I think you missed the point. Google and Vonage are not using SBC's lines. SBC's customers are using SBC's lines (which they have paid for) to access Google and Vonage. This is like the RIAA/Apple skirmish, it's simply that one side sees money being made and wants a cut of it.
I originally had a 15" laptop but switched to a 12" ultralight (Dell 300m). Wherever I go, it goes. I even have a power cable under the couch! At work I have it hooked to my PC via firewire and have the 1394 connection bridged to the LAN. This allows me to open up an RDP session from my desktop to my laptop at the desktop's resolution. As a result I only have to connect 2 wires to get blistering-fast transfers and KVM-like abilities. I actually prefer this over using a KVM because I can keep the laptop display windowed and can switch between systems without taking my hands off the keyboard. I just wish Dell would offer another ultralight with a faster processor. The 1.2ghz works but can be a pretty slow when hitting SQL really hard (also installed on laptop). If they had a Pentium-M at 2+ghz I'd go for it.
I don't think you understand the definition of "theft".
They never stole your credit rating, they impersonated you and tarnished your reputation. They fraudulently acquired goods which can probably be considered stealing from some merchant in the transactional process, but they did not steal that item from you.
As a matter of fact, the PQI stick comes with software that will take a bootable floppy and turn that USB key into a bootable drive. Mine is set to boot Ghost with Network and USB Drive support so any machine I'm at can be ghosted. It's also nice to be able to launch any DOS utility when needed.
I got my PQI stick in last week and it's amazing! It's fast enough to compile off of and 1GB means it'll be a LONG time before you run out. The coolest part is that it come with a wallet insert so for the thickness of about 2.5 credit cards you can carry 2 sticks everywhere you go. Someone mentioned that Tiger Direct was sold out. I got mine from Surplus Computers, does anyone know why these cards have taken such a steep drop in price?
There's no loss. Entering the evidence into the trial presentation software takes time too. But usually this is carried out by legal assistants. Our firm uses a product called Visionary that allows us to lay out all sorts of evidence and recall it at a moments notice to present on the secondary display. The cool part is that the software is free, they make their money through processing video. When a deposition comes in, you can request a tape from the court reporting service and then send it to them, they will then encode the entire thing and sync the transcript with the video. The result is the ability to highlight a paragraph or even a sentence in the depo and press play, the secondary display then shows the playback of the person actually saying that. Seeing someone say something has a MUCH greater effect on the judge or jury than simply quoting them.
I know you meant to be funny but in a sense, you're right. These reusable tokens can be, well, reused. So if someone were to send you an email with a token, you could use that token(or token based on the previous token) to send an email out without having to create a new token. Since spammers are primarily outbound senders they wouldn't accumulate the tokens that a normal corporation would with frequent two-way communication. In effect, this is a lot like currency.
My office is actually working on a large scale paper-to-digital conversion. So far we have nearly 300,000 sheets scanned but we are far from being finished. Scanning the paper is only the first part of the equation. Since you are scanning a hundred pages max I'd recommend a plain scanner with an ADF capacity of at least 30 pages. Our office is using our high-speed copiers to scan-to-tiff as fast as 120ppm on the newest units. Documents are separated by a dark sheet with a large X on it. A scanrouter server then takes these file and drops them in a folder where someone, using a thumbnail view identifies the first page and classifies it by person and document type (depo, condensed depo, cv, etc...) They then select the entire document (looking for the next large X and drops them onto a custom application I wrote. This program will rename/move these files into an image share under the format//#/00000001.tif where # is the next available folder number beginning with 1. The program uses an auto-complete box for the persons name so we reduce the number of misspellings and the available doctypes can be modified using an ini file.
Next, we run another custom program that will crawl ALL folders in that image share looking for any.TIF file that does not have an identically named.TXT file. More on this later. Each file it finds matching this criteria are placed in a database. Finally, another program which plugs into ScanSoft's OmniPage Pro 14 COM abilities and will pull files from this database, recognize, and place the output TXT file next to the accompanying TIF. The benefit of using a database is that we can unleash a large group of machines on recognizing these pages and start/stop them as needed. We figured that when we're done, we'll need approximately 30 days of computing time on a P4/2.8Ghz to finish off 250,000 files (for those counting, that's about 10 seconds a page)
Now here's where it all comes together, we use an application called Summation which will import a.dii file (which is a specially formatted text file describing each folder, generated by yet another app) and allow users to search for text by person, type, anything, and read/print out the corresponding page.
I guess you could say we have our systems pretty locked down, but we try and give the users everything they could ever need so they don't have to be trusted with making the right decision of which program to download. Additionally, if there IS some program we need to install, we can push the app in the background so most of the time, there's no need for them to even log out. I know this is quite a bit of hand holding, but our business function doesn't require very many custom configurations and we've managed to reduce the majority of our service calls to application support, where we just have to show them how to do things.
We watch our systems through close auditing which runs once a day on the first login of that machine. We receive notification if a new executable or activex component shows up. We have yet to see any unauthorized changes but don't plan on letting our guard down anytime soon.
The easiest way to prevent corporate computers from becoming infected with spyware is to not run your users as local admins. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've seen companies whine and complain because it's too much work, and that it's easier to just let them install what they want.
We have almost 200 machines and in the past 8 months have had only ONE exploited. Not only that, but a restart fixed it, because all they were able to do was change the startup page in IE.
I'll admit it, we spent lots of research time adjusting permissions so that certain apps would run (Freakin ADP) but once it's set up, you can rest easier knowing that the users, and transitively any software running as the user) cannot write to system folders.
Obviously, this isn't our only level of security, we run SAV CE and regularly push a set of kill bits for malicious activex components. Oh, and our last line of protection is a driver-level program called Fortres that denies any writes to certain files (EXE's, executables, others we choose). They can't even copy/rename files to and from EXE.
We've covered most of our bases and are continually watching for holes but I'd say the most important thing an admin can do to control the desktops is to run users as users!
You have to look at its intention. Let me start by saying that I don't want to see a company held liable for the misuse of their product any more than the next man, but to the IP Holders, they are viewing the actions of Morpheus and friends as an attempt to profit from helping share ripped music.
When you look at the telco, internet, and mail, they are all a broad distribution medium obviously designed to transfer things from one point to the next with complete disregard to what they carry. The IP Holders feel that the P2P apps were solely designed to distribute copyrighted music (note they do not care about free music) and that's where this issue is based. If the P2P apps in question began in an era where unauthorized music sharing was not so popular (and it grew out of usefullness in the way FTP and WWW grew) then they would not have a case.
When our office decided to re-cable we were told by the building that we couldn't pull new cable unless we removed all the old cable. It turns out the previous tenants had re-cabled at least three times before. We were initially quoted tens of thousands of dollars to have it removed but finally found a contractor who would remove it all for just a few thousand. As it turns out he had horribly underestimated the job and upon completion, expressed to us how much he had under-quoted us but still held to his quote. All in all, having pre-existing wiring is a double-edged sword. New tenants might like the idea of saving on cabling and such, but also can come back and bite you when it comes time to upgrade.
My question is how would one go about No-Spam listing their entire domain. I'm sure plenty of people here have Catch-All's and it would be impossible to include every iteration. The same goes for ISP's. We have all seen Earthlink, Yahoo, even Hotmail include anti-spam methods, could they have their entire domain listed? Should they? This raises several other questions, but at least in response to your (2), this would cover all recipients of a domain without giving a single address away.
As a matter of fact, Texas HB-831 has made it a class-C misdemeanor
"Person commits a class C misdemeanor if they knowingly direct a laser pointer at a police officer, uniformed security guard, fire fighter, emergency medical service worker, or other uniformed municipal, state or federal officers. "
Apparently for fear that a police officer would confuse a laser pointer with a laser sight from a gun.
I see exactly where you're going with Microsoft's desire to keep control over licensing, but consider how Samba integration could benefit them in other ways.
We've seen over the past few years Microsoft swallow their pride and admit that they have a few chronic "problems". We've also seen them revamp their licensing structure, including their new $399 Unlimited connection 2003 "Web Edition" Server. I think Microsoft is beginning to move towards Service based licenses (SQL, Exchange, LCS) and considering basic file sharing a necessity instead of a luxury. It would appease both the Open Source community and the MS community if their latest file sharing component was based on open source technology and people could trust that it has been peer-reviewed and had FAR FEWER bugs than before (though I think anything qualifies as that).
In reference to your comment about them being concerned about people using XP Home (Or Pro) for a server role, the limitations in the non-server platforms speak for themselves. XP Home only supporting one processor, and XP Pro only 2, will mean that any heavy duty work will be left to the Server versions.
Now, I don't know how they could end up bundling a GPL'd Samba with their next platform, I'm sure licensing would be a major issue (Separate CD, Free Download?) but we've seen Microsoft do some pretty strange things recently.
FYI: YES, I know they won't be doing this, it's hypothetical!
Unfortunately no one was aware it was HTTP traffic that kept the session going until a little "discussion" with one of the OIT people. By then I had already signed up with cable. Now I use a keepalive program on my laptop when roaming on their wireless network but my desktop is no longer on resnet. Besides that, I'm still happy. The change to resnet left us all with private IP's that left many FTP sites unreachable (even with PASV) which meant I couldn't update my website, plus the P2P filtering filtered Bittorrent, and of course with no public IP, my computer was unreachable from work so no VNC or web services. I think the biggest complaint came from users with game consoles. This effectively shut them out because most don't have web browsers.
We've begged and pleaded with them to lax the rules or change the implementation. Even a PPPOE or MAC registration would be an improvement but our requests fell on deaf ears. I personally don't feel it was the right choice, we were given a single days notice it was going to occur a few weeks after we signed our apartment contracts! How's that for timing? But that's how our university functions. They gave a few families 90 days notice that their University-owned houses were going to be condemned and torn down for expansion only 60 or so days after signing a new lease. Oh well, they have their reasons I guess.
I think the reason to avoid UofF was because of its invasive approach to controlling the network. Their app takes advantage of loose shares. The university I attend has used packetshapers quite successfully to control P2P bandwidth and their new 'Vernier Login' system keeps infected systems from chewing up the remaining sliver of bandwidth. While I personally got so sick of the new system that I switched over to cable, I understand their need. The way the Vernier system works is your machine is assigned an IP but the DNS server forwards every one of your requests to a login web page where the student had to log in with their NT accound. This way, if they knew of a system that was infected, they would know whose machine it was(and could lock them out if necessary). I got sick of it becase it timed out every 5 minutes if no traffic took place over port 80, that means that streaming audio, FTP, even IRC/IM would drop out if you didn't keep browsing. Heck, even reading long pages would time you out, forcing you to go back and log in again. But anwyays, this IS an invasion, their concern is what their machines are putting ON the network, not what's stored on their personal machines.
We've actually had a pretty good experience with Dell. Our entire firm runs Dimensions and when they break Dell either ships out parts (arriving the next day I might add) or sends someone out to replace the part. Granted, dealing with someone on the opposite side of the globe has its drawbacks, a 1 second lag in communication with someone who already has a hard enough time speaking english is brutal, but once you finally convince them you know what you're doing, they cooperate. A word of advice, If you call for a Precision Workstation you usually receive someone within the US, I guess the Dimension calls receive the outsourced support.
Also, if the laptop is in warranty, they are quite willing to help, even if you've made changes yourself. My Inspiron fell off a table and broke the power connector, I received a shipping box from Airborne Express within 4 hours and received it back 3 days later with a brand new bottom and motherboard. To save space, here are some of the other things they've covered under warranty: Laptop fan blade broken by air-duster Fried laptop motherboard due to coke spill Countless dead laptop keyboards Even more broken laptop lid latches becuase they were plastic (Replaced with metal ones) A laptop display with a single dead pixel Heh, we even had a desktop that received runoff from a secretary watering her plants!
If you look at the lineup Sony has with MS support you'll see that they are really pushing hard to make MS-only support not such a bad thing. I personally started out with a Sony Cybershot camera when they came out and it was the fact that I had that camera that finally convinced me to purchase my Clie NR70. If I wanted to now, I could also sell my Dell Inspiron and purchase a Sony laptop with built-in memory stick support, or a Memory Stick MP3 player, or even one of their big-screen TV's with an MS reader to view photos.
Now I'm not saying that this completely forgives them for supporting only one format, but there are people who have quite a few Sony products and don't plan on switching anytime soon, for them, the MemoryStick format is just fine.
I work in a law firm where attorneys find their PDA's indispensable. The ability to bill for time while away from their computer, then have it automatically applied the next time they sync has saved countless hours. Also, those equipped with Palm i705's can respond to e-mails while out of the office.
I personally use my PDA all day long.
1:In class, I use a fold-out keyboard and take on average 5-6 pages of notes; these are automatically synced with my system. I also take long documents that I have to study for a test and set these to sync so that I can read them while I have free time.
2:When walking to class, I use it as an MP3 player; I use a 128mb card which provides more than enough music.
3:When waiting for class to start, I use AvantGo to read the news that I otherwise would not have had time to do. Cnet, InfoWorld, CNN, NYT, Wall Street Journal...
4:At work I am bombarded with tasks, I can list these by priority and keep my grocery list tucked away under a different category.
Of course there's always the standard contact list and memo pads, but there's also a program called RJ-45 that I use to get patch cables crimped correctly, no matter how many times I try, I always forget the order.
Now I just have to wait until all the Sony NR70's leave the store shelves so that mine can "break" and under its replacement plan, have it replaced with an NX70 which has PalmOS5 and WiFi capability!
Well, a linux solution is closer than you'd think. Check out MythTV. This guy has been working on a PVR in Linux running fairly cheap hardware. Definately worth a look-see.
Probabbly my most favorite tool would be a 12 gauge needle. Nothing straightens pins better. Since it's hollow and rigid and barbed, you can fit the sharp tip around the flattened pin (ps/2, ribbon, anything) and pry it up, then slide it down the barrel and you have an perfectly aligned pin with barely any noticable bend. I've used this countless times when that cable just won't plug in and then you find out why.
Some of my other favorites are * homemade Cat5 loopback for testing lines * Roto-Zip, perfect for cutting holes for boxes in wallas * 'U' shaped coathanger wire, for finding the EXACT location of a stud after you cut a hole on the wrong side * Multi-function ISA and PCI card that does Serial,Parallel, IDE and FDD for testing out faulty ports (sort of old now) * 44-pin to 40 pin IDE adapter for testing Laptop hard drives in a regular PC
These are a few of my favorite tools. Of course there's always all the other mandatory stuff such as caffiene pills for when it absloutely has to be done overnight!
The funny thing about the caddy, I can't remove it. I pulled one of those coarse v. fine thread mixups and miss-threaded a screw into its brass thread inserts. Upon getting it almost completely lodged in, the threads gave out from the plastic. So now I have a freely-spinning screw securely holding in the brass threads, so the only way to remove the caddy is going to be to drill out the screw. I don't have the time to do that and I need more room in my case, so I'm just looking for a larger case and going to replace the caddy with a cooled one at the same time.
Now tht I think of it, I really do need a new case. All my motherboard standoffs are stripped out, so I tack-welded them so they'd stay put and I don't have any room to put my new adjustable 120mm fan!
I think he was referring to being completely unable to hear the drive when the CPU fan runs. Whenever I had Western Digital drives, I could always hear them spinning. I now run a 60 & 80Gig Barracuda IV and can back his comment. You can NOT hear the thing run. They do tend to get a bit hot. My 80Gig is in a removable caddy and during heavy defragging it will reach 137 degrees F. I need to get it mounted in front of the fan!
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I think you missed the point. Google and Vonage are not using SBC's lines. SBC's customers are using SBC's lines (which they have paid for) to access Google and Vonage. This is like the RIAA/Apple skirmish, it's simply that one side sees money being made and wants a cut of it.
I originally had a 15" laptop but switched to a 12" ultralight (Dell 300m). Wherever I go, it goes. I even have a power cable under the couch! At work I have it hooked to my PC via firewire and have the 1394 connection bridged to the LAN. This allows me to open up an RDP session from my desktop to my laptop at the desktop's resolution. As a result I only have to connect 2 wires to get blistering-fast transfers and KVM-like abilities. I actually prefer this over using a KVM because I can keep the laptop display windowed and can switch between systems without taking my hands off the keyboard.
I just wish Dell would offer another ultralight with a faster processor. The 1.2ghz works but can be a pretty slow when hitting SQL really hard (also installed on laptop). If they had a Pentium-M at 2+ghz I'd go for it.
I don't think you understand the definition of "theft".
They never stole your credit rating, they impersonated you and tarnished your reputation.
They fraudulently acquired goods which can probably be considered stealing from some merchant in the transactional process, but they did not steal that item from you.
Remember, a verb acts on a noun!
As a matter of fact, the PQI stick comes with software that will take a bootable floppy and turn that USB key into a bootable drive. Mine is set to boot Ghost with Network and USB Drive support so any machine I'm at can be ghosted. It's also nice to be able to launch any DOS utility when needed.
I got my PQI stick in last week and it's amazing! It's fast enough to compile off of and 1GB means it'll be a LONG time before you run out. The coolest part is that it come with a wallet insert so for the thickness of about 2.5 credit cards you can carry 2 sticks everywhere you go. Someone mentioned that Tiger Direct was sold out. I got mine from Surplus Computers, does anyone know why these cards have taken such a steep drop in price?
There's no loss. Entering the evidence into the trial presentation software takes time too. But usually this is carried out by legal assistants. Our firm uses a product called Visionary that allows us to lay out all sorts of evidence and recall it at a moments notice to present on the secondary display. The cool part is that the software is free, they make their money through processing video. When a deposition comes in, you can request a tape from the court reporting service and then send it to them, they will then encode the entire thing and sync the transcript with the video. The result is the ability to highlight a paragraph or even a sentence in the depo and press play, the secondary display then shows the playback of the person actually saying that. Seeing someone say something has a MUCH greater effect on the judge or jury than simply quoting them.
I know you meant to be funny but in a sense, you're right. These reusable tokens can be, well, reused. So if someone were to send you an email with a token, you could use that token(or token based on the previous token) to send an email out without having to create a new token. Since spammers are primarily outbound senders they wouldn't accumulate the tokens that a normal corporation would with frequent two-way communication. In effect, this is a lot like currency.
I think any diehard Futurama viewer knows exactly what happens when heaps of waste are launched into space!
My office is actually working on a large scale paper-to-digital conversion. So far we have nearly 300,000 sheets scanned but we are far from being finished. Scanning the paper is only the first part of the equation. Since you are scanning a hundred pages max I'd recommend a plain scanner with an ADF capacity of at least 30 pages. Our office is using our high-speed copiers to scan-to-tiff as fast as 120ppm on the newest units. Documents are separated by a dark sheet with a large X on it. A scanrouter server then takes these file and drops them in a folder where someone, using a thumbnail view identifies the first page and classifies it by person and document type (depo, condensed depo, cv, etc...) They then select the entire document (looking for the next large X and drops them onto a custom application I wrote. //#/00000001.tif where # is the next available folder number beginning with 1. The program uses an auto-complete box for the persons name so we reduce the number of misspellings and the available doctypes can be modified using an ini file.
.TIF file that does not have an identically named .TXT file. More on this later. Each file it finds matching this criteria are placed in a database.
.dii file (which is a specially formatted text file describing each folder, generated by yet another app) and allow users to search for text by person, type, anything, and read/print out the corresponding page.
This program will rename/move these files into an image share under the format
Next, we run another custom program that will crawl ALL folders in that image share looking for any
Finally, another program which plugs into ScanSoft's OmniPage Pro 14 COM abilities and will pull files from this database, recognize, and place the output TXT file next to the accompanying TIF. The benefit of using a database is that we can unleash a large group of machines on recognizing these pages and start/stop them as needed. We figured that when we're done, we'll need approximately 30 days of computing time on a P4/2.8Ghz to finish off 250,000 files (for those counting, that's about 10 seconds a page)
Now here's where it all comes together, we use an application called Summation which will import a
I guess you could say we have our systems pretty locked down, but we try and give the users everything they could ever need so they don't have to be trusted with making the right decision of which program to download. Additionally, if there IS some program we need to install, we can push the app in the background so most of the time, there's no need for them to even log out.
I know this is quite a bit of hand holding, but our business function doesn't require very many custom configurations and we've managed to reduce the majority of our service calls to application support, where we just have to show them how to do things.
We watch our systems through close auditing which runs once a day on the first login of that machine. We receive notification if a new executable or activex component shows up. We have yet to see any unauthorized changes but don't plan on letting our guard down anytime soon.
The easiest way to prevent corporate computers from becoming infected with spyware is to not run your users as local admins. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've seen companies whine and complain because it's too much work, and that it's easier to just let them install what they want.
We have almost 200 machines and in the past 8 months have had only ONE exploited. Not only that, but a restart fixed it, because all they were able to do was change the startup page in IE.
I'll admit it, we spent lots of research time adjusting permissions so that certain apps would run (Freakin ADP) but once it's set up, you can rest easier knowing that the users, and transitively any software running as the user) cannot write to system folders.
Obviously, this isn't our only level of security, we run SAV CE and regularly push a set of kill bits for malicious activex components. Oh, and our last line of protection is a driver-level program called Fortres that denies any writes to certain files (EXE's, executables, others we choose). They can't even copy/rename files to and from EXE.
We've covered most of our bases and are continually watching for holes but I'd say the most important thing an admin can do to control the desktops is to run users as users!
You have to look at its intention. Let me start by saying that I don't want to see a company held liable for the misuse of their product any more than the next man, but to the IP Holders, they are viewing the actions of Morpheus and friends as an attempt to profit from helping share ripped music.
When you look at the telco, internet, and mail, they are all a broad distribution medium obviously designed to transfer things from one point to the next with complete disregard to what they carry. The IP Holders feel that the P2P apps were solely designed to distribute copyrighted music (note they do not care about free music) and that's where this issue is based. If the P2P apps in question began in an era where unauthorized music sharing was not so popular (and it grew out of usefullness in the way FTP and WWW grew) then they would not have a case.
When our office decided to re-cable we were told by the building that we couldn't pull new cable unless we removed all the old cable. It turns out the previous tenants had re-cabled at least three times before. We were initially quoted tens of thousands of dollars to have it removed but finally found a contractor who would remove it all for just a few thousand. As it turns out he had horribly underestimated the job and upon completion, expressed to us how much he had under-quoted us but still held to his quote.
All in all, having pre-existing wiring is a double-edged sword. New tenants might like the idea of saving on cabling and such, but also can come back and bite you when it comes time to upgrade.
My question is how would one go about No-Spam listing their entire domain. I'm sure plenty of people here have Catch-All's and it would be impossible to include every iteration.
The same goes for ISP's. We have all seen Earthlink, Yahoo, even Hotmail include anti-spam methods, could they have their entire domain listed? Should they?
This raises several other questions, but at least in response to your (2), this would cover all recipients of a domain without giving a single address away.
As a matter of fact, Texas HB-831 has made it a class-C misdemeanor
"Person commits a class C misdemeanor if they knowingly direct a laser pointer at a police officer, uniformed security guard, fire fighter, emergency medical service worker, or other uniformed municipal, state or federal officers. "
Apparently for fear that a police officer would confuse a laser pointer with a laser sight from a gun.
I see exactly where you're going with Microsoft's desire to keep control over licensing, but consider how Samba integration could benefit them in other ways.
We've seen over the past few years Microsoft swallow their pride and admit that they have a few chronic "problems". We've also seen them revamp their licensing structure, including their new $399 Unlimited connection 2003 "Web Edition" Server. I think Microsoft is beginning to move towards Service based licenses (SQL, Exchange, LCS) and considering basic file sharing a necessity instead of a luxury. It would appease both the Open Source community and the MS community if their latest file sharing component was based on open source technology and people could trust that it has been peer-reviewed and had FAR FEWER bugs than before (though I think anything qualifies as that).
In reference to your comment about them being concerned about people using XP Home (Or Pro) for a server role, the limitations in the non-server platforms speak for themselves. XP Home only supporting one processor, and XP Pro only 2, will mean that any heavy duty work will be left to the Server versions.
Now, I don't know how they could end up bundling a GPL'd Samba with their next platform, I'm sure licensing would be a major issue (Separate CD, Free Download?) but we've seen Microsoft do some pretty strange things recently.
FYI: YES, I know they won't be doing this, it's hypothetical!
Unfortunately no one was aware it was HTTP traffic that kept the session going until a little "discussion" with one of the OIT people. By then I had already signed up with cable. Now I use a keepalive program on my laptop when roaming on their wireless network but my desktop is no longer on resnet.
Besides that, I'm still happy. The change to resnet left us all with private IP's that left many FTP sites unreachable (even with PASV) which meant I couldn't update my website, plus the P2P filtering filtered Bittorrent, and of course with no public IP, my computer was unreachable from work so no VNC or web services. I think the biggest complaint came from users with game consoles. This effectively shut them out because most don't have web browsers.
We've begged and pleaded with them to lax the rules or change the implementation. Even a PPPOE or MAC registration would be an improvement but our requests fell on deaf ears. I personally don't feel it was the right choice, we were given a single days notice it was going to occur a few weeks after we signed our apartment contracts! How's that for timing? But that's how our university functions. They gave a few families 90 days notice that their University-owned houses were going to be condemned and torn down for expansion only 60 or so days after signing a new lease. Oh well, they have their reasons I guess.
I think the reason to avoid UofF was because of its invasive approach to controlling the network. Their app takes advantage of loose shares. The university I attend has used packetshapers quite successfully to control P2P bandwidth and their new 'Vernier Login' system keeps infected systems from chewing up the remaining sliver of bandwidth.
While I personally got so sick of the new system that I switched over to cable, I understand their need. The way the Vernier system works is your machine is assigned an IP but the DNS server forwards every one of your requests to a login web page where the student had to log in with their NT accound. This way, if they knew of a system that was infected, they would know whose machine it was(and could lock them out if necessary). I got sick of it becase it timed out every 5 minutes if no traffic took place over port 80, that means that streaming audio, FTP, even IRC/IM would drop out if you didn't keep browsing. Heck, even reading long pages would time you out, forcing you to go back and log in again.
But anwyays, this IS an invasion, their concern is what their machines are putting ON the network, not what's stored on their personal machines.
We've actually had a pretty good experience with Dell. Our entire firm runs Dimensions and when they break Dell either ships out parts (arriving the next day I might add) or sends someone out to replace the part. Granted, dealing with someone on the opposite side of the globe has its drawbacks, a 1 second lag in communication with someone who already has a hard enough time speaking english is brutal, but once you finally convince them you know what you're doing, they cooperate.
A word of advice, If you call for a Precision Workstation you usually receive someone within the US, I guess the Dimension calls receive the outsourced support.
Also, if the laptop is in warranty, they are quite willing to help, even if you've made changes yourself. My Inspiron fell off a table and broke the power connector, I received a shipping box from Airborne Express within 4 hours and received it back 3 days later with a brand new bottom and motherboard.
To save space, here are some of the other things they've covered under warranty:
Laptop fan blade broken by air-duster
Fried laptop motherboard due to coke spill
Countless dead laptop keyboards
Even more broken laptop lid latches becuase they were plastic (Replaced with metal ones)
A laptop display with a single dead pixel
Heh, we even had a desktop that received runoff from a secretary watering her plants!
If you look at the lineup Sony has with MS support you'll see that they are really pushing hard to make MS-only support not such a bad thing. I personally started out with a Sony Cybershot camera when they came out and it was the fact that I had that camera that finally convinced me to purchase my Clie NR70.
If I wanted to now, I could also sell my Dell Inspiron and purchase a Sony laptop with built-in memory stick support, or a Memory Stick MP3 player, or even one of their big-screen TV's with an MS reader to view photos.
Now I'm not saying that this completely forgives them for supporting only one format, but there are people who have quite a few Sony products and don't plan on switching anytime soon, for them, the MemoryStick format is just fine.
I work in a law firm where attorneys find their PDA's indispensable.
The ability to bill for time while away from their computer, then have it automatically applied the next time they sync has saved countless hours. Also, those equipped with Palm i705's can respond to e-mails while out of the office.
I personally use my PDA all day long.
1:In class, I use a fold-out keyboard and take on average 5-6 pages of notes; these are automatically synced with my system. I also take long documents that I have to study for a test and set these to sync so that I can read them while I have free time.
2:When walking to class, I use it as an MP3 player; I use a 128mb card which provides more than enough music. 3:When waiting for class to start, I use AvantGo to read the news that I otherwise would not have had time to do. Cnet, InfoWorld, CNN, NYT, Wall Street Journal...
4:At work I am bombarded with tasks, I can list these by priority and keep my grocery list tucked away under a different category.
Of course there's always the standard contact list and memo pads, but there's also a program called RJ-45 that I use to get patch cables crimped correctly, no matter how many times I try, I always forget the order.
Now I just have to wait until all the Sony NR70's leave the store shelves so that mine can "break" and under its replacement plan, have it replaced with an NX70 which has PalmOS5 and WiFi capability!
Well, a linux solution is closer than you'd think. Check out MythTV. This guy has been working on a PVR in Linux running fairly cheap hardware. Definately worth a look-see.
Probabbly my most favorite tool would be a 12 gauge needle. Nothing straightens pins better. Since it's hollow and rigid and barbed, you can fit the sharp tip around the flattened pin (ps/2, ribbon, anything) and pry it up, then slide it down the barrel and you have an perfectly aligned pin with barely any noticable bend. I've used this countless times when that cable just won't plug in and then you find out why.
Some of my other favorites are
* homemade Cat5 loopback for testing lines
* Roto-Zip, perfect for cutting holes for boxes in wallas
* 'U' shaped coathanger wire, for finding the EXACT location of a stud after you cut a hole on the wrong side
* Multi-function ISA and PCI card that does Serial,Parallel, IDE and FDD for testing out faulty ports (sort of old now)
* 44-pin to 40 pin IDE adapter for testing Laptop hard drives in a regular PC
These are a few of my favorite tools. Of course there's always all the other mandatory stuff such as caffiene pills for when it absloutely has to be done overnight!
The funny thing about the caddy, I can't remove it. I pulled one of those coarse v. fine thread mixups and miss-threaded a screw into its brass thread inserts. Upon getting it almost completely lodged in, the threads gave out from the plastic. So now I have a freely-spinning screw securely holding in the brass threads, so the only way to remove the caddy is going to be to drill out the screw. I don't have the time to do that and I need more room in my case, so I'm just looking for a larger case and going to replace the caddy with a cooled one at the same time.
Now tht I think of it, I really do need a new case. All my motherboard standoffs are stripped out, so I tack-welded them so they'd stay put and I don't have any room to put my new adjustable 120mm fan!
I think he was referring to being completely unable to hear the drive when the CPU fan runs. Whenever I had Western Digital drives, I could always hear them spinning. I now run a 60 & 80Gig Barracuda IV and can back his comment. You can NOT hear the thing run. They do tend to get a bit hot. My 80Gig is in a removable caddy and during heavy defragging it will reach 137 degrees F. I need to get it mounted in front of the fan!