Normally, redundancy is a high priority. Is the savings in hardware and electricity worth the risk of losing (say) 10 machines because one power supply failed?
I'm sure there's still more than one power supply. You just don't have 42 of them, like you would in a rack full of 1U servers...instead, you'd have maybe two or three (like you do in some conventional servers with redundant power supplies).
2 years ago Wells Fargo had an issue with the latest Netscape, but aside from that they've supported every Mozilla I've ever used.
I think their browser check only goes so far as to look at the user-agent string instead of anything potentially more sophisticated. For sh*ts and grins, I tried logging in with Lynx (an SSL-enabled build, of course) one time. As I expected, they rejected it.
I tried this next:
lynx -useragent="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible ; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)" https://banking.wellsfargo.com
That got around the browser check just fine...and the site was surprisingly navigable with Lynx, too. If you're using something other than IE/NS/Moz and you can set the user-agent string, try it out with your bank and see how it works.
Then again, if **I** was running things, I'd have Congresscritters and Senators living in general-issue family housing on any of the local military bases in the DC area.
Then you'd also have only people running for office who don't care what kind of housing the government gives them and their families. That would be the ones who are independently wealthy and can afford to turn it down. Oops.
Besides, the government isn't paying for housing for congressmen and senators. They're expected to pay their own way. They also need to maintain residences in their home districts/states to maintain their eligibility, so they end up paying two mortgages and/or rents while they're in office. (Unless they're someone like Ted "The Swimmer" Kennedy or Frank Lautenberg, in which case they're independently wealthy and able to pay for several homes out of the change in their pockets.)
So, you're basically admitting that you either have the choice of buying a black Model-T or building your own from parts.
WTF is that supposed to mean?
For the vast majority of the market, THAT IS NO CHOICE AT ALL!
Please explain for everybody here how Joe Luser is only able to choose from among whatever is available at Best Buy, CompUSA, etc. This should be interesting. Just because those are the only computer-buying options Joe Luser knows about before he buys his first computer doesn't mean that his choice is restricted in any way...he could find other vendors in the yellow pages, or maybe a geek friend of his could turn him onto something better. It's also likely that by the time he's ready to get rid of his first computer in a couple of years, he'll figure out that he got shafted the first time around and will go elsewhere.
Until then, don't bother us.
Yeah, we can't have impure thought around here...it'll upset the Slashbots who can't get over their "M$" fetish.
well, all the time i order machines that i intend to install linux on from vendor X, and i say, "i don't want windows installed on the machine, and i don't want to pay for a windows license". however, thanks to microsoft's bulk licensing approach with vendors, this is not possible.
Sounds like you need to (a) find a different vendor or (2) start building your own machines. I suspect most screwdriver shops would have no problems building "naked PCs," and they probably use better parts than Dell anyway. (Some of 'em will use sh*tty parts if you let them get away with it, though, so be careful...you might want to specify the motherboard, processor, hard drive, etc. that you want if you're going to have the machine built.)
the cable industry, which sells Internet access to most Americans
From what bodily orifice did the author pull this nugget? Last time I checked, most people were still stuck with dial-up connections. Cable might have an edge over DSL as far as broadband connectivity goes (which would make sense, since DSL pretty uniformly sucks, at least around here), but broadband comprises a fairly small part of everything that qualifies as "Internet access."
Then again, considering the source of the article (tompaine.com is a well-known hangout for left-wing nuts and kooks), this lack of a firm grip on the facts shouldn't be surprising.
As for my own experiences with broadband, the only limit I've run up against with Cox was when it started blocking port 25 on dynamic-IP accounts. An extra $10/month for a static IP address fixed that (and generally made running a web/mail/SSH server more convenient). Other than that, I've been pretty much free to do whatever I want. My experiences with various DSL providers here has been underwhelming, but that owes more to Sprint's incompetence at keeping a DSL network running than anything else.
Yes, China and Iraq are excellent examples of what happens to a country when the right to bear arms is violated. Great Britain
You must not have heard of, among other things, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. How about all of those surveillance cameras all over the place? 1984 just happened a few years later than predicted.
Germany
Maybe you missed this article about how they're censoring Google.
Switzerland
Given that they issue guns to everybody (full-automatic machine guns in most cases, which are kept at home), I don't see how this strengthens your case. If anything, it's further proof that an armed society is a polite society.
and Iceland
I don't know enough about them one way or the other, so I won't comment.
are all ruled by tyrants that oppress their people.
Only tyrants and criminals fear an armed citizenry.
I think this is a very disturbing thought. I'm not a tyrant and I'm not a criminal, and yet I'm very afraid of armed citizenry.
Why? Are you worried that your neighbor is going to gun you down? If he's that much of a low-life, you need to consider (a) moving or (b) arming yourself as a defense against him. Don't count on the government to guarantee your safety as they can do fsck-all for you if some punk wishes to do you harm. Call for a cop and call for a pizza; tell us which one arrives first.
In a lot of Ocidental countries it is much easier to get a gun than to get some shooting courses.
The same can be said for cars and driver's-ed courses. Your point is...? (Before you point out that you need a driver's license to operate a car, let me remind you that while the right to keep and bear arms is a natural right that is not subject to government interference or restriction, operating a motor vehicle on the public streets is a privilege. It's also worth noting that in many jurisdictions, you don't need to have taken any driver's-ed courses to get a driver's license.)
The Second Amendment is the one that guarantees the other nine in the Bill of Rights. Look at countries such as China or Iraq as examples of what happens when the people's right to bear arms is violatedby the government. Hell, it was Mao who said that "power flows from the barrel of a gun"...like other mass murderers before him, he knew the dangers ordinary people with guns would pose to his regime. Only tyrants and criminals fear an armed citizenry.
Two words--Lease return. 0% finanicing is killing the market prices for used cars, which aren't subsidized. You can get some sweet deals on a nearly new car from almost all the auto companies.
You're still spending a relative fortune to (potentially) buy someone else's problems. I'd have a hard time forking over more than $2-3k on a used car, unless it's something special (like an old muscle car) and I can verify that it's still in decent shape. If you're looking at spending a five-figure amount on a vehicle, I think it'd make more sense to buy new.
Then again, I don't trade in for something different every 2-3 years, as too many people seem to do. I bought an '02 S10 earlier this year, and I see no reason why I can't get at least 15 years (if not more) out of it. The salesman was a bit surprised that I didn't go for something "spiffier," but I don't buy status symbols. I don't need the people-hauling capacity of an SUV, and a V6 is plenty for getting to/from work or down the highway (hell, it actually delivers more power and torque and better mileage than the 33%-larger V8 in my '77 Cutlass Supreme). I'm sure I could've gotten a used Tahoe (or maybe even a Suburban) for about what I paid for a new S10, but I'm not complaining...there's no telling what abuse a previous bonehead owner would've heaped on a used vehicle (missed oil changes, jackrabbit starts, etc.).
Rule of thumb: Put your hand over the PS's exhaust fan. If the air's significantly warmer than the air in the PC's case, get a bigger power supply.
Dual Athlons run hot, no matter what power supply you use. I have a dual 1900 at work and a dual 2100 at home, both powered by 430W Antecs. The exhaust is a fair bit warmer than you get from most other computers.
The home machine previously had a 1.0-GHz Athlon, powered by a 350W Enermax. I could've tried running the new setup on the old power supply, but decided against that.
Easy solution. leave it plugged in, but switched off at the wall socket.
It's kinda hard to do that when wall outlets aren't switched. (Yeah, I know the Brits have switches on all of their outlets...but they're weird that way.:-) )
When paperbacks started costing > 9 dollars, I stopped buying them. It hurt to decrease my favorite entertainment, but with my scifi/fantasy appetite of 2-4 paperbacks a weekend, I just couldn't afford it.
Dude... haven't you got a library? The original source of free books...
If you've already replaced Blockbuster with Netflix, what are the odds you'll want to locate and trudge down to the nearest library when you can get your reading fix online? (Especially with some of the types of people who hang around libraries...at least Blockbuster didn't have that problem.)
i'd be willing to bet that redwolves2 is italian. my grandparents said the same thing...
I used to hear "x puts hair on your chest" from my father...and one half of his background (the part with the name) is German and the other half is Irish. I suspect it's an Americanism that got passed around no matter what your ancestry.
Actual performance of the product is not a real concern. It's all about conspicuous consumption. I bet you pay a nice premium for those tubes.
Most tubes aren't that expensive...Antique Electronic Supply has 12AX7s starting at $6.25 each (current-manufacture Chinese, quantity 10+). They have some more expensive varieties of that tube (NOS Amperex for $78.00 each, NOS Mullard for $67.00 each, NOS domestic-manufacture for $14.90 each), but how much you fork over for tubes depends mainly on how much audiophoole Kool-Aid you've been drinking lately.:-)
It's all about making it look like it performs well, which has led to a number comparisons between this crowd and another that does similar things to certain import sedans...
I definitely won't argue about the many similarities between the case modders and the rice boys. It's a wonder they haven't tried combining the two...how about a windowed hood on a Civic, or a nitrous bottle in an overclocked Celeron? (Then again, you couldn't see a windowed hood underneath the four-foot-wide "Type R" sticker...and it's not like there's anything worth looking at under the hood of the average rice burner anyway.)
I can't get my mind off of the old analogy of a van full of data tapes travelling cross-country.
Anyone care to do the math to figure out the bandwidth of one million (or billion) AOL disks travelling at highway speeds?
Probably fairly low, given that the contents of all the CDs are identical (or nearly so). OTOH, it would be highly redundant storage...RAID would have nothing on it.:-)
I configured Apache to pop up a window on an infected machine every time my server received an attempt at compromising it. It exploited the hole created by Code Red to pop up a message on the infected server./default.ida used a server-side include to call Lynx with a URL that caused this command to execute on the infected server:
net send localhost "Your webserver has been infected with the CodeRed2 worm. You have a security hole so big that you can drive a Mack truck through it. You should fix it before some script kiddie comes along and takes advantage of it. Remove root.exe and shell.exe from c:\inetpub\scripts (or wherever your CGI scripts live, though c:\inetpub\scripts is the default location)."
Damn...if I had thought of it (and if I didn't think Internet advertising is evil), I could've made a mint off all of the lusers who let their servers get infected with Code Red! If I had figured out how to do something similar with Nimda, I could've made an even bigger killing!
(Details of my adventures with Code Red are up here. The live counter is gone now because my rusty SQL skillz resulted in MySQL thrashing away for more than a minute to generate four numbers.)
And please, don't use no-name computers. Compare to Dell, Compaq et al.
Why not? Nobody with any intelligence buys name-brand desktops. Would you pay more money to get inferior components? I wouldn't. Want a dual Athlon MP 1900+ with decent amounts of memory & disk, a decent video card, and Win2K for somewhere around $1600? Dude, you're not getting a Dell!
"Pentium 4s have no multi-cpu board designs..." Really?
Intel seem [sic] to think otherwise.
Where are the dual Socket-478 motherboards? They don't exist...if you want Intel MP, you get to fork over the big bucks for Xeons. Hope you brought some Vaseline...you'll need it.
At work I've got a 49000 line Microsoft Visual C++ project that compiles in 5.5 minutes on a 1700 MHz Pentium 4. That's right, about 150 lines per second.
Something must be seriously ate-up on your machine. I have a ~20000-line MFC project in VC++6. On a dual Athlon MP 1900+, I get three EXEs and two DLLs each in debug and release builds in about 50 seconds. On an Athlon XP 1600+, the compile time increases a little bit to 65 seconds. I know the P4 is a slower processor than the Athlons I'm running, but it shouldn't be that much slower. (If I had my old 1.0-GHz Athlon set up, I'd benchmark the build on that for sh*ts and grins.)
In terms of performance the fastest chip that fitted in a socket 3 was the Cyrix 5x86 120Mhz, which (again speaking of integer performance) was equivalent of a P100.
I still have one of those kicking around on a Biostar 8433UUD...it's not currently installed in anything, though. For $350 (processor & motherboard) in late 1995/early 1996 (?), it was a deal. It outran a P5-133 Packard Bell at work (not too surprising, since the Packard Bell had no L2 cache and sh*tty onboard video vs. the #9 Motion 531 I had at home). The only downside was that the 40-MHz FSB of the 5x86-120 meant that the PCI bus had to be underclocked (to 26.67 MHz) to keep things stable. I suppose I could've tried running the processor at 133 MHz (4x33) instead of 120 (3x40), but slower access to the L2 cache would probably have made performance about the same.
If only there was a theme that used the OS native widgets, without the ugly 'classic' icons...
Phoenix looks like it's going that way. I would be using it right now instead of the new Mozilla beta, but Phoenix doesn't let you disable third-party cookies (you can't check the checkbox that controls third-party cookies, at least not under Win2K). Once they get that fixed, though, I'll more than likely switch over to Phoenix. All I really want is a browser. I use Mutt on my home Linux server for mail, so I don't need a mail client, and I use text editors (such as JOE or Notepad) for editing HTML and CSS.
The thing that bugs me right now about Mozilla 1.2b is that the Pinball theme doesn't work (it didn't work in Phoenix, either, and for the same reason...it hasn't been updated). Classic is ghey (as you noted), and Modern isn't much better. Pinball ought to be the default.:-)
If you try and install 98, you are shut out of the Microsoft Update site, so you can't get MSIE 6. I know how to upgrade MSIE 4.0 that comes with 98 to a newer version, so I can get into Windows Update. There is a trick to that;-).
Then again, you really should be using Mozilla as your browser. As for updates, I only use Windows Update to see what updates need to be applied to my Win2K systems...and then use the knowledgebase numbers (Qxxxxxx) to manually download the updates. I save them to CD for future use, so that when Microsoft pulls the plug on Win2K, I'll still have all of the available updates for it. Since you want to keep using Win98, it'd be even more essential to squirrel away all the updates someplace. (Having this stuff on CD also keeps you from having to download a few hundred megs of patches every time you need to nuke-and-reinstall your system.)
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I'm sure there's still more than one power supply. You just don't have 42 of them, like you would in a rack full of 1U servers...instead, you'd have maybe two or three (like you do in some conventional servers with redundant power supplies).
Sounds like it's time for you to leave Elbonia...
I think their browser check only goes so far as to look at the user-agent string instead of anything potentially more sophisticated. For sh*ts and grins, I tried logging in with Lynx (an SSL-enabled build, of course) one time. As I expected, they rejected it.
I tried this next:
That got around the browser check just fine...and the site was surprisingly navigable with Lynx, too. If you're using something other than IE/NS/Moz and you can set the user-agent string, try it out with your bank and see how it works.
Besides, the government isn't paying for housing for congressmen and senators. They're expected to pay their own way. They also need to maintain residences in their home districts/states to maintain their eligibility, so they end up paying two mortgages and/or rents while they're in office. (Unless they're someone like Ted "The Swimmer" Kennedy or Frank Lautenberg, in which case they're independently wealthy and able to pay for several homes out of the change in their pockets.)
WTF is that supposed to mean?
Please explain for everybody here how Joe Luser is only able to choose from among whatever is available at Best Buy, CompUSA, etc. This should be interesting. Just because those are the only computer-buying options Joe Luser knows about before he buys his first computer doesn't mean that his choice is restricted in any way...he could find other vendors in the yellow pages, or maybe a geek friend of his could turn him onto something better. It's also likely that by the time he's ready to get rid of his first computer in a couple of years, he'll figure out that he got shafted the first time around and will go elsewhere.
Yeah, we can't have impure thought around here...it'll upset the Slashbots who can't get over their "M$" fetish.
Sounds like you need to (a) find a different vendor or (2) start building your own machines. I suspect most screwdriver shops would have no problems building "naked PCs," and they probably use better parts than Dell anyway. (Some of 'em will use sh*tty parts if you let them get away with it, though, so be careful...you might want to specify the motherboard, processor, hard drive, etc. that you want if you're going to have the machine built.)
From what bodily orifice did the author pull this nugget? Last time I checked, most people were still stuck with dial-up connections. Cable might have an edge over DSL as far as broadband connectivity goes (which would make sense, since DSL pretty uniformly sucks, at least around here), but broadband comprises a fairly small part of everything that qualifies as "Internet access."
Then again, considering the source of the article (tompaine.com is a well-known hangout for left-wing nuts and kooks), this lack of a firm grip on the facts shouldn't be surprising.
As for my own experiences with broadband, the only limit I've run up against with Cox was when it started blocking port 25 on dynamic-IP accounts. An extra $10/month for a static IP address fixed that (and generally made running a web/mail/SSH server more convenient). Other than that, I've been pretty much free to do whatever I want. My experiences with various DSL providers here has been underwhelming, but that owes more to Sprint's incompetence at keeping a DSL network running than anything else.
You must not have heard of, among other things, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. How about all of those surveillance cameras all over the place? 1984 just happened a few years later than predicted.
Maybe you missed this article about how they're censoring Google.
Given that they issue guns to everybody (full-automatic machine guns in most cases, which are kept at home), I don't see how this strengthens your case. If anything, it's further proof that an armed society is a polite society.
I don't know enough about them one way or the other, so I won't comment.
Fear the government that fears your gun.
Why? Are you worried that your neighbor is going to gun you down? If he's that much of a low-life, you need to consider (a) moving or (b) arming yourself as a defense against him. Don't count on the government to guarantee your safety as they can do fsck-all for you if some punk wishes to do you harm. Call for a cop and call for a pizza; tell us which one arrives first.
The same can be said for cars and driver's-ed courses. Your point is...? (Before you point out that you need a driver's license to operate a car, let me remind you that while the right to keep and bear arms is a natural right that is not subject to government interference or restriction, operating a motor vehicle on the public streets is a privilege. It's also worth noting that in many jurisdictions, you don't need to have taken any driver's-ed courses to get a driver's license.)
The Second Amendment is the one that guarantees the other nine in the Bill of Rights. Look at countries such as China or Iraq as examples of what happens when the people's right to bear arms is violatedby the government. Hell, it was Mao who said that "power flows from the barrel of a gun"...like other mass murderers before him, he knew the dangers ordinary people with guns would pose to his regime. Only tyrants and criminals fear an armed citizenry.
You're still spending a relative fortune to (potentially) buy someone else's problems. I'd have a hard time forking over more than $2-3k on a used car, unless it's something special (like an old muscle car) and I can verify that it's still in decent shape. If you're looking at spending a five-figure amount on a vehicle, I think it'd make more sense to buy new.
Then again, I don't trade in for something different every 2-3 years, as too many people seem to do. I bought an '02 S10 earlier this year, and I see no reason why I can't get at least 15 years (if not more) out of it. The salesman was a bit surprised that I didn't go for something "spiffier," but I don't buy status symbols. I don't need the people-hauling capacity of an SUV, and a V6 is plenty for getting to/from work or down the highway (hell, it actually delivers more power and torque and better mileage than the 33%-larger V8 in my '77 Cutlass Supreme). I'm sure I could've gotten a used Tahoe (or maybe even a Suburban) for about what I paid for a new S10, but I'm not complaining...there's no telling what abuse a previous bonehead owner would've heaped on a used vehicle (missed oil changes, jackrabbit starts, etc.).
You'd go too easy on them...
s/... called newbies/ shot/
Dual Athlons run hot, no matter what power supply you use. I have a dual 1900 at work and a dual 2100 at home, both powered by 430W Antecs. The exhaust is a fair bit warmer than you get from most other computers.
The home machine previously had a 1.0-GHz Athlon, powered by a 350W Enermax. I could've tried running the new setup on the old power supply, but decided against that.
It's kinda hard to do that when wall outlets aren't switched. (Yeah, I know the Brits have switches on all of their outlets...but they're weird that way. :-) )
If you've already replaced Blockbuster with Netflix, what are the odds you'll want to locate and trudge down to the nearest library when you can get your reading fix online? (Especially with some of the types of people who hang around libraries...at least Blockbuster didn't have that problem.)
I used to hear "x puts hair on your chest" from my father...and one half of his background (the part with the name) is German and the other half is Irish. I suspect it's an Americanism that got passed around no matter what your ancestry.
Most tubes aren't that expensive...Antique Electronic Supply has 12AX7s starting at $6.25 each (current-manufacture Chinese, quantity 10+). They have some more expensive varieties of that tube (NOS Amperex for $78.00 each, NOS Mullard for $67.00 each, NOS domestic-manufacture for $14.90 each), but how much you fork over for tubes depends mainly on how much audiophoole Kool-Aid you've been drinking lately. :-)
I definitely won't argue about the many similarities between the case modders and the rice boys. It's a wonder they haven't tried combining the two...how about a windowed hood on a Civic, or a nitrous bottle in an overclocked Celeron? (Then again, you couldn't see a windowed hood underneath the four-foot-wide "Type R" sticker...and it's not like there's anything worth looking at under the hood of the average rice burner anyway.)
Probably fairly low, given that the contents of all the CDs are identical (or nearly so). OTOH, it would be highly redundant storage...RAID would have nothing on it. :-)
Damn...if I had thought of it (and if I didn't think Internet advertising is evil), I could've made a mint off all of the lusers who let their servers get infected with Code Red! If I had figured out how to do something similar with Nimda, I could've made an even bigger killing!
(Details of my adventures with Code Red are up here. The live counter is gone now because my rusty SQL skillz resulted in MySQL thrashing away for more than a minute to generate four numbers.)
Why not? Nobody with any intelligence buys name-brand desktops. Would you pay more money to get inferior components? I wouldn't. Want a dual Athlon MP 1900+ with decent amounts of memory & disk, a decent video card, and Win2K for somewhere around $1600? Dude, you're not getting a Dell!
Where are the dual Socket-478 motherboards? They don't exist...if you want Intel MP, you get to fork over the big bucks for Xeons. Hope you brought some Vaseline...you'll need it.
Something must be seriously ate-up on your machine. I have a ~20000-line MFC project in VC++6. On a dual Athlon MP 1900+, I get three EXEs and two DLLs each in debug and release builds in about 50 seconds. On an Athlon XP 1600+, the compile time increases a little bit to 65 seconds. I know the P4 is a slower processor than the Athlons I'm running, but it shouldn't be that much slower. (If I had my old 1.0-GHz Athlon set up, I'd benchmark the build on that for sh*ts and grins.)
I still have one of those kicking around on a Biostar 8433UUD...it's not currently installed in anything, though. For $350 (processor & motherboard) in late 1995/early 1996 (?), it was a deal. It outran a P5-133 Packard Bell at work (not too surprising, since the Packard Bell had no L2 cache and sh*tty onboard video vs. the #9 Motion 531 I had at home). The only downside was that the 40-MHz FSB of the 5x86-120 meant that the PCI bus had to be underclocked (to 26.67 MHz) to keep things stable. I suppose I could've tried running the processor at 133 MHz (4x33) instead of 120 (3x40), but slower access to the L2 cache would probably have made performance about the same.
Phoenix looks like it's going that way. I would be using it right now instead of the new Mozilla beta, but Phoenix doesn't let you disable third-party cookies (you can't check the checkbox that controls third-party cookies, at least not under Win2K). Once they get that fixed, though, I'll more than likely switch over to Phoenix. All I really want is a browser. I use Mutt on my home Linux server for mail, so I don't need a mail client, and I use text editors (such as JOE or Notepad) for editing HTML and CSS.
The thing that bugs me right now about Mozilla 1.2b is that the Pinball theme doesn't work (it didn't work in Phoenix, either, and for the same reason...it hasn't been updated). Classic is ghey (as you noted), and Modern isn't much better. Pinball ought to be the default. :-)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ is where you download the installer...that page even works with Mozilla. (Tried looking for a full-download installer instead of a network installer, but didn't see one.) For other Win98 updates, you might try http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/downloads/corpo rate.asp.
Then again, you really should be using Mozilla as your browser. As for updates, I only use Windows Update to see what updates need to be applied to my Win2K systems...and then use the knowledgebase numbers (Qxxxxxx) to manually download the updates. I save them to CD for future use, so that when Microsoft pulls the plug on Win2K, I'll still have all of the available updates for it. Since you want to keep using Win98, it'd be even more essential to squirrel away all the updates someplace. (Having this stuff on CD also keeps you from having to download a few hundred megs of patches every time you need to nuke-and-reinstall your system.)