Huh. You mean that isn't normal? I can hear all of those things, and I've always been highly agitated by high-pitched sounds as well. The bats drive me crazy during summer nights, and I've been tickled pink since LCDs have replaced CRTs wholesale. The one that irritates me the most, though, are power supplies on brown power, or just poor quality power supplies, and anything that's performing PWM with a high wattage. I HATE cooking on an electric stove and using the microwave.
I haven't had my hearing tested since probably early grade school, but I don't recall anything special. But it'd be interesting if I could, indeed, hear a much higher frequency than most people. (Interestingly, my wife can't hear a lot of the things that irritate me which I can't identify - "Hey, you hear that? Help me find it!" -> "I can't hear anything!"
Damn high pitch sounds. While they might be good for echolocation, they are absolutely impossible to track down at times.
Personally, I went back to just using ALSA + internal alsa mixer. That kinda sucked (couldn't get it to consistently mix, particularly with Flash, and it would frequently result in poor quality crap while doing so), so...
I went back to what I was doing a decade ago: use ESD (wherever possible). I suppose I could use JACK or something else, but it does a good enough job and I'm not continually irritated with alsa dying outright due to different things vying for -whatever-.
I don't think the 'generic' functionality of the speakers or microphone would make much difference. They are all of at least acceptable quality these days, even on laptops (albeit, usually very small).
I'd think this technology would be quite limited in a desktop, actually - unless the speakers and microphone are built into the LCD, at least. There'd be a great deal of sensitivity to ambient noise, machine noise, and the positioning of the speakers/microphone to each other; if they're not able to effectively -reflect- back to each other, you might have some problems.
I'd imagine that the technology uses triangulation more so than sonar, which is why I make this guess.
I think those numbers are, in all likelihood, due to three things:
1) In Q2 2008, XP was still a purchase option. 2) People were anticipating W7 in Q2 2009 (to no small degree) and were waiting. 3) Finances. Q2 2009 and onward have been difficult, and waiting for W7 seems to many to be a good idea.
Dell has a long way before they're out of the domain of "colossal fail". I've yet to see a product from them since, oh, 2000 or so. That goes for laptops, desktops, and business printers (which are the worst offender, IMO).
What's more, their support is horrible. This is downright damning in and of itself. I've got a friend who got a Dell laptop (a higher-end 17" model with SSD, can't recall which one). He's had to send it back for servicing three times now, this time due to the LCD dying. He spent over 6 hours on the phone with Dell support yesterday, trying to get the 'ultimate' care package. He had a 'manager' level rep swear at him once, and they sold him the "ultimate" phone package instead of the parts + labor package he asked for (repeatedly).
I've heard good things about the Mini-9, but frankly, even at $200, I'm hesitant to look at it due to their record. I will not recommend Dell to anyone, and will actively discourage their purchase until Dell gets their act together.
Frankly, I think they're going the way of Gateway, RSN. I give 'em 6 months (frankly, I'm surprised they lasted this long).
Apparently you're not from the midwest. The Blackberry smartphones have been incredibly popular out here in Verizonland - if, for no other reason, than there are no other smartphones worth half a damn available.
With Verizon bandwidth fees and quality of service/bandwidth throughput, you're not going to be able to use an iPhone or WinMo phone anyway...
Do you have any idea how many languages are spoken in Afghanistan, most of which are spoken nowhere else? And due to its fringe interest, you're not likely to find many people other than those who have been there who can speak, let alone understand those languages and English (or Spanish, Portuguese, etc.).
From the CIA World Factbook:
Afghan Persian or Dari (official) 50%, Pashto (official) 35%, Turkic languages (primarily Uzbek and Turkmen) 11%, 30 minor languages (primarily Balochi and Pashai) 4%, much bilingualism
Keep in mind that Persian has many dialects even within Persia which are not commonly understood within Iran. Afghan Persian? Forget about it. Your chances of finding one of the above listed languages decreases as you go into the more remote, tribal areas. This is all complicated by an illiterate populace which doesn't have a written language to go with their spoken tribal tongue, nevermind being able to write.
Then, consider language/dialectal confusion. Even with English in the modern world, people will have brogues so thick and incomprehensible to make the actual language spoken inconsequential. Sure, you've got someone fluent in Uzbek, just in the Uzbek spoken 30 miles to the east, not this backwater Uzbek-Turkic mix...
I used to know a Kurdish Iranian who could speak and understand 7 languages, two of which were Turkic and Persian. He still was unable to communicate in the native tongue in some smaller locales near (100 miles) of where he was born.
Whatever else our new strategy entails, "no civilian casualties" needs to be the cornerstone, or we're never going to win.
That's been a key focus of US military development for the past, oh, 80 years or so. You know, since WWII. Smart bombing, targeting systems, shaped charges, special forces training, target practice, tactics and strategy (vs. bombing the shit out of everything), and so on.
So what, just stop fighting wars until we're able to shoot laser beams from space at only the "bad guys"? You use what you've got, and you make what you've got better.
"Civilized" is not an absolute. A civilized culture is one which fights natural behavior inclinations for the betterment of all. It's not a fucking utopia, because there are people involved.
Do you care to mention a more "civilized" world than the West, per chance? We're not trying to push our taboos (and lack thereof) on them. We're trying to get them to treat each other like people - in essence "the golden rule". That's fucking it.
So, let millions starve (and many to death - they were pretty close to that already) instead of bombing them? The humanitarian thing would be to bomb them, honestly.
Also consider that Japanese culture was very indoctrinated and not-quite post-Imperialist at that time. The Japanese subjects were lied to about US intentions (raping babies and the like) and were basically armed and instructed to fight to the last man and woman. It would have been brutal. It's unlikely they'd have been willing to accept US aide, or surrender to anything short of overwhelming force that could be seen for hundreds of miles. (Consider what Japanese culture has been like since then - pride, honor, accomplishment, and the like still strong. It was much stronger before WWII.
Well, what is cowardice? Not steeling one's self against fear in the face of certain death, maybe?
Problem is, these guys with vests strapped to their chests (or setting off bombs remotely) are one of the following:
1) devoted followers of Allah who think they're not dying, but just going to their reward of many willing virgins (in a world where they get a rare glimpse of ankle). 2) hostages. They're told to do so or their families are killed. 3) mentally deficient or drugged, and actually completely unaware of what it is they're doing.
Suicide bombers are saps. The real cowards are their masters: they push others in front of themselves.
Insulting him? You need only state one of the many facts about his life, or mention his name -outside- of the state of reverence, and you're jihaded:
* bring note to the fact that a number of his wives were children * postulate on his use of hallucinogens while in the desert * consider him lazy for living off of his rich, elderly wife * bring to note any of the many outright consistencies in the text * refer to the many verses which say that it is not only acceptable but expected of a Muslim to convert by force, enslave (same thing really), or slay any disbelievers * etc.
Though, of course, mention that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Western systems of belief and government, disregards women as property, and so on, it'll be pretty well accepted. (Unless you're in the Western world, where they've encouraged by the Quran to disregard things like social/cultural porhibitions against lying given to being in the den of unbelievers.)
Oh, and they don't "simply believe he delivered the word of God". They believe he is the one, true prophet, and all that have come before and after were lesser and to be either converted, enslaved, or killed.
No, but I've designed enough systems to know that it's generally a bad idea to implement a global root level process in such a fashion that would allow it to clusterfuck/root.
I'm sorry, but there's no way this should've fallen through QA cracks, because it should not have made it to QA in the first place. This kind of thing should never have been possible in the first place due to a clear segregation of permissions between "Admin" and everything else - particularly "guest".
The fact that this is even possible suggests a much deeper flaw in the security mechanisms of OS X.
I can't speak for him, but I'm 27, and I've been happily married for 6 years, two wonderful children, and have a 4-year degree. I've got more responsibility than many (most?) people in urban areas 10 years my senior. I can say for certain fact that I am a more responsible parent, citizen, and employee than many people in my parents' generation.
Granted, I've been mostly unemployed for the last two years (picking up this and that, and anything I can get - things are hard right now around here), but I do have 5 years of sysadmin experience - and I'm damn good at what I do.
IMO, this guy is correct in his assessment of punk-ass 20-somethings. Whether it applies to him or not, I can not say. Personally, I'm more agitated with the older generations than I am with my own, but my generation has plenty of time to fuck things up yet. Can't say the consumist-but-still-dope-n-mange mentality demonstrated by my age group has, so far, endeared me to them.
There are plenty of games out there on linux for "gamers". Most of them, however, are not for the fast-twitch, thrill-a-minute, same-game-but-higher-DPI-graphics crowd. Likewise, not many of them are the "highly graphical" type to begin with.
Final, and correct option: install virtualbox, windows XP, all updates, and a firewall + malware combination of your choice to a physical volume, then reboot to said volume.
There are a handful of options; many are actually quite good/enjoyable. Several that I've found quite enjoyable are Battle for Wesnoth (decent storyline and enjoyable turn based strategy with cute/good 2D graphics), Freeciv (Civilization clone), Freecol (Colonization clone), Open and Alien Arena (decent FPS games, more humorous most of the time than the original Q3A, and people still play online), Frozen Bubble (sadly addictive), Teeworlds (2D FPS based on the Q3 engine, IIRC, with some really humorous animation/gameplay - think multiplayer Kirby, but with guns). Vegastrike is very, very similar to the Privateer games from the early 1990s (which I absolutely loved), and is decent fun (albeit not as polished). There's also a Railroad Tycoon type game out there, can't recall what it's called. It really depends on what your flavor is: there are a lot of high quality games out there which are absolutely free (high quality, in terms of gameplay; the graphics do tend to be slightly lacking compared to modern contemporaries, but they're still at least close.)
A top games for linux google turns up a fair amount of information. It all depends on what kind of games you like.
Alternatively, there's also PlayOnLinux, which is a great project enabling very easy installation and playing of many popular Windows games (some of which run markedly better under Linux, ironically). Short of concurrency issues with Fallout 3 (making it essentially unplayable), the actual -performance- of Fallout 3 was better under linux was better for me than it was under XP or W7.
This isn't all that interesting/new to me. Maybe I'm just not enough of a cloudy-scientist-type, but out here on the plains, I tend to spend a great deal of time looking up at the clouds (not much else to look at).
Clouds like these seem to come around out here on the Dakota plains this time of year - aka during hurricane/tornado season. I've seen them a handful of times, and they are kinda freaky. I think each of the times I saw them it was due to several fronts of differing temperatures converging - ie, not just two fronts, but a hot and cold front, as well as another of unknown median temperature. Oddly, I don't recall any storms accompanying them, though there was a little dribbling a time or two as well as some very high up lightning.
I'm pretty sure that this isn't a "cloud structure" so much as multiple cloud structures at different altitudes passing each other and possibly causing turbulence in the other layers - not a subduction, per se, but something like one. But what do I know, I don't even know the proper names for all the different clouds...
You can not diagnose a problem by looking at (several) layers above the cause of the problem. It's like tracing a wire to find where a rat chewed through it, or trying to find the other end of your ethernet cable in a huge snarled tangle of many wires. No. It won't work as an effective means of finding the problem, other than to tell you that there is a problem.
The above mentioned problems are indeed fairly indepth; I've been doing this whole "computer geek" thing for 15 years now, and I've repaired and diagnosed my fair share of other's PCs (for money or otherwise), not to mention work-related stuff. I've not come across nearly that many -different- symptoms, but I have seen a number of them.
That said, there tends to be a diagnosis procedure I've picked up (and roughly follow). It goes like:
1) Verify hardware visually and audibly for proper function. Eg. fans are spinning, heatsink is not dangling, no burst/leaking/bulged capacitors, excessive dust build-up (blow it out to make sure) or scorch marks anywhere within the chassis. This takes, tops, 5 minutes. 2) If the above checks out Okay, run memtest86 for no fewer than 2 full passes or three hours. 3) If the above passes Okay, chances are the base hardware is (mostly) fine (eg. board/cpu/ram). It's usually enough to rule them out as the primary fault if there are frequent failures/faults. 4) Run an intensive/load-based test to see if the problem might be due to power/load and a crap PSU. Of course, doing a little math and looking at the PSU's rating and make should be enough to tell you if it's junk/not doing its job. A multimeter comes in handy here, too. (This would be when you load test something like the graphics card.) 5) Failing that (rarely) swap out the PSU. It's probably the problem. 6) If the swap doesn't fix the problem, start yanking cards (or disabling onboard stuff in BIOS) and trying the machine with known-good hardware. If that still fails, well... it's probably the board or some really, really bad mains power.
In my experience, the most likely parts to fail are: 1) Fans. I hate the damn things, and they've caused many a good-but-warm processor/board/etc. to completely go *poof*, often with the token magic smoke. 2) PSU. Surge protectors are your friend, but there are a lot of crap PSUs out there, and there's not much that can be done for brown outs and just crap power. 3) RAM. Not nearly as common as it used to be, but still fairly common. 4) PCBs. Anything from PCI cards to the mainboard can do it, and if these are the cause, chances are even it's due to foreign matter (dust/dirt in the riser, intermittent grounding, etc.) 5) CPUs. Provided the failure isn't secondary to the PSU or board going, CPUs don't seem to fail all that often anymore, it would seem. I chalk it up to internal board/CPU sensors for temperature monitoring, plus cleaner power coming into the board from the PSU than used to be the case.
The most amazing "failure" I've seen, is a system which had an Antec 450 watt PSU, circa 2002 or so - IE, right around when all those bad-cap PSUs and mainboards were being made. For whatever consequence, it was an AMD Athlon XP+ 2000 and had been running in a dusty house, on 24/7, for about 7 years, where the power was prone to frequent brownouts (also, see: bad wiring). Again, the system was rock solid, but when I took the PSU apart to replace the fan when the system was de/recommissioned to me, half the capacitors in the thing were popped/leaked (the electrolyte had long since dried up). Yet, still stable, and it seemed to have very little output variance.
Yes, Samba4 can emulate an AD server, if you don't mind having to maintain two sets of user and group accounts. Samba4 still requires either usermapping, or managing the linux users and groups separately. It simply lacks the nice seamless integration of AD, and does not fully implement GPOs inheritances, etc.
What're you talking about? Have you even tried doing those things? I had seamless client authentication, mapping, and granular permission setting via GUI working in Samba 3, almost a full 3 years ago. (No, it wasn't easy, but it's certainly doable.)
Eh, actually, from what I've heard, it very well might be the iPhone's/Apple's fault. I've got a couple friends who are huge smartphone geeks, one of which has been using smartphones since 2003 or so. He's used them all. From his assessment, iPhones will perform significantly worse than a Windows Mobile or Android based phone in the same area, and that's for basic voice service. Data rates are lower in the exact same 10'^2 area, and the latency is worse. This holds with the limited experience I've had with the platforms.
I don't know if it's due to QoS from ATT or the iPhone modems, but considering how many iPhones ATT has these days, I'd wager that iPhone users coudl very well account for the bulk of unsatisfied ATT customers.
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Huh. You mean that isn't normal? I can hear all of those things, and I've always been highly agitated by high-pitched sounds as well. The bats drive me crazy during summer nights, and I've been tickled pink since LCDs have replaced CRTs wholesale. The one that irritates me the most, though, are power supplies on brown power, or just poor quality power supplies, and anything that's performing PWM with a high wattage. I HATE cooking on an electric stove and using the microwave.
I haven't had my hearing tested since probably early grade school, but I don't recall anything special. But it'd be interesting if I could, indeed, hear a much higher frequency than most people. (Interestingly, my wife can't hear a lot of the things that irritate me which I can't identify - "Hey, you hear that? Help me find it!" -> "I can't hear anything!"
Damn high pitch sounds. While they might be good for echolocation, they are absolutely impossible to track down at times.
That.
Personally, I went back to just using ALSA + internal alsa mixer. That kinda sucked (couldn't get it to consistently mix, particularly with Flash, and it would frequently result in poor quality crap while doing so), so...
I went back to what I was doing a decade ago: use ESD (wherever possible). I suppose I could use JACK or something else, but it does a good enough job and I'm not continually irritated with alsa dying outright due to different things vying for -whatever-.
I don't think the 'generic' functionality of the speakers or microphone would make much difference. They are all of at least acceptable quality these days, even on laptops (albeit, usually very small).
I'd think this technology would be quite limited in a desktop, actually - unless the speakers and microphone are built into the LCD, at least. There'd be a great deal of sensitivity to ambient noise, machine noise, and the positioning of the speakers/microphone to each other; if they're not able to effectively -reflect- back to each other, you might have some problems.
I'd imagine that the technology uses triangulation more so than sonar, which is why I make this guess.
Actually, it's a new, skinny pig, with the same dress. The dress does not fit too well any longer.
I think those numbers are, in all likelihood, due to three things:
1) In Q2 2008, XP was still a purchase option.
2) People were anticipating W7 in Q2 2009 (to no small degree) and were waiting.
3) Finances. Q2 2009 and onward have been difficult, and waiting for W7 seems to many to be a good idea.
Dell has a long way before they're out of the domain of "colossal fail". I've yet to see a product from them since, oh, 2000 or so. That goes for laptops, desktops, and business printers (which are the worst offender, IMO).
What's more, their support is horrible. This is downright damning in and of itself. I've got a friend who got a Dell laptop (a higher-end 17" model with SSD, can't recall which one). He's had to send it back for servicing three times now, this time due to the LCD dying. He spent over 6 hours on the phone with Dell support yesterday, trying to get the 'ultimate' care package. He had a 'manager' level rep swear at him once, and they sold him the "ultimate" phone package instead of the parts + labor package he asked for (repeatedly).
I've heard good things about the Mini-9, but frankly, even at $200, I'm hesitant to look at it due to their record. I will not recommend Dell to anyone, and will actively discourage their purchase until Dell gets their act together.
Frankly, I think they're going the way of Gateway, RSN. I give 'em 6 months (frankly, I'm surprised they lasted this long).
Apparently you're not from the midwest. The Blackberry smartphones have been incredibly popular out here in Verizonland - if, for no other reason, than there are no other smartphones worth half a damn available.
With Verizon bandwidth fees and quality of service/bandwidth throughput, you're not going to be able to use an iPhone or WinMo phone anyway...
Wow, you can type on the iPhone's screen as if you had tactile feedback, without looking at it? Impressive.
You should be sorry - that's a really silly idea.
Do you have any idea how many languages are spoken in Afghanistan, most of which are spoken nowhere else? And due to its fringe interest, you're not likely to find many people other than those who have been there who can speak, let alone understand those languages and English (or Spanish, Portuguese, etc.).
From the CIA World Factbook:
Afghan Persian or Dari (official) 50%, Pashto (official) 35%, Turkic languages (primarily Uzbek and Turkmen) 11%, 30 minor languages (primarily Balochi and Pashai) 4%, much bilingualism
Keep in mind that Persian has many dialects even within Persia which are not commonly understood within Iran. Afghan Persian? Forget about it. Your chances of finding one of the above listed languages decreases as you go into the more remote, tribal areas. This is all complicated by an illiterate populace which doesn't have a written language to go with their spoken tribal tongue, nevermind being able to write.
Then, consider language/dialectal confusion. Even with English in the modern world, people will have brogues so thick and incomprehensible to make the actual language spoken inconsequential. Sure, you've got someone fluent in Uzbek, just in the Uzbek spoken 30 miles to the east, not this backwater Uzbek-Turkic mix...
I used to know a Kurdish Iranian who could speak and understand 7 languages, two of which were Turkic and Persian. He still was unable to communicate in the native tongue in some smaller locales near (100 miles) of where he was born.
Whatever else our new strategy entails, "no civilian casualties" needs to be the cornerstone, or we're never going to win.
That's been a key focus of US military development for the past, oh, 80 years or so. You know, since WWII. Smart bombing, targeting systems, shaped charges, special forces training, target practice, tactics and strategy (vs. bombing the shit out of everything), and so on.
So what, just stop fighting wars until we're able to shoot laser beams from space at only the "bad guys"? You use what you've got, and you make what you've got better.
"Civilized" is not an absolute. A civilized culture is one which fights natural behavior inclinations for the betterment of all. It's not a fucking utopia, because there are people involved.
Do you care to mention a more "civilized" world than the West, per chance? We're not trying to push our taboos (and lack thereof) on them. We're trying to get them to treat each other like people - in essence "the golden rule". That's fucking it.
So, let millions starve (and many to death - they were pretty close to that already) instead of bombing them? The humanitarian thing would be to bomb them, honestly.
Also consider that Japanese culture was very indoctrinated and not-quite post-Imperialist at that time. The Japanese subjects were lied to about US intentions (raping babies and the like) and were basically armed and instructed to fight to the last man and woman. It would have been brutal. It's unlikely they'd have been willing to accept US aide, or surrender to anything short of overwhelming force that could be seen for hundreds of miles. (Consider what Japanese culture has been like since then - pride, honor, accomplishment, and the like still strong. It was much stronger before WWII.
Said another way...
Well, what is cowardice? Not steeling one's self against fear in the face of certain death, maybe?
Problem is, these guys with vests strapped to their chests (or setting off bombs remotely) are one of the following:
1) devoted followers of Allah who think they're not dying, but just going to their reward of many willing virgins (in a world where they get a rare glimpse of ankle).
2) hostages. They're told to do so or their families are killed.
3) mentally deficient or drugged, and actually completely unaware of what it is they're doing.
Suicide bombers are saps. The real cowards are their masters: they push others in front of themselves.
Insulting him? You need only state one of the many facts about his life, or mention his name -outside- of the state of reverence, and you're jihaded:
* bring note to the fact that a number of his wives were children
* postulate on his use of hallucinogens while in the desert
* consider him lazy for living off of his rich, elderly wife
* bring to note any of the many outright consistencies in the text
* refer to the many verses which say that it is not only acceptable but expected of a Muslim to convert by force, enslave (same thing really), or slay any disbelievers
* etc.
Though, of course, mention that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Western systems of belief and government, disregards women as property, and so on, it'll be pretty well accepted. (Unless you're in the Western world, where they've encouraged by the Quran to disregard things like social/cultural porhibitions against lying given to being in the den of unbelievers.)
Oh, and they don't "simply believe he delivered the word of God". They believe he is the one, true prophet, and all that have come before and after were lesser and to be either converted, enslaved, or killed.
No, but I've designed enough systems to know that it's generally a bad idea to implement a global root level process in such a fashion that would allow it to clusterfuck /root.
I'm sorry, but there's no way this should've fallen through QA cracks, because it should not have made it to QA in the first place. This kind of thing should never have been possible in the first place due to a clear segregation of permissions between "Admin" and everything else - particularly "guest".
The fact that this is even possible suggests a much deeper flaw in the security mechanisms of OS X.
I have three jobs, four if you count PC repair as it comes. I'm still "unemployed", for all intents and purposes.
I can't speak for him, but I'm 27, and I've been happily married for 6 years, two wonderful children, and have a 4-year degree. I've got more responsibility than many (most?) people in urban areas 10 years my senior. I can say for certain fact that I am a more responsible parent, citizen, and employee than many people in my parents' generation.
Granted, I've been mostly unemployed for the last two years (picking up this and that, and anything I can get - things are hard right now around here), but I do have 5 years of sysadmin experience - and I'm damn good at what I do.
IMO, this guy is correct in his assessment of punk-ass 20-somethings. Whether it applies to him or not, I can not say. Personally, I'm more agitated with the older generations than I am with my own, but my generation has plenty of time to fuck things up yet. Can't say the consumist-but-still-dope-n-mange mentality demonstrated by my age group has, so far, endeared me to them.
There are plenty of games out there on linux for "gamers". Most of them, however, are not for the fast-twitch, thrill-a-minute, same-game-but-higher-DPI-graphics crowd. Likewise, not many of them are the "highly graphical" type to begin with.
Final, and correct option: install virtualbox, windows XP, all updates, and a firewall + malware combination of your choice to a physical volume, then reboot to said volume.
There are a handful of options; many are actually quite good/enjoyable. Several that I've found quite enjoyable are Battle for Wesnoth (decent storyline and enjoyable turn based strategy with cute/good 2D graphics), Freeciv (Civilization clone), Freecol (Colonization clone), Open and Alien Arena (decent FPS games, more humorous most of the time than the original Q3A, and people still play online), Frozen Bubble (sadly addictive), Teeworlds (2D FPS based on the Q3 engine, IIRC, with some really humorous animation/gameplay - think multiplayer Kirby, but with guns). Vegastrike is very, very similar to the Privateer games from the early 1990s (which I absolutely loved), and is decent fun (albeit not as polished). There's also a Railroad Tycoon type game out there, can't recall what it's called. It really depends on what your flavor is: there are a lot of high quality games out there which are absolutely free (high quality, in terms of gameplay; the graphics do tend to be slightly lacking compared to modern contemporaries, but they're still at least close.)
A top games for linux google turns up a fair amount of information. It all depends on what kind of games you like.
Alternatively, there's also PlayOnLinux, which is a great project enabling very easy installation and playing of many popular Windows games (some of which run markedly better under Linux, ironically). Short of concurrency issues with Fallout 3 (making it essentially unplayable), the actual -performance- of Fallout 3 was better under linux was better for me than it was under XP or W7.
This isn't all that interesting/new to me. Maybe I'm just not enough of a cloudy-scientist-type, but out here on the plains, I tend to spend a great deal of time looking up at the clouds (not much else to look at).
Clouds like these seem to come around out here on the Dakota plains this time of year - aka during hurricane/tornado season. I've seen them a handful of times, and they are kinda freaky. I think each of the times I saw them it was due to several fronts of differing temperatures converging - ie, not just two fronts, but a hot and cold front, as well as another of unknown median temperature. Oddly, I don't recall any storms accompanying them, though there was a little dribbling a time or two as well as some very high up lightning.
I'm pretty sure that this isn't a "cloud structure" so much as multiple cloud structures at different altitudes passing each other and possibly causing turbulence in the other layers - not a subduction, per se, but something like one. But what do I know, I don't even know the proper names for all the different clouds...
This.
You can not diagnose a problem by looking at (several) layers above the cause of the problem. It's like tracing a wire to find where a rat chewed through it, or trying to find the other end of your ethernet cable in a huge snarled tangle of many wires. No. It won't work as an effective means of finding the problem, other than to tell you that there is a problem.
The above mentioned problems are indeed fairly indepth; I've been doing this whole "computer geek" thing for 15 years now, and I've repaired and diagnosed my fair share of other's PCs (for money or otherwise), not to mention work-related stuff. I've not come across nearly that many -different- symptoms, but I have seen a number of them.
That said, there tends to be a diagnosis procedure I've picked up (and roughly follow). It goes like:
1) Verify hardware visually and audibly for proper function. Eg. fans are spinning, heatsink is not dangling, no burst/leaking/bulged capacitors, excessive dust build-up (blow it out to make sure) or scorch marks anywhere within the chassis. This takes, tops, 5 minutes.
2) If the above checks out Okay, run memtest86 for no fewer than 2 full passes or three hours.
3) If the above passes Okay, chances are the base hardware is (mostly) fine (eg. board/cpu/ram). It's usually enough to rule them out as the primary fault if there are frequent failures/faults.
4) Run an intensive/load-based test to see if the problem might be due to power/load and a crap PSU. Of course, doing a little math and looking at the PSU's rating and make should be enough to tell you if it's junk/not doing its job. A multimeter comes in handy here, too. (This would be when you load test something like the graphics card.)
5) Failing that (rarely) swap out the PSU. It's probably the problem.
6) If the swap doesn't fix the problem, start yanking cards (or disabling onboard stuff in BIOS) and trying the machine with known-good hardware. If that still fails, well... it's probably the board or some really, really bad mains power.
In my experience, the most likely parts to fail are:
1) Fans. I hate the damn things, and they've caused many a good-but-warm processor/board/etc. to completely go *poof*, often with the token magic smoke.
2) PSU. Surge protectors are your friend, but there are a lot of crap PSUs out there, and there's not much that can be done for brown outs and just crap power.
3) RAM. Not nearly as common as it used to be, but still fairly common.
4) PCBs. Anything from PCI cards to the mainboard can do it, and if these are the cause, chances are even it's due to foreign matter (dust/dirt in the riser, intermittent grounding, etc.)
5) CPUs. Provided the failure isn't secondary to the PSU or board going, CPUs don't seem to fail all that often anymore, it would seem. I chalk it up to internal board/CPU sensors for temperature monitoring, plus cleaner power coming into the board from the PSU than used to be the case.
The most amazing "failure" I've seen, is a system which had an Antec 450 watt PSU, circa 2002 or so - IE, right around when all those bad-cap PSUs and mainboards were being made. For whatever consequence, it was an AMD Athlon XP+ 2000 and had been running in a dusty house, on 24/7, for about 7 years, where the power was prone to frequent brownouts (also, see: bad wiring). Again, the system was rock solid, but when I took the PSU apart to replace the fan when the system was de/recommissioned to me, half the capacitors in the thing were popped/leaked (the electrolyte had long since dried up). Yet, still stable, and it seemed to have very little output variance.
Yes, Samba4 can emulate an AD server, if you don't mind having to maintain two sets of user and group accounts. Samba4 still requires either usermapping, or managing the linux users and groups separately. It simply lacks the nice seamless integration of AD, and does not fully implement GPOs inheritances, etc.
What're you talking about? Have you even tried doing those things? I had seamless client authentication, mapping, and granular permission setting via GUI working in Samba 3, almost a full 3 years ago. (No, it wasn't easy, but it's certainly doable.)
Eh, actually, from what I've heard, it very well might be the iPhone's/Apple's fault. I've got a couple friends who are huge smartphone geeks, one of which has been using smartphones since 2003 or so. He's used them all. From his assessment, iPhones will perform significantly worse than a Windows Mobile or Android based phone in the same area, and that's for basic voice service. Data rates are lower in the exact same 10'^2 area, and the latency is worse. This holds with the limited experience I've had with the platforms.
I don't know if it's due to QoS from ATT or the iPhone modems, but considering how many iPhones ATT has these days, I'd wager that iPhone users coudl very well account for the bulk of unsatisfied ATT customers.