
damned well know how to write, from scratch and with nothing more helpful
than emacs/vi/notepad, a program that will successfully compile.
Even in the Windows world, and even just a single dialog-box with a custom
windowproc version of the standard "hello world" program, a coder should
have the ability to write that from scratch.
If they can't cut it with that - Better they learn they can't actually
code in the second semester than the eighth.
Let's just say that, despite the incredible rarity of this disease, I'd
guess that almost everyone comes down with it has also heard of it.
Yeah, I know - those two and three year olds, having no work or school
to keep their twisted little minds busy, hang out in all
the loony-bin chat rooms discussing their delusional symptoms-of-the-week,
right?
I really do not understand the overwhelmingly negative response from
normally-anti-establishment Slashdotters on this topic. The links
mention all three objections commonly raised:
1) The fibers do NOT come from fabric
2) Not everyone with this has the associated psychological symptoms
3) Not everyone with the fibers has the open sores
That pretty thoroughly rules out the "lint in self-inflicted wounds
from delusional parasitosis inspired scratching" argument.
Personally, I find it sad that we'd rather consider people "crazy"
than to remain open to the idea that they have a previously unknown
pathogen. Do most Slashdotters really believe modern medicine has
all the answers? Gues what, people - We still die. Medical science
has a LONG way to go.
I'd point out that 15 years ago, I played with staph aureus
in a basically uncontained micro lab, since "everyone knows" that it
only causes infection in severely immune-compromised individuals. And
today, we know it as one of the "flesh-eating" (necrotizing fasciitis)
bacteria, with some strains resistant to three of the major classes
of antibiotics.
I have treated patients with this. No one scoffs that these people
need help. But this disease is not of primary skin pathology
Did you read any of the links? Like the third one, that points
out that the fibers, of a proven non-textile orgin, can occur both
without the neuro/psychological symptoms and without the
open sores?
You old trips crack me up. 10-12 years of college, and for all
that, they gave you three shotguns - screw with DA, screw with the
NE/5HT balance, or sedate the poor bastards. And if someone presents
with any unusual physical symptoms, just write it off as
self-inflicted and load another round of shotgun #1.
Slashdot Mirror
the fiddlers are the ones who don't call me, because they think they can figure it out on their own, which is perfectly fine by me.
...And by the time they do call for help, they've
mangled their system to the point where it won't even boot -
meaning that instead of going through the tedious process
of tracking down exactly what they broke, you can just
re-RIS it and tell them not to try whatever they did last
again. ;-)
you answered. whoops.
Actually, I didn't quite answer one of your questions...
My Epia machines have almost no upgradeability, but their job will basically never change (my internet gateway will work fine until the day I get fiber-to-the-home, and my file server has one PCI slot which will suffice to fill it with more drives than the case itself will hold).
My desktop machines currently have single-core Athlon 64s, but support X2s (though socket 939 has apparently neared the end of its life, so...). They also have at least one PCI x16 slot.
My own personal desktop machine will probably break 100W under load when I eventually drop an X2 in it... Though DarkWhite's suggestion of a 7600GS might balance out the difference enough to keep me in the high 90s.
one important thing you forgot to mention for those who want a decent video card with a good performance/power ratio is that NVIDIA just recently came out with the G71/G73 cores
;-)
Wow? I actually hadn't seen a comparison of those in terms of energy efficiency yet.
Having just looked it up, I see the 7600GS draws a mere 32W - Fully 20W (give or take a few between implementations) less than the 6600!
And it comes in dual-DVI versions. Aww man - Now I need a reason to justify the upgrade!
How did you do it? Which components did you choose, and what tools are available to test things like power consumption and heat output?
:)
;-)
Just a little meta-comment first... If you log in to post, you can have Slashdot tell you when someone replies. But since you asked, I'll presume you plan to check back in the near future.
For measurement, I use a simple kill-a-watt meter. WONDERFUL little toy, and pretty cheap. Unless you have access to dozens of samples, though, you'll need to do your research up-front and the measurement just confirms your success. The below suggestions you should take as BROAD generalizations, you really need to look up each component of your system and pick ones that work together and give you what you need, all while minimizing power.
For your first critical decision (even if you put CPU as the #1 constraint), graphics. Do you just want desktop productivity with only the most basic 3d acceleration? Go for on-board Unichrome or (a bit older) Radeon Xpress (which tend to include the whole chipset, not just video). If you want some "real" 3d power for gaming, but don't rank that as the sole reason you own a PC, try to get one of the newer mobile GPUs. Personally, I went with a GeForce 6600, which draws low enough power to work in a passively-cooled config, but has enough horsepower to play previous-gen games at full res and highest quality (and most current games at the default quality). You might also consider driver support for it first - Many GPUs now offer a wide range of performance, dynamically selectable, so you can run in low performance (and thus low power) mode most of the time, then kick it up to play a game.
For the motherboard, if you don't need a ton of peripherals, uATX boards tend to consider power draw as a design constraint whereas most MBs seem to assume you'll just get a bigger power supply if necessary. And now we see that chipset makes a big difference as well - I'll apparently need to research this topic far more for my next build.
Which brings me to power supply... Most people don't think anything of it, and get the cheapest, biggest one they can find. I currently run all SeaSonic S-12s (well, one older SeaSonic, the model of which I forget but the same basic design as the S-12s). Nice quiet 12cm fan, and 85% efficient. They cost a little more, but keep your total power budget in mind - When I say I don't have a single system drawing over 100W at-the-wall, I mean it. I have one 380W in my file-server (spinning up four drives will most likely represent the biggest load your system sees), and the rest have 220W (the lowest SeaSonic makes), with not even a hint of instability. And don't neglect what a difference a few percent more efficient makes - On a high-end rig that draws 400W internally, going from 70 to 85% efficient will save a whopping 60W at-the-wall.
Currently, the biggest difference you can make comes from the CPU. Go with a P4, and you might as well abandon power consumption as a design constraint. On the opposite end of that spectrum, if you don't need a lot of horsepower, the Via Epia boards (of which you can now get a dual-CPU model, the DP-310) absolutely rock and have everything on-board - I run a passively cooled single-CPU Dual-NIC Epia as my internet gateway, with a CF drive, and the whole thing draws 26W (IIRC); yet, when necessary, I can use it as a low-end desktop machine fully capable of doing just about any common task short of gaming or video editing. For my "real" machines, I currently have Athlon64s (one RS400 chipset and one NForce4, the latter of which I now regret after reading the FP link). Though spec'd at a TDP of 65W, in practice they draw 30-35W under load, and 7-11W idle. A Pentium-M would give more bang-per-watt, but they cost a hell of a lot more. And as I mentioned, the next-gen Core Duos look very promising.
For memory, running one gig stick instead of two 512MB sticks (otherwise ide
Ugh - "we have plain ol' granite outcroppings". Learn to spell, pla!
when the material detection shows an illegal, controlled substance - like anthrax or uranium
Uranium, in itself, does not count as a "controlled" substance. You can, legally, go online and buy anything from uranium metal to large quantities of ore samples MUCH "hotter" than you should ever spend much time near.
However, although you might poison yourself, you can't actually use those (in any realistic quantity) to build an explosive device.
Now, enriched uranium, plutonium, and very-hot fissile byproducts such as cesium-137, you can't get without jumping through legal hoops.
But using the fact that someone has low levels of radiation coming from their car or home should most certainly NOT count as "probably cause".
For comparison, here in New England, we have plain ol' grantite outcroppings hotter than U238 metal (not unrelated, we also have a lot of Radon gas problems, but, not the point).
Seeing as the ATI board doesn't have a built-in ethernet controller (which honestly seems a little crappy
:)
I'll agree with you there, but...
It seems to me that you're really limited to just 1-2 additional cards, and not having an in-built ethernet controller really limits flexibility
Except for graphics cards (which have typically had their own bus since the days of VL - And even though anything can theoretically use x16, nothing does except graphics) and network, what more do you really need?
TV tuner? That falls into the "graphics card" category. WiFi, okay, I did mention network above. PCMCIA? C'mon, seriously? And sound cards... Yeah, AC93 used to suck, but current onboard sound systems do well enough that very few people even have speakers capable of resolving the difference.
I don't think I've needed more than two cards in any system I've built since the early '90s (back when things like HDDs and 2S1P1G didn't come built into every motherboard). I have two machines running today that have no expansion cards in them (and two more that only have graphics cards as an add-in).
I see your concern, but I really don't think it will hurt all that much. Also, don't forget USB2 - You can run just about anything short of a video card over that at full speed, even HDD and sound. I highly doubt more than a tiny minority of people will suffer from a shortage of expansion slots. And for those who do need more... Some MB manufacturer will continue to serve that niche, so no need to worry about that.
I've recently started trying to build my new systems to draw as little power as possible. I've done fairly well at it, too (largely thanks to the 90nm Athlon 64s, although I'll keep my eyes on Intel's new offerings), with not a single system in my house sucking over 100W at the wall.
But I have to admit, it never even occurred to me that the chipset alone could account for (over) 20W difference between systems - And that only considers the difference between the two, not the absolute draw. I had previously focused on the CPU, then the GPU, then HDDs, in that order.
With the current trend in power consumption, it looks like my next system will focus on the GPU first, then Northbridge, then CPU, then HDDs! Holy reversals, Batman!
What next - Should I worry just how much power my fans and ever-growing number of parts with numerous LEDs draw? I never considered them as a significant draw, either...
I have no idea why they are looking at this in a desktop centric way.
Because even if AMD didn't prove the clock-rate-only wars as a sham, Intel destroying the P4 with a chip sucking a quarter the power did.
Modern machines run dozens, if not hundreds, of processes simultaneously. Even if not running multithreaded apps, the average user will benefit from going multi-core.
In no way is x64 bit or duel core processing support available for important desktop applications(games).
64 bit (easily) allows more than 4GB memory, end of story. Currently that doesn't matter. Wait until Vista comes out.
Multi-core kicks serious butt entirely on its own merits. If you ONLY play CPU-intensive single-threaded games, for now, a faster single-core will give you more bang for your buck. If you do anything more than just gaming, you'll very quickly see that dual core gives a HUGE speedup for considerably less money than continuing to play the clock-speed war. Now, I suspect going from two to four cores won't make nearly as much difference as going from one to two, until more CPU-intensive apps (including games) start making use of them. But that will happen, and probably within the next two or three years. Now that dual-core has gone from "extremely rare" to "the majority of new machines", developers will use them.
As someone who runs as a non-admin, I'll share a few tips I've learned on how best to make everything work...
1) Download CPAU, which works somewhat like RunAs but will let you create "job" files so you don't need to type a password each time.
2) Make three accounts, a "guest" (don't use the built-in guest account for this) user, a "poweruser", and an "admin" (don't use the built-in admin account for this). For the rest of this post, I'll call your real account "fred", the lower-permissioned account "barney", and the higher-permissioned account "gazoo".
3) Set the root of all drives to explicitly "deny" all permissions to "gazoo". This wouldn't even slow down an interactive attacker, but few hostile programs expect to need to take ownership and change permissions from an account already having admin privs.
4) Give "fred" write permission on "Documents and Settings\barney". Give "barney" read permission on "Documents and Settings\fred". Give "fred" read permission on "Documents and Settings\gazoo". That alone will solve 99% of permission problems you'll have.
5) Use CPAU to set up job files to run all your networking programs (browser, email, IM, etc) as "barney". Do the same for all programs that legitimately need admin access (many CD/DVD rippers, for example) to run as "gazoo".
6) To install most software (even well-behaved software that doesn't require admin to run), log in as admin (the real one, not "gazoo") and create its directory under Program Files, giving "fred" (or "barney" if it will run with reduced permissions) write permission to that dir. Then, install it while logged in as "fred" (or, again, as "barney" if applicable). Also, some pesky software will work best if you install it first as the user it will run as, and then as "fred". Firefox and Thunderbird fall into this category, because of the way they handle user profiles (Using the highly-recommended "Portable" versions of both will completely avoid this problem, btw).
The above will take care of most common problems you might have. Other problems will still pop up, however.
For example, good luck printing from your web browser - you can use Microsoft's TweakUI to edit the relevant ACLs, but that seems like about a 50/50 shot of working. I curently have two machines at home set up more-or-less as described above, and basically identical. One of them can print from "barney" and one can't. Wierd.
Also, get used to using UNC names. Mapped drives, even if mapped under all three accounts, will not show up for programs running as anyone but the currently logged-in user.
And some "experts" wonder why so many Windows users still run as admin.
Seriously, the summary lacks something... like "how does this differ from Emacs/VI"? I can edit HTML or XML just fine in Emacs or VI. I can run them on just about any platform in existance. The results (at least, with me as the creator) support every browser that at least basically conforms to the W3 standards.
With apologies to Edwin Starr.
I think you may be confusing an alleged lack of comedy value in the article with the wholesale inability of Americans to grasp anything remotely humorous unless it contains the word "beaver" in it.
Now that I consider funny!
Heh. You said "beaver". Huh-huh.
We've used Symantec's corporate edition for 4-5 years now and have never run into such an issue.
Have you moved to v10 yet?
If not - Don't.
v9 worked just fine for us as well. No fuss, no muss, much like you described. Then we switched to 10... Initially it looked good, until we discovered that some of our older laptops (not ancient, just older) had gone from "a bit slow" to "unuseable" the moment we installed the AV client.
SAV has been just about as close to painless as we could want
For most of our users, it doesn't cause problems (that they notice) either. But like I said, the big problems we see occur during intense disc I/O... Most noticeably, it kills the power-to-(useable)-desktop time and makes DVD underruns all but certain. And on servers... Ouch! Our poor NAS sits there with rtvscan constantly sucking at least a quarter of the CPU - And that just with on-demand scanning, no "active" scanning at all.
And yes, we know about the problem with the default configuration where it tries to actively scan network drives, as well as always running rather than waiting for the machine to idle. Even fixing those, it still causes a drastic slowdown.
Thats strange, AntiVir was the only one out of the 3 I could install on Windows Server 2003.
Did they perhaps start allowing it with v7? At least on v6, I even went so far as to trick the installer into going ahead with the setup, and then the actual AntiVir service would also check and kill itself.
I would very much like it if v7 works on Server, I'll have to try it again this weekend.
Thank you!
In other words, the government only needs warrants for unreasonable searches and seizures.
Of course, in your explanation, the government decides what counts as "reasonable", effectively striking out the entire amendment. Somehow I don't think the Founding Fathers just wanted to put little bits of meaningless prose at the end of the Constitution for fun. People don't need protection from "reasonable" searches - they need protection from an abusive government.
And unreasonable can either mean 'beyond normal limits' or 'not showing good judgement'.
Don't play semantic games. "Unreasonable" means, both literally and from common use in that time period, "without reason". That would make the meaning of that particular clause essentially "The government can't go on evidence-fishing trips, nor can it harass people with searches it knows won't find anything".
And if you still want to deliberately misread a fairly obvious statement, I can make my point without relying on that particular word... The next part, after the subordinate clause, forms a conjunction with the main clause that ends with "shall not be violated". Read that way, the fourth amendment outright forbids any "unreasonable" searches; for those deemed reasonable, it requires "probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched". Which an indiscriminate collection of data does not satisfy.
Lets just conjecture for the moment that this equipment *is* there. Is there anything that leads us to beleive the government is using it for any kind of searching that is unreasonable?
You mean, any reason beside Klein's statement and the papers backing him up; AT&T protesting that ducuments anyone "with a little knowledge of networking technology could not have written" could cause them irreparable harm; and the president himself admitting to the existance of such a program (despite his PR lacky saying "yes" means "no" in a later press conference)? Nope. No reason at all.
cynicism is not a good basis for an assertion.
"blahyawn"
Or do you prefer "Kthxbye"?
You rhetorically asked as though I just parroted what the talking heads have told me, without stopping to consider if this actually does violate the constitution. Now, whether or not you want to continue our debate on the meaning of "is", I found your opening volley somewhat insulting, and responded in kind.
Is it just me or is that article summary complete and utter nonsense?
Well, technically "yes", but as the entire article reads like that summary, I suppose that actually makes the summary a fairly good one.
Now, as for why this made the Slashdot FP... I dunno. Slow news day? It doesn't even belong in the "It's funny, laugh" section, since it completely fails at coming off as even remotely funny (despite trying soooooo hard).
I'll do better than that - I'll even quote it here for you:That comes from the fourth amendment, from a little-known part of the US Constitution called the "Bill of Rights". The current administration should try giving it a read before wiping their asses with it every morning.
Maybe it's OK if you get the information from a third party - as if that removes the classification of the information.
It doesn't remove the classification, but it removes the legal obligation to not disclose it, an obligation which a person has to willingly take upon themselves as part of accepting a given security clearance.
Now, the afforementioned "third party" would still have broken the law, but that falls into a whole different ballpark as far as infringing on our freedom of the press goes.
That of not only protection but saving the time wasting recovery from infections?
If "free" meant "less effective" then you would have a good point. But it doesn't - The three mentioned in the FP all perform comparably to Symantec, and (from at least one independant review I've seen) considerably better than McAfee.
Not to mention, they consume FAR lower system resources. At work we run Symantec corporate edition, and I actually need to disable it to burn a DVD rather than a coaster (and I don't run on old or low-end hardware). At home, AntiVir chugs away without making a nuissance of itself or reducing all disc access to a crawl. It also doesn't install six services, two autoruns, and a handfull of TCP/IP stack hijacks, which Symantec does.
Personally, I long for Clam to support on-demand scanning. But until then... AntiVir wins, with AVG a close second (and the only free on-demand choice for server versions of Windows).
I use AntiVir on 2000 Workstation and XP boxes. I chose it specifically because it catches viruses the big names (Symantec and McAfee) deliberately ignore, such as the FBI's "Magic Lantern" (or whatever they've renamed it this month). As a perk, it really does run well and consumes a minimum of system resources.
Unfortunately, AntiVir refuses to run on any "servers" (meaning NT4 server, 2000 server, and any form of 2003). On those, I run AVG, which works almost as well, IMO, but has a slightly less friendly updater.
...OSHA will!
Check out the photos of the "secret doors". Now, I understand that networking can get a bit messy, but that doesn't justify keeping a needlessly unsafe work area. That place looks like a nightmare! And not even remotely handicap-accessible.
For shame, AT&T... Blatantly violating the US constitution we can overlook, but a dangerously messy work environment? Tsk tsk tsk.
Ah well... on the bright side, if they nailed Al Capone for tax evasion, perhaps we plebes will eventually see some form of justice done in this case.
The presence of strange white fibers, also knowns as "poly-fill" in the other 98% of cases leads researchers to the much more obvious conclusion...
I would say the majority of SIDS cases represent nothing more than the combination of a social stigma against medical abortion and the standard primate behavior of performing "fourth trimester" abortions via suffocation.
Doesn't take a genius... Pillow over face, baby lacks the muscle strength in the first week or so to thrash around leaving any evidence of a struggle, baby suffocates. Nothing to see here, move along. Good of these researchers to keep up the "plausible deniability" facade (even if only in a whopping 2% of cases), though.
I don't consider this a simple matter of using an IDE or not...
Most modern IDEs include "wizards" that write 90% of the framework code of a given project. The programmer just needs to plug in a few callbacks and call it a day.
Now, although I personally think I can write better framework code, I don't have a problem with someone using a wizard, once they already understand exactly what it does for them.
Put bluntly - Someone taking a college-level programming course should damned well know how to write, from scratch and with nothing more helpful than emacs/vi/notepad, a program that will successfully compile.
Even in the Windows world, and even just a single dialog-box with a custom windowproc version of the standard "hello world" program, a coder should have the ability to write that from scratch.
If they can't cut it with that - Better they learn they can't actually code in the second semester than the eighth.
Let's just say that, despite the incredible rarity of this disease, I'd guess that almost everyone comes down with it has also heard of it.
Yeah, I know - those two and three year olds, having no work or school to keep their twisted little minds busy, hang out in all the loony-bin chat rooms discussing their delusional symptoms-of-the-week, right?
I really do not understand the overwhelmingly negative response from normally-anti-establishment Slashdotters on this topic. The links mention all three objections commonly raised:
1) The fibers do NOT come from fabric
2) Not everyone with this has the associated psychological symptoms
3) Not everyone with the fibers has the open sores
That pretty thoroughly rules out the "lint in self-inflicted wounds from delusional parasitosis inspired scratching" argument.
Personally, I find it sad that we'd rather consider people "crazy" than to remain open to the idea that they have a previously unknown pathogen. Do most Slashdotters really believe modern medicine has all the answers? Gues what, people - We still die. Medical science has a LONG way to go.
I'd point out that 15 years ago, I played with staph aureus in a basically uncontained micro lab, since "everyone knows" that it only causes infection in severely immune-compromised individuals. And today, we know it as one of the "flesh-eating" (necrotizing fasciitis) bacteria, with some strains resistant to three of the major classes of antibiotics.
I have treated patients with this. No one scoffs that these people need help. But this disease is not of primary skin pathology
Did you read any of the links? Like the third one, that points out that the fibers, of a proven non-textile orgin, can occur both without the neuro/psychological symptoms and without the open sores?
You old trips crack me up. 10-12 years of college, and for all that, they gave you three shotguns - screw with DA, screw with the NE/5HT balance, or sedate the poor bastards. And if someone presents with any unusual physical symptoms, just write it off as self-inflicted and load another round of shotgun #1.