I'll admit it, I'm a UNIX guy, but I have been sucked into doing Windows admin lately and have a few questions about your procedure:
How exactly do you backup the customer's data? Based on your description, it sounds like you don't actually perform a complete system backup. I'm imagining someone just copying.doc files off of the machine. I would generally copy it to a network share using Knoppix.
If you're installing a new copy of the operating system, how did you backup any installed applications such that they can be restored on the new system? I would assume you'd need the install media and activation code along with the exact settings the customer had used previously. These are home users. They don't care. If they had Office, I made them bring in the install discs or something as proof. I used unattended installers to actually do the installation, for the most part. Games were their responsibility.
What do you do if you don't have the particular operating system that the customer had installed? I'm assuming you don't have Standard and Enterprise releases for all platforms (x86,IA64,AMD64) and operating systems. Heck, how can you legally install a copy of Windows onto a customer's machine? Do you have a licensing arrangement with Microsoft? I had copies of pretty much everything. The only OSs I didn't have were NT It sounds to me like you didn't so much repair customers' machines as wipe out what's there and start over. Yep. It's cheaper than other solutions. That may work fine in a situation where you can just redeploy a standard image (like we do for our server farms), but I just don't see how that would fly on a customer's one-of-a-kind system. It doesn't and didn't. On some people's systems, we did have to do actual repair work on the software to keep their business related software. Often, we had to do it quickly. For this, we charged extra. For the rest of the people, what do expect for $40?
I ran a computer repair shop (note that I said "ran" not "worked at"), and this practice of "stealing" porn, music and movies was practically company policy. In fact, that's pretty much all we did. Ninety percent of repairs went like this:
1) Backup customer data (read: customer's porn, music, movies and various documents. Occasionally saved games) 2) Copy over WinXP syspreped mini-image, wiping hard drive. 3) Fix partition table. 4) Run through XP mini-install. 5) Grab any straggler updates. 6) Copy back customer data. 7) Delete crap we don't care about from backup. 8) At the end of the day, copy porn, music and movies that don't suck to my laptop and clean the image/backup server.
(In case you didn't realize, 90% of repairs are people who got so much spyware and viruses that a wipe is just faster. Especially with the mini-image (which is just a copy of XP/2k, fully updated, with all the various media players and firefox, that's been syspreped and shrunk down to the minimum (with ntfsresize on Knoppix). On first boot, XP will auto resize the fs to the maximum if the fs is smaller than the partition.))
This was some time ago (read: long enough ago that the statute of limitations applies), but I see no reason that it doesn't still work like that. I mean, come on, it's faster than bittorrent.
It's not about looseness, but about kind. Many green teas and most oolongs do well with multiple infusions (usually three is the magic number, but some people claim to four or even five). The green teas that don't do well are the ones that are sold in a finely ground state (like sencha from Japan). Oolong teas and most China greens will do multiple infusions from teabags, although you'll probably only get two good infusions from bags versus three to four from loose. Also, when you pour your tea leaving some water in the pot and then add more water (several times) this is called Gung Fu style and is very common in Asia.
Concerning caffeine: Most (we're talking around ninety percent) of the caffeine will be present in the first cup. Most of the tannins will be present in the last cup. As such, most people consider the first cup the be the best and the rest to be gravy. Unless you're a caffeine wuss, that is. The then second cup will be the best. (Some caffeine wusses have been know to infuse the first cup for only thirty seconds (since by then, most of the caffeine has been infused, but almost none of the flavor) and then throw it out! The horror!)
On to black. Black tea should never be multiply infused. It's supposed to be strong. Drink green tea if you're a wuss.
Sort of. You see, Dell makes one installation, updates it, and installs they're crapware. Then they sysprep it (with the appropriate answer file) and reboot into some other OS (Linux, maybe, since it has the tools to deal with this. It could be Windows based as well, like BartPE or even some bootable form of partition magic. It could be something highly modified but I doubt it. They rarely have to do this, so I'm quite sure that they only have a couple of people who can, and those people probably don't care so much about optimizing the procedure. It really doesn't matter, anyway.) In this alternative environment, they shrink down their clean, sysprepped image to as small as it can get. This is the image they put out on every hard disk they ship. The only thing that's differs between shipped disks is the partition table between hard disk sizes.
Anyway, during the mini-install on first boot, Windows will automatically resize the filesystem to fill the partition it's on. Because of that feature, Dell only needs one image for all HD sizes, and it can be ridiculously small. The smaller the better, in fact, so that it takes less to write that image to all 8 billion of the HDs they ship. Although I'm quite sure they have specialized hardware and software for this, it still takes time to write out the OS image, and 2GB for Vista is four times longer that 500MB for XP.
It's because the black and white TVs of the 50s and 60s (when color TV was standardized) had pad time between each frame to allow the electron gun to move from the bottom corner back up to the top. Since the powers that be in the US (although I doubt this would have been the case today) decided that the new color standard was to fully compatible with the old b&w standard, this padding had to be present in the new standard as well. It's the same reason FM stereo signals are encoded jointly (That is, one channel is put on the carrier and then the difference between that and the other channel is encoded into it kind of like how Dolby 5.1 is encoded into a stereo signal (involving complex mathematics and analog hardware). As opposed to sending out two channels separately.). People like backward compatibility. The audio part is probably for much the same reasons. IIRC, PAL doesn't have this padding because Britain decided to screw over b&w TV owners instead.
Yes, but the ruling considered it a "form contract" which means that most of the provisions that reduce a party's rights are ignored by the courts. The reason is that there is no (or a very limited) "meeting of the minds", since you were not party to negotiations and had no way to change the agreement. This doesn't mean that form contracts aren't valid, just that the courts are VERY likely to strike provisions requiring things that solely benefit the corporation producing the contract, like arbitration clauses and the such.
Probably because the iPhone DOES have tactile feedback. Using some tricks with the vibrator that took something like ten years to develop, the iPhone can trick you into thinking that are real buttons on the screen. It's probably the most innovative thing Apple has ever done, actually.
And yes, if reading email is found to be illegal, then the law will simply be changed to make it legal. Ok, I'll be waiting for that Constitutional amendment to go through. Unless this ruling is overturned (which is possible), that's what would be required. Exactly. Although, I do expect that the Bush administration will simply continue to ignore the courts for it's own ends.
That's it. That's where this whole idiotic discussion ends. Traffic stops (by virtue of them happening only in traffic on public roads) ALWAYS happen in a public place, therefore there is no expectation of privacy. End of story.
First, you can have a jury trial if you want, but the fees would normally be in excess of the judgment and so it is rarely done (or did you think someone other that parties involved was going to get the bill.). Second, you CAN appeal a jury trial. There's no real difference in that respect. You can only appeal if you have grounds (for example, some rule was misapplied that could have affected the case, the judgment was ridiculous (That's a very common appeal, especially from jury trials. It's not like any ever really gets a $300 million judgment for medical malpractice. The jury can award it, but it'll get reduced to something more reasonable.), etc.)
I don't why whoever modified you as interesting did so, considering how confused you seem (I don't mean to sound insulting; I'm just in one of those snarky moods.:) ). SELinux doesn't have any services to begin with. It's a security layer that provides fine grained control of permissions for individual executables and services. Perhaps you were refering to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which does come with a buttload of services at install (and can use SELinux), although I don't believe any are configured to run by default (except for sane services like ssh, and even then I'm not sure.).
Bad example. TNT's a cable network and, as such, not subject to FCC rules. They can say anything they want, just like Comedy Central does. Of course, this doesn't counter your complaint against TNT but strengthens it. TNT is a bunch of cocksuckers for making movies unwatchable for no real reason.
Actually, there is such a filter but it's set ridiculously low. I know because shortly after Lost Coast came out, I was forced to upgrade past version 5x.xx.
Hence the "stick with 32-bit" part of my argument. The poster I was replying knew enough about Linux to have a Kubuntu CD sitting around and install it, and he knew enough about computers to know about 64-bitness. He should have taken the thirty seconds to see whether using 64-bit Kubuntu was worth the trouble. Anyone with Google could have seen that it's not. IIRC, Kubuntu recommends the 32-bit version if you don't know any better, so why didn't he just trust the recommendation. Furthermore, he knew enough to know that the Flash plugin wouldn't work because of his browser's 64-bitness; he should have taken the ten seconds on Google to find nspluginwrapper. Completely clueless users would have stuck with 32-bit Ubuntu in the first place. Users in the know would have done the research. Less clueless, but totally lazy users are the only ones who run into the these problems.
Not to be an ass, but the only real problem your sister had with Kubuntu was the installer (ie, you) being a dumbass. You can use 32-bit binary plugins with 64-bit Firefox using using nspluginwrapper. Or, better yet, you could have stuck with 32-bit Kubuntu. Why bother going to the headaches of 64-bit Linux when you probably don't need it? Installing more software is as easy as busting out the package manager and picking the app. It's EASIER than double-clicking a setup file, as there's no need to find one. Compiling shit, Jesus, this isn't 1999; someone has already done that, packaged it, and stuck it in the repository for damn near everything you need.
I hear ya. Public transport in Michigan sucks as well. Grand Rapids has one of the best bus systems in the country (if you believe the hype) but I don't no of anyone who can use it, since no one lives near a bus stop. The few people I do know who live close enough to get on, live so close to work that it's cheaper to use their car.
Sounds like you've never owned a nice sound system. In a proper system, the sound will stay at line level (or, better yet, in digital form) until it gets to the receiver. The receiver has the only volume control that will do anything. Fortunately, nearly all expensive sound systems come with universal remotes that would make your PDA jealous. I've even seen remotes with built-in 2.4GHz LCD monitors and speakers so you can keep watching on the can.
613 rules alright, but you can't do half of them anymore because the Temple of David has been destroyed. Just ask a Jew. (No, I'm not a Jew, but I was thinking of becoming one.)
I'm not saying that it's not possible, just highly unlikely. And I know that the PC platform is highly variable and fractured, but it wasn't always, and that's my point. The PC started out as an IBM machine that others implemented clones of. It was a true standard (hardware) platform. It ran MS-DOS, which also had numerous standards compliant clones (4dos, ndos, now freedos). It, too, was a true standard (software) platform. Together, they formed a true, standard platform. Move forward twenty years, and look what we've got. Twenty semi-compatible "standards" running on numerous incompatible software platforms with an even larger variety of pseudo-standard hardware components.
We can start with a uniform standard console tomorrow, and ten years from now, it will be as splintered as PCs.
In fact, considering nVidia's past performance concerning older chipsets/cards, I expected it. For example, to use a Geforce 2 GTS (which, while old, isn't half-bad for the games I like to play (CS1.6, *craft (not WoW)) you have to go back to Forceware 71.xx. Now that's some old shit. The WinXP x64 Forceware doesn't include (and never did) support for cards older than GeForce 4 (which was damn near state of the art when XP x64 was released).
This is exactly what I'm talking about. None of the companies that make consoles will adhere strictly to the standard and we'll have wars over what's good and what's not. The standard console will be as standard as a PC.
"there's a good possibility that the industry will come together on a platform standard"
My ass. There's no way in hell. We already have a standard gaming platform. It's called the PC. The industry won't make another one. Well, Microsoft might claim to, but it won't really be a standard.
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I'll admit it, I'm a UNIX guy, but I have been sucked into doing Windows admin lately and have a few questions about your procedure:
.doc files off of the machine.
How exactly do you backup the customer's data? Based on your description, it sounds like you don't actually perform a complete system backup. I'm imagining someone just copying
I would generally copy it to a network share using Knoppix.
If you're installing a new copy of the operating system, how did you backup any installed applications such that they can be restored on the new system? I would assume you'd need the install media and activation code along with the exact settings the customer had used previously.
These are home users. They don't care. If they had Office, I made them bring in the install discs or something as proof. I used unattended installers to actually do the installation, for the most part. Games were their responsibility.
What do you do if you don't have the particular operating system that the customer had installed? I'm assuming you don't have Standard and Enterprise releases for all platforms (x86,IA64,AMD64) and operating systems. Heck, how can you legally install a copy of Windows onto a customer's machine? Do you have a licensing arrangement with Microsoft?
I had copies of pretty much everything. The only OSs I didn't have were NT It sounds to me like you didn't so much repair customers' machines as wipe out what's there and start over.
Yep. It's cheaper than other solutions.
That may work fine in a situation where you can just redeploy a standard image (like we do for our server farms), but I just don't see how that would fly on a customer's one-of-a-kind system.
It doesn't and didn't. On some people's systems, we did have to do actual repair work on the software to keep their business related software. Often, we had to do it quickly. For this, we charged extra. For the rest of the people, what do expect for $40?
FWIW, YHBT.
I ran a computer repair shop (note that I said "ran" not "worked at"), and this practice of "stealing" porn, music and movies was practically company policy. In fact, that's pretty much all we did. Ninety percent of repairs went like this:
1) Backup customer data (read: customer's porn, music, movies and various documents. Occasionally saved games)
2) Copy over WinXP syspreped mini-image, wiping hard drive.
3) Fix partition table.
4) Run through XP mini-install.
5) Grab any straggler updates.
6) Copy back customer data.
7) Delete crap we don't care about from backup.
8) At the end of the day, copy porn, music and movies that don't suck to my laptop and clean the image/backup server.
(In case you didn't realize, 90% of repairs are people who got so much spyware and viruses that a wipe is just faster. Especially with the mini-image (which is just a copy of XP/2k, fully updated, with all the various media players and firefox, that's been syspreped and shrunk down to the minimum (with ntfsresize on Knoppix). On first boot, XP will auto resize the fs to the maximum if the fs is smaller than the partition.))
This was some time ago (read: long enough ago that the statute of limitations applies), but I see no reason that it doesn't still work like that. I mean, come on, it's faster than bittorrent.
It made sense to me. The first looseness statement was about whether it's possible and the second was about how well it works.
It's not about looseness, but about kind. Many green teas and most oolongs do well with multiple infusions (usually three is the magic number, but some people claim to four or even five). The green teas that don't do well are the ones that are sold in a finely ground state (like sencha from Japan). Oolong teas and most China greens will do multiple infusions from teabags, although you'll probably only get two good infusions from bags versus three to four from loose. Also, when you pour your tea leaving some water in the pot and then add more water (several times) this is called Gung Fu style and is very common in Asia.
Concerning caffeine: Most (we're talking around ninety percent) of the caffeine will be present in the first cup. Most of the tannins will be present in the last cup. As such, most people consider the first cup the be the best and the rest to be gravy. Unless you're a caffeine wuss, that is. The then second cup will be the best. (Some caffeine wusses have been know to infuse the first cup for only thirty seconds (since by then, most of the caffeine has been infused, but almost none of the flavor) and then throw it out! The horror!)
On to black. Black tea should never be multiply infused. It's supposed to be strong. Drink green tea if you're a wuss.
Sort of. You see, Dell makes one installation, updates it, and installs they're crapware. Then they sysprep it (with the appropriate answer file) and reboot into some other OS (Linux, maybe, since it has the tools to deal with this. It could be Windows based as well, like BartPE or even some bootable form of partition magic. It could be something highly modified but I doubt it. They rarely have to do this, so I'm quite sure that they only have a couple of people who can, and those people probably don't care so much about optimizing the procedure. It really doesn't matter, anyway.) In this alternative environment, they shrink down their clean, sysprepped image to as small as it can get. This is the image they put out on every hard disk they ship. The only thing that's differs between shipped disks is the partition table between hard disk sizes.
Anyway, during the mini-install on first boot, Windows will automatically resize the filesystem to fill the partition it's on. Because of that feature, Dell only needs one image for all HD sizes, and it can be ridiculously small. The smaller the better, in fact, so that it takes less to write that image to all 8 billion of the HDs they ship. Although I'm quite sure they have specialized hardware and software for this, it still takes time to write out the OS image, and 2GB for Vista is four times longer that 500MB for XP.
It's because the black and white TVs of the 50s and 60s (when color TV was standardized) had pad time between each frame to allow the electron gun to move from the bottom corner back up to the top. Since the powers that be in the US (although I doubt this would have been the case today) decided that the new color standard was to fully compatible with the old b&w standard, this padding had to be present in the new standard as well. It's the same reason FM stereo signals are encoded jointly (That is, one channel is put on the carrier and then the difference between that and the other channel is encoded into it kind of like how Dolby 5.1 is encoded into a stereo signal (involving complex mathematics and analog hardware). As opposed to sending out two channels separately.). People like backward compatibility. The audio part is probably for much the same reasons. IIRC, PAL doesn't have this padding because Britain decided to screw over b&w TV owners instead.
Yes, but the ruling considered it a "form contract" which means that most of the provisions that reduce a party's rights are ignored by the courts. The reason is that there is no (or a very limited) "meeting of the minds", since you were not party to negotiations and had no way to change the agreement. This doesn't mean that form contracts aren't valid, just that the courts are VERY likely to strike provisions requiring things that solely benefit the corporation producing the contract, like arbitration clauses and the such.
Probably because the iPhone DOES have tactile feedback. Using some tricks with the vibrator that took something like ten years to develop, the iPhone can trick you into thinking that are real buttons on the screen. It's probably the most innovative thing Apple has ever done, actually.
Two words: public place.
That's it. That's where this whole idiotic discussion ends. Traffic stops (by virtue of them happening only in traffic on public roads) ALWAYS happen in a public place, therefore there is no expectation of privacy. End of story.
pig = pig IS gaim
now that would piss off some lawyers.
First, you can have a jury trial if you want, but the fees would normally be in excess of the judgment and so it is rarely done (or did you think someone other that parties involved was going to get the bill.). Second, you CAN appeal a jury trial. There's no real difference in that respect. You can only appeal if you have grounds (for example, some rule was misapplied that could have affected the case, the judgment was ridiculous (That's a very common appeal, especially from jury trials. It's not like any ever really gets a $300 million judgment for medical malpractice. The jury can award it, but it'll get reduced to something more reasonable.), etc.)
I don't why whoever modified you as interesting did so, considering how confused you seem (I don't mean to sound insulting; I'm just in one of those snarky moods. :) ). SELinux doesn't have any services to begin with. It's a security layer that provides fine grained control of permissions for individual executables and services. Perhaps you were refering to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which does come with a buttload of services at install (and can use SELinux), although I don't believe any are configured to run by default (except for sane services like ssh, and even then I'm not sure.).
Bad example. TNT's a cable network and, as such, not subject to FCC rules. They can say anything they want, just like Comedy Central does. Of course, this doesn't counter your complaint against TNT but strengthens it. TNT is a bunch of cocksuckers for making movies unwatchable for no real reason.
Actually, there is such a filter but it's set ridiculously low. I know because shortly after Lost Coast came out, I was forced to upgrade past version 5x.xx.
Hence the "stick with 32-bit" part of my argument. The poster I was replying knew enough about Linux to have a Kubuntu CD sitting around and install it, and he knew enough about computers to know about 64-bitness. He should have taken the thirty seconds to see whether using 64-bit Kubuntu was worth the trouble. Anyone with Google could have seen that it's not. IIRC, Kubuntu recommends the 32-bit version if you don't know any better, so why didn't he just trust the recommendation. Furthermore, he knew enough to know that the Flash plugin wouldn't work because of his browser's 64-bitness; he should have taken the ten seconds on Google to find nspluginwrapper. Completely clueless users would have stuck with 32-bit Ubuntu in the first place. Users in the know would have done the research. Less clueless, but totally lazy users are the only ones who run into the these problems.
Not to be an ass, but the only real problem your sister had with Kubuntu was the installer (ie, you) being a dumbass. You can use 32-bit binary plugins with 64-bit Firefox using using nspluginwrapper. Or, better yet, you could have stuck with 32-bit Kubuntu. Why bother going to the headaches of 64-bit Linux when you probably don't need it? Installing more software is as easy as busting out the package manager and picking the app. It's EASIER than double-clicking a setup file, as there's no need to find one. Compiling shit, Jesus, this isn't 1999; someone has already done that, packaged it, and stuck it in the repository for damn near everything you need.
I hear ya. Public transport in Michigan sucks as well. Grand Rapids has one of the best bus systems in the country (if you believe the hype) but I don't no of anyone who can use it, since no one lives near a bus stop. The few people I do know who live close enough to get on, live so close to work that it's cheaper to use their car.
Sounds like you've never owned a nice sound system. In a proper system, the sound will stay at line level (or, better yet, in digital form) until it gets to the receiver. The receiver has the only volume control that will do anything. Fortunately, nearly all expensive sound systems come with universal remotes that would make your PDA jealous. I've even seen remotes with built-in 2.4GHz LCD monitors and speakers so you can keep watching on the can.
613 rules alright, but you can't do half of them anymore because the Temple of David has been destroyed. Just ask a Jew. (No, I'm not a Jew, but I was thinking of becoming one.)
I'm not saying that it's not possible, just highly unlikely. And I know that the PC platform is highly variable and fractured, but it wasn't always, and that's my point. The PC started out as an IBM machine that others implemented clones of. It was a true standard (hardware) platform. It ran MS-DOS, which also had numerous standards compliant clones (4dos, ndos, now freedos). It, too, was a true standard (software) platform. Together, they formed a true, standard platform. Move forward twenty years, and look what we've got. Twenty semi-compatible "standards" running on numerous incompatible software platforms with an even larger variety of pseudo-standard hardware components.
We can start with a uniform standard console tomorrow, and ten years from now, it will be as splintered as PCs.
In fact, considering nVidia's past performance concerning older chipsets/cards, I expected it. For example, to use a Geforce 2 GTS (which, while old, isn't half-bad for the games I like to play (CS1.6, *craft (not WoW)) you have to go back to Forceware 71.xx. Now that's some old shit. The WinXP x64 Forceware doesn't include (and never did) support for cards older than GeForce 4 (which was damn near state of the art when XP x64 was released).
This is exactly what I'm talking about. None of the companies that make consoles will adhere strictly to the standard and we'll have wars over what's good and what's not. The standard console will be as standard as a PC.
"there's a good possibility that the industry will come together on a platform standard"
My ass. There's no way in hell. We already have a standard gaming platform. It's called the PC. The industry won't make another one. Well, Microsoft might claim to, but it won't really be a standard.