oops you are right! Sorry bout that. And of all things I went to the same high school with anselmo(clifton l ganus) though he was two years older than I.
First all hard drive suck. They have all had bad runs. Conversley, they have all made good products as well.
Most people tend to generally think what they have/sell/install is the best.
IBM is getting some flack from the/. crowd(I bet it is the under 30 bunch) for the bad run of deskstars. And they were bad drives. But dollar for dollar, I think over the years IBM has consistently made some of the most solid hard drives on the market. Warranty issues are the best in the industry. They fix and replace. And what did IBM do? They replaced all the bad ones. And still warrantied the new ones for three years. No change made. Hitachi will carry the ball, they have a good core of engineers.
Western Digital - They have always had a good middle of the road product. I have had good luck with them. Most of the problems I have had or early doas on new machines. And they always handled the warranty issues well. Nothing spectacular.
Maxtor - Maxtor is a good drive now. For a good two year run in the late nineties they were absolutley the noiseiest prone to fail things I have ever ever seen.
Seagate - Solid drive, great SCSI drive. They bought Connor out, which to me the Connor drive was the absolute worst in the market.
There are a slew of others. Samsung, fujitsu, lg, quantum. And they all make decent products.
The problem here is that most modders/hackers/enthusiasts buy the bargain drive with the most gimmees. So that barebone, oem, fell off the truck, pricewatch special has problems cause someone wanted to save a couple of extra bucks. As in the IBM bad run, they went cheap so we all bought them. Actually now is the time to grab some great IBM drives at a low price cause of the desktar issue, which has been fixed.
So look at all these new drives with a grain of salt. We have no data that they will last 3,5,10 years. They are all new and new technology. And I will give up seek time and gigaybytes for realibility. But we all love the bells and whistles, and with them come the problems.
As a Native New Orleanian I guess I should mention that the House of Shock where this ride is located is a Trent Reznor project.
I worked at the ISP that kicked him his bandwidth in the day and his group were a pretty nice bunch of guys. I remember one day when I was BOFHing some tech calls and someone calls to add a couple of pop boxes for a domain and reset a pass. In my best "fuck you asshole, stupid loser that you are" voice I asked for the customers last name. When I replied "Like uh Trent" guy said yeah and I pulled the account up. Felt like such an ass.
Course the ultimate scare would be to be the only guy in the ride with 4 300 lb female ex cons who just got outta stir and are looking for some strange. As the lights go out and the strains of the song Closer chime in.... oof gonna have nightmares about that one.
Puto
Re:Atari, Intellivision, and the arcade
on
The Aging Gamer
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· Score: 2
Yeah combat was two players but I would fly the jets around and practice. The tanks I would drive around and practice shooting on the fly and angled shots.
I think I was so amazes by it it didn't matter the number of players Puto
Atari, Intellivision, and the arcade
on
The Aging Gamer
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Ok I am 32 years old. Here is what I played. Wasn't no Sega or Nintendo in my day.
Pinball - Silverball Mania Pong - Cocktal Version, lost many a quarter(but pops snuck me into bars, cause that is where pong lived.
Boot Hill - FPS? The Original death match.
What about those wierd baseball games where you hat to bat at the balls with the stick on a lever?
Shoot the bear with the 90 pound rifle?
Then came the 2600 for me. I can play Combat by myself for hours.
Breakout? You kicked its ass enough the bricks didnt come back.
AS for being in the thirties. I still latch on too the odd game(gotta keep the kiddies in check cause I can't impress em with my cool Galaga skills).
Now I am playing The Thing. Not so bad, the character barf and commit suicide.
Intel is playing catch up and releasing some new boards with all the bells and whistles that the other guys have been releasing for some time now.
However, Intel does release stable products(some have been flawed, i820) And in an enteprise a board with an an Intel chipset is usually the best way to go.
But in the end who cares? As long as it works fine. As long as it is pretty quick, stable, and does as promised I am a pretty happy camper.
Got other stuff to worry about than p4's with 333 ddr. DDR aint to cheap anyway. I got a gig of it in my athlon box. But I coulda got 4 gigs of SDR ram for the same cost and tricked out a mean little server with it.
Well, as a tech who who went to school for CS and has some certs here is what the market wants.
Ok, you are a 22 years old and a Linux god. You know Php, CGI, et al ad naueseam. You got a semi decent project on source forge. Where are your big bucks?
Well a company looks at it this way. A degree shows that you took the time and completed something. Whether it is in CS or underwater basketweaving. And you might not know fuck all about anything but you showed a little discipline. AND college really can teach you some much needed social skills to survive in the real world. I do not care how good you are at what you do, if you piss of the customers cause you are l33t and they ain't, your out the door. And this also means that the Think Geek cap and Spawn t-shirt are not appropriate apparel for all occasions.
Online courseware is great, and I am one of those people who can pick up things easily from a book. But you know what? Regular classes are great too, you make friends,contacts, meet girls, get out the house.
All my practical knowledge in this industry I picked up on my own. IS was just starting to hit Unis so the courses were not all the good. I took a lotta business classes which have come in handy.
I like to see someone with a degree and mad skills. Good combination. Degrees are not that hard, and unis can come cheap here in the us. And if you got the skils you can get a job to pay for the school are do it yourself.
And before you come down on me. I got a GED at 20, started college at 23, finished at 28. Cause even though I got pretty good jobs with my skills, as soon as I got that paper, it opened many more doors.
So the online thing is great to a point. But you gotta have the real world behind it.
And at 32 years old I wish I could back do the uni earlier, and give my younger self a swift kick in the ass. Oh and buy some Microsoft stock;)
Puto
Re:There is Support for 98 Intel Faq
on
New MP3 Portables
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· Score: 2
Hey dude didnt mean to come off pissy. It was a long day.
Here is an Intel Faq:
http://www.intel.com/technology/usb/faq.htm
Yeah the drivers are vendor related for the USB 2.0 cards that you can get for 98 boxes but I have used several and have been fine.
My drive supports USB 2.0 and firewire by the way, so I get the best of both worlds.
Down side is that pc's just started shipping with 2.0 support so while this is the perfect movable device for me(size of a large paperback). I generally need to bring the card if I am doing large data dumps or backing up a clients box. Well it did two weeks at a client site as a backup drive while they waited for their tape to be rmaed. Then they didnt want to give it back.
I have two 120 giggers on my machine at home sitting side by side as an attached storage solution and have had no problem enclosures have a little fan in them. And considering again the cost. I paid 160 for each one. you can beat it.
I have and 80 gig USB 2.0 portable hardrive. It runs fine under 98,2000, and xp at USB 2.0 there is support, just a driver issue. My drive is an IBM Desktar that I picked up for 125 bucks. I use it as a backup and also have another one that I have just about every driver, OS, ISO, that a tech guy needs and it sits in my tool kit next to a usb 2.0 pci card. Case I need something on site and I don't have the cd and usb 1 is too slow.
Are you serious? The Vast Majority of ISPs are running some *NIX. Which I would put a large percent of that number running Linux. I just switched a major site from a BSD host to a linux box and we have seen no problems. And I am talking about 35 gigs of hosting.
I am starting my own hosting company and my two servers are on Redhat. There are thousands of little hosting companies that run linux, and some large ones as well. Valueweb is switching from BSD to Linux and thier are pretty big. Rackspace is a big linux shop.
Do ISP's take Linux seriously? Yeah, I say that is why the all use it.
As for your ISP? Well, you are ultimately responsible for securing your own box. Windows, Linux, or whatever. Your ISP can issue warnings but if they are worth their salt they will protect you an themselves.
When I was on the tail end of my college years I kept up my habit for comps by buying and reselling them fairly quickly.
I had just picked up a p-90 for a very good price and had a buyer for my dx266. Check these specs.
16 megs of ram 2 meg video windows 3.1 CD-rom 15 inch monitor Colorado 250 Tape Backup(still hearing it whining on these late lonely nights) and a 540 meg Connor drive(worst comp in history).
Well I had a buyer for 1600 bucks, I had paid 2400 for the thing, buyer was getting a fair deal. 2 years warranty...
I had opened the box for whatever reason and it was running on the kitchen table at my place.
I go out the night, get a little ripped with some friends. Come home, crash, and up bright and early cause I had to deliver the box.
So I do not notice that the case is back on. Probably in some hangover funk it swept by me.
I deliver the box. And a week later my customer calls and tells me there is this horrible funk coming out her new computer.
I go over and crack the box, and there is some rotten scum in the bottom of the case. Slightly boozie smelling. I clean it out, tell her I do not know what it easse, but looks like a rodent got in... she buys it.
I go home and my roomate says that he had come home drunk and was about to finish doom and he got motion sickness from the game but instead of running to the bathroom, he yacked in the case. He freaked, mopped mostof it out, and put the cover back on.
Man oh man, the this throws a whole new wrench into the gigahertz wars. Amd and Intel lookout, IBM gonna be rolling out some 33 mhz processers that will whip both your collective asses and further confuse computer owners.
This is good news but I sense wierdness in the space time contiunuim with this announcement.
I have a Dual direct drive turntable I bought in 1986 with a diamond stylus. It sounds great and I have 'ripped' all my LPs to mp3 a long time ago. Didn't need to stick em in my scanner, didn't need to stitch any images together.
Besides I would not stick any of my 12 maxi singles of 1980s Billy Idol in the scanner to be scraped against the glass.;).
My NAD stereo has been faithfully updated over the years but the turntable remains the same. And I do use it on the odd occasion and sometimes do pick up an ablum at the flea market.
I consider myself fairly well rounded in music, from the popular to the obscure, and even a little bit on the world music front. Growing up in New Orleans does that too you, thank god for that. The 80's would have been intolerable anywhere else!
Anyway, as most people will point out I had no idea who Ms. Ian is, went to her site and listened to a few of her tracks. Not bad, not something I would buy. Joan Baez, Marianne Faithful, folk chick angst.(almost a female john cougar, heartland muzak) Done well but again, not my type of music. I get my angst from Townes Van Zandt. Might be a guy thing.
I laud her for speaking out on this issue and while she does have 17 ablums to her credit. It almost smacks of an almost made it saw a way to revitalize a fading almost career.
I would look on this with a grain of salt.
She does have quite a good voice.
Then again music, art, is subjective, what you like you like, up to you.
Call him an arrogant rich bastard but he is a geek like the rest of us.
Hey, how many of us bought the friggin X-10 cam bundles for 99.99? So we can see what our servers do while we are at Comdex?
How many of us don't have gigs of mp3's in the car? Even built one before commercial players were for sale?
The guy is just ab ubergeek who made some cash and modded the shit outta his house. More power to him!
I would kill to have my own theater. John Carpenters The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, big screen cheese fests for me and the bodies. And imagine Ron Jeremy on the big screen? Yikes.
We would all do something similar if we had the cash. We all got some weird wants.
What are some of the weird things you would do with bucks? Besides being altruistic?
I am a network engineer who by way of circumstance am a Colombian citizen. Grandfather was from Spain and my father was born there. I was born in the US, but have both citizenships.
I lived in Colombia for the past two years before coming home. And Colombia and Venezuela are both full of computets. All kinds. Though SCO is a pretty popular OS over there. Many old school cobol accounting apps running on it.
ANYWAY. I do not think MS is too worried about losing Venezuela. When you go to a computer store in either country they give you windows free with the pc. Not a licnesed copy. They give you the cost of the liscense, you can get windows with a liscense or without. Who the fuck is gonna choose to pay more money? Not Latin Americans. They gotta pinch pennies. And if they got the money they will not do it anyway.
If you buy that liscsense, you better call MS from the store and verify it is valid, cause it is probably hoked up anyway.
I installed several large networks and ordered Dell PC's for the warranties and I could be sure I was getting the licenses legally. And I did. All windows and my big Red Hat Server.
You think Chavez would actually pay Gates? With latins get the money up front. You think if Chavez used pirate software, gates could do something about it? NO. Venezuela is an entity for itself.
This might look like a win for us but is just clever spin from our community.
Venezuela could care less about its systems. What you got is some good sysadmins whispering free in Politicians ears, makes the Politicians look good, like they were paying for software anyway.
In those countries software, music piracy is an accepted norm. You can buy burned cd's in shopping centers on the streets. They will chip your playstation while you wait. This announcement will not garner any interest there. People are too worried about food and shelter.
And yeah there are nice areas. For the privileged few. The top 5 percent. Yeah I two ISDN lines in my apartment. And the montly cost would have fed a family of five.
Show me where opensource benefits latin america. Medical records, state agencies, but until then this announcement has all the weight of Pam Anderson announcing her new fashion line.
The Microsoft Healthcare Users Group. This is a group of vendors that sit togehter on a board that define all standards for healthcare products that run on MS software. To be a member of this group or state that your software is compliant they certify you.
They strictly adhere to all governmental regulations for healthcare records including EDI and storing of sensitive medical records.
The medical industry is a huge economic buyer in the hardware and software industry and MS based vendors have always been in strict compliance with government standards.
1. Check to see if your software is HL7(health care 7) HL7 is a protocol for formatting, transmitting and receiving data in a healthcare environment.
2. Ask your vendor how they store the medical rcords, is it hl7 compliant. I think you guys have a homegrown product? IF your product is home grown it does'nt apply to the governmental standard for handling medical data, the EULA is the least of your worries.
3. IF the product is home grown. Cover your ass.
MSHUG is microsoft centric but a good start for you.
I did medical software for ten years and dealt with all these issues long ago. Your vendor should be able to point you in the right direction. BUT IF YOUR SOFTWARE CAME FROM A VAR, DONT ASK HIM, CALL THE ACTUAL HOME COMPANY! The developers will give you more of a straight answer than the var.
There are six other contributors to the Project. Microsoft and Cisco are there and while they are two mighty large behemoths in the industry there are several other people and orginizations with their eggs in the basket too.
The ed copy almost urges us to pour wood on the MS sacrificial pyre.
Any large outfit with software, hardware, anything do do with networking is gonna have their fingers in this pie. And MS or Cisco would have not been idiots to get on it. And both companied can put money and people on the case.
MS realizes UNIX(Linux)is a force and although they do not like, know they must coexist. The days of MS thinking they could destory us or over. But every crusade needs its zealots, and us on the Nix have em.
Hey if MS can do something to secure the MS networks I have to support, and it contributes to the community. Take their money, develop it, and we all benefit from it. I might get a weekend off.
Just a draft for a project with multiple backers. But is has MS in it so lets skew the editorial comment.
Truth in Journalism is hard to come by we all have learned to read between the lines.
We read the slashdot cause it compiles info from sources on the web we do not have go looking for. Neither time nor inclination. But referencing someone elses work, and then putting a slant on it is something else. It is cheesy. If you want to spin, learn to spin. Sometimes the articles here have all the intelligence of liner notes from 80's hair bands.
Well I can't imagine what school's must be teaching these days cause the younger generation I do run into seems to be completely clueless for many things.
Math, science. But also literature, geography, world events. But no couth is one of the biggest problems.
I admin from home. Sit in my underwear, drink beer, do not shave. See me in public like that? Hell no. I go on an interview for a possible client and I look like the man from IBM in the 80's. The orginal Men in Black
I am 32 and not that old(or at least I dont think so). Here is what I know.
Late 80's schools had gotten so horrid they had to administer tests that had to be taken before graduation. Basic skills tests. You might have passed your exams but still had to take this one. I never took it but I saw one and it was frightfully easy. Along the lines of the ASVAB for the military.
Schools dropped physics and trig to go to things like Alebgra 1,2 and geometry and that was it in math.
Anyone have that physics teacher who used the overhead for the notes? And he had written the notes originally back in 63 and over the years had made corrections to them? But sill used them. Probably still teaching.
TENURE - stay here long enough and we will give you a free cushion for your ass.
I went to a boarding school for my formative years and while I did recieve a fair amount of ass whuppins I did get some great teachers who really got me into science and math and literature. We built a Heathkit Hero in the dorm and fiddled with ham radios, and even had a unix box in '83. A DEC. And I owned your ass playing miner 2049er and Lode Runner on the Apple//.
I then switched to a local school and bam. I saw the wonders of a regular high school. Sure I got girls and booze and had quite a bit of fun, but I did not learn near as much or the teachers did nothing to generate my interest in things. Well, methane soap bubble torches were fun.
Teachers aren't paid enough. Private schools do tend to get the better ones. I graduated in the end from a public school, and had good teachers, but my private school experience was by far superior. And when I choose to lay my eggs I will make the sacrifice and send my little geeks to a private school. For them.
Teachers also need to be recertified every couple of years, just like people in the tech industry. "I had a TRS-80 back in the day so I don't ever need to take a computer class". Teachers get complacent, light a fire under their asses.
Bit of a rant here, but we do need to do something about it. Our world ya know.
And I do not care if you are 18 and can write a script that will control the weather, make Bill Gates give it all to charity, or even make Slashdotters a more level-headed bunch. Education is the the real fucking deal.
I just picked up an 8500LE, which though although claimed to be a lower end part came with same specs and s+-video out. 87 bucks at newegg.com. I flashed it to retail bios and I got a regualr 8500. Noi biggie. And it is an awsome card, 2d and 3d. For 109 dollars you can get the 128 meg version, makes sure it says le.
I should of spent the money and got the 128 meg version.
My primary function in IT has been on the medical end. Just about every aspect. And I have used the Nixes and MS products in offices I have managed and was the it director for a small hospital. I have 12 years in this side of industry and have seen it ALL.
The problems you mention are true but are a little exaggerated.
1. MS word is a bit of a learning curve if you come from Wordperfect(which in it's day rocked). But all of those items you mentioned that cannot be done with Word, can be. MS is quite big on the Healthcare front. I have implemented key expanders for word since 1995.
This goes for any software implentation that is in a production enviroment such as a hospital. Have 25 percent of the staff begin to switch at first, have em use it for half a day, but slowly roll it out and ease the new product it. ANY change of software will cause downtime in production. AND all employees when switching from something known to something new create a lotta FUD. They are scared, don't want to learn something new, and in many cases they know the new stuff might bring to light some of their faults. Sounds like the hospital IT staff was a little clueless.
Then which brings me the the point of TCO and standards.
Word in the longrun would probably be cheaper than open office and easier to support because people have it at home, can pick up a a dummies book, go to New Horizons, call a friend, many venues for support. And the more widely spread the product on the market, = less calls I get because many people know it and can lean over and help their coworker.
We do need an open standard for documents. I totally agree. BUT when medical records and forms need to be sent in formats that cannot change and need to print on your printer like I look at them on my screen. Insurance claim forms adhere to a certain standard and if they are 1 millionth of a mm off, then the companies wont take em.
Then I am going to choose the most widely accepted format, which in this case is Word.
Word has an 85 percent saturation in the medical industry, and sadly enough I have to go with it but cause it will be around in the long run, TCO. I train em on Word now, the industry supports it, and it will be around.
Word Perfect has been floundering since the 90s. They actually were going out of business and Novell bought them. I have a CD that says Novells Word Perfect. The widespread use is that it has always been bundled free with systems.
This is not a Microsoft ad. As an IT director I choose the least painful route and the less costly in the long run. And in the medical industry word fits the bill.
I use Unix, I like it. I use open office. I use Office, I like em both. Office is a good product
I dunno if computer translation is going to be up to par for a long time.
I speak both Spanish and English. English is native and Spanish is due to 3 years in South America. And my grandparents are from Spain. I did not really know anything until I lived in Colombia and my granny who has Phd in her own language was a pretty harsh mistress. I was 21 years old when I learned. Of course living with a Colombian sysadmin girl for two years was a big help. She liked the Penguin.
Languages differ too much from location to location. Justlike English in regions in the US. I am from New Orleans and the english changes from neighborhood to neoghborhood.
Word meanings and expressions might be exactly the same in spelling and sound but mean different things to different people.
To build these variables into software would be a *HUGE* task.
I think the best we could hope for is software that does a decent brute translation and then a human does the final edit.
The problem is one word might be ok to use in Puerto Rico(well they are confused about which language they speak) but socially unacceptable in Colombia. Software cannot know the difference.
People will always do the translation gig better.
Puto
Course my handle is pretty bad in any Latin country.
Slashdot Mirror
oops you are right! Sorry bout that. And of all things I went to the same high school with anselmo(clifton l ganus) though he was two years older than I.
My bad.
Puto
First all hard drive suck. They have all had bad runs. Conversley, they have all made good products as well.
/. crowd(I bet it is the under 30 bunch) for the bad run of deskstars. And they were bad drives. But dollar for dollar, I think over the years IBM has consistently made some of the most solid hard drives on the market. Warranty issues are the best in the industry. They fix and replace. And what did IBM do? They replaced all the bad ones. And still warrantied the new ones for three years. No change made. Hitachi will carry the ball, they have a good core of engineers.
Most people tend to generally think what they have/sell/install is the best.
IBM is getting some flack from the
Western Digital - They have always had a good middle of the road product. I have had good luck with them. Most of the problems I have had or early doas on new machines. And they always handled the warranty issues well. Nothing spectacular.
Maxtor - Maxtor is a good drive now. For a good two year run in the late nineties they were absolutley the noiseiest prone to fail things I have ever ever seen.
Seagate - Solid drive, great SCSI drive. They bought Connor out, which to me the Connor drive was the absolute worst in the market.
There are a slew of others. Samsung, fujitsu, lg, quantum. And they all make decent products.
The problem here is that most modders/hackers/enthusiasts buy the bargain drive with the most gimmees. So that barebone, oem, fell off the truck, pricewatch special has problems cause someone wanted to save a couple of extra bucks. As in the IBM bad run, they went cheap so we all bought them. Actually now is the time to grab some great IBM drives at a low price cause of the desktar issue, which has been fixed.
So look at all these new drives with a grain of salt. We have no data that they will last 3,5,10 years. They are all new and new technology. And I will give up seek time and gigaybytes for realibility. But we all love the bells and whistles, and with them come the problems.
Puto
As a Native New Orleanian I guess I should mention that the House of Shock where this ride is located is a Trent Reznor project.
I worked at the ISP that kicked him his bandwidth in the day and his group were a pretty nice bunch of guys. I remember one day when I was BOFHing some tech calls and someone calls to add a couple of pop boxes for a domain and reset a pass. In my best "fuck you asshole, stupid loser that you are" voice I asked for the customers last name. When I replied "Like uh Trent" guy said yeah and I pulled the account up. Felt like such an ass.
Course the ultimate scare would be to be the only guy in the ride with 4 300 lb female ex cons who just got outta stir and are looking for some strange. As the lights go out and the strains of the song Closer chime in.... oof gonna have nightmares about that one.
Puto
Yeah combat was two players but I would fly the jets around and practice. The tanks I would drive around and practice shooting on the fly and angled shots.
I think I was so amazes by it it didn't matter the number of players
Puto
Ok I am 32 years old. Here is what I played. Wasn't no Sega or Nintendo in my day.
Pinball - Silverball Mania
Pong - Cocktal Version, lost many a quarter(but pops snuck me into bars, cause that is where pong lived.
Boot Hill - FPS? The Original death match.
What about those wierd baseball games where you hat to bat at the balls with the stick on a lever?
Shoot the bear with the 90 pound rifle?
Then came the 2600 for me. I can play Combat by myself for hours.
Breakout? You kicked its ass enough the bricks didnt come back.
AS for being in the thirties. I still latch on too the odd game(gotta keep the kiddies in check cause I can't impress em with my cool Galaga skills).
Now I am playing The Thing. Not so bad, the character barf and commit suicide.
Puto
I had these mattel babies with black snap together track. The track looked and felt as if it was made of hollowed out steel belts.
The cars themselves had a walkman style female jack. The Track had the charger in the shape of a gas pump with two d batteries.
They would last four about 3 minutes.
They were fun even though you couldnt control them. They had headlights that worked and they also had dayglo paint.
Puto
Intel is playing catch up and releasing some new boards with all the bells and whistles that the other guys have been releasing for some time now.
However, Intel does release stable products(some have been flawed, i820) And in an enteprise a board with an an Intel chipset is usually the best way to go.
But in the end who cares? As long as it works fine. As long as it is pretty quick, stable, and does as promised I am a pretty happy camper.
Got other stuff to worry about than p4's with 333 ddr. DDR aint to cheap anyway. I got a gig of it in my athlon box. But I coulda got 4 gigs of SDR ram for the same cost and tricked out a mean little server with it.
Jeez this aint news.
Well, as a tech who who went to school for CS and has some certs here is what the market wants.
;)
Ok, you are a 22 years old and a Linux god. You know Php, CGI, et al ad naueseam. You got a semi decent project on source forge. Where are your big bucks?
Well a company looks at it this way. A degree shows that you took the time and completed something. Whether it is in CS or underwater basketweaving. And you might not know fuck all about anything but you showed a little discipline.
AND college really can teach you some much needed social skills to survive in the real world. I do not care how good you are at what you do, if you piss of the customers cause you are l33t and they ain't, your out the door. And this also means that the Think Geek cap and Spawn t-shirt are not appropriate apparel for all occasions.
Online courseware is great, and I am one of those people who can pick up things easily from a book. But you know what? Regular classes are great too, you make friends,contacts, meet girls, get out the house.
All my practical knowledge in this industry I picked up on my own. IS was just starting to hit Unis so the courses were not all the good. I took a lotta business classes which have come in handy.
I like to see someone with a degree and mad skills. Good combination. Degrees are not that hard, and unis can come cheap here in the us. And if you got the skils you can get a job to pay for the school are do it yourself.
And before you come down on me. I got a GED at 20, started college at 23, finished at 28. Cause even though I got pretty good jobs with my skills, as soon as I got that paper, it opened many more doors.
So the online thing is great to a point. But you gotta have the real world behind it.
And at 32 years old I wish I could back do the uni earlier, and give my younger self a swift kick in the ass. Oh and buy some Microsoft stock
Puto
Hey dude didnt mean to come off pissy. It was a long day.
Here is an Intel Faq:
http://www.intel.com/technology/usb/faq.htm
Yeah the drivers are vendor related for the USB 2.0 cards that you can get for 98 boxes but I have used several and have been fine.
My drive supports USB 2.0 and firewire by the way, so I get the best of both worlds.
Down side is that pc's just started shipping with 2.0 support so while this is the perfect movable device for me(size of a large paperback). I generally need to bring the card if I am doing large data dumps or backing up a clients box. Well it did two weeks at a client site as a backup drive while they waited for their tape to be rmaed. Then they didnt want to give it back.
I have two 120 giggers on my machine at home sitting side by side as an attached storage solution and have had no problem enclosures have a little fan in them. And considering again the cost. I paid 160 for each one. you can beat it.
Puto
I have and 80 gig USB 2.0 portable hardrive. It runs fine under 98,2000, and xp at USB 2.0 there is support, just a driver issue. My drive is an IBM Desktar that I picked up for 125 bucks. I use it as a backup and also have another one that I have just about every driver, OS, ISO, that a tech guy needs and it sits in my tool kit next to a usb 2.0 pci card. Case I need something on site and I don't have the cd and usb 1 is too slow.
Do a little research.
Puto
Are you serious? The Vast Majority of ISPs are running some *NIX. Which I would put a large percent of that number running Linux. I just switched a major site from a BSD host to a linux box and we have seen no problems. And I am talking about 35 gigs of hosting.
I am starting my own hosting company and my two servers are on Redhat. There are thousands of little hosting companies that run linux, and some large ones as well. Valueweb is switching from BSD to Linux and thier are pretty big. Rackspace is a big linux shop.
Do ISP's take Linux seriously? Yeah, I say that is why the all use it.
As for your ISP? Well, you are ultimately responsible for securing your own box. Windows, Linux, or whatever. Your ISP can issue warnings but if they are worth their salt they will protect you an themselves.
You know I have ranted too much. Troll elsewhere.
Puto
When I was on the tail end of my college years I kept up my habit for comps by buying and reselling them fairly quickly.
I had just picked up a p-90 for a very good price and had a buyer for my dx266. Check these specs.
16 megs of ram
2 meg video
windows 3.1
CD-rom
15 inch monitor
Colorado 250 Tape Backup(still hearing it whining on these late lonely nights)
and a 540 meg Connor drive(worst comp in history).
Well I had a buyer for 1600 bucks, I had paid 2400 for the thing, buyer was getting a fair deal. 2 years warranty...
I had opened the box for whatever reason and it was running on the kitchen table at my place.
I go out the night, get a little ripped with some friends. Come home, crash, and up bright and early cause I had to deliver the box.
So I do not notice that the case is back on. Probably in some hangover funk it swept by me.
I deliver the box. And a week later my customer calls and tells me there is this horrible funk coming out her new computer.
I go over and crack the box, and there is some rotten scum in the bottom of the case. Slightly boozie smelling. I clean it out, tell her I do not know what it easse, but looks like a rodent got in... she buys it.
I go home and my roomate says that he had come home drunk and was about to finish doom and he got motion sickness from the game but instead of running to the bathroom, he yacked in the case. He freaked, mopped mostof it out, and put the cover back on.
Heheheh.
Puto
Here is the guys site who wrote the game.
http://www.warrenrobinett.com/
Puto
Man oh man, the this throws a whole new wrench into the gigahertz wars. Amd and Intel lookout, IBM gonna be rolling out some 33 mhz processers that will whip both your collective asses and further confuse computer owners.
This is good news but I sense wierdness in the space time contiunuim with this announcement.
Puto
I have a Dual direct drive turntable I bought in 1986 with a diamond stylus. It sounds great and I have 'ripped' all my LPs to mp3 a long time ago. Didn't need to stick em in my scanner, didn't need to stitch any images together.
;).
Besides I would not stick any of my 12 maxi singles of 1980s Billy Idol in the scanner to be scraped against the glass.
My NAD stereo has been faithfully updated over the years but the turntable remains the same. And I do use it on the odd occasion and sometimes do pick up an ablum at the flea market.
Puto
I consider myself fairly well rounded in music, from the popular to the obscure, and even a little bit on the world music front. Growing up in New Orleans does that too you, thank god for that. The 80's would have been intolerable anywhere else!
Anyway, as most people will point out I had no idea who Ms. Ian is, went to her site and listened to a few of her tracks. Not bad, not something I would buy. Joan Baez, Marianne Faithful, folk chick angst.(almost a female john cougar, heartland muzak) Done well but again, not my type of music. I get my angst from Townes Van Zandt. Might be a guy thing.
I laud her for speaking out on this issue and while she does have 17 ablums to her credit. It almost smacks of an almost made it saw a way to revitalize a fading almost career.
I would look on this with a grain of salt.
She does have quite a good voice.
Then again music, art, is subjective, what you like you like, up to you.
Puto
Call him an arrogant rich bastard but he is a geek like the rest of us.
Hey, how many of us bought the friggin X-10 cam bundles for 99.99? So we can see what our servers do while we are at Comdex?
How many of us don't have gigs of mp3's in the car? Even built one before commercial players were for sale?
The guy is just ab ubergeek who made some cash and modded the shit outta his house. More power to him!
I would kill to have my own theater. John Carpenters The Thing, Big Trouble in Little China, big screen cheese fests for me and the bodies. And imagine Ron Jeremy on the big screen? Yikes.
We would all do something similar if we had the cash. We all got some weird wants.
What are some of the weird things you would do with bucks? Besides being altruistic?
Puto
I am a network engineer who by way of circumstance am a Colombian citizen. Grandfather was from Spain and my father was born there. I was born in the US, but have both citizenships.
I lived in Colombia for the past two years before coming home. And Colombia and Venezuela are both full of computets. All kinds. Though SCO is a pretty popular OS over there. Many old school cobol accounting apps running on it.
ANYWAY. I do not think MS is too worried about losing Venezuela. When you go to a computer store in either country they give you windows free with the pc. Not a licnesed copy. They give you the cost of the liscense, you can get windows with a liscense or without. Who the fuck is gonna choose to pay more money? Not Latin Americans. They gotta pinch pennies. And if they got the money they will not do it anyway.
If you buy that liscsense, you better call MS from the store and verify it is valid, cause it is probably hoked up anyway.
I installed several large networks and ordered Dell PC's for the warranties and I could be sure I was getting the licenses legally. And I did. All windows and my big Red Hat Server.
You think Chavez would actually pay Gates? With latins get the money up front. You think if Chavez used pirate software, gates could do something about it? NO. Venezuela is an entity for itself.
This might look like a win for us but is just clever spin from our community.
Venezuela could care less about its systems. What you got is some good sysadmins whispering free in Politicians ears, makes the Politicians look good, like they were paying for software anyway.
In those countries software, music piracy is an accepted norm. You can buy burned cd's in shopping centers on the streets. They will chip your playstation while you wait. This announcement will not garner any interest there. People are too worried about food and shelter.
And yeah there are nice areas. For the privileged few. The top 5 percent. Yeah I two ISDN lines in my apartment. And the montly cost would have fed a family of five.
Show me where opensource benefits latin america. Medical records, state agencies, but until then this announcement has all the weight of Pam Anderson announcing her new fashion line.
Puto
The Microsoft Healthcare Users Group. This is a group of vendors that sit togehter on a board that define all standards for healthcare products that run on MS software. To be a member of this group or state that your software is compliant they certify you.
They strictly adhere to all governmental regulations for healthcare records including EDI and storing of sensitive medical records.
The medical industry is a huge economic buyer in the hardware and software industry and MS based vendors have always been in strict compliance with government standards.
1. Check to see if your software is HL7(health care 7) HL7 is a protocol for formatting, transmitting and receiving data in a healthcare environment.
2. Ask your vendor how they store the medical rcords, is it hl7 compliant. I think you guys have a homegrown product? IF your product is home grown it does'nt apply to the governmental standard for handling medical data, the EULA is the least of your worries.
3. IF the product is home grown. Cover your ass.
MSHUG is microsoft centric but a good start for you.
I did medical software for ten years and dealt with all these issues long ago. Your vendor should be able to point you in the right direction. BUT IF YOUR SOFTWARE CAME FROM A VAR, DONT ASK HIM, CALL THE ACTUAL HOME COMPANY! The developers will give you more of a straight answer than the var.
PUTO
There are six other contributors to the Project. Microsoft and Cisco are there and while they are two mighty large behemoths in the industry there are several other people and orginizations with their eggs in the basket too.
The ed copy almost urges us to pour wood on the MS sacrificial pyre.
Any large outfit with software, hardware, anything do do with networking is gonna have their fingers in this pie. And MS or Cisco would have not been idiots to get on it. And both companied can put money and people on the case.
MS realizes UNIX(Linux)is a force and although they do not like, know they must coexist. The days of MS thinking they could destory us or over. But every crusade needs its zealots, and us on the Nix have em.
Hey if MS can do something to secure the MS networks I have to support, and it contributes to the community. Take their money, develop it, and we all benefit from it. I might get a weekend off.
Just a draft for a project with multiple backers. But is has MS in it so lets skew the editorial comment.
Truth in Journalism is hard to come by we all have learned to read between the lines.
We read the slashdot cause it compiles info from sources on the web we do not have go looking for. Neither time nor inclination. But referencing someone elses work, and then putting a slant on it is something else. It is cheesy. If you want to spin, learn to spin. Sometimes the articles here have all the intelligence of liner notes from 80's hair bands.
Puto
Well I can't imagine what school's must be teaching these days cause the younger generation I do run into seems to be completely clueless for many things.
//.
Math, science. But also literature, geography, world events. But no couth is one of the biggest problems.
I admin from home. Sit in my underwear, drink beer, do not shave. See me in public like that? Hell no. I go on an interview for a possible client and I look like the man from IBM in the 80's. The orginal Men in Black
I am 32 and not that old(or at least I dont think so). Here is what I know.
Late 80's schools had gotten so horrid they had to administer tests that had to be taken before graduation. Basic skills tests. You might have passed your exams but still had to take this one. I never took it but I saw one and it was frightfully easy. Along the lines of the ASVAB for the military.
Schools dropped physics and trig to go to things like Alebgra 1,2 and geometry and that was it in math.
Anyone have that physics teacher who used the overhead for the notes? And he had written the notes originally back in 63 and over the years had made corrections to them? But sill used them. Probably still teaching.
TENURE - stay here long enough and we will give you a free cushion for your ass.
I went to a boarding school for my formative years and while I did recieve a fair amount of ass whuppins I did get some great teachers who really got me into science and math and literature. We built a Heathkit Hero in the dorm and fiddled with ham radios, and even had a unix box in '83. A DEC. And I owned your ass playing miner 2049er and Lode Runner on the Apple
I then switched to a local school and bam. I saw the wonders of a regular high school. Sure I got girls and booze and had quite a bit of fun, but I did not learn near as much or the teachers did nothing to generate my interest in things. Well, methane soap bubble torches were fun.
Teachers aren't paid enough. Private schools do tend to get the better ones. I graduated in the end from a public school, and had good teachers, but my private school experience was by far superior. And when I choose to lay my eggs I will make the sacrifice and send my little geeks to a private school. For them.
Teachers also need to be recertified every couple of years, just like people in the tech industry. "I had a TRS-80 back in the day so I don't ever need to take a computer class". Teachers get complacent, light a fire under their asses.
Bit of a rant here, but we do need to do something about it. Our world ya know.
And I do not care if you are 18 and can write a script that will control the weather, make Bill Gates give it all to charity, or even make Slashdotters a more level-headed bunch. Education is the the real fucking deal.
Take the time. I had to do it at 32 and it sucks.
Puto
I just picked up an 8500LE, which though although claimed to be a lower end part came with same specs and s+-video out. 87 bucks at newegg.com. I flashed it to retail bios and I got a regualr 8500. Noi biggie. And it is an awsome card, 2d and 3d. For 109 dollars you can get the 128 meg version, makes sure it says le.
I should of spent the money and got the 128 meg version.
But for 87 bucks I got something that kicks ass.
Go ATI.
Puto
My primary function in IT has been on the medical end. Just about every aspect. And I have used the Nixes and MS products in offices I have managed and was the it director for a small hospital. I have 12 years in this side of industry and have seen it ALL.
U TF -8&q=word+key+expanders
The problems you mention are true but are a little exaggerated.
1. MS word is a bit of a learning curve if you come from Wordperfect(which in it's day rocked). But all of those items you mentioned that cannot be done with Word, can be. MS is quite big on the Healthcare front. I have implemented key expanders for word since 1995.
No one know about google at the hospital?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=
2. A WELL PLANNED ROLLOUT.
This goes for any software implentation that is in a production enviroment such as a hospital. Have 25 percent of the staff begin to switch at first, have em use it for half a day, but slowly roll it out and ease the new product it. ANY change of software will cause downtime in production. AND all employees when switching from something known to something new create a lotta FUD. They are scared, don't want to learn something new, and in many cases they know the new stuff might bring to light some of their faults. Sounds like the hospital IT staff was a little clueless.
Then which brings me the the point of TCO and standards.
Word in the longrun would probably be cheaper than open office and easier to support because people have it at home, can pick up a a dummies book, go to New Horizons, call a friend, many venues for support. And the more widely spread the product on the market, = less calls I get because many people know it and can lean over and help their coworker.
We do need an open standard for documents. I totally agree. BUT when medical records and forms need to be sent in formats that cannot change and need to print on your printer like I look at them on my screen. Insurance claim forms adhere to a certain standard and if they are 1 millionth of a mm off, then the companies wont take em.
Then I am going to choose the most widely accepted format, which in this case is Word.
Word has an 85 percent saturation in the medical industry, and sadly enough I have to go with it but cause it will be around in the long run, TCO. I train em on Word now, the industry supports it, and it will be around.
Word Perfect has been floundering since the 90s. They actually were going out of business and Novell bought them. I have a CD that says Novells Word Perfect. The widespread use is that it has always been bundled free with systems.
This is not a Microsoft ad. As an IT director I choose the least painful route and the less costly in the long run. And in the medical industry word fits the bill.
I use Unix, I like it. I use open office. I use Office, I like em both. Office is a good product
Puto
There was a special version of NT for each seperate box. When you installed NT 4.0 for Alpha, you had to use NT Alpha cd's.
So all development was halted when the quit support for it years ago.
I am looking at my first copy of back office now. Six discs, with one set for Intel and one set for Alpha.
10 grand for 25 users.
Yikes
Puto
I dunno if computer translation is going to be up to par for a long time.
I speak both Spanish and English. English is native and Spanish is due to 3 years in South America. And my grandparents are from Spain. I did not really know anything until I lived in Colombia and my granny who has Phd in her own language was a pretty harsh mistress. I was 21 years old when I learned. Of course living with a Colombian sysadmin girl for two years was a big help. She liked the Penguin.
Languages differ too much from location to location. Justlike English in regions in the US. I am from New Orleans and the english changes from neighborhood to neoghborhood.
Word meanings and expressions might be exactly the same in spelling and sound but mean different things to different people.
To build these variables into software would be a *HUGE* task.
I think the best we could hope for is software that does a decent brute translation and then a human does the final edit.
The problem is one word might be ok to use in Puerto Rico(well they are confused about which language they speak) but socially unacceptable in Colombia. Software cannot know the difference.
People will always do the translation gig better.
Puto
Course my handle is pretty bad in any Latin country.