Parent is written well and has solid logic to it. You put into words the whole argument that I have against the RIAA's recent stance on file-sharers. Great post.
This is probably about as good at correcting pitch during a song as Microsoft Word's (and most other auto-dictionary) spelling and grammar checker is at spotting my spelling mistakes. False positive anyone?
I disagree with your disagreement of me. Here is a link to a screen shot to prove that indeed an nVidia display driver has been offered for certain nVidia chipset graphics adapters as a CRITICAL update on Microsoft's Windowsupdate site.
I disagree with your disagreement of me. Here is a link to a screen shot to prove that indeed an nVidia display driver has been offered for certain nVidia chipset graphics adapters as a CRITICAL update on Microsoft's Windowsupdate site.
You can do this already with Windows XP if you set it up to do so. In the system properties go to the Automatic Updates tab and then click on the radio button next to the bottom option, "Automatically download the updates, and then install them on the schedule that I specify".
Of course you'd have to be out of your gourd to do this regarding MS's history of untested patches. Also I noticed that MS is including driver updates in the critical updates as well (nVidia driver). I've NEVER installed a driver from MS on my computer and every time a customer of ours does it, it seems to totally screw up everything.
If it's in a light-proof can how do I know that there's really a CCD inside of the can? Maybe someone put just put two wires out of the can so that it would look like there's a CCD in there but instead there's not? I must now put my tin foil beanie on in order to study this problem. Don't try to read my mind while I ponder this problem as the aluminum foil will protect me. That and I'll be down in my lead-lined basement with closed-circuit cameras watching the perimiter. Besides, how can I be totally sure that my light-proof can is actually light-proof? I can't see inside it so how do I know for sure there's no light inside?
Before I read the article my guess was that Antec would win...and I was right. From the low end to the high end these guys have got their stuff together.
Most of the cases we buy come with Enlight power supplies (they are Enlight cases after all for the most part). Although these Enlight PSes seem to be ok, I always replace them with a nice quiet reliable Antec when they are going home to me or to my family. I also recommend putting an Antec PS in to customers who buy the biggest, baddest gaming PCs.
The simple fact of the matter is though, that most folks don't really need a 550 watt PS. A 350 watt PS will more than handle the load of most average consumer PCs. I do dread opening up an e-Machine or various other "value" (aka cheap ass P.O.S) PC and seeing a 130 watt PS running a P4 CPU. *shudder*
I've been fixing PCs and printers for 8 years professionally for a small company. I keep these things handy at all times whenever I go on a service call:
In my pocket: Leatherman Micro
In my Toolkit:
Mutli-screwdriver with 3 phillips, 2 regular, and 5 torx bits.
Needle nose pliers
Side Cutter
Wire stripper
RJ-45 crimper/stripper
Bag of RJ-45 ends
Bag of Misc RJ-45 Keystone jacks
handfull of misc keystone wall plates
Couple of surface mount keystone jacks
Misc assortment of known-good RAM
allen wrench assortment
Assortment of mini-screwdrivers
10 blank floppies
CAT-5 cable tester
Toner Generator/Signal Tester
Small compartmental box with:
RJ-11 ends
Screws
Screw-down wire holders
jumpers
Windows 98 boot disk with oformat
Bootable QuickTech floppy
Bootable Norton Ghost floppy
Bootable USB keychain drive with most common utilities
CD Case with:
CD with.cab files for all version of Win 95, 98, and ME
CD full of drivers for network cards, video cards, sound cards, motherboard infs, etc.
CD full of utilities: Many of which are in.img format that can be opened by WinImage and extracted bootable to a floppy. Winzip, various software utilities, service packs for common OSes
IE versions CD - CD with zipped versions of IE on it from 4-6a
Windows 2k Pro CD
Windows XP Pro CD
Windows XP Home CD
CD of/i386 dirs for WinNT 4.0 workstation and server
2 disc set of current version of Redhat
3 disc set of current verison of FreeBSD
Norton Antivirus 2003 CD
Symantec Antivirius Corp Ed CD
CDs of Office 97 Pro, Office 2k Pro, Office XP SBE and Pro
2 blank CDs
In the trunk of my car:
1 ATX Power Supply
1 AT Power Supply
Assortment of Socket 7, Socket 370, Socket 4xx and Slot 1 and 2 fans along with a chassis fan
1 known good pci network card
1 known good pci video card
1 known good agp video card
1 10' printer cable
1 10' usb cable
assortment of patch cables
1 500' spool CAT-5e
assortment of cleaning rags and supplies for printers such as dish towels, rubbing alcohol, and rubber rejuvinator
This covers most everything I can possibly need to have onsite. Some times if I know what's going on ahead of time I'll also bring along a spare HD and a few other things, but generally this list always gets me by.
IANAL withstanding, but doesn't the proposed damages need to be above X amount before you can request a trial by jury in a civil case? (which of course it would be at $150k per song). Also I _think_ a civil jury trial isn't as strict as a criminal jury trial if I remember correctly in that only a simple majority of the jurors need to see guilt unlike a criminal trial where there needs to be not a single juror with a reasonable doubt in order to be judged as guilty.
I don't actually own any kilts. Remember, I'm just a poor IT worker. All I can afford is $19 knock-off Docker khakis. If a traditional kilt costs $1k then yeah $115 is a steal, but still expensive when compared to how cheaply you can buy khakis or slacks.
Oh, I guess i didn't compare them to other kilt pricing, I was going against the $19 I pay for my khakis at JC Penny on sale.
I buy them cheap and decorate them with elaborate toner spills and ink pen leaks. Sometimes I even get electrolyte fluid on a leg or maybe even battery acid of some sort. They're so much more fun to wear when they are eternally stained.
The fines aren't between $750 and $150,000 per offense. These people are being sued for that amount in civil court cases. The vast, vast majority of these cases aren't criminal cases, they're civil. Huge difference. If they were criminal cases you'd pay a fine and go to jail for a while, but you'd also get a court appointed lawyer if you couldn't afford one and have the option of a jury trial.
In a civil case there's not much for a limit on damages and no governmental checks and balances on what those limits are. So basically the RIAA can almost literally sue the pants off you for doing something that doesn't physically hurt anyone and just has minor monetary effects on their being. Isn't America great?
So remember, kids! Every time you download a song off the Internet, you kill a baby panda!
And every time you download stolen copyrighted porn material off Kazaa and masterbate to it, a ninja kills a kitten! So in theory, Kazaa kills kittens. This is why the FBI and government want to shut down P2P networks, because after all who wants to kill a cute little kitten?
I re-read my original post 10 times for clarity and also had my girlfriend, who knows nothing of computers, read it and she understood it. I am sorry that my point was lost on you.
No, I do not fix "HP's computers". We, as a company, fix computers sold by HP/Compaq to 3rd parties (businesses or home users) that fail under warranty. We also sell our own "white box" brand of computers. We repair our own "white box" computers both under warranty, and out of warranty. We fix ANYONE's brand of computer out of warranty. We, as a company, also do contracted computer warranty repair services for other manufacturers through warranty companies such as Panda TPM, Nexicore, PC SOS, Technical Alliance Corp, GSN Barrister, and Unisys. These companies pay us to fix computers for their customers, mostly under warranty. This concludes what we, as a small business, already do.
Note that as I stated above, we already do do general computer/printer repair. We've ALWAYS done this. We will continue to do this. Note that we do NOT do software design/development, software programming, web design, web programming or anything else that relates to anything software other than fixing problems in existing software.
Also note that we ARE the local main street type computer store. We are not a Fry's, nor a Best Buy, nor are there any Fry's or Best Buys within 100 miles of here.
You idea of having signs painted or adherred to each employee's vehicle is a good one, but my original question has still not been answered. What other companies other than Panda TPM, Barrister, Nexicore, PC SOS, Technical Alliance Corp, and VentureTech Network are available out there for people or companies like us to do work for?
Although it would seem that nobody even bothered to read the article before posting (as usual) due to the only replies so far relating to programming contract work, of which there is nothing even mentioned in the article, this is the jist of what I want to know.
I fix computers. My company fixes and sells computers. We fix our own computers under warranty. We fix HP's computers under warranty. It costs us money to fix our own computers under warranty. It costs HP money to have us fix their computers and printers under warranty and it, in turn, comes to us as income for fixing what they sold. We'd like to fix more computers and printers and stuff under warranty that other companies have sold to customers that did not buy computers or printers from us. We'd also like to have oppurtunites to do service and networking contract work for large companies and government offices that have a contract with some large company. The question is, which companies other than those listed in the article above, would you go about using to achieve these goals?
Note that this article has absolutely nothing to do with writing code, programming, FORTRAN, fuzzy brown squirrels, or beach balls. It has to do with doing warranty work for PC vendors and getting paid to do it.
Ive always thought most games were an art form, in their design aspect at the very least. I write areas and encounters for Homeland MUD and the sheer volume of unique descriptions of rooms, areas, NPCs, and objects that have been written be me and our staff is astounding. Each one is like a short story in and of itself. This is no different from the guys that toil for hours in order to create the graphical artwork for graphical games instead of text-based ones.
I also contend that the code used in these games, or any creative code for that matter, is a form of art. Especially if it's well formatted and commented!
I'd also go as far as to say that certain players of games engage in an artform. Surely it is art the way a top Quake3 player frags their foes. And it is art to watch from above as some of the players on Homeland use their strategies and skills to accomplish what they and I never though possible.
I have been MUDding since '94 and have mainly played and immed on DIKU-based MUDs. I started out on Sojourn way back then. I was fully hooked on Sojourn, and accumulated nearly massive amounts of playing time, and the game eventually helped lead to the demise of my college career. I followed Sojourn through it's split into Toril and Duris, following the Toril path due to my disdain for true pkill MUDs. When Toril shut down due to imm issues and conflicts with a few players and all sorts of other things, I was at a loss as to what to do with my free time. Myself and a few friends from my guild on Toril (where I had ammased 1.5 years of playing time in the span of 4.5 years) decided to create our own MUD. This was known as ExileMUD (Not Exile, ExileMUD). I was in charge of areas creation, and one of the original forgers of this game. We gained ourselves a small playerbase over the years of turmoil and eventually due to conflicts that arose between most of us and one other imm. Myself and one of the main coders from ExileMUD split off and formed our own MUD called Homeland MUD, and I have been working on this ever since. We are set to open at the end of this month and have already attracted a decent following. I've heard that since myself and Vhaerun left ExileMUD to form Homeland that ExileMUD has been on a serious decline and that it will be shut down soon due to a total lack of players or development.
Sojourn/Toril has opened (Sojourn II) and closed (More admin conflict) and opened again (Sojourn III), but is on a downward decline as far as I and many others who have and do play there can tell. They recently lost their hosting (another bane of all MUD admins) and are running off a cable modem. Also the main owner of Sojourn is leaving behind his legacy and passing the game down to the younger forgers. The decline of Sojourn III is only helping to bolster the ranks of players that are coming over to Homeland as word of mouth spreads between all of the players that consider each other to be a loose family of sorts. When one player from S3 comes over to Homeland, checks it out, and realizes that it's just what they've been looking for, they often bring along a handful of friends, who in turn bring their friends as well.
As a player I am sure I handed out my share of grief to the admins of the MUDs I played on, and as I grew older, and I hope wiser I turned towards admining myself as I had conquered the vast majority of challenges thrown at me as a player. Now I see grief from time to time as an admin, but I think that the vast majority of grief from players towards admins is brought on by the manner in which the admins govern themselves and the attitude that is given towards the players.
I do think that text-based MUDs have been in a slight decline, but new ones are popping up every day. The problem is that many of the new ones popping up daily have little or nothing original or innovative to add to the collective MUD world. Many of these are Stock MUDs with Stock areas, and never get to the point where they are modified enough to be useful.
Also I think as current MUD players get older, have families and generally give up the habit, there becomes a strong lack of players to take their place. Young kids these days are not interested in playing text games any more than they are in reading books it would seem. And as someone already likened text MUDs to books and MMORPGs to movies, so do I. I would rather read the book and become immersed in the story through my own imagination any day rather than having the director's vision of the story being spoon-fed to me.
If you are looking for a solid MUD that's been in development for 5 years and that is on the grow, that has a friendly staff, a solid fantasy theme (Forgotten Realms) then check out Homeland at mud.homelandmud.org port 6666
Actually it's been possible for some time to get an Asus notebook similar to this, with just the case, motherboard, and LCD on it. I'm not sure Asus really wants you to be able to get them this way and they come in a "white box".
One of the guys at work got one of these, went to Intel's channel partner site, got a PIII mobile CPU for next to nothing, snagged a decent 2.5" HD from one of our retailers, and threw in some SODIMMs that we had in stock and he got a really nice notebook for hardly anything (this was a year or two ago).
He was even able to call up Asus and tell them the stickers wore off his notebook, and they sent him out some new ones for free, so you can't even tell it's not the real deal.
On the other side of things, I do believe from opening up quite a few notebooks for repairs that the vast majority of notebook components are somewhat standardized. The batteries tend to be the most varried components inside the notebooks. Consider that there are only a very few manufacturers of notebook computers that are outsourced by the major computer vendors, and that makes for some pretty standard stuff. It's even possible to get the "white box" version of most of Dell's notebooks direct from the company that manufactures them for Dell, last I checked anyways.
Otherwise I recommend using google to search for bands that you do like, browse through the listings and you're sure to turn up something you might like. Then search for it on P2P, and if you like it, buy it. Simple.
This site was pretty cool, although when I put my 3 suggestions in, it just came up with a list of artists I already had. I tried again with several different scenarios, but it always came up with stuff I already have and like. I wasn't able to get it to give me anything that I had never heard of before.
It may not be the answer you were looking for, but Tool covers just about everything I look for in music.
Of course if you were looking for other stuff that doesn't come from a record company then this place has a pretty decent search feature of downloadable mp3s.
If you really wanted to heat your house in the winter you should find an old multi-CPU socket 7 board and go with a bunch of old Cyric PR266 CPUs. Now those were good processors...for overheating anyways.
I also went to Rose-Hulman the same year you started. The laptop was great for MUDding in class, but after dropping out due to poor grades from being up all night MUDding and drinking beer and not going to class (bed time), it sure made for an expensive year.
Those things were pretty crappy notebooks that they made us buy anyways. AMS Soundwaves 486DX4100 with 400MB HDs and 12" LCDs. The specs weren't bad, it's just that they fell apart if you looked at them wrong. I'm all for colleges pushing technology, and I hate to say that the notebook was one of the factors I considered when I chose Rose-Hulman, and it turned out to be nothing good for me at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Parent is written well and has solid logic to it. You put into words the whole argument that I have against the RIAA's recent stance on file-sharers. Great post.
This is probably about as good at correcting pitch during a song as Microsoft Word's (and most other auto-dictionary) spelling and grammar checker is at spotting my spelling mistakes. False positive anyone?
I disagree with your disagreement of me. Here is a link to a screen shot to prove that indeed an nVidia display driver has been offered for certain nVidia chipset graphics adapters as a CRITICAL update on Microsoft's Windowsupdate site.
I disagree with your disagreement of me. Here is a link to a screen shot to prove that indeed an nVidia display driver has been offered for certain nVidia chipset graphics adapters as a CRITICAL update on Microsoft's Windowsupdate site.
You can do this already with Windows XP if you set it up to do so. In the system properties go to the Automatic Updates tab and then click on the radio button next to the bottom option, "Automatically download the updates, and then install them on the schedule that I specify".
Of course you'd have to be out of your gourd to do this regarding MS's history of untested patches. Also I noticed that MS is including driver updates in the critical updates as well (nVidia driver). I've NEVER installed a driver from MS on my computer and every time a customer of ours does it, it seems to totally screw up everything.
If it's in a light-proof can how do I know that there's really a CCD inside of the can? Maybe someone put just put two wires out of the can so that it would look like there's a CCD in there but instead there's not? I must now put my tin foil beanie on in order to study this problem. Don't try to read my mind while I ponder this problem as the aluminum foil will protect me. That and I'll be down in my lead-lined basement with closed-circuit cameras watching the perimiter. Besides, how can I be totally sure that my light-proof can is actually light-proof? I can't see inside it so how do I know for sure there's no light inside?
Why would you want to measure ripples in Anonymouse Cowards?
Before I read the article my guess was that Antec would win...and I was right. From the low end to the high end these guys have got their stuff together.
Most of the cases we buy come with Enlight power supplies (they are Enlight cases after all for the most part). Although these Enlight PSes seem to be ok, I always replace them with a nice quiet reliable Antec when they are going home to me or to my family. I also recommend putting an Antec PS in to customers who buy the biggest, baddest gaming PCs.
The simple fact of the matter is though, that most folks don't really need a 550 watt PS. A 350 watt PS will more than handle the load of most average consumer PCs. I do dread opening up an e-Machine or various other "value" (aka cheap ass P.O.S) PC and seeing a 130 watt PS running a P4 CPU. *shudder*
I've been fixing PCs and printers for 8 years professionally for a small company. I keep these things handy at all times whenever I go on a service call:
In my pocket: Leatherman Micro
In my Toolkit:
Mutli-screwdriver with 3 phillips, 2 regular, and 5 torx bits.
Needle nose pliers
Side Cutter
Wire stripper
RJ-45 crimper/stripper
Bag of RJ-45 ends
Bag of Misc RJ-45 Keystone jacks
handfull of misc keystone wall plates
Couple of surface mount keystone jacks
Misc assortment of known-good RAM
allen wrench assortment
Assortment of mini-screwdrivers
10 blank floppies
CAT-5 cable tester
Toner Generator/Signal Tester
Small compartmental box with:
RJ-11 ends
Screws
Screw-down wire holders
jumpers
Windows 98 boot disk with oformat
Bootable QuickTech floppy
Bootable Norton Ghost floppy
Bootable USB keychain drive with most common utilities
CD Case with:
CD with .cab files for all version of Win 95, 98, and ME
CD full of drivers for network cards, video cards, sound cards, motherboard infs, etc.
CD full of utilities: Many of which are in .img format that can be opened by WinImage and extracted bootable to a floppy. Winzip, various software utilities, service packs for common OSes
IE versions CD - CD with zipped versions of IE on it from 4-6a
Windows 2k Pro CD
Windows XP Pro CD
Windows XP Home CD
CD of /i386 dirs for WinNT 4.0 workstation and server
2 disc set of current version of Redhat
3 disc set of current verison of FreeBSD
Norton Antivirus 2003 CD
Symantec Antivirius Corp Ed CD
CDs of Office 97 Pro, Office 2k Pro, Office XP SBE and Pro
2 blank CDs
In the trunk of my car:
1 ATX Power Supply
1 AT Power Supply
Assortment of Socket 7, Socket 370, Socket 4xx and Slot 1 and 2 fans along with a chassis fan
1 known good pci network card
1 known good pci video card
1 known good agp video card
1 10' printer cable
1 10' usb cable
assortment of patch cables
1 500' spool CAT-5e
assortment of cleaning rags and supplies for printers such as dish towels, rubbing alcohol, and rubber rejuvinator
This covers most everything I can possibly need to have onsite. Some times if I know what's going on ahead of time I'll also bring along a spare HD and a few other things, but generally this list always gets me by.
IANAL withstanding, but doesn't the proposed damages need to be above X amount before you can request a trial by jury in a civil case? (which of course it would be at $150k per song). Also I _think_ a civil jury trial isn't as strict as a criminal jury trial if I remember correctly in that only a simple majority of the jurors need to see guilt unlike a criminal trial where there needs to be not a single juror with a reasonable doubt in order to be judged as guilty.
I don't actually own any kilts. Remember, I'm just a poor IT worker. All I can afford is $19 knock-off Docker khakis. If a traditional kilt costs $1k then yeah $115 is a steal, but still expensive when compared to how cheaply you can buy khakis or slacks.
Oh, I guess i didn't compare them to other kilt pricing, I was going against the $19 I pay for my khakis at JC Penny on sale.
I buy them cheap and decorate them with elaborate toner spills and ink pen leaks. Sometimes I even get electrolyte fluid on a leg or maybe even battery acid of some sort. They're so much more fun to wear when they are eternally stained.
The fines aren't between $750 and $150,000 per offense. These people are being sued for that amount in civil court cases. The vast, vast majority of these cases aren't criminal cases, they're civil. Huge difference. If they were criminal cases you'd pay a fine and go to jail for a while, but you'd also get a court appointed lawyer if you couldn't afford one and have the option of a jury trial.
In a civil case there's not much for a limit on damages and no governmental checks and balances on what those limits are. So basically the RIAA can almost literally sue the pants off you for doing something that doesn't physically hurt anyone and just has minor monetary effects on their being. Isn't America great?
Those are some freaking expensive kilts. $115 for a standard kilt and $25 more for a 'beer gut cut'. Geesh! I'd rather just go commando.
And every time you download stolen copyrighted porn material off Kazaa and masterbate to it, a ninja kills a kitten! So in theory, Kazaa kills kittens. This is why the FBI and government want to shut down P2P networks, because after all who wants to kill a cute little kitten?
I re-read my original post 10 times for clarity and also had my girlfriend, who knows nothing of computers, read it and she understood it. I am sorry that my point was lost on you.
No, I do not fix "HP's computers". We, as a company, fix computers sold by HP/Compaq to 3rd parties (businesses or home users) that fail under warranty. We also sell our own "white box" brand of computers. We repair our own "white box" computers both under warranty, and out of warranty. We fix ANYONE's brand of computer out of warranty. We, as a company, also do contracted computer warranty repair services for other manufacturers through warranty companies such as Panda TPM, Nexicore, PC SOS, Technical Alliance Corp, GSN Barrister, and Unisys. These companies pay us to fix computers for their customers, mostly under warranty. This concludes what we, as a small business, already do.
Note that as I stated above, we already do do general computer/printer repair. We've ALWAYS done this. We will continue to do this. Note that we do NOT do software design/development, software programming, web design, web programming or anything else that relates to anything software other than fixing problems in existing software.
Also note that we ARE the local main street type computer store. We are not a Fry's, nor a Best Buy, nor are there any Fry's or Best Buys within 100 miles of here.
You idea of having signs painted or adherred to each employee's vehicle is a good one, but my original question has still not been answered. What other companies other than Panda TPM, Barrister, Nexicore, PC SOS, Technical Alliance Corp, and VentureTech Network are available out there for people or companies like us to do work for?
Although it would seem that nobody even bothered to read the article before posting (as usual) due to the only replies so far relating to programming contract work, of which there is nothing even mentioned in the article, this is the jist of what I want to know.
I fix computers. My company fixes and sells computers. We fix our own computers under warranty. We fix HP's computers under warranty. It costs us money to fix our own computers under warranty. It costs HP money to have us fix their computers and printers under warranty and it, in turn, comes to us as income for fixing what they sold. We'd like to fix more computers and printers and stuff under warranty that other companies have sold to customers that did not buy computers or printers from us. We'd also like to have oppurtunites to do service and networking contract work for large companies and government offices that have a contract with some large company. The question is, which companies other than those listed in the article above, would you go about using to achieve these goals?
Note that this article has absolutely nothing to do with writing code, programming, FORTRAN, fuzzy brown squirrels, or beach balls. It has to do with doing warranty work for PC vendors and getting paid to do it.
Ive always thought most games were an art form, in their design aspect at the very least. I write areas and encounters for Homeland MUD and the sheer volume of unique descriptions of rooms, areas, NPCs, and objects that have been written be me and our staff is astounding. Each one is like a short story in and of itself. This is no different from the guys that toil for hours in order to create the graphical artwork for graphical games instead of text-based ones.
I also contend that the code used in these games, or any creative code for that matter, is a form of art. Especially if it's well formatted and commented!
I'd also go as far as to say that certain players of games engage in an artform. Surely it is art the way a top Quake3 player frags their foes. And it is art to watch from above as some of the players on Homeland use their strategies and skills to accomplish what they and I never though possible.
I have been MUDding since '94 and have mainly played and immed on DIKU-based MUDs. I started out on Sojourn way back then. I was fully hooked on Sojourn, and accumulated nearly massive amounts of playing time, and the game eventually helped lead to the demise of my college career. I followed Sojourn through it's split into Toril and Duris, following the Toril path due to my disdain for true pkill MUDs. When Toril shut down due to imm issues and conflicts with a few players and all sorts of other things, I was at a loss as to what to do with my free time. Myself and a few friends from my guild on Toril (where I had ammased 1.5 years of playing time in the span of 4.5 years) decided to create our own MUD. This was known as ExileMUD (Not Exile, ExileMUD). I was in charge of areas creation, and one of the original forgers of this game. We gained ourselves a small playerbase over the years of turmoil and eventually due to conflicts that arose between most of us and one other imm. Myself and one of the main coders from ExileMUD split off and formed our own MUD called Homeland MUD, and I have been working on this ever since. We are set to open at the end of this month and have already attracted a decent following. I've heard that since myself and Vhaerun left ExileMUD to form Homeland that ExileMUD has been on a serious decline and that it will be shut down soon due to a total lack of players or development.
Sojourn/Toril has opened (Sojourn II) and closed (More admin conflict) and opened again (Sojourn III), but is on a downward decline as far as I and many others who have and do play there can tell. They recently lost their hosting (another bane of all MUD admins) and are running off a cable modem. Also the main owner of Sojourn is leaving behind his legacy and passing the game down to the younger forgers. The decline of Sojourn III is only helping to bolster the ranks of players that are coming over to Homeland as word of mouth spreads between all of the players that consider each other to be a loose family of sorts. When one player from S3 comes over to Homeland, checks it out, and realizes that it's just what they've been looking for, they often bring along a handful of friends, who in turn bring their friends as well.
As a player I am sure I handed out my share of grief to the admins of the MUDs I played on, and as I grew older, and I hope wiser I turned towards admining myself as I had conquered the vast majority of challenges thrown at me as a player. Now I see grief from time to time as an admin, but I think that the vast majority of grief from players towards admins is brought on by the manner in which the admins govern themselves and the attitude that is given towards the players.I do think that text-based MUDs have been in a slight decline, but new ones are popping up every day. The problem is that many of the new ones popping up daily have little or nothing original or innovative to add to the collective MUD world. Many of these are Stock MUDs with Stock areas, and never get to the point where they are modified enough to be useful.
Also I think as current MUD players get older, have families and generally give up the habit, there becomes a strong lack of players to take their place. Young kids these days are not interested in playing text games any more than they are in reading books it would seem. And as someone already likened text MUDs to books and MMORPGs to movies, so do I. I would rather read the book and become immersed in the story through my own imagination any day rather than having the director's vision of the story being spoon-fed to me.
If you are looking for a solid MUD that's been in development for 5 years and that is on the grow, that has a friendly staff, a solid fantasy theme (Forgotten Realms) then check out Homeland at mud.homelandmud.org port 6666
Actually it's been possible for some time to get an Asus notebook similar to this, with just the case, motherboard, and LCD on it. I'm not sure Asus really wants you to be able to get them this way and they come in a "white box".
One of the guys at work got one of these, went to Intel's channel partner site, got a PIII mobile CPU for next to nothing, snagged a decent 2.5" HD from one of our retailers, and threw in some SODIMMs that we had in stock and he got a really nice notebook for hardly anything (this was a year or two ago).
He was even able to call up Asus and tell them the stickers wore off his notebook, and they sent him out some new ones for free, so you can't even tell it's not the real deal.
On the other side of things, I do believe from opening up quite a few notebooks for repairs that the vast majority of notebook components are somewhat standardized. The batteries tend to be the most varried components inside the notebooks. Consider that there are only a very few manufacturers of notebook computers that are outsourced by the major computer vendors, and that makes for some pretty standard stuff. It's even possible to get the "white box" version of most of Dell's notebooks direct from the company that manufactures them for Dell, last I checked anyways.
A google search for "music recommendations" turned up some interesting online tools to find music you might like.
ListenUp
Emergent Music
The Library Blog
Otherwise I recommend using google to search for bands that you do like, browse through the listings and you're sure to turn up something you might like. Then search for it on P2P, and if you like it, buy it. Simple.
This site was pretty cool, although when I put my 3 suggestions in, it just came up with a list of artists I already had. I tried again with several different scenarios, but it always came up with stuff I already have and like. I wasn't able to get it to give me anything that I had never heard of before.
It may not be the answer you were looking for, but Tool covers just about everything I look for in music.
Of course if you were looking for other stuff that doesn't come from a record company then this place has a pretty decent search feature of downloadable mp3s.
If you really wanted to heat your house in the winter you should find an old multi-CPU socket 7 board and go with a bunch of old Cyric PR266 CPUs. Now those were good processors...for overheating anyways.
I also went to Rose-Hulman the same year you started. The laptop was great for MUDding in class, but after dropping out due to poor grades from being up all night MUDding and drinking beer and not going to class (bed time), it sure made for an expensive year.
Those things were pretty crappy notebooks that they made us buy anyways. AMS Soundwaves 486DX4100 with 400MB HDs and 12" LCDs. The specs weren't bad, it's just that they fell apart if you looked at them wrong. I'm all for colleges pushing technology, and I hate to say that the notebook was one of the factors I considered when I chose Rose-Hulman, and it turned out to be nothing good for me at all.