Actually, I have an uncle in Taiwan who did this (and may still). When he was doing it, the factories who made the pcb board were more than happy to let him have the scrap boards which tested bad. These boards were dumped into a 50 gallon or so container with a bunch of nasty chemicals. The gold on the card connectors would fall off and settle on the bottom. That mess was glopped up onto a small ceramic bowl, where he subsequently used some other chemicals and a acetylene torch to melt it down and purify it. He had about 3 or 4 ounces of gold by the time he was done with it. I am not sure how many boards he went through though!
Does anyone know what the legal status of click through agreements would be if I get to the install, then let my kid click on the ok button (she's 6)? Or put the keyboard on the ground and let one of my dogs run over it? I do not think you can be legally bound to a contract unless you are 18 at signing, and certainly my dogs do not have any legal status (plus they can't read). Or if I have my mother (who can't read English) do it?
OK, then how about I flame you for not knowing the reason for the big award in the hot coffee lawsuit: (blah blah blah)
Yet another fruity defender of the stupid. Guess what? I drink hot chocolate with coffee at work. This means I 1) either microwave some water or 2) get water from the cafeteria downstairs which is probably 10 degrees from boiling (it does make the styrofoam cup a little softer). Now the instructions on my Hershey's hot chocolate say "heat water for 1-1.5 minutes or until hot, but not boiling", while the directions on my Maxwell House/Kraft French Vanilla coffee mix say "Slowly pour 8 fl. oz. boiling water" over while stirring.
So by the reasoning of all the defenders of this stupid person, I can spill the coffee I made on myself, get 200+ degree burns, and sue Maxwell house because they are "negligently" endangering me by telling me to use boiling water. By the same token, I can sue Hershey's because I can heat the water to just "not boiling" and burn myself.
You know, I EXPECT restaurants to FOLLOW the instructions, and even MORE diligently. So unless their is some Federal law requiring that coffee be served at something less than just under boiling, or less than a scalding temperature, the stupid lady deserves nothing but ridicule and scorn, like most of the population has given her.
We had some stupid person here at work get a steam burn or something because she opened her food container from the microwave. Then she went to the nurse. Then it has to get reported to OSHA. So now we have these big signs on the microwaves that say "CAUTION Food or drink items may be hot when removed from this appliance"
Does no one have common sense anymore? Why do we have to legislate for the stupid? Seatbelt laws, childseat laws, helmet laws, etc...are all there not because intelligent people don't do it, but because stupid people 1) need things explained to them before they do it and 2) because having a law scares them SO MUCH that they will follow the rules, not because they KNOW to, but because the government TOLD them to. And yet here in Arizona I routinely see kids sitting in the back of trucks, being held by mom in the front seat. waving from the back seat, etc....
The punishment for being stupid should be death, or living with whatever happened to the idiots, not MORE LAWS AND LAWSUITS.
I do not understand how this is remotely interesting. I had a gym membership (because of my wife, not because I wanted to join) and they had a whole bank of cycling machines with different "games" setup.
Granted, I only tried one (some scenic thing biking around and racing others) but there were a couple others that I am sure were more "interactive".
This was a year or so after the birth of my daughter, which would make this FIVE YEARS AGO.
Is the poster of this story trying to stereotype the typical/. user as one who has never seen a gym before???
just curious: why don't you print to file on your home PC and take the file to work and print that?
me, I use acrobat and print directly to a.pdf and then take that wherever.
Umm, these people are actually BUYING Turbotax. The retail price for Adobe Acrobat is $250. I do not think most people are willing to buy Adobe Acrobat Writer just to print their taxes.
On the flip side, you CAN go to Adobe's website and get files converted to.pdf for free (first 5 files). But it only supports a certain set of programs, and Turbotax is not one of them. Although you can print to a Postscript format and it may work.
You really do have this, with the two discs. I had that same feeling when I watched the Extended version. I just watched it in two blocks of time. I hope future extended version are also done the same way. Initially I was annoyed at the 2 DVDs for the one film, because I have to change discs. Now I hope the other two are done the same way. Essentially you get a disc per book for a total of 6 near 2 hour movies.
That is why my next purchase will be a nice 300 disc Sony DVD/CD changer (I already have the five disc one, because with kids LESS handling of DVDs is better!). I will be able to put in all 6 (or 60) discs after all the super extended special editions are out, do continuous play and watch a LOTR marathon.
Uh... "one huge novel"? Where'd you get that idea?
It was originally supposed to be 6 books when he wrote it but the publishers, at the time of the original printing, wanted to save money on printing costs and force readers to buy more of the series all at once. They combined books 1 and 2 into one book, 3 and 4 into the next, and 5 and 6 into the last.
Probably from watching the extra features on the DVD, where it says that he wan't happy about it being split up into different book?
But thats exactly the same as having them on two different virtual desktops. Instead of moving your eyes from one screen to the other, flip from one desktop to the other. Tie this to a shortcut key, and its second nature. Why is that different?
It is different in that having to hit a key is essentially interrupting your thought process. Yes, you have to hit refresh on your browser, but to SEE the screen change from one program to the next and then hit the refresh is much slower than just looking over. Uses less energy, and my ass can get bigger in my chair.
The other issue is that in my case, my dev screen is in 1280x1024 while my browser screen is in 800x600 or 1024x768. You still have to keep a certain minimum screen size in mind when designing pages. I do not know of a hotkey that will let you change the resolution while you switch to your other virtual desktop (of course I am using Windows so....). That would be even worse in the scenario you are showing, as now it is:
Save change in editor Hit switch key Watch as CRT changes resolution to new resolution, or LCD switch to a screen with a 1" to 2" black border or worse, an upsized to fit from lower resolution mess. Now hit browser refresh.
If you are making several changes, keystrokes just to change your desktop back and forth take time. We live in a society which values how much work can get done in X amount of time, so more work in less time = more time to do more work.
The story you are referring to is this one.
And an 16 gauss field can make a frog levitate!
See here
Magnets are really the next frontier of technology, we just spend too much money using them to throw particles around rather than using the actual natural properties of them.
--ngoy
I understand the need for detail, but we are talking changes of one bit in a scattered pattern. I have not researched it, but I think greyscale medical imaging is on the 10 bit level, so 1024 different shades of grey. If you change the first (or even second) bit, I doubt a doctor is going to point to that and make a diagnosis on a laser imaged x-ray.
And thanks to our wonderful health care industry, it probably is immaterial anyways since the doctors get paid NOT to refer you to specialists anyways...
OIC. In context of the latter part of your message I understand what you are referring to, but the disgruntled masses of MSCE's still made no sense. Most of them are paper MCSE's and couldn't use a command line since the mouse doesn't work well in it.
To reply to the point of the webserver statistics though, do you really think the good hackers get caught? Microsoft gets the publicity because: 1)It is a monopoly, and pretty much everyone hates those 2) Their products are easier for the less technically inclined to hack 3)Everyone wants to bash Microsoft
I wasn't aware of the webserver penetration, that is enlightening information, but that just means that there are more insidious ways that people have found to hack in that we will never know about.
In addition to the comments above, Epson (who hasn't put out a new digital camera in quite awhile) has had something called IAS (Image Authentication System). Per their web site: Image authentication is provided from the point of capture and thereafter
EPSON IAS-protected images remain standard JPEG images, viewable with all software programs that read JPEG images
Image manipulation can be detected down to the level of a single bit
Verification of image integrity is fast and easy.
IAS images suffer no visible loss of imaqe quality
Compatible with the EPSON PhotoPC 700, 750Z, 800, 850Z, 3000Z, and 3100Z digital cameras
Works with Windows 95, 98, 2000, Me, XP, and Windows NT 4.0 (with Service Pack 3 or higher)
Not a lot of information, but theirs has been out for a LONG time. It has "non-visible" to the human eye detection, so it should have sufficed for any forensic photographer that could use a 3MP image (which I don't think is sufficient for decent crime scene photography, but I am not a CSI).
I personally do not see where a "lossless" type of authentication is useful, even in medical imaging, is one shade off going to make a difference?
Oh please, blaming an increase on viruses and trojans on "Windows people" (what, are we like pod people?) is pathetic. The increase is directly releated to the growth of Linux as a viable alternative to Windows. The reason it is targeted more is mainlydue to things like the Russian mod and related hackers, because where the servers are is where the money is. If the bulk of web servers were *nix, then there would be tons of exploits, hacks, etc...by those who have a financial interest. The rest of virus writing crowd just have a joy for creating MASS havoc, so when a majority of desktops are Linux, guess where the majority of viruses are going to be?
NIANALU (No, I am not a Linux user), and don't plan to be one for the foreseable future. Windows works fine for me, and no, I am not unable to grow with technology, and have no fear of becoming "unemployed" by Linux. If my company decides to implement it, then by all means I will go with the flow. Until then, I don't have the urge.
Wow, only 30K eh? I guess I will get a second mortgage on my house so I can be the low end of those who have WAAAAAAYYYY too much money to spend. Was there anything actually interesting in the article at all except that Tony Hawk has a chipped playstation so he can play burnt ps/2 games? There wasn't anything in the article that really pointed out anything extroadinary technology-wise.
(Back to Reality Now) I wired my house recently (not a fun thing to do in Arizona mind you, at least when it is warm out). I put in two lines of CAT5, two lines of RG6, and one line of CAT3 for voice. Each of the bedrooms got a set, the living room got one, and the kitchen is next. Everything goes to my office (which used to be the family room before I walled it off) down from the attic to a structured media center box (whatever you call them) that I got for $10 from a surplus building supplier. It came with one telephone distribution module and I also got some extra 5 jack network modules from them too. So my Sprint MMDS internet connection goes into the room to my Linksys router, which then is plugged into the panel so the other rooms have internet connectivity. My phone line also runs into the panel and gets distributed to the other rooms. The panel can handle 4 pairs, so when my daughter gets old enough and assuming we are still using copper phone lines I can just punch down her phone line from the main house phone to her new line.
I go to local auctions a lot, so I paid minimal prices for the cables and stuff, probably $10-$15 for the the CAT5 and CAT3 total, and $5 for the RG6 per spool (I have about a mile of coax now, don't know what the heck to do with it). I used Snap-N-Seal connectors for the cable, with connectors I got from Ebay, and the RJ stuff with a professional crimper set from Ebay as well (Sargent tools). So my total cost to wire my house myself? Less than $150.
I have a friend who neglected to tell me he wanted to have his house done and it cost him over $500 for 3 or 4 ports with a hub. I would have done it for cost of parts and free food. Oh well, his loss.
ngoy (Remember to wear a dust mask if you have an older house. That blown in insulation is nasty sh!t!)
Well, I guess you don't have a choice, but the other two manufacturers that I am familiar with (Toshiba and IBM) have always had external battery pack chargers available. Toshiba had (and may still) a charger that had spots for two batteries to charge at once.
In your situation, I would recommend checking other departments for a non-repairable laptop that still charges (like a cracked lcd or something that the school will not pay to fix) and use that to charge batteries with. Or check eBay for a laptop that has similar damage but boots.
ngoy
Re:What (cool thing) could you do w/multiple devic
on
Tackling AGP 8X
·
· Score: 5, Informative
In gaming, you could use multiple POV's in flight simulators (I think M$ flight sim supports three monitors, IIRC), or racing (Front, left, right). In desktop publishing it is usful for seeing two pages at once, or four pages at once depending on what resolution you are using.
At work I leave Outlook open on one all the time, have Visual Studio open on that one and an Internet Exploder screen open on the right screen. That way when I make changes in VS on the left I can instantly refresh the IE window on the right without doing all the toggling back crap.
I also used to do reports and presentations. Having dual monitors allowed me to have Excel/Access/whatever source program open on the left, and Powerpoint on the right. I could drag a chart from Excel full size and drop it into Powerpoint without having to do cut/alt-tab switch window/paste. Much easier, gives WYSIWIG some credence to its name.
I am running dual monitors on an NT4 box with 2 Matrox Millenium PCI's (have had dual monitors for 4 or five years now I think on that one). My other box has a Matrox G450 AGP and a Matrox PCI Millenium for dual capability on it (W2K).
IMHO, Matrox makes the best multi-display drivers/cards at a reasonable price and have had them for quite a long time compared to the others. They have a quad output card also but it is costs a bit more than the duals.
In a cost/benefit analysis, you would find that a combo unit would be a bad thing. Kind of like a tv/vcr combo, or a scan/copy/fax/printer.
Although the integration of the components makes it cheaper for the manufacturer to produce (to a certain extent) what happens to you when one part fails? You are screwed! PSU dead with working UPS = useless. Likewise the inverse. At least if they are separate you can repair one or the other and not have both sent out. If you have a tv/vcr combo and the vcr goes out, you are out of tv until it gets fixed. If the TV goes out, well, doesn't do any good to have a vcr, plus you won't have it anyways since it will be out for service.
But the corporations love selling people this integrated crap, because they know that you will sooner buy a new one than wait for it be replaced or repaired. Have you seen the cost of repairing electronics recently?
Since I am from the old school of computing technology (where off is actually off, none of this soft-on/off crap) it surprised me when I was putting in some dimms into a friend's HP that the RAM slots were powered for some reason (no, it was not in sleep mode). I pushed on the dimm and suddenly saw a bright point of light and little puff of smoke. I yanked the dimm out, only to find that one of the gold traces on the dim got so hot it melted the epoxy (or whatever holds it onto the pcb) that held it on and soldered itself to the dimm slot on the pc. So I ended up using a twice as large dimm in the other slot.
Moral of the story is unplug the power cable (we all do that don't we). Nothing gets your heart going like electricity! Like the time I was putting in a gable fan in my attic and cut a live wire with my T-Cutter's. THAT was a bigger spark, and burnt a nice big hole in the cutters. At least I got to exchange them at Home Depot
ngoy (I'm still alive! Darwin ain't got nothin' on me!)
I was tihnking the same thing but for regular monitors. They already sell those fruity 3D lcd shutter glasses anyways. So if a monitor refreshes at 85 to 120 Hz, you could theoretically show 2 people different screens at 42.5 to 60 Hz by showing each an interleaved screen that was synced to their glasses. So if you could get Quake, UT, etc... to work with a simpler control device, you could have two or more people play with the same system.
I don't think the computing power is there though to accomadate running the same program twice on the same computer, although really you are just performing the tasks that the programmed AI would do for a character in the game, so maybe giving more manual control isn't a big deal.
"Hey honey, can we get this Ferrai instead of the minivan? It's much safer, comes with 1 gig of RAM instead of the 256MB in the van. We could hit a brick wall and not feel a thing! Just think how safe our children will be!
By your "interpretation" of the meaning of buffer cache, I assume RAMBUS is RAM that is either shaped like a bus, or is a busload of RAM; DDRRAM is as big as my wife's breasts; and EDO RAM is the main memory type of Edo Japan.
Do you actually know what the inside of a harddrive looks like? Extra RAM helps shock absorbtion as much as my mother-in-law's lack of bathing helps body odor.
The amusing thing at this company is that the they have us working as contractors. We have the IT support contract for the "IT supported" systems. We also have a second contract with their T&M (time and materials) custom projects group to provide headcount to them (there are actually two groups that provide non-IT support). But, sometimes we get a request for services from a customer not through the internal group. So we have to tell the group we have a contract with, point them in that direction. Then we get a request for the EXACT same customer, but now the charge is passed to the group who we contracted to, who then charges the original customer our hour rate plus a percentage.
To top it all off, there was a meeting with both contracts and us, and we found out we were going to provide resources for the SAME project, but that the two group were competing against each other to get the business! As the headcount provider for both groups, I found this to be the most hilarious thing imaginable.
Yeah, sure, the only company that controls both hardware and OS, and they will be happy to sell a computer without DRM? I suspect they are WAY farther ahead with it, just that no one knows it yet. Remember, the bulk of the "artsy" types use Macs, and they are the ones that want their stuff protected (Like when you PAY to get your kid's pictures or wedding pictures, but the photographer owns the copyright to YOUR picture. That is a load of crap.) Adobe Photoshop has digital watermarking built in, you think that is hark to put into a regular software or even a hardware product?
And then for every minor os upgrade Apple comes out with, you will have to pay $100.
"Here's the OSXI.3 upgrade. That's $130. Oh, you have 11.2 already? That's nice. This is the NEW 11.3 version. That will be $130 please."
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Actually, I have an uncle in Taiwan who did this (and may still). When he was doing it, the factories who made the pcb board were more than happy to let him have the scrap boards which tested bad. These boards were dumped into a 50 gallon or so container with a bunch of nasty chemicals. The gold on the card connectors would fall off and settle on the bottom. That mess was glopped up onto a small ceramic bowl, where he subsequently used some other chemicals and a acetylene torch to melt it down and purify it. He had about 3 or 4 ounces of gold by the time he was done with it. I am not sure how many boards he went through though!
Does anyone know what the legal status of click through agreements would be if I get to the install, then let my kid click on the ok button (she's 6)? Or put the keyboard on the ground and let one of my dogs run over it? I do not think you can be legally bound to a contract unless you are 18 at signing, and certainly my dogs do not have any legal status (plus they can't read). Or if I have my mother (who can't read English) do it?
Anyone?
I do not understand how this is remotely interesting. I had a gym membership (because of my wife, not because I wanted to join) and they had a whole bank of cycling machines with different "games" setup.
/. user as one who has never seen a gym before???
Granted, I only tried one (some scenic thing biking around and racing others) but there were a couple others that I am sure were more "interactive".
This was a year or so after the birth of my daughter, which would make this FIVE YEARS AGO.
Is the poster of this story trying to stereotype the typical
Umm, these people are actually BUYING Turbotax. The retail price for Adobe Acrobat is $250. I do not think most people are willing to buy Adobe Acrobat Writer just to print their taxes.
On the flip side, you CAN go to Adobe's website and get files converted to
That is why my next purchase will be a nice 300 disc Sony DVD/CD changer (I already have the five disc one, because with kids LESS handling of DVDs is better!). I will be able to put in all 6 (or 60) discs after all the super extended special editions are out, do continuous play and watch a LOTR marathon.
It is different in that having to hit a key is essentially interrupting your thought process. Yes, you have to hit refresh on your browser, but to SEE the screen change from one program to the next and then hit the refresh is much slower than just looking over. Uses less energy, and my ass can get bigger in my chair.
The other issue is that in my case, my dev screen is in 1280x1024 while my browser screen is in 800x600 or 1024x768. You still have to keep a certain minimum screen size in mind when designing pages. I do not know of a hotkey that will let you change the resolution while you switch to your other virtual desktop (of course I am using Windows so....). That would be even worse in the scenario you are showing, as now it is:
Save change in editor
Hit switch key
Watch as CRT changes resolution to new resolution, or LCD switch to a screen with a 1" to 2" black border or worse, an upsized to fit from lower resolution mess.
Now hit browser refresh.
If you are making several changes, keystrokes just to change your desktop back and forth take time. We live in a society which values how much work can get done in X amount of time, so more work in less time = more time to do more work.
--ngoy
The story you are referring to is this one. And an 16 gauss field can make a frog levitate! See here Magnets are really the next frontier of technology, we just spend too much money using them to throw particles around rather than using the actual natural properties of them. --ngoy
Nononono, you don't understand. Britney IS the album, the music is the filler.
You think we actually are listening to the music when we see the Pepsi commercials? I hate Pepsi! Coke Rules!
Downloading Britney Spears' album - free
Poster of Britney Spears (for daughter(ahem) - $10
TV for watching Britney Spears commericials - $400
Downloading video of Britney Spears t!t showing from her dress - priceless
ngoy
I understand the need for detail, but we are talking changes of one bit in a scattered pattern. I have not researched it, but I think greyscale medical imaging is on the 10 bit level, so 1024 different shades of grey. If you change the first (or even second) bit, I doubt a doctor is going to point to that and make a diagnosis on a laser imaged x-ray.
And thanks to our wonderful health care industry, it probably is immaterial anyways since the doctors get paid NOT to refer you to specialists anyways...
ngoy
OIC. In context of the latter part of your message I understand what you are referring to, but the disgruntled masses of MSCE's still made no sense. Most of them are paper MCSE's and couldn't use a command line since the mouse doesn't work well in it.
To reply to the point of the webserver statistics though, do you really think the good hackers get caught? Microsoft gets the publicity because:
1)It is a monopoly, and pretty much everyone hates those
2) Their products are easier for the less technically inclined to hack
3)Everyone wants to bash Microsoft
I wasn't aware of the webserver penetration, that is enlightening information, but that just means that there are more insidious ways that people have found to hack in that we will never know about.
ngoy
In addition to the comments above, Epson (who hasn't put out a new digital camera in quite awhile) has had something called IAS (Image Authentication System). Per their web site:
Image authentication is provided from the point of capture and thereafter
EPSON IAS-protected images remain standard JPEG images, viewable with all software programs that read JPEG images
Image manipulation can be detected down to the level of a single bit
Verification of image integrity is fast and easy.
IAS images suffer no visible loss of imaqe quality
Compatible with the EPSON PhotoPC 700, 750Z, 800, 850Z, 3000Z, and 3100Z digital cameras
Works with Windows 95, 98, 2000, Me, XP, and Windows NT 4.0 (with Service Pack 3 or higher)
Not a lot of information, but theirs has been out for a LONG time. It has "non-visible" to the human eye detection, so it should have sufficed for any forensic photographer that could use a 3MP image (which I don't think is sufficient for decent crime scene photography, but I am not a CSI).
I personally do not see where a "lossless" type of authentication is useful, even in medical imaging, is one shade off going to make a difference?
ngoy
Oh please, blaming an increase on viruses and trojans on "Windows people" (what, are we like pod people?) is pathetic. The increase is directly releated to the growth of Linux as a viable alternative to Windows. The reason it is targeted more is mainlydue to things like the Russian mod and related hackers, because where the servers are is where the money is. If the bulk of web servers were *nix, then there would be tons of exploits, hacks, etc...by those who have a financial interest. The rest of virus writing crowd just have a joy for creating MASS havoc, so when a majority of desktops are Linux, guess where the majority of viruses are going to be?
NIANALU (No, I am not a Linux user), and don't plan to be one for the foreseable future. Windows works fine for me, and no, I am not unable to grow with technology, and have no fear of becoming "unemployed" by Linux. If my company decides to implement it, then by all means I will go with the flow. Until then, I don't have the urge.
ngoy
I submitted the same story with the much catchier headline of "Linux helps Chrysler's crashing"
2002-10-21 15:53:27 Linux helps Chrysler's crashing (articles,linux) (rejected)
Or maybe his submission was earlier. But mine would have gotten more eyeballs!
ngoy
Wow, only 30K eh? I guess I will get a second mortgage on my house so I can be the low end of those who have WAAAAAAYYYY too much money to spend. Was there anything actually interesting in the article at all except that Tony Hawk has a chipped playstation so he can play burnt ps/2 games? There wasn't anything in the article that really pointed out anything extroadinary technology-wise.
(Back to Reality Now) I wired my house recently (not a fun thing to do in Arizona mind you, at least when it is warm out). I put in two lines of CAT5, two lines of RG6, and one line of CAT3 for voice. Each of the bedrooms got a set, the living room got one, and the kitchen is next. Everything goes to my office (which used to be the family room before I walled it off) down from the attic to a structured media center box (whatever you call them) that I got for $10 from a surplus building supplier. It came with one telephone distribution module and I also got some extra 5 jack network modules from them too. So my Sprint MMDS internet connection goes into the room to my Linksys router, which then is plugged into the panel so the other rooms have internet connectivity. My phone line also runs into the panel and gets distributed to the other rooms. The panel can handle 4 pairs, so when my daughter gets old enough and assuming we are still using copper phone lines I can just punch down her phone line from the main house phone to her new line.
I go to local auctions a lot, so I paid minimal prices for the cables and stuff, probably $10-$15 for the the CAT5 and CAT3 total, and $5 for the RG6 per spool (I have about a mile of coax now, don't know what the heck to do with it). I used Snap-N-Seal connectors for the cable, with connectors I got from Ebay, and the RJ stuff with a professional crimper set from Ebay as well (Sargent tools). So my total cost to wire my house myself? Less than $150.
I have a friend who neglected to tell me he wanted to have his house done and it cost him over $500 for 3 or 4 ports with a hub. I would have done it for cost of parts and free food. Oh well, his loss.
ngoy
(Remember to wear a dust mask if you have an older house. That blown in insulation is nasty sh!t!)
Well, I guess you don't have a choice, but the other two manufacturers that I am familiar with (Toshiba and IBM) have always had external battery pack chargers available. Toshiba had (and may still) a charger that had spots for two batteries to charge at once.
In your situation, I would recommend checking other departments for a non-repairable laptop that still charges (like a cracked lcd or something that the school will not pay to fix) and use that to charge batteries with. Or check eBay for a laptop that has similar damage but boots.
ngoy
In gaming, you could use multiple POV's in flight simulators (I think M$ flight sim supports three monitors, IIRC), or racing (Front, left, right). In desktop publishing it is usful for seeing two pages at once, or four pages at once depending on what resolution you are using.
At work I leave Outlook open on one all the time, have Visual Studio open on that one and an Internet Exploder screen open on the right screen. That way when I make changes in VS on the left I can instantly refresh the IE window on the right without doing all the toggling back crap.
I also used to do reports and presentations. Having dual monitors allowed me to have Excel/Access/whatever source program open on the left, and Powerpoint on the right. I could drag a chart from Excel full size and drop it into Powerpoint without having to do cut/alt-tab switch window/paste. Much easier, gives WYSIWIG some credence to its name.
I am running dual monitors on an NT4 box with 2 Matrox Millenium PCI's (have had dual monitors for 4 or five years now I think on that one). My other box has a Matrox G450 AGP and a Matrox PCI Millenium for dual capability on it (W2K).
IMHO, Matrox makes the best multi-display drivers/cards at a reasonable price and have had them for quite a long time compared to the others. They have a quad output card also but it is costs a bit more than the duals.
ngoy
In a cost/benefit analysis, you would find that a combo unit would be a bad thing. Kind of like a tv/vcr combo, or a scan/copy/fax/printer.
Although the integration of the components makes it cheaper for the manufacturer to produce (to a certain extent) what happens to you when one part fails? You are screwed! PSU dead with working UPS = useless. Likewise the inverse. At least if they are separate you can repair one or the other and not have both sent out. If you have a tv/vcr combo and the vcr goes out, you are out of tv until it gets fixed. If the TV goes out, well, doesn't do any good to have a vcr, plus you won't have it anyways since it will be out for service.
But the corporations love selling people this integrated crap, because they know that you will sooner buy a new one than wait for it be replaced or repaired. Have you seen the cost of repairing electronics recently?
ngoy
Since I am from the old school of computing technology (where off is actually off, none of this soft-on/off crap) it surprised me when I was putting in some dimms into a friend's HP that the RAM slots were powered for some reason (no, it was not in sleep mode). I pushed on the dimm and suddenly saw a bright point of light and little puff of smoke. I yanked the dimm out, only to find that one of the gold traces on the dim got so hot it melted the epoxy (or whatever holds it onto the pcb) that held it on and soldered itself to the dimm slot on the pc. So I ended up using a twice as large dimm in the other slot.
Moral of the story is unplug the power cable (we all do that don't we). Nothing gets your heart going like electricity! Like the time I was putting in a gable fan in my attic and cut a live wire with my T-Cutter's. THAT was a bigger spark, and burnt a nice big hole in the cutters. At least I got to exchange them at Home Depot
ngoy
(I'm still alive! Darwin ain't got nothin' on me!)
I was tihnking the same thing but for regular monitors. They already sell those fruity 3D lcd shutter glasses anyways. So if a monitor refreshes at 85 to 120 Hz, you could theoretically show 2 people different screens at 42.5 to 60 Hz by showing each an interleaved screen that was synced to their glasses. So if you could get Quake, UT, etc... to work with a simpler control device, you could have two or more people play with the same system.
I don't think the computing power is there though to accomadate running the same program twice on the same computer, although really you are just performing the tasks that the programmed AI would do for a character in the game, so maybe giving more manual control isn't a big deal.
ngoy
Wow, a whole new use for RAM.
"Hey honey, can we get this Ferrai instead of the minivan? It's much safer, comes with 1 gig of RAM instead of the 256MB in the van. We could hit a brick wall and not feel a thing! Just think how safe our children will be!
By your "interpretation" of the meaning of buffer cache, I assume RAMBUS is RAM that is either shaped like a bus, or is a busload of RAM; DDRRAM is as big as my wife's breasts; and EDO RAM is the main memory type of Edo Japan.
Do you actually know what the inside of a harddrive looks like? Extra RAM helps shock absorbtion as much as my mother-in-law's lack of bathing helps body odor.
ngoy
Are you sure you don't mean "pricked" wieners? Are there channels other than 594-599? Shango
The amusing thing at this company is that the they have us working as contractors. We have the IT support contract for the "IT supported" systems. We also have a second contract with their T&M (time and materials) custom projects group to provide headcount to them (there are actually two groups that provide non-IT support). But, sometimes we get a request for services from a customer not through the internal group. So we have to tell the group we have a contract with, point them in that direction. Then we get a request for the EXACT same customer, but now the charge is passed to the group who we contracted to, who then charges the original customer our hour rate plus a percentage.
To top it all off, there was a meeting with both contracts and us, and we found out we were going to provide resources for the SAME project, but that the two group were competing against each other to get the business! As the headcount provider for both groups, I found this to be the most hilarious thing imaginable.
Oh well, such is life in large corporations.
--ngoy
Yeah, sure, the only company that controls both hardware and OS, and they will be happy to sell a computer without DRM? I suspect they are WAY farther ahead with it, just that no one knows it yet. Remember, the bulk of the "artsy" types use Macs, and they are the ones that want their stuff protected (Like when you PAY to get your kid's pictures or wedding pictures, but the photographer owns the copyright to YOUR picture. That is a load of crap.) Adobe Photoshop has digital watermarking built in, you think that is hark to put into a regular software or even a hardware product?
.3 upgrade. That's $130. Oh, you have 11.2 already? That's nice. This is the NEW 11.3 version. That will be $130 please."
And then for every minor os upgrade Apple comes out with, you will have to pay $100.
"Here's the OSXI
Shango