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User: MonkeyBoy

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  1. Re:I'm back online on Some People @Home, Some Not @Home · · Score: 1

    The letter my friend showed me today said (paraphrased) "Restart your computer and open Internet Explorer. The page that loads will have software you can download to make your internet connection work again."

    I'm guessing AT&T has never heard of the concept of creating your own home page, or going to one of your choosing.

    Of course, this logic path is only helped by PCs running Windows, where the average user thinks that there's some funny little wizard, replete with star-embroidered cloak and hat, sitting inside making it all work - and they know damn well you never mess with wizards! Here there be dragons, touch nothing, do nothing...

    Of course, if you weren't on a PC at work, your network configuration wouldn't miraculously shit itself...

  2. Re:XBOX harder to hack than you think on TechTV Cracks Open The Xbox · · Score: 1

    You're missing the point. It's not that we're saving a couple hundred, it's that we're also cause Microsoft to LOSE a couple hundred. On every unit. Buy multiple units and save! Save! Save!

    This could really explode in MS's face, so expect massive legal battles, FUD, etc. the minute details become readily available.

    Because, remember, the only way MS can make money is if you buy XBox titles and peripherals. If you just buy the system, they're in the hole, and if you never buy anything else, they'll never make up the cost.

  3. Re:... and the it all begins on TechTV Cracks Open The Xbox · · Score: 1
    People don't play consoles for the PC ports, they play them for the console exclusives.
    Then why are you getting an X-Box?

    Every title made for the X-Box will be "ported" to the PC in a few short months (time dictated by how much they want to tick off MS). "Console exclusives" only apply to other consoles. Remember, if you buy an X-Box, you're not buying a console. You're buying a PC.

    The only upside to purchasing an X-Box is that, if you don't buy any games, you cause Microsoft to lose a couple hundred dollars. A new BIOS should be out shortly that lets it boot off the HD, after that all it takes is linux drivers for the video/NIC (according to friends of friends, working drivers are already available), and... bam... a non-expandable PC with 64MB and a UMA chipset.

    Sounds really appetizing, mmmmyeah... but, hey, at least Microsoft loses money.
  4. Re:hmmmm.... on TechTV Cracks Open The Xbox · · Score: 1

    That's a Seagate U-series drive. They're pretty damn reliable, but they're not the fastest things in the world.

    I bought one for my parents a couple years ago as a christmas present, back when they were brand new. Their (insert name brand hunk of shit model here) has horrible ventilation, but even after running for several hours - all buttoned up - the drive was barely warm to the touch.

    I suspect there'll be more cases of idiotic children bumping consoles off shelves, etc. with the drives in motion, heads meeting platters. In any case, MS will be blamed, since the children are, of course, blameless and angelic.

    Yes, this could work out nicely... mwahahaha...

  5. Re:amazing new technology on AMD Roadmap for Coming Year and Beyond · · Score: 1
    That would break the laws of thermodynamics.
    What, the part about condensation, or the part about splitting into half a dozen companies?
  6. Re:Solution to DUIs on Sony/Toyota Developing Car With Emotions · · Score: 1

    There's a cheaper, and much more effective, solution to the problem. And, thank god, it's actually been implemented in a few states.

    After you get a DUI you get a ignition cutoff switch installed in your car. Connected to the switch is, essentially, an breathalyzer (a device with a tube that you blow through, which in theory measures your blood alcohol level).

    The problem is that if you went to a wine tasting (swish wine around your mouth, then spit it out), or recently gargled & rinsed with Listerine, these things can set off false positives. Of course, you'd have to be in a great rush to get to the car (hence the latter is more likely) as the alcohol will evaporate fairly quickly or get swallowed.

    Another problem is that if you can convince any sober person to blow into the tube for you, the car will start. Hopefully there aren't enough dumbass hicks out there to make this a massive problem (that durn fool government iz tryin' to break us southern dandies!).

    It sure as hell is a lot cheaper to implement than a bunch of CCDs and the necessary "logic" to determine whether a person is drunk. Which would be damn hard to figure out without some way of measuring blood alcohol.

    For example, my uncle had a mild epileptic seizure and was pulled over, and arrested for, drunk driving. After processing him they administered a blood alcohol test, which came back negative, and because he was still behaving like a "drunk" the idea slowly dawned in the cops that maybe, just maybe, he wasn't drunk after all.

  7. Re:There is a reason they don't read email on Usenix Takes Stand Against ATA and SSSCA · · Score: 1

    From my dealing with... "the older generation"... be it managers or politicians (primarily the former, barely the latter)... they generally only read things that are physically in front of them.

    In other words, email probably has to go through an extra step - a staffer (or multiple staffers) wades through the deluge and only print out ones that *they* feel make valid points.

    Those printouts then go onto the stack along with paper mail, which then go through other staffers to weed out mail from wackos, unimportant topics, etc.

    This extra step immediately cuts down the number of emails that will get through, but also does an effective job of weeding out messages from the wackos and idiots.

    I would expect that the emails with gross misspellings and grammar so horrible that it's impossible to tell the topic would be weeded out at the first step as well. And, given the average email I get, that's a whooooole lotta email that immediately gets nuked.

    Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

  8. Re:Kansas? Who Cares? on Used ICBM Silo For Sale, "Cheap" · · Score: 1

    As if it'd make a difference?

    Whether it's loaded or not, they'll target it anyway, since, after all, it could just as easily be a ruse.

    They're thousands of miles away and unable to inspect it for themselves, and media coverage is always of questionable integrity.

  9. Re:Somewhere in the former Soviet Union... on Used ICBM Silo For Sale, "Cheap" · · Score: 1

    The international one Wakes up, condemned this earth, which always one forces still to the Hungern! The right such as glow in herd of herdherd now with power to the break-through penetrates. Pure desk makes with the Bedranger! Army of the slaves, wakes up! A nothing to be, carry it not long everything to become, stromt zuhauf! Volker, stronghold the signals! Up, to last combat! The international Erkampft the human right It does not save to us a hoh'res nature no God, no emperor, still Tribun us from the misery to erlosen konnen we only does! Empty word: poor rights, empty word: going obligation! Unmundigt calls one us farmhands, bears the disgrace longer not! In city and country, you work people, we are the starkste Partei'n the Mussigganger shift aside! This world must be ours; Our blood is no more of the raben and the machtigen vultures ate! Only if we drove it out then seem let us sun ' ohn ' let us omit!

    Stupid babelfish.

  10. Re:Tried it. Does nothing on Huge security hole in Internet Explorer for MacOS · · Score: 1

    Actually, no, IE has handled .hqx decoding on-the-fly from the first MacOS version. It didn't require StuffIt for decoding, except, perhaps, for the StuffIt Engine extension (under classic MacOS) - but probably not even that.

  11. Re:Near-Useless Security on Huge security hole in Internet Explorer for MacOS · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Same as every automatic backup method that doesn't allow for regression - if you don't realize you're hosed before the next automatic backup occurs, the needed data can get overwritten with "newer" (e.g. infected, corrupted) versions of the files.

    Not every worm is out to delete files, many of them will modify existing files to re-infect the system after you clean out the obvious.

  12. Re:Preferences on Huge security hole in Internet Explorer for MacOS · · Score: 1

    No. .sit is the same thing as .zip, a compression method.

    .hqx is the same thing as .uu, and encoding method to prevent corruption due to storage on/passing through other systems (.e.g 7-bit Un*x boxes)...

    And if you read the link you'll notice that:

    1) IE decodes HQX attachments without the use of an external program
    2) After downloading & decoding the attachment (decodes on-the-fly actually), it launches the attachment.

    While this behavior can be turned off (with little consequence since Stuffit Expander can decode HQX-encoded files), the default behavior is to perform steps 1 & 2 above.

    This is a change from the older IEs, which also decoded automatically but only launched a program if it was a StuffIt archive or some other type of file - the attachment itself, if it was an application, wouldn't be launched (except by the "helper" application, which is like a QuickTime movie clip being read by QuickTime Player).

    All of this was under your control through Preferences of course. And in the new one... they're a shadow of it's former self...

  13. Re:Here it is, for all you MSIE trolls on A Quick Look At Mac-On-Linux · · Score: 1

    Try assigning more memory to MSIE.

    While it does grab memory from the temporary pool as needed, it seems a lot more zippy if you give it another 10 or 20 megs to play with in it's base partition.

    Also has a memory leak issue where if it's been running (even in the background w/o a window open) for several hours it becomes VERY sluggish on more complex pages, but a simple quit & reload will fix that. Best to just issue a Command-Q and be patient - go get a cup of coffee, fresh air, etc. as the exercise will do you good. When you return it'll have choked and sputtered it's way to finish and catch your quit.

    I'm not sure but I think the leak may be a plugin, though I don't have anything unusual installed...

    I'm also getting damn annoyed at MSIE crashing every so often and ^@$#%^@#$ corrupting the Internet Preferences file, a file used by the OS but which MSIE has taken over for it's own nefarious purposes. MSIE doesn't equal Internet, no matter what Bill says!

  14. Re:subscription on More on the Replay TV 4000 · · Score: 1

    Uh, yeah. I guess my 70-ish year old mother & father are abberations.

    They looked at what cable TV cost and DirecTV cost and signed up when they realized cable cost twice as much for the same channels.

    Frankly, I recommend everyone do the same thing (compare cable to DTV), particularly since all those "you can't put a dish on your property" rules are unenforceable (there's a federal law on the books, written in the era of large satellite dishes, protecting satellite dishes).

    Frankly, I think someone, somewhere, is getting a kickback from cable companies to try and pull that bullshit. Whether it's the builders, association members, city council, whoever - to try and pull something that asinine means they're getting something out of it, simply because the risk is high of it exploding in their face.

  15. Re:Shopping... on Software Transferability? (or the lack of it) · · Score: 1

    Er, but what about that little stickler that contracts have to be signed BEFORE the sale?

    EULAs are unenforceable because they require you to follow the stipulations AFTER the sale.

    It's like buying a car, then having the salesman come by 5 minutes after money has changed hands and saying "great, thanks for buying, but now you have to pay $200/mo for 5 years".

    It's even a big leap to simply have the contract enforced BY the sale. Typically restrictive contracts like this require a signature, thereby certifying that you've read it and agreed to the terms.

  16. Re:Termination on The Book of SCSI, 2nd Edition · · Score: 1

    How about this... contact the manufacturer.

    A few years ago I bought a Travan4 drive from APS. It was more expensive than if I bought it in a generic case but I liked their case design at the time (built-in active termination, small footprint, stackable).

    The problem is once it arrived I found out they had connected the SCSI ID jumpers oddly, so I could only do 0 or... 7 I think. As it turned out they'd reversed the grounds. I contacted them, explained what I thought was happening, and asked if it'd be OK to open the case and switch the jumpers around. They said it'd be okay, marked it in my customer record, and of course I dutifully saved the emails.

    The other option is to send it back to them so they can make the change, but usually if you be a stickler and make them pay shipping costs both ways they'll relent and let you do the work yourself.

    Though I think the biggest problem is the need for you to impress on them you're not a yokel who feels the need to stick screwdrivers into power supplies for no particular reason.

  17. Re:Losers on Spy Satellites? What Spy Satellites? · · Score: 1

    Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!

  18. Re:They've got to be kidding on Lawsuit Alleges That Palms Damage Motherboards · · Score: 1

    One of our salespeople damaged her laptop. A large number of keys on the keyboard and the DVD-ROM weren't working. Explaination to what happened before they stopped working? "Nothing unusual happened. They just stopped working."

    It wasn't until we had the old keyboard shipped back to us that we discovered that the insides of the keyboard were virtually filled with salt and god knows what organic matter. I'm assuming french fries, maybe some popcorn.

    The DVD-ROM had a damaged lens, caused by her leaving her map CD in the drive and bouncing the laptop around such that the CD got scratched by the lens of the drive. Over. And Over. And Over. Until it just stopped reading any disc stuck in there, including the replacement map CDs.

    Her response to the repair bill? "What? You mean we have to pay for the repair? Why wasn't it covered under warranty?" Uhh. Yeah.

    If you behave like an idiot, bad things will happen to you. The idea is to learn from your mistakes and become less of an idiot over time, not blithely scamper around and sue everyone who requires you to think before acting.

  19. Re:Definitely works in linux on Apple Input Devices on x86? · · Score: 1
    f there's any problem it's with using a USB KVM. The Linux PC needs to be switched to 'active' when booting, and be given a chance to recognize the keyboard. Otherwise it (or any other USB device) won't be recognized.

    Might want to try out IOGear's new MiniView II KVM switchbox. It's got this odd "ghosting" technology which basically makes the system think whatever devices are plugged in are there, even when you're on another input. This translates into no delay when switching to a different input, since it doesn't have to plug 'n play the USB bus.

    Unfortunately I think a side effect of this is that keyboard & mouse are represented as a keyboard & mouse INSIDE the switchbox, not the make/mfg of the connected components. Creates trouble when trying to get remap/driver software working - doesn't see the hardware, won't load the software.

    YMMV of course. Probably a way aroundit, I just don't have the time to figure it out.
  20. Re:300bps? on TRS-80 Laptops Still Plugging Along · · Score: 1

    Either you've never connected to a BBS over a 300 baud connection, or you REALLY suck at typing. ;)

    Then again, it's been about 15-17 years since I had to work over a 300 baud connection. How much of that slowdown was due to the actual connection speed (keep in mind most systems, even back then, would echo your characters back to you - halving the connection speed. Most BBS systems didn't rely on local echo), and how much was due to the system on the other end being roughly the same speed as yours and therefore a little overwhelmed, is a debatable question.

    I had learned to touchtype a couple years earlier and was pushing around 60wpm, far less than 16cps, yet unless I used a terminal that had a line buffer characters would just go missing...

  21. Re:Hastings's Law on Apple Dumps the Cube · · Score: 1

    Well, if I remember right, it uses a 2.5" (laptop) HD, and today those HDs are virtually silent. What little noise came from it is (was) muffled by the case, much as is the case with laptops.

    Yes, I'm aware older laptops have noisy HDs, the ones right off the shelf that I've touched recently have been very, very quiet.

  22. Re:I wonder if this has been demonstrated yet? on Stealth Aircraft Useless? · · Score: 1

    Yep, bang on. All this conspiracy mumbo jumbo always makes me laugh.

    But wasn't the other part of the puzzle that they threw up a ton of missles in the 117's path, so that once they got lock they'd get a hit before it got out of range? Granted they had a good window due to excellent planning (and poor planning on the UN's part), but I'd be surprised if it was as good an opportunity as the one provided to NK by the B52s 'nuclear turn' tactic (sigh).

  23. NAV Corporate, AKA Intel LANDesk Protect on University IT Departments and Viruses? · · Score: 2

    Since everyone seems to be beating the dead horse of installing software on student boxes, I figured I'd interject some real-life experience with NAV Corporate.

    Ah, good ol' NAV Corporate. I just rolled out a hundred user license of that thing at my employer, only had three hiccups so far which are solved by an update. Unfortunately two of those three have fscked up their systems so badly not only will the update fail but the old version won't uninstall. That's right Bill, keep blathering about .NET and features people don't need/want, never focus on fixing bugs that are already there.

    One thing to remember is that the product isn't a modified version of Symantec's NAV codebase, it's really Intel's LANDesk virus protection software. Intel sold it a while back to Symantec, and they modified it and released it as their own. Sounds like a bastard child but with 7.5 it's pretty close to NAV in terms of problems/solutions. Registry keys are still listed as Intel LANDesk, heh.

    Highs are the virus definitions coming to a central server and getting pushed out to secondary servers and all clients automatically, usually within minutes of the update being downloaded. AND without the users ability to cancel the update.

    Lows are program updates. First, LiveUpdate doesn't grab program updates, not on the central server, and not on the client boxes.This means you have to call Symantec for updates, which while free for one person does take time (sitting on hold for 1hr). Second, there doesn't appear to be a LiveUpdate-ish method for rolling out program updates. Granted you can use login scripts, etc. for rolling them out but that, to some extent, involves user interaction. When some users reboot several times each week in a vain attempt to avoid the weekly administrative scan ("But I want to use MY system!" It's not your system, it's the company's system, and if you didn't think a coworker loved you that mess a few months ago might've been avoided. Go have some more coffee, it only takes 15 minutes, if you left it alone it'd be DONE by now), even though reboots just start the process over, keeping them out of the picture is a good thing.

    Client support is limited to 9x/NT/2000, with NT/2000/Netware support for servers. A Mac client is in the box with 7.5.1 but it won't talk to the central server so it's back the end-user conundrum of the software asking to run LiveUpdate and the user declining to run LiveUpdate ("I just ran that there update three weeks ago! I don't need none of them updates for a while!").

    I wouldn't hold your breath for any un*x tie-ins. Then again, my experience with colleges has been that un*x has a small foothold outside of the CIS & technical arenas (at the very least I've met few fresh-from-college marketing/management/legal/etc majors with any lasting un*x experiences)

  24. Re:I'll give you a brute force solution... on Kubrick's AI Spawns Distributed Client / Cognition · · Score: 1

    "You're on the brute squad? You ARE the brute squad!"

  25. Re:lots of skin == good clean fun! on Is Gaming Too Much Skin, Not Enough Good Clean Fun? · · Score: 1

    Well, chatting and the acquisition of material goods. Okay, technically immaterial, but in the world of EQ they're material.