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User: SDrag0n

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  1. With some experience in a medical environment on Ask Slashdot: Do I Give IT a Login On Our Dept. Server? · · Score: 1

    There are so many reasons why you should be happy they didn't simply confiscate it. They're responsible for making sure all computer hardware is following regulations for example, all electronic equipment that plugs into the local power system needs to pass an inspection to make sure it won't cause a problem with any medical equipment (like shorting out circuits). Also, the hospital needs to be able to ensure HIPPA laws aren't being violated with patient data making it's way straight out of the network into the wild open as well as making sure your "little server" can't be a point for a security breach from the outside world with an open port.

    I'm sure in your mind "YOUR" server has no problems but other people's asses are on the line for it.

  2. To teach the basics on Are Graphical Calculators Pointless? · · Score: 1

    First, crippled technology might be a little bit extreme. It's really that is just has a very focused operating scope. After that though, the real thing is that students really should learn basics. Sure, you might be able to buy a program to solve any problem for you later on in life but what if you are hired to design that program? Of course you can go do tons of research at the time but for many people math is not a "simple" subject, they need a lot of exposure to really learn it and being able to do a "high level" view or understanding the details can both be very useful. Besides, if you keep going with the "well you can get a computer to do....." you could eventually extend that to "Well, you could get a computer to breath for you, run your heart, and tell you what you're going to eat today". Just because you can get a computer to do something doesn't mean it's a great idea. From what I remember of college a few years back many students were already doing everything they could to not have to really learn a subject anyways, why make it easy?

  3. What we really need on Space Elevators Could Be Lethal · · Score: 1
    is some dilithium crystals so we can make a subspace jump over the van-allen belt. Or mabye a anti-matter shield so that all the radioactive particals are distroyed with a violent bang. I know I would like some fireworks on my trip into space. They (the ambiguous they) should get to work on that as soon as they figure out how to make an enormous cable that stretches all the way into space.

    Personally, I'd be more concerned about falling back to Earth. Having an hour to think about what it feels like before smacking the ground at terminal velocity sounds like blast to me.

  4. Walmart on Sony's Obsession with Proprietary Formats · · Score: 1

    I saw HD-DVDs in Walmart a couple of days ago. . . I didn't see any Blu-ray movies. That may be a problem for Sony getting people to adapt it, they're a bit behind in getting it out to the market (at least, what most people will use it for. I don't plan on getting a $1000 BR burner. Or any BR device for that matter)

  5. Small systems on Should You Pre-Compile Binaries or Roll Your Own? · · Score: 1

    I have a small, older (450 PII 256M, 10G) computer that my grandparents gave to me since they figured I could do something with it. I run gentoo on it for a few reasons (and yes, the initial install sucked, A LOT) but, it all fits very well on a small HD. I just recently installed CentOS for a friend to do some testing with on my system, I didn't even install all the software I have on my 450 and it took about 9G for the install. As cool as that is, for my older system, which I definately don't want to invest any money in, I'm not sure I could get everything I want on it with a 10G HD. I mainly use it as a development machine with LAMP, INTEL FORTRAN, and a few other odds and ends (yes, X is installed with KDE) and it fits well in about 6G of space because it doesn't have all the random things I don't use (see CUPS) My point in that while binary distrobutions are very nice to get a system up and running, they don't always fit the mold of what you need/want. There are too many other factors.

  6. Re:Pioneers Get the arrows on Is It Wrong to Love Microsoft? · · Score: 1
    macs had true plug and play from the day the mac II came out.

    I would like to point out that Apple made (or knew all the specs for in advance) its own hardware, which is why it had "plug and play". I'm not saying Windows is perfect by any means, but getting all of that to work with tons of random manufacturers creating their own "features" on their hardware would be a fairly difficult trick.

  7. Here's a link to LWN where he talks about it on Linus Drops BitKeeper · · Score: 5, Informative
    He talks about some other products he's tried, why he wrote his own, and a little about how it works.

    http://lwn.net/Articles/131313/

    Check the "made the first version available" link towards the top

  8. Global Tracking on EU Presses Ahead With Galileo GPS System · · Score: -1, Troll

    Yeah, just what everyone needs, 15000 different global tracking systems. Gee. . . I wonder how many redundant systems we can send into space costing billions of dollars. I love taxes.

  9. Modchip usage?? on Bungie Speaks On Halo 2 Leak · · Score: 1

    I see a lot of posts claiming that people with modchips will pirate the game. I know a guy who has a modchip, and he has pre-ordered a copy of the game, just to support the company in what they feel will be a great game. They use their modchip to stream video (of recorded tv shows) and purchased music across their network to the TV mainly, what's the problem with this?

  10. Hehe. . . Indiana on Intel Ranks Colleges with Best Wireless Access · · Score: 1

    I go to Purdue, and I think it's great that we are "unwired" but does it strike anyone else as funny that Indiana has the top 2 "unwired" schools? I mean seriously, Indiana isn't exactly known for it's technological prowess. . . IU can be the most wired, but at least our basketball team didn't totally tank this year. Whoo!

  11. Purdue because of India on The Best Colleges for Network Engineering? · · Score: 1

    Well, I would say that since all the tech jobs are moving to India, and Purdue has a ton of Indians in tech-majors (including CS and Network Engineering) that Purdue must be the best. Obviously all the Purdue grads back in India have gotten jobs, so a Purdue degree means a job! Yeah!

  12. Re:Suggestions for Total FF Newbie? on Review: Final Fantasy X · · Score: 1

    Personally, my favorite is FF6 (FF3 in the USA), but the original and 2 were good too. 7 is weird, 8 is okay. I'd go with one of the first 3 released in the US although they are for NES or SNES. Emulators work well for both of those systems though.

  13. Older Final Fantasy on Review: Final Fantasy X · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Personally, I liked the older Final Fantasies. The new ones seem like punching buttons through a movie. In the old ones (FF, FF2, FF3 or FF, FF4, FF6) They had some much more interesting puzzles and even if the characters are 2D, I think the game was more fun to play.

  14. Re:Am I the only one...? on Clever New Windows Worm · · Score: 1

    I have a couple of email addresses I use and in neither have I ever gotten a worm or a virus. I think it may have something to do with one of them being my work, where everyone uses outlook, but also McAfee on everything comming into the network. for the other email address, most of the people I know use webmail or netscape mail so. . .

  15. Ignorance of User on Clever New Windows Worm · · Score: 1

    What should be realized is that because MS Windows has a much broader user base than any other operating system, of course it's going to be the target of more viruses and have a higher infection rate due to the lack of experience/knowledge of the user. The reason few viruses are written for any other operating systems is that, in general, the users have a lot more know how and everyone would quickly know about it. Just because Microsoft software has more vulnerabilities doesn't mean it's bad software, it just has more users (so a lager number of users who don't know much about computers), and is thus an easier platform to spread malicious software on.

  16. Not that I've been able to find on Large-Scale Video Archiving? · · Score: 1
    I did some research on digital recording of security cameras. The best product I could find was a company based out of Indianapolis that could record from 32 cameras at a time with a 120 FPS frame-rate that had to be distributed (if one camera was recording 10 FPS, there was 110 FPS left to use)

    They didn't have one system that could do it, but they did have huge combinations of those systems which could probably do what you are talking about. Do all 1000 cameras need to go to the same piece of hardware? Look at switches. Most companies used a few smaller ones instead of one huge switch. Of course, it was a while back that I did this research so if anything has come out recently, I don't know about it. Hope that helps

  17. Restrictions for development kill efficiency on Can Developers Work in a 'Locked-Down' Environment? · · Score: 1
    I work for a hospital in the IT department and about 6 months ago we instituted lock-downs on all of the computers in the hospital. From the perspective of trying to fix computers, it's a godsend. It literally took the number of problems we had to fix per day from about 40 to 10 (there are only about 200 PCs) so we have time to concentrate on other things such as network problems, new equipment etc. On the other hand, I do a good deal of custom software development for our department to use, and if my computer was locked-down, it would have been a real pain to do anything.

    Just a note, I don't know how they are planning on locking down your PCs, but I wrote a small program to modify registry entries without any user intervention going through the windows API that works even on the computers where the users don't have access to the Registry. As a developer, it's nice to use regedit, but the above program is used periodically to changes registry settings across the whole network and we don't have any problems with it.