I worked for a place, that was sworn to use RedHat.. Well, RedHat 6.0 through 6.2. The logic was "Our application worked on it then, we'll keep using it forever". Damned the remote exploits. Damned patching it, ever. We'll use it the way it came off the disk.
{sigh}
I showed them that their application ran fine on the current Slackware, and even Slackware64. They had 64 bit servers, but refused to consider using a 64 bit operating system. Again, "it's the way we've always done it."
A few remote exploits later, and new hardware that simply wasn't recognized (damned if they'll let me build a kernel). I had to sneak a few newer kernels on, to support hardware that they wanted. (shh, that's still a secret).
They did decide to start using newer hardware, with a modern operating system. They wanted RedHat, they wanted support, but didn't want to pay for RHEL. I asked them "how many times have you asked for support in the last few years?" The answer was, "zero". Actually, they did ask for support. The folks over at RedHat laughed at them. Well, very politely. It was something like "You're using an ancient unpatched patform. Go download something resembling modern, and we'll help you."
There was a running theme there too. They used the version of Postgresql that came on the CD. They used the version of Apache that came on the CD. Regardless of what improvements or security fixes showed up in future versions, they didn't come on the original CD, so they weren't trustworthy. I was really surprised that we didn't have a higher suicide rate. I found that talking to a brick wall while on long smoke breaks was far more rational than trying to argue with them.
The ended up going with CentOS, because it was modern, it did have pay support available, and they could get the OS for free.
I have a serious problem with RedHat and all derivatives. They patch known stable code to make it theirs. On so many developer sites, I've seen statements saying that they can't support known bugs in the RedHat tainted versions, because the changes destabilized it. Basically, if you want help from the author, go get a fresh copy, compile it, and install it. If you're allergic to compiling (sadly, so many people are), most authors have a RPM version available.
It's not just a few authors who complain. It's not just some edge cases that become troublesome. I ran into them all the damned time. In quite a few cases, I had to go compile static binaries from original author sources, on my Slackware machine, and copy them over, so basic things would "just work". They refused to accept that anything with "Slack" in the name could possibly work, regardless of the fact that I ran an enterprise network for years, fully automated, without any problems.
The fully automated part was the reason I wasn't there any more. My babies (the servers) were self sufficient. I was just a babysitter, in case something went wrong. Failed hard drive, CPU fan failure, the occasional bad network cable. You get the idea. I didn't spend every day logging into well over 100 servers, fixing things. And we were always patched up to current. If Slack didn't have a package, or if we wanted something different, we managed that ourselves. As I recall, that list was 3 things. Apache, Sendmail, and OpenSSH. Those three were customized for our purposes.
For kids, it does make perfect sense. My dad was an engineer. When I was a little kid, I was sure he drove a train.:) By the time I was a teenager, I understood what he really did.
Well, grazing lands need water too, and cattle require water. I grew up on a farm. The grass did fine with rainfall, but we had several locations for the cattle to drink. Ours was supplied by our own well. Over about 15 years, we had two new wells dug, because the previous ones dried out. The water table continued to drop due to the increased needs of the "local" metro area (about 100 miles away).
In that driving around, did you notice the damage that we've done? The first thing you should have noticed was the oil based roads that we've put everywhere. You should also notice buildings. I'm afraid to know the total acreage of heat absorbing ground covering (roads, parking lots, buildings, etc) that we've spread across the natural lands in the last 100 years. In metro and suburban areas, it would be fair to guess that more than 50% of the natural land has been covered in darker materials. In many places, you will hear this being referenced as "heat islands". Where there is more heat absorption, the local temperature increases. Pay attention next time you walk into a parking lot on a hot day. It will be hotter than a grassy area. Or if you're in a snowy area, notice that when the snow melts, it retreats from exposed asphalt areas faster than grassy areas. That's not always due to road traffic and salts.
I know some gov't person suggested that everyone paint their roofs white. It sounded silly, and wasn't backed with any scientific information. It would have been very easy to build a strong case for doing it.
We are looking at painting our roof white. Well, sealing it with an elastic roofing sealer. I've been researching it carefully, so as not to destroy our roof in the process.:) From what I've seen, people have been reporting at least a 10 degree drop in attic temperatures by doing it, and they've reduced instances of roof leakage.
I'm not a "go green, save the world" freak. I look at things from a practical position. If we can lower attic temperatures, we can reduce our power bill in the summer. On very hot days (>= 100 degrees), the A/C runs 100% of the time from about an hour after sunrise, to several hours after dark.
In one house I owned, I added attic fans. They needed the capacity to cycle all the attic air out within 5 minutes, to cool the house. In doing that, I brought the A/C duty cycle down under 50% during the day. I don't have that house now (standard economy, layoff, foreclosure story).
Right now in the house I'm in, with an outside temperature in the mid 70's, the A/C still turns on. Even if we open the windows, the inside temperature will still be 80 degrees or higher. It is still hot inside because the entire roof absorbs so much heat. The normal solution is to install a larger or more modern air conditioner, and add insulation to the attic space. That's nice, but it doesn't change the fact that the house still absorbs so much heat. It's an expensive kludge, rather than fixing the actual cause.
Nope. I've spent a good bit of time considering what could be done. Doing "what if's" in my head (or on paper, and researching them), including information from what other people have done, if a fun hobby. It doesn't just apply to stuff like this.
The conclusion I've come to on illegal activity is, dumb luck is against me. I couldn't ever do anything illegal, because I will be caught. Or at very least, the profit versus the risk is too low.
What is one year of my life lost in jail worth? I'm not willing to accept any amount of money (goods, etc) for that.
What if someone got hurt or killed? I'm not willing to accept any amount for the consequences of that.
Here's a dumb example. It really happened. In the middle of the night, someone shot out the front windows (and glass door) of a friends store. They found one bullet lodged in a wall. The rest passed through the interior walls, and most likely hit the warehouse area. Some of the bullet holes indicated the shots had gone straight past one of the registers.
They had been working late for the last week. Part of that work did involve standing at that particular register. They just happened to go home a bit earlier that night (before midnight), so the place was empty. From outside, you couldn't tell the difference, as you couldn't see from the front door/window area to that register.
The police didn't follow up on the case, because it was only property damage, and no large theft nor injury.
I helped them review the security tapes. The footage wasn't great, but we did manage to put together about 3 minutes, which showed a particular vehicle with some identifying characteristics. We couldn't read any writing on the vehicle, nor the license plate. We got the staff together, and we went through exactly what we knew. It was a vehicle of this type, with these characteristics. Did any customers have a vehicle like that? There was a customer, who hadn't been in in a couple months. They figured out his name, and there was a record of delivery to his home from about 8 months prior. Still, it wasn't enough for the police.
We drove out to the guys house, and I carried a video camera. We weren't confronting the guy, we were only gathering evidence. Is vehicle was parked in the street, and the distinguishing characteristics all matched the vehicle in the video.
It took several more days to get an audience with a detective willing to investigate it. Presented with the footage from the security camera, and the video of his vehicle parked in front of his home, they had enough probable cause to get a search warrant.
When they showed up to his house, the guy knew he was screwed. He confessed to shooting my friends store, as well as 4 other places that night, one which involved a non-fatal injury. He told the police where to find the gun (under the drivers seat of the vehicle). His story was basically that he got drunk, went for a drive, and shot at businesses that he believed had wronged him in some sort of way.
I guess I should mention, that state has rather strict laws on firearms, and virtually nobody in the area has concealed carry permits (they are very strict). Having a firearm in the vehicle, concealed under the seat is a felony.
No one knew about the concealed weapon violation, nor the DUI, until he confessed to it. And no, "I was drunk" is not an excuse.
He was arrested, and plead guilty. We weren't involved in the court events, as he confessed to everything and then some. No witnesses, other than the investigators, were required.
I don't know how long he got, but I'm sure with the charges, he got some decent time.
He almost got away with it. If we hadn't followed up with it, and pushed to get a detective to investigate it further, he may have. His dumb luck was that we put the information together, and provide it to the police.
Dumb luck is your biggest enemy, and will get you caught if you try to do anything illegal. At least it's mine.:)
Overpopulation, both of humans, and food stuff animals, are the issue.
As we farm animals, we create vast herds (flocks, whatever), in controlled environments. The total population, and local density, are much higher than would have been found in nature.
From a UN report on food, agriculture, and global warming. "[the livestock sector] responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. The production of cattle to feed and clothe humans stresses ecosystems around the world, and is assessed to be one of the top three environmental problems in the world on a local to global scale."
There are roughly 1.5 billion head of cattle in the world today. There are huge tracts of farm land dedicated to the upkeep of those cattle (grazing fields, grain for feed, etc). Natural factors (predators, limited food supplies, disease, etc) do not keep the population in check.
There are also roughly 16 billion chickens.. The same factors apply.
Vegetarians don't help much. They increase their dependance on plant crops, and reduce the need on animals slightly. I would guess to an unnoticeable degree.
These populations wouldn't be so huge, if humanity had not been limiting it's natural controlling factors (predators, food supplies, disease, etc). We've made our environments safer to live in, and have eliminated or control many diseases that would have normally thinned the population to manageable levels.
Fossil fuels play their part, but again, only because the human population is so huge. Any reliance on any resource becomes unmanageable when you have 6.7 billion humans. Even if a small percentage of them uses a harmful resource, or a clean resource in a harmful way, it has an impact on everyone.
Three words for you.. "arterial gas embolism". You may think you need a lot of air, but put it in the wrong place and you'll find yourself dead. Air is dangerous stuff. They should outlaw it, just like dihydrogen monoxide. Save the world, save yourselves, outlaw this dangerous stuff !
On many of the commercial roofs I've been on, they are kind enough to have skylights. Metal roofs frequently have thinner translucent panels, so they can afford to save a few bucks on their power bill. I only paid attention to them as "things not to step on".:) A screwdriver would quietly and easily remove many of them. A quick hit with a hammer may make some noise, but only for a moment.
But why go through the trouble of getting on the roof. Most buildings have locked glass doors, and plenty of windows. A locked glass door can quickly become a locked door frame with a gaping hole in it.
A lock pick set, and someone who actually knows how to use it, is a lot quicker, quieter, and less noticeable. It also makes the person who just got their stuff taken wondering if they left the doors unlocked that night.
That's from the "shit I had to fix because someone else broke it" department.
It's not necessarily so easy.. Bent rebar or other metals can hang the vehicle. Tires can be punctured by the broken glass and metal debris. If you drive nose first, you may break the headlights, corner lights, windshield, and get something impaled in the radiator. Driving in backwards may result in a broken taillight, and potentially piercing the fuel tank on debris.
Then there are all the attention concerns. Someone's bound to of heard it. If not, a cop will eventually. Broken lights, windows, and assorted body damage will be a dead giveaway.
I know perfectly well I can't do it. The way my luck runs, if I were to ever do something like that, the police would happen to drive by right as I was entering the building. No amount of superb planning can make up for dumb luck.
If you go any farther than "I make software", their eyes glaze over anyways.
For over a decade, I've held high level IT positions, including responsibilities in management, systems administration, network administration, and software development. My current title is "Director of Information Technology". When someone asks what I do, I just say "computer stuff". I elaborate a little bit at a time, until I understand what level they're at. In most social circles, "computer stuff" is all they need to know, or can comprehend.
To many of them "IT" is the group that consists of the guy who comes to their desk to fix problems. The whole department, regardless of what they're doing, is considered "that guy who fixes my computer when it breaks." Ya, the lowest rank and responsibility in my department, and that's all anyone understands it to be... that's not to imply that the desktop support job is crap. That just happens to be the lowest position in my department.:) I have a lot of sympathy, since I have done it, and executives always seem to think that I should help them with their desktop problems, even if it's that they accidentally turned off their power strip, and the computer won't turn on. Sometimes I wonder how some people manage to survive at home. They don't appear to have the skills to work a light switch, or change a lightbulb. I don't quite understand how they make themselves coffee in the morning without burning their house down.
From what I've seen, it's frequently the client's DNS servers, not the client itself.
I've used a short TTL (5m) for quite a while. It's intentional, because I've needed to switch things rather quickly in the past, and it's better for it to "just work", rather than waiting hours for everyone to pick up the change.
I used to work for a place that had a huge traffic load. Our slow days were still millions of unique visitors. When we took a machine out of DNS (DNS round robin between 15+ machines), we'd see the traffic drop significantly in the first 5 minutes. When AOL finally saw our change, it would drop more. There would still be lingering people for about an hour, and then it would finally be idle.
That was a pretty regular thing for us to do. We scaled our traffic to our various datacenters this way. We'd also load test lines and individual servers with it. If it looked like we were running into a bandwidth limitation, I'd throw a few hundred Mb/s down the line, and see how it performed. If it really was, we'd then switch everything away from it to other datacenters until the provider fixed it.
In all those circumstances, in 5 minutes most (but not all) of the traffic moved. An hour from the change, the remainder had moved.
I've seen this with my home provider. I let them handle DNS for my home machine, rather than doing it myself. I've made changes, and they don't respect it within 30 minutes. Within about an hour, the new DNS records show properly.
Google's public DNS servers seem to do pretty well in that respect. Our changes are reflected properly there in just a few minutes. AOL, TimeWarner/RoadRunner, and a few others are pretty bad. I know why they do it (reducing load on their DNS servers), but it becomes a pain in the ass for places that need to make changes quickly.
Well, I can say that I wasn't very fond of the WebOS interface at all.
When I bought them, I hadn't researched the possibility of Android on them well enough. I mistook "It could be done", for "It has been done". Now that CyanogenMod has their alpha version available, I'm very happy. I installed alpha 2 last weekend on mine, and installed it on my girlfriends this evening. The first install session was kind of hit and miss, because I hadn't already done it. Once I got everything lined up, it was just a few minutes from turning it on to copy files, to her logging into Google so the marketplace would work.
It is an Alpha release, so there are bugs. There are little things like, sometimes when it goes to sleep, it won't wake up. There are workarounds for right now. Also, the android marketplace isn't installed, so you have to get a copy of the signed marketplace so it will work right.
They are still polishing up the finer points, but all in all, it's a very usable version. Oh, and so much faster and smoother than WebOS.
If you want to argue that, you have absolutely no clue how wholesale purchasing works...
If I buy something in a bulk of 1, well, I get pretty close to retail pricing, even if it's from a wholesale outlet. If I buy 1,000, it gets better. When we get over 100,000, the manufacturer will pretty much bend over backwards to satisfy you. Of course, when you start pushing the pricing down below their cost, that's when it gets farmed out to China.
I made http://m.freeinternetpress.com for my mobile users (namely me). It's great for WML enabled browsers. I haven't really used it in a while, since I have my android now. The full size page loads fine on it, and the users haven't asked for a light version. I suspect if the page is too heavy, they go for the RSS feeds, since they contain the same content.
What would have happened if Microsoft didn't drop support for Mac when the they did? Safari came in to fill a void. The ones people are mentioning are just a few of the many out there. Beyond those, there are little projects people have done to make their own. I'd bet quite a few of us have said "how hard could it possibly be to write a rendering engine?":)
If MSIE and Netscape never existed, would we have something now? Who knows. I can guarantee, if there's a profit to be made somewhere, someone will try. The web browser market is tough. In itself, there is no money to be made any more. People don't generally pay for their browsers. They don't pay for support. They expect a tool that does what they tell them to, and if they don't like it, they'll pick another free one. To enter and hold the market now, you have to have an alternative income source, and that income isn't going to come from the browser market, nor can you hope donations will keep it going.
MSIE is funded by Microsoft (obviously). Chrome by Google. Safari by Apple. Opera by Google (funny that, huh?). Konquorer is funded by KDE e.V. by member fees and donations. For MSIE and Safari, having a browser of their own enhances their product. Can you imagine an OS not coming with a web browser any more?
I guarantee, in 10 years, there will be new browsers in the game, and some will likely have dropped out.
Quite a few years ago, I had a boss tell me that he wanted the sites tested in "every web browser". We had a customer who complained our main site didn't look good in some browser that no one had ever heard off. I went on a quest to find "all" the web browsers. I had a beautiful collection of them, or at least those that weren't just skins on another browser. My desktop was full of icons for many of the browsers. It was horrible trying to keep up with them. At least my boss realized that "all" wasn't a reasonable request. "all" became "the major ones our customers use", so I was able to trim it down to the current versions MSIE, Netscape, and Opera. We then told the complaining user "go get a real browser." Honestly, the one he used was horrible, and didn't render anything right. It was a fun way to spend a week not doing any real work and getting paid for it.:)
Mmmm.. Open fire on a submarine.. or a spaceship.. That sounds lovely, as long as it's not the ship I'm on. Let me know how that works out for you.
Compressing pure carbon may not have the desired results. You'd probably prefer coal or charcoal. You may impress your girlfriend with the compressed coal though.
Why are you trying so hard to be right, but your works are consistently wrong? If you can't even get this right, why should I listen to anything else you have to say? You can't even work a simple menu guided tool to purchase memory, even for the wrong machine. I provided the spec on the machine early on in this conversation.
Exactly the same would be true if you bought a cheap third party component for the engine of your car.
Well, you're close, but so far off. I guess the closest thing I can think of is if I bought fuel injectors directly from Bosch, rather than buying them for a substantial markup from the dealer. As was already discussed, Crucial isn't cheap, nor are they crap. I'm picky about the parts I put in my car too, which frequently are better aftermarket parts.
Since you brought this up, we can make a very fair comparison. My girlfriend has a Mini also. She needed an oil change. She wanted both the filter and oil purchased from the dealership. It has a weird filter, but no impossible to find. It was a lot cheaper to buy a better spec filter at a parts store. As for the oil, they recommend Castrol synthetic oil, so getting the BMW brand on the bottle would have just been an extra expense.
After changing her oil, she got a flat tire. Sure, they both involved the same car, but the cause/effect relationship simply is not there.
A few years back, I did change the oil in my car, using a different brand oil and filter. Like, a brand I didn't normally use. A couple days later, the car overheated. Before jumping to the conclusion that the oil caused the overheating, and replacing the car, I diagnosed the problem. A paper towel had blown up on the radiator and was blocking the airflow. While I was diagnosing it (at a gas station at midnight, of course), a "helpful" person such as yourself came over. He diagnosed it a blown head gasket, without any supporting facts other than "overheating".
Both for my cars, and for my computer, I am picky about what I put into them. I use good parts. Those parts may not be (and likely aren't) OEM parts, but with a bit of experience, we can select the best parts to do the job, without going broke doing it.
While you have the experience of building out your own boxes for friends and family, I have... well... 17 years ago, I worked in a computer store, and built out thousands of custom machines. Cheap, but custom.:)
I have over a decade in IT, mostly building servers, but also workstations, and custom gaming machines for friends, family, coworkers, friends of coworkers, and... well, anyone who knew anyone who knew me always ended up coming to me if they wanted a good machine.
So, there are only several thousand machines out there with my name on 'em. (not really "on" it, but I build them). Occasionally I get a call about a broken part (usually hard drives). Most of them are asking me to help them upgrade because they want something newer and better.... and the machine I'm using right now is a Phenom II X6 1100T, Asus motherboard, 8GB Crucial memory, 3 1TB drives (2 as RAID0). It only has 2 cooling fans, but the big one on the back is rated for 100cfm. The motherboard temperature as I'm writing this is 95F, but I also have BOINC (for LHC@home) set to run while I'm using the computer, and it's allowed to use up to 90% of the CPU time (i.e., I'm beating the crap out of it 24/7). Other than a video driver problem a while back, it's been running flawlessly, regardless if I'm booted to Linux (Slamd64) or Windows (Win 7).
My girlfriend's other machine is very very similar. Some spare parts from mine, like a CPU that I upgraded from, etc. She likes her Mac though, which was the subject of this conversation. Ya, her Windows/Linux machine is faster, better, and cheaper. She needed the Windows machine, so she could play some PC games. (ya, the GF is a gamer too.). I'll probably just end up making her Win machine into a triple-boot hackintosh. That does away with her "spare" machine. I guess I'll be buying one of the newer processors soon.:) I only have... well... a bunch of spares for me.:)
Apple Store listing Mac Pro (2006 - 2008) One or two Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400 Series 800MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM No memory currently available for that model
Wow, you're absolutely right. How could I be so wrong? Oh... Because I wasn't.
Since Apple doesn't even sell that memory any more, what would be your suggestion? I can't exactly go and buy new memory from Apple. I could buy from eBay, but that leaves me open to the possibility of buying something that's broken. If it fixes the problem, then that's it. If it doesn't, that doesn't mean that the problem doesn't still exist with the memory. Or as I did when I worked in a computer store, we only ever tested with known good parts. If the known good part fixed the problem, we could then replace it with new parts from the store room. No, customers don't get known good, but used, parts.
Since you (or those who participated on the fanboy side of this conversation) said to only buy first-party parts, it will be impossible to get those parts. So the new option is no longer to repair, but to replace it with a newer machine. Planned obsolescence at its best. Who'd want an old machine like this. Only 8 2.8Ghz cores, 8GB RAM, and a 1GB video card (purchased as an option when the machine was purchased).
1) Crucial is a manufacturer for Apple. Same stuff, I just bought it farther up the supply line. And, I've bought thousands of units from them, without a single failure.
2) The memory was purchased and installed before Christmas. Well, checking the tracking, I received it on 12/15/2010, and as I recall, I installed it the same day. So you are suggesting that after 10 months of operating, the memory is crap and caused the problem? Amazingly doubtful.
And, looking at the difference between building out a Hackintosh, or letting her go straight Linux or Windows, I'm of the opinion that it isn't worth fixing the Apple.
But, the prior message was the fact that Apple's are x86 machines now. They are, except with expensive parts that aren't compatible with anything else.
Actually, no... But not in any sort of good way. They are x86 based, but only a few parts (CPU, hard drive, DVD) are PC parts.
My girlfriend has a Mac Pro, dual quad core 2.8Ghz... For Christmas, I upgraded the memory. Apple's site had it listed for something like $800. I got it from Crucial for $200. From what I read, Crucial makes it for Apple, so that's a clue about their mark up.
In the last month, according to the sensors, the power supply is overheating. Everything on forums, and according to Apple, is the power sensors are defective. The recommendation is to ignore them. Great. But we didn't pay attention to it until it started crashing. The fans are spinning fine, so it's something else. She has to leave a big desk fan blowing on it while it's on, to keep it from crashing.
The price for a power supply? About $300. No, it's not ATX. I can't find an ATX adapter, and I can't find a way to adapt it. So I can try for about $300.
The price for a motherboard? About $800 or so.
Since normal diagnostics haven't shown anything, and it's out of Apple's warranty, I have to figure it out on my own... If I want to pick up parts to experiment with, I'll be spending about $1,000. I'd probably buy a new PS first. Knowing how things turn out, that won't be the fault. Even if I buy both to test, there's still a good chance it's something else, like a flaky CPU.
To get a used one like it will cost a small fortune. Even still, a used one may have the same problems.
I never believe in the invincible Apple platform. I know that components fail. Anything with overpriced components isn't worth it, no matter how shiny the packaging is, nor how much fanboys proclaim they are the greatest.
And any fanboy wanting to argue this, send me a motherboard and power supply, so I can make her machine stable again. I'll send you a PC motherboard and power supply in exchange.:)
You know, I'd be willing to bet that the wonders of the Internet have really advanced what they can do too.
Not long ago, I was thinking back to when I was a kid. There was no Internet. Well, there was, but I had no way to get to it.
When I graduated high school, there were less than 10 web sites. We did have BBSs. Most had porn and door games. And there were the collections of text files, from dubious sources. Oh, we shouldn't forget the experts that populated the newsgroups. Well, about the same ratio of experts, to liars who said they were experts, as Wikipedia has.:)
I lived far enough from any major cities, where the libraries had scarce information. Good luck finding experts. The closest I found to civilian aerospace group was some folks who made model rockets, but never went above a Class C motor.
Getting my hands on construction equipment was rough. Flea markets, yard sales for deals, or if I had money (ya, right), I could order through retail outlets.
Now we can get tools and supplies through Craigslist and eBay. We can find and talk to experts world wide almost instantly (depending on when they read their email). We can read people's accounts of what they've done, and watch videos on how successful they were. And hell, if I were to start a project, I could present it to hundreds of thousands of people in just a day (submit the story to Slashdot), or possibly more attention by emailing press releases to every publication on the planet.
I wish I was doing stuff that I did when I was a kid.. I had room to do stuff. Growing up on a farm sucked for socialization, but had it's advantages, like I could build a rocket at the house, and launch it in the back field. I could probably have done motor tests on some pretty big motors, and no one would have cared.
Then again, if I was still out there, I wouldn't be making as much money as I am now, so I most likely wouldn't be able to fund crazy hobbies.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I seem to recall something about that also.
I worked for a place, that was sworn to use RedHat.. Well, RedHat 6.0 through 6.2. The logic was "Our application worked on it then, we'll keep using it forever". Damned the remote exploits. Damned patching it, ever. We'll use it the way it came off the disk.
{sigh}
I showed them that their application ran fine on the current Slackware, and even Slackware64. They had 64 bit servers, but refused to consider using a 64 bit operating system. Again, "it's the way we've always done it."
A few remote exploits later, and new hardware that simply wasn't recognized (damned if they'll let me build a kernel). I had to sneak a few newer kernels on, to support hardware that they wanted. (shh, that's still a secret).
They did decide to start using newer hardware, with a modern operating system. They wanted RedHat, they wanted support, but didn't want to pay for RHEL. I asked them "how many times have you asked for support in the last few years?" The answer was, "zero". Actually, they did ask for support. The folks over at RedHat laughed at them. Well, very politely. It was something like "You're using an ancient unpatched patform. Go download something resembling modern, and we'll help you."
There was a running theme there too. They used the version of Postgresql that came on the CD. They used the version of Apache that came on the CD. Regardless of what improvements or security fixes showed up in future versions, they didn't come on the original CD, so they weren't trustworthy. I was really surprised that we didn't have a higher suicide rate. I found that talking to a brick wall while on long smoke breaks was far more rational than trying to argue with them.
The ended up going with CentOS, because it was modern, it did have pay support available, and they could get the OS for free.
I have a serious problem with RedHat and all derivatives. They patch known stable code to make it theirs. On so many developer sites, I've seen statements saying that they can't support known bugs in the RedHat tainted versions, because the changes destabilized it. Basically, if you want help from the author, go get a fresh copy, compile it, and install it. If you're allergic to compiling (sadly, so many people are), most authors have a RPM version available.
It's not just a few authors who complain. It's not just some edge cases that become troublesome. I ran into them all the damned time. In quite a few cases, I had to go compile static binaries from original author sources, on my Slackware machine, and copy them over, so basic things would "just work". They refused to accept that anything with "Slack" in the name could possibly work, regardless of the fact that I ran an enterprise network for years, fully automated, without any problems.
The fully automated part was the reason I wasn't there any more. My babies (the servers) were self sufficient. I was just a babysitter, in case something went wrong. Failed hard drive, CPU fan failure, the occasional bad network cable. You get the idea. I didn't spend every day logging into well over 100 servers, fixing things. And we were always patched up to current. If Slack didn't have a package, or if we wanted something different, we managed that ourselves. As I recall, that list was 3 things. Apache, Sendmail, and OpenSSH. Those three were customized for our purposes.
For kids, it does make perfect sense. My dad was an engineer. When I was a little kid, I was sure he drove a train. :) By the time I was a teenager, I understood what he really did.
Well, grazing lands need water too, and cattle require water. I grew up on a farm. The grass did fine with rainfall, but we had several locations for the cattle to drink. Ours was supplied by our own well. Over about 15 years, we had two new wells dug, because the previous ones dried out. The water table continued to drop due to the increased needs of the "local" metro area (about 100 miles away).
In that driving around, did you notice the damage that we've done? The first thing you should have noticed was the oil based roads that we've put everywhere. You should also notice buildings. I'm afraid to know the total acreage of heat absorbing ground covering (roads, parking lots, buildings, etc) that we've spread across the natural lands in the last 100 years. In metro and suburban areas, it would be fair to guess that more than 50% of the natural land has been covered in darker materials. In many places, you will hear this being referenced as "heat islands". Where there is more heat absorption, the local temperature increases. Pay attention next time you walk into a parking lot on a hot day. It will be hotter than a grassy area. Or if you're in a snowy area, notice that when the snow melts, it retreats from exposed asphalt areas faster than grassy areas. That's not always due to road traffic and salts.
I know some gov't person suggested that everyone paint their roofs white. It sounded silly, and wasn't backed with any scientific information. It would have been very easy to build a strong case for doing it.
We are looking at painting our roof white. Well, sealing it with an elastic roofing sealer. I've been researching it carefully, so as not to destroy our roof in the process. :) From what I've seen, people have been reporting at least a 10 degree drop in attic temperatures by doing it, and they've reduced instances of roof leakage.
I'm not a "go green, save the world" freak. I look at things from a practical position. If we can lower attic temperatures, we can reduce our power bill in the summer. On very hot days (>= 100 degrees), the A/C runs 100% of the time from about an hour after sunrise, to several hours after dark.
In one house I owned, I added attic fans. They needed the capacity to cycle all the attic air out within 5 minutes, to cool the house. In doing that, I brought the A/C duty cycle down under 50% during the day. I don't have that house now (standard economy, layoff, foreclosure story).
Right now in the house I'm in, with an outside temperature in the mid 70's, the A/C still turns on. Even if we open the windows, the inside temperature will still be 80 degrees or higher. It is still hot inside because the entire roof absorbs so much heat. The normal solution is to install a larger or more modern air conditioner, and add insulation to the attic space. That's nice, but it doesn't change the fact that the house still absorbs so much heat. It's an expensive kludge, rather than fixing the actual cause.
Nope. I've spent a good bit of time considering what could be done. Doing "what if's" in my head (or on paper, and researching them), including information from what other people have done, if a fun hobby. It doesn't just apply to stuff like this.
The conclusion I've come to on illegal activity is, dumb luck is against me. I couldn't ever do anything illegal, because I will be caught. Or at very least, the profit versus the risk is too low.
What is one year of my life lost in jail worth? I'm not willing to accept any amount of money (goods, etc) for that.
What if someone got hurt or killed? I'm not willing to accept any amount for the consequences of that.
Here's a dumb example. It really happened. In the middle of the night, someone shot out the front windows (and glass door) of a friends store. They found one bullet lodged in a wall. The rest passed through the interior walls, and most likely hit the warehouse area. Some of the bullet holes indicated the shots had gone straight past one of the registers.
They had been working late for the last week. Part of that work did involve standing at that particular register. They just happened to go home a bit earlier that night (before midnight), so the place was empty. From outside, you couldn't tell the difference, as you couldn't see from the front door/window area to that register.
The police didn't follow up on the case, because it was only property damage, and no large theft nor injury.
I helped them review the security tapes. The footage wasn't great, but we did manage to put together about 3 minutes, which showed a particular vehicle with some identifying characteristics. We couldn't read any writing on the vehicle, nor the license plate. We got the staff together, and we went through exactly what we knew. It was a vehicle of this type, with these characteristics. Did any customers have a vehicle like that? There was a customer, who hadn't been in in a couple months. They figured out his name, and there was a record of delivery to his home from about 8 months prior. Still, it wasn't enough for the police.
We drove out to the guys house, and I carried a video camera. We weren't confronting the guy, we were only gathering evidence. Is vehicle was parked in the street, and the distinguishing characteristics all matched the vehicle in the video.
It took several more days to get an audience with a detective willing to investigate it. Presented with the footage from the security camera, and the video of his vehicle parked in front of his home, they had enough probable cause to get a search warrant.
When they showed up to his house, the guy knew he was screwed. He confessed to shooting my friends store, as well as 4 other places that night, one which involved a non-fatal injury. He told the police where to find the gun (under the drivers seat of the vehicle). His story was basically that he got drunk, went for a drive, and shot at businesses that he believed had wronged him in some sort of way.
I guess I should mention, that state has rather strict laws on firearms, and virtually nobody in the area has concealed carry permits (they are very strict). Having a firearm in the vehicle, concealed under the seat is a felony.
No one knew about the concealed weapon violation, nor the DUI, until he confessed to it. And no, "I was drunk" is not an excuse.
He was arrested, and plead guilty. We weren't involved in the court events, as he confessed to everything and then some. No witnesses, other than the investigators, were required.
I don't know how long he got, but I'm sure with the charges, he got some decent time.
He almost got away with it. If we hadn't followed up with it, and pushed to get a detective to investigate it further, he may have. His dumb luck was that we put the information together, and provide it to the police.
Dumb luck is your biggest enemy, and will get you caught if you try to do anything illegal. At least it's mine. :)
You should expand that a little bit.
Overpopulation, both of humans, and food stuff animals, are the issue.
As we farm animals, we create vast herds (flocks, whatever), in controlled environments. The total population, and local density, are much higher than would have been found in nature.
From a UN report on food, agriculture, and global warming. "[the livestock sector] responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. The production of cattle to feed and clothe humans stresses ecosystems around the world, and is assessed to be one of the top three environmental problems in the world on a local to global scale."
There are roughly 1.5 billion head of cattle in the world today. There are huge tracts of farm land dedicated to the upkeep of those cattle (grazing fields, grain for feed, etc). Natural factors (predators, limited food supplies, disease, etc) do not keep the population in check.
There are also roughly 16 billion chickens.. The same factors apply.
Vegetarians don't help much. They increase their dependance on plant crops, and reduce the need on animals slightly. I would guess to an unnoticeable degree.
These populations wouldn't be so huge, if humanity had not been limiting it's natural controlling factors (predators, food supplies, disease, etc). We've made our environments safer to live in, and have eliminated or control many diseases that would have normally thinned the population to manageable levels.
Fossil fuels play their part, but again, only because the human population is so huge. Any reliance on any resource becomes unmanageable when you have 6.7 billion humans. Even if a small percentage of them uses a harmful resource, or a clean resource in a harmful way, it has an impact on everyone.
Save the planet, kill yourself.
Three words for you.. "arterial gas embolism". You may think you need a lot of air, but put it in the wrong place and you'll find yourself dead. Air is dangerous stuff. They should outlaw it, just like dihydrogen monoxide. Save the world, save yourselves, outlaw this dangerous stuff !
On many of the commercial roofs I've been on, they are kind enough to have skylights. Metal roofs frequently have thinner translucent panels, so they can afford to save a few bucks on their power bill. I only paid attention to them as "things not to step on". :) A screwdriver would quietly and easily remove many of them. A quick hit with a hammer may make some noise, but only for a moment.
But why go through the trouble of getting on the roof. Most buildings have locked glass doors, and plenty of windows. A locked glass door can quickly become a locked door frame with a gaping hole in it.
A lock pick set, and someone who actually knows how to use it, is a lot quicker, quieter, and less noticeable. It also makes the person who just got their stuff taken wondering if they left the doors unlocked that night.
That's from the "shit I had to fix because someone else broke it" department.
It's not necessarily so easy.. Bent rebar or other metals can hang the vehicle. Tires can be punctured by the broken glass and metal debris. If you drive nose first, you may break the headlights, corner lights, windshield, and get something impaled in the radiator. Driving in backwards may result in a broken taillight, and potentially piercing the fuel tank on debris.
Then there are all the attention concerns. Someone's bound to of heard it. If not, a cop will eventually. Broken lights, windows, and assorted body damage will be a dead giveaway.
I know perfectly well I can't do it. The way my luck runs, if I were to ever do something like that, the police would happen to drive by right as I was entering the building. No amount of superb planning can make up for dumb luck.
If you go any farther than "I make software", their eyes glaze over anyways.
For over a decade, I've held high level IT positions, including responsibilities in management, systems administration, network administration, and software development. My current title is "Director of Information Technology". When someone asks what I do, I just say "computer stuff". I elaborate a little bit at a time, until I understand what level they're at. In most social circles, "computer stuff" is all they need to know, or can comprehend.
To many of them "IT" is the group that consists of the guy who comes to their desk to fix problems. The whole department, regardless of what they're doing, is considered "that guy who fixes my computer when it breaks." Ya, the lowest rank and responsibility in my department, and that's all anyone understands it to be. .. that's not to imply that the desktop support job is crap. That just happens to be the lowest position in my department. :) I have a lot of sympathy, since I have done it, and executives always seem to think that I should help them with their desktop problems, even if it's that they accidentally turned off their power strip, and the computer won't turn on. Sometimes I wonder how some people manage to survive at home. They don't appear to have the skills to work a light switch, or change a lightbulb. I don't quite understand how they make themselves coffee in the morning without burning their house down.
Be careful, I'm pretty sure Disney already trademarked that one.
From what I've seen, it's frequently the client's DNS servers, not the client itself.
I've used a short TTL (5m) for quite a while. It's intentional, because I've needed to switch things rather quickly in the past, and it's better for it to "just work", rather than waiting hours for everyone to pick up the change.
I used to work for a place that had a huge traffic load. Our slow days were still millions of unique visitors. When we took a machine out of DNS (DNS round robin between 15+ machines), we'd see the traffic drop significantly in the first 5 minutes. When AOL finally saw our change, it would drop more. There would still be lingering people for about an hour, and then it would finally be idle.
That was a pretty regular thing for us to do. We scaled our traffic to our various datacenters this way. We'd also load test lines and individual servers with it. If it looked like we were running into a bandwidth limitation, I'd throw a few hundred Mb/s down the line, and see how it performed. If it really was, we'd then switch everything away from it to other datacenters until the provider fixed it.
In all those circumstances, in 5 minutes most (but not all) of the traffic moved. An hour from the change, the remainder had moved.
I've seen this with my home provider. I let them handle DNS for my home machine, rather than doing it myself. I've made changes, and they don't respect it within 30 minutes. Within about an hour, the new DNS records show properly.
Google's public DNS servers seem to do pretty well in that respect. Our changes are reflected properly there in just a few minutes. AOL, TimeWarner/RoadRunner, and a few others are pretty bad. I know why they do it (reducing load on their DNS servers), but it becomes a pain in the ass for places that need to make changes quickly.
Well, I can say that I wasn't very fond of the WebOS interface at all.
When I bought them, I hadn't researched the possibility of Android on them well enough. I mistook "It could be done", for "It has been done". Now that CyanogenMod has their alpha version available, I'm very happy. I installed alpha 2 last weekend on mine, and installed it on my girlfriends this evening. The first install session was kind of hit and miss, because I hadn't already done it. Once I got everything lined up, it was just a few minutes from turning it on to copy files, to her logging into Google so the marketplace would work.
It is an Alpha release, so there are bugs. There are little things like, sometimes when it goes to sleep, it won't wake up. There are workarounds for right now. Also, the android marketplace isn't installed, so you have to get a copy of the signed marketplace so it will work right.
They are still polishing up the finer points, but all in all, it's a very usable version. Oh, and so much faster and smoother than WebOS.
If you want to argue that, you have absolutely no clue how wholesale purchasing works...
If I buy something in a bulk of 1, well, I get pretty close to retail pricing, even if it's from a wholesale outlet. If I buy 1,000, it gets better. When we get over 100,000, the manufacturer will pretty much bend over backwards to satisfy you. Of course, when you start pushing the pricing down below their cost, that's when it gets farmed out to China.
Odd, I bought 3 from BestBuy that morning. They were all shipped from different distribution centers, but they all arrived within a week.
Look over their site carefully, or contact them.
I couldn't find the really really slim version of Slashdot, so I asked Cmdr Taco... he replied with...
An awful lot of people use the m. subdomain. For example http://www.weatherunderground.com has http://m.wund.com/.
I made http://m.freeinternetpress.com for my mobile users (namely me). It's great for WML enabled browsers. I haven't really used it in a while, since I have my android now. The full size page loads fine on it, and the users haven't asked for a light version. I suspect if the page is too heavy, they go for the RSS feeds, since they contain the same content.
What would have happened if Microsoft didn't drop support for Mac when the they did? Safari came in to fill a void. The ones people are mentioning are just a few of the many out there. Beyond those, there are little projects people have done to make their own. I'd bet quite a few of us have said "how hard could it possibly be to write a rendering engine?" :)
If MSIE and Netscape never existed, would we have something now? Who knows. I can guarantee, if there's a profit to be made somewhere, someone will try. The web browser market is tough. In itself, there is no money to be made any more. People don't generally pay for their browsers. They don't pay for support. They expect a tool that does what they tell them to, and if they don't like it, they'll pick another free one. To enter and hold the market now, you have to have an alternative income source, and that income isn't going to come from the browser market, nor can you hope donations will keep it going.
MSIE is funded by Microsoft (obviously). Chrome by Google. Safari by Apple. Opera by Google (funny that, huh?). Konquorer is funded by KDE e.V. by member fees and donations. For MSIE and Safari, having a browser of their own enhances their product. Can you imagine an OS not coming with a web browser any more?
I guarantee, in 10 years, there will be new browsers in the game, and some will likely have dropped out.
Quite a few years ago, I had a boss tell me that he wanted the sites tested in "every web browser". We had a customer who complained our main site didn't look good in some browser that no one had ever heard off. I went on a quest to find "all" the web browsers. I had a beautiful collection of them, or at least those that weren't just skins on another browser. My desktop was full of icons for many of the browsers. It was horrible trying to keep up with them. At least my boss realized that "all" wasn't a reasonable request. "all" became "the major ones our customers use", so I was able to trim it down to the current versions MSIE, Netscape, and Opera. We then told the complaining user "go get a real browser." Honestly, the one he used was horrible, and didn't render anything right. It was a fun way to spend a week not doing any real work and getting paid for it. :)
I was just bringing that from the gp of your post.
I'm sure party animals over at NASA could find something to do with hydrogen, carbon dust, and salt water (err, urine).
Mmmm.. Open fire on a submarine.. or a spaceship.. That sounds lovely, as long as it's not the ship I'm on. Let me know how that works out for you.
Compressing pure carbon may not have the desired results. You'd probably prefer coal or charcoal. You may impress your girlfriend with the compressed coal though.
But.... Crucial does show the right memory for that machine.
From the link you provided:
http://store.apple.com/us/memorymodel/ME_MACPRO_S10_RAM
Apple Memory Module 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM - 1x4GB
From Crucial:
http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=Mac%20Pro%206-Core%20Mid%202010&Cat=RAM
DDR3 PC3-10600 - CL=9 - Unbuffered - ECC - DDR3-1333 - 1.5V - 256Meg x 72 - Part #: CT1431613
4GB = 4GB
1333Mhz = DDR3-1333 = 1333Mhz
DDR3 = DDR3
ECC = ECC
Why are you trying so hard to be right, but your works are consistently wrong? If you can't even get this right, why should I listen to anything else you have to say? You can't even work a simple menu guided tool to purchase memory, even for the wrong machine. I provided the spec on the machine early on in this conversation.
Well, you're close, but so far off. I guess the closest thing I can think of is if I bought fuel injectors directly from Bosch, rather than buying them for a substantial markup from the dealer. As was already discussed, Crucial isn't cheap, nor are they crap. I'm picky about the parts I put in my car too, which frequently are better aftermarket parts.
Since you brought this up, we can make a very fair comparison. My girlfriend has a Mini also. She needed an oil change. She wanted both the filter and oil purchased from the dealership. It has a weird filter, but no impossible to find. It was a lot cheaper to buy a better spec filter at a parts store. As for the oil, they recommend Castrol synthetic oil, so getting the BMW brand on the bottle would have just been an extra expense.
After changing her oil, she got a flat tire. Sure, they both involved the same car, but the cause/effect relationship simply is not there.
A few years back, I did change the oil in my car, using a different brand oil and filter. Like, a brand I didn't normally use. A couple days later, the car overheated. Before jumping to the conclusion that the oil caused the overheating, and replacing the car, I diagnosed the problem. A paper towel had blown up on the radiator and was blocking the airflow. While I was diagnosing it (at a gas station at midnight, of course), a "helpful" person such as yourself came over. He diagnosed it a blown head gasket, without any supporting facts other than "overheating".
Both for my cars, and for my computer, I am picky about what I put into them. I use good parts. Those parts may not be (and likely aren't) OEM parts, but with a bit of experience, we can select the best parts to do the job, without going broke doing it.
[/me tips his hat to mjwx]
While you have the experience of building out your own boxes for friends and family, I have ... well ... 17 years ago, I worked in a computer store, and built out thousands of custom machines. Cheap, but custom. :)
I have over a decade in IT, mostly building servers, but also workstations, and custom gaming machines for friends, family, coworkers, friends of coworkers, and ... well, anyone who knew anyone who knew me always ended up coming to me if they wanted a good machine.
So, there are only several thousand machines out there with my name on 'em. (not really "on" it, but I build them). Occasionally I get a call about a broken part (usually hard drives). Most of them are asking me to help them upgrade because they want something newer and better. ... and the machine I'm using right now is a Phenom II X6 1100T, Asus motherboard, 8GB Crucial memory, 3 1TB drives (2 as RAID0). It only has 2 cooling fans, but the big one on the back is rated for 100cfm. The motherboard temperature as I'm writing this is 95F, but I also have BOINC (for LHC@home) set to run while I'm using the computer, and it's allowed to use up to 90% of the CPU time (i.e., I'm beating the crap out of it 24/7). Other than a video driver problem a while back, it's been running flawlessly, regardless if I'm booted to Linux (Slamd64) or Windows (Win 7).
My girlfriend's other machine is very very similar. Some spare parts from mine, like a CPU that I upgraded from, etc. She likes her Mac though, which was the subject of this conversation. Ya, her Windows/Linux machine is faster, better, and cheaper. She needed the Windows machine, so she could play some PC games. (ya, the GF is a gamer too.). I'll probably just end up making her Win machine into a triple-boot hackintosh. That does away with her "spare" machine. I guess I'll be buying one of the newer processors soon. :) I only have ... well ... a bunch of spares for me. :)
I call your bluff, sir.
Apple Store listing
Mac Pro (2006 - 2008)
One or two Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400 Series 800MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM
No memory currently available for that model
Apple Technical Specification
Standard Configuration:
2GB (two 1GB) of 800MHz DDR2 ECC fully buffered DIMM
Build To Order Options:
4GB (four 1GB)
8GB (four 2GB)
16GB (four 4GB)
16GB (eight 2GB)
32GB (eight 4GB)
From my order with Crucial
(CT2KIT25672AP80E)
2-2GB 240-PIN 256MX72 DDR2 PC2-6400 FULLY BUFF
Item subtotal: $159.99
Total w/ tax+shipping: $162.06
Crucial's current part:
4GB kit (2GBx2)
DDR2 PC2-6400 â CL=5 â Fully Buffered â ECC â DDR2-800 â 1.8V â 256Meg x 72 â â Part #: CT774458
Comparison with Apple listing.
2GB (two 1GB) of 800MHz DDR2 ECC fully buffered DIMM
800Mhz = PC2-6400 = DDR2-800 = 800Mhz
ECC = ECC
fully buffered = Fully Buffered
DIMM = DIMM
Wow, you're absolutely right. How could I be so wrong? Oh... Because I wasn't.
Since Apple doesn't even sell that memory any more, what would be your suggestion? I can't exactly go and buy new memory from Apple. I could buy from eBay, but that leaves me open to the possibility of buying something that's broken. If it fixes the problem, then that's it. If it doesn't, that doesn't mean that the problem doesn't still exist with the memory. Or as I did when I worked in a computer store, we only ever tested with known good parts. If the known good part fixed the problem, we could then replace it with new parts from the store room. No, customers don't get known good, but used, parts.
Since you (or those who participated on the fanboy side of this conversation) said to only buy first-party parts, it will be impossible to get those parts. So the new option is no longer to repair, but to replace it with a newer machine. Planned obsolescence at its best. Who'd want an old machine like this. Only 8 2.8Ghz cores, 8GB RAM, and a 1GB video card (purchased as an option when the machine was purchased).
Nah, I'm a good guy in person. Plenty of sarcasm, but still a good guy. Now, when they present a $1,000 quote, we'd still walk away.
Well, two problems.
1) Crucial is a manufacturer for Apple. Same stuff, I just bought it farther up the supply line. And, I've bought thousands of units from them, without a single failure.
2) The memory was purchased and installed before Christmas. Well, checking the tracking, I received it on 12/15/2010, and as I recall, I installed it the same day. So you are suggesting that after 10 months of operating, the memory is crap and caused the problem? Amazingly doubtful.
And, looking at the difference between building out a Hackintosh, or letting her go straight Linux or Windows, I'm of the opinion that it isn't worth fixing the Apple.
But, the prior message was the fact that Apple's are x86 machines now. They are, except with expensive parts that aren't compatible with anything else.
Actually, no... But not in any sort of good way. They are x86 based, but only a few parts (CPU, hard drive, DVD) are PC parts.
My girlfriend has a Mac Pro, dual quad core 2.8Ghz... For Christmas, I upgraded the memory. Apple's site had it listed for something like $800. I got it from Crucial for $200. From what I read, Crucial makes it for Apple, so that's a clue about their mark up.
In the last month, according to the sensors, the power supply is overheating. Everything on forums, and according to Apple, is the power sensors are defective. The recommendation is to ignore them. Great. But we didn't pay attention to it until it started crashing. The fans are spinning fine, so it's something else. She has to leave a big desk fan blowing on it while it's on, to keep it from crashing.
The price for a power supply? About $300. No, it's not ATX. I can't find an ATX adapter, and I can't find a way to adapt it. So I can try for about $300.
The price for a motherboard? About $800 or so.
Since normal diagnostics haven't shown anything, and it's out of Apple's warranty, I have to figure it out on my own... If I want to pick up parts to experiment with, I'll be spending about $1,000. I'd probably buy a new PS first. Knowing how things turn out, that won't be the fault. Even if I buy both to test, there's still a good chance it's something else, like a flaky CPU.
To get a used one like it will cost a small fortune. Even still, a used one may have the same problems.
I never believe in the invincible Apple platform. I know that components fail. Anything with overpriced components isn't worth it, no matter how shiny the packaging is, nor how much fanboys proclaim they are the greatest.
And any fanboy wanting to argue this, send me a motherboard and power supply, so I can make her machine stable again. I'll send you a PC motherboard and power supply in exchange. :)
You know, I'd be willing to bet that the wonders of the Internet have really advanced what they can do too.
Not long ago, I was thinking back to when I was a kid. There was no Internet. Well, there was, but I had no way to get to it.
When I graduated high school, there were less than 10 web sites. We did have BBSs. Most had porn and door games. And there were the collections of text files, from dubious sources. Oh, we shouldn't forget the experts that populated the newsgroups. Well, about the same ratio of experts, to liars who said they were experts, as Wikipedia has. :)
I lived far enough from any major cities, where the libraries had scarce information. Good luck finding experts. The closest I found to civilian aerospace group was some folks who made model rockets, but never went above a Class C motor.
Getting my hands on construction equipment was rough. Flea markets, yard sales for deals, or if I had money (ya, right), I could order through retail outlets.
Now we can get tools and supplies through Craigslist and eBay. We can find and talk to experts world wide almost instantly (depending on when they read their email). We can read people's accounts of what they've done, and watch videos on how successful they were. And hell, if I were to start a project, I could present it to hundreds of thousands of people in just a day (submit the story to Slashdot), or possibly more attention by emailing press releases to every publication on the planet.
I wish I was doing stuff that I did when I was a kid.. I had room to do stuff. Growing up on a farm sucked for socialization, but had it's advantages, like I could build a rocket at the house, and launch it in the back field. I could probably have done motor tests on some pretty big motors, and no one would have cared.
Then again, if I was still out there, I wouldn't be making as much money as I am now, so I most likely wouldn't be able to fund crazy hobbies. :)