Then stop getting yourself roped into them. Demand that your friends/relatives who keep getting problems to do things like apply patches and use something other than IE. Demand that favors should be returned. Be passive-aggressive or something until they offer you cookies. If you can't do these things to someone then chances are they're your boss and are paying you to do it, they're giving you other things (like sex) in return, or you're in a not-so-functional relationship with them.
My roommate and I now only fixes computers for cookies, money, or cute girls. That has worked out rather well.
But don't you realize that it's because MS being idiots about this that most of us here have jobs? (Or had, if you've moved beyond the hell of tech support.) Yes, crappy jobs that involve cleaning out crap from computers everyday. But imagine if there WAS a good built in virus/spyware scanner in Windows that automatically fixes systems--imagine if Windows had no holes/problems and fixed itself. Who would need tech support then?
I have two old laptops (P2 333) lying around for emergency situations. For example, when my friend's room flooded and her computer destroyed she used one of my crappy backup systems for a month or so while finding a bargain laptop on eBay to replace hers. And since she got used to Linux on my laptop she started using Linux regularly too! =) Since then that laptop has been used quite a lot by myself or my friends when our computers are in the shop, and the other one has been circulating between international students from Eastern Europe who could not afford laptops.
I attend and work for the IT department of Amherst College, a small liberal arts college (1600 undergrads, no grad students) in the Northeastern USA. Our wireless network here only covers freshmen dorms, libraries and select classrooms. The policy disallows WAPs in those areas, and allows WAPs in the other areas as long as they are configured properly. (We've had about one misconfigured router/WAP fucking with our DHCP server every week or so in the last two years--it seemed to have gotten better this year...) It's sort of a compromise for not outfitting the older dorms with wireless yet. The fun thing is that once someone got approval to set a WAP up on the roof of a house and an entire hill plus the coffee shop on the bottom of that hill got WiFi. =)
I can see why people like WAPs, but why the hell would you need one when you have a campus-wide wireless network? And I know from experience that making sure that everyone who uses a WAP configures them properly is a pain in the ass even for a small school like this. (Some people who set them up don't know what they're doing at all, while some have their parents set them up incorrectly for them and don't know how to fix it.) And if there's wireless already it just adds unneccessary crap to the department's support list.
One day when I was bored I took two hard drives apart and wanted to make a windchime out of the platters. I found that the platters didn't actually make a loud/nice sound when they collide, so I ended up making a wind chime out of the circular metal washers that seperate the platters from each other instead. They make satisfying "ding" sounds when they collide. They are now hung from the motor that spins the platters.
Also I made a keychain out of one of those top panels with the screw holes that hold the platters down, and the insides of the covers of Seagate hard drives make nice mirrors. =)
I once had a similar machine (Celeron 300mhz processor ThinkPad with 64 megs of RAM) and I ran Debian with Blackbox as the VM. It ran fine--in fact, very quickly. Two friends of mine had even slower ThinkPads and they ran Debian/Fluxbox and Red Hat/KDE 2 respectively, and those two machines ran at decent speeds.
One day I decided to install WinXP on it. It worked, actually. A bit slow, but it worked. =) I found that XP is actually very good and rather stable on older PCs. Later I installed RedHat 9 and KDE 2 on it and it was still pretty fast. I haven't tried KDE 3 though.
Older ThinkPads are actually very good when it comes to running Linux. In fact, I'm in the market for an "upgrade" to that laptop.
1 - Blackbox for Windows (explorer != good shell) 2 - ObjectDock (Windows taskbar != good interface) 3 - WindowBlinds (XP default theme == waste of space)
So by the time I'm here on my list, my computer no longer looks like a Windows box. (As much as I like Macs, I can't afford one. And I need Flash MX compatibility so no Linux--it doesn't run very well under WINE.)
Once upon a time I made a software pirate costume for Halloween. My trusty pirate sidearm was a floppy drive that shot a disk out at medium velocity. It's very effective against drunk people and/or eyes.
As my next big idea, I think I'll put these magnet-driven motors in PCs too cool down hard drives. I mean, it's quiet and uses 80% less power than our normal fans!
To provide a story from another point of view...
There was a comment earlier about how the martial arts is a bad idea for someone who isn't very coordinated. I agree. I studied martial arts (judo and some kung fu, to be specific) from first to fifth grade, and I was not good at it. I did not have the physical coordination to actually accomplish anything, and people actually made fun of me in the classes and that really sucked. At least in school I could add and multiply a whole lot better than the people who mock me and shove me against walls.
Worse still is when I try to fight back using what I've learned. Not only do I not accomplish anything, I get hit harder.
It's not to say that physical activity isn't good. What did it for me, actually, were yoga and dance. I was (and am) still uncoordinated, but the way the classes were taught and the atmosphere of the classes (and the diciplines in general, at least at the beginner level) did not punish failure.
Granted, yoga and dance don't really attract girls and aren't the most masculine activities, but the fact that the classes are usually female dominated and the first step to getting a girlfriend (assuming the subject here is not gay) is to be able to talk to and be around girls. It helps to have females friends first. It's sort of like an investment for later sex.
Personal experience: I wanted to talk to my girlfriend and found that she was playing a game online. (Puzzle Pirates, which is cute and silly unlike most other MMO games.) In fact, she's been playing said game ever since she got broadband a few days ago. Well, I like Puzzle Pirates, she plays it all the time, why not talk to her in the game world?
So I logged into the game and sent her a private message. She finished what she was doing and came to where I was and we started "talking". Let's call me A and her B.
A: Hey! I haven't talked to you in a while. *hug* B: *hug* Wanna fight? A: Did you get my letter? (B challenges A to a duel.) B: Fight me!!! A: Um, okay... (A and B fight. A wins.) B: =( Not fair! You have a better sword! (I've been playing on and off for longer than she has.) A: Aww... *hug* B: I'm off to earn more money and buy a better sword now. =P (B leaves the island on a pirate ship to plunder some loot.) A: But but I wanted to talk about our relationship...
Really, talking and communicating are two different things. Even when you're not busy killing rabbits for EXP or shooting each other and manage to have meaningful conversations about non-game stuff they wouldn't be anything more signifigant than "I had tuna for dinner". When you're in a game--especially when you're a serious gamer--you're going to keep your focus on your party member's positions and their abilities and cool combos you can perform with them, limiting your chat only to "heal me I'm dying!!!" or the occasional "wow you suck I ownzed you" (don't say that with your SO unless she/he says it to you too =). Meaningful, deep conversations about your relationship (which I assume is what the original poster's girlfriend wanted) don't really happen in games, with the exception of something like a tabletop role-playing game--but by definition everything that goes on in the game is restricted to inside the game and whatever romance you develop is for your characters only, not you. (I can't really imagine how many girl gamers smacked a guy whose character has a relationship with hers so he thought they would be involved in real life too.)
And besides, when you're trying to communicate, do it as yourself and not "GoblinSlayer256" or some other fictional character. If she really wanted to date a half-orc barbarian or a Navy SEAL she probably wouldn't even have looked at you in the first place. (Unless you're actually a half-orc Navy SEAL, in which case I apologize.)
Copied directly from my course syllabus: "(Be warned that the author has another cheaper book
simply called Algebra, which should not be confused with our textbook.)" This is from an algebra class. He was also the same professor who decided to switch over to a more expensive textbook when he took over the linear algebra class.
Although the department did do some good when they decided to switch textbook vendor/authors after the publisher switched over the a new edition for their calculus books (Stewart's 5th Edition, a $60 or so price increase for a few more pictures).
Currently the design department I work for uses an older model Canon color copier that has conterfiet protection built in, so if you try to photocopy American currency it will come out black and green. Personally, I don't really see why it was installed, since the photocopier's quality isn't all that good to begin with.
The problem is just that--the copier sucks. So it thinks EVERYTHING that has some green in it is American currency. (Oh, if only people thought the same.) So we have to bypass all protection by copying everything at 100.5%. Yes, apprantly Canon thinks that people cannot tell the difference between a real dollar bill and one printed on lower-quality paper and is signifigantly different in tone and color, while anyone can tell that a dollar bill that is 100.5% bigger is a fake.
It's annoying, but we deal with it--we spent the money on an $4000 G5 instead. Mmmm...
Believe me when I say that whenever I buy any piece of music online now I spend twenty minutes before-hand to research whether said label/artist is part of the RIAA.
I have resolved to start my own anti-RIAA fund: everytime they make/. I will put five bucks into a jar, and every time I have twenty I'll go and buy myself a CD-worth of independent music. I suggest that other people do the same--imagine, every/. reader spending five bucks, that's like... a lot.
Where I go to school (I also work for IT here) we basically combine all the techniques everyone here described: a login script that scans for the patch and prompts the user to patch if the machine isn't patched, have the login script run an anti-virus tool, postering the ENTIRE college, recruiting residential life and handing out patch CDs to every RA on campus, and banning MAC addresses AND closing off ports via hourly scans of the network. So far it's been doing really well. The only problem we have now, actually, is the 5000 or so SPAM (and mostly infected) messages that comes in every hour, slowing our e-mail servers to a crawl.
Ahh, her origami models for her undergrad math thesis still floats gloriously in the Amherst College math building.
Here's another link: http://web.merrimack.edu/hullt/OrigamiMath.html
Tom's a graph theorist who's been studying this subject basically for as long as mathematics and origami were linked. There are some very interesting stuff there, like curricula to courses involving origami that he's taught.
Slashdot Mirror
Then stop getting yourself roped into them. Demand that your friends/relatives who keep getting problems to do things like apply patches and use something other than IE. Demand that favors should be returned. Be passive-aggressive or something until they offer you cookies. If you can't do these things to someone then chances are they're your boss and are paying you to do it, they're giving you other things (like sex) in return, or you're in a not-so-functional relationship with them. My roommate and I now only fixes computers for cookies, money, or cute girls. That has worked out rather well.
But don't you realize that it's because MS being idiots about this that most of us here have jobs? (Or had, if you've moved beyond the hell of tech support.) Yes, crappy jobs that involve cleaning out crap from computers everyday. But imagine if there WAS a good built in virus/spyware scanner in Windows that automatically fixes systems--imagine if Windows had no holes/problems and fixed itself. Who would need tech support then?
I have two old laptops (P2 333) lying around for emergency situations. For example, when my friend's room flooded and her computer destroyed she used one of my crappy backup systems for a month or so while finding a bargain laptop on eBay to replace hers. And since she got used to Linux on my laptop she started using Linux regularly too! =) Since then that laptop has been used quite a lot by myself or my friends when our computers are in the shop, and the other one has been circulating between international students from Eastern Europe who could not afford laptops.
Notice how they advertised infinite loops as a feature. Seems like they're copying Microsoft advert strategies now...
Sure! Let's put choking-size metal things on a baby! I'm sure he won't attempt to munch on your new $300 babycam...
I attend and work for the IT department of Amherst College, a small liberal arts college (1600 undergrads, no grad students) in the Northeastern USA. Our wireless network here only covers freshmen dorms, libraries and select classrooms. The policy disallows WAPs in those areas, and allows WAPs in the other areas as long as they are configured properly. (We've had about one misconfigured router/WAP fucking with our DHCP server every week or so in the last two years--it seemed to have gotten better this year...) It's sort of a compromise for not outfitting the older dorms with wireless yet. The fun thing is that once someone got approval to set a WAP up on the roof of a house and an entire hill plus the coffee shop on the bottom of that hill got WiFi. =) I can see why people like WAPs, but why the hell would you need one when you have a campus-wide wireless network? And I know from experience that making sure that everyone who uses a WAP configures them properly is a pain in the ass even for a small school like this. (Some people who set them up don't know what they're doing at all, while some have their parents set them up incorrectly for them and don't know how to fix it.) And if there's wireless already it just adds unneccessary crap to the department's support list.
One day when I was bored I took two hard drives apart and wanted to make a windchime out of the platters. I found that the platters didn't actually make a loud/nice sound when they collide, so I ended up making a wind chime out of the circular metal washers that seperate the platters from each other instead. They make satisfying "ding" sounds when they collide. They are now hung from the motor that spins the platters. Also I made a keychain out of one of those top panels with the screw holes that hold the platters down, and the insides of the covers of Seagate hard drives make nice mirrors. =)
When I first read the headline, all I could think of is "HOLY CRAP! Imagine the case mods you can make with that!!!"
Ale and whores. (And manwhores too for those of us who like men.)
Sorry, my mistake. When I say 9 I meant 7. =) I can't count--must be the whole majoring in math thing.
I once had a similar machine (Celeron 300mhz processor ThinkPad with 64 megs of RAM) and I ran Debian with Blackbox as the VM. It ran fine--in fact, very quickly. Two friends of mine had even slower ThinkPads and they ran Debian/Fluxbox and Red Hat/KDE 2 respectively, and those two machines ran at decent speeds. One day I decided to install WinXP on it. It worked, actually. A bit slow, but it worked. =) I found that XP is actually very good and rather stable on older PCs. Later I installed RedHat 9 and KDE 2 on it and it was still pretty fast. I haven't tried KDE 3 though. Older ThinkPads are actually very good when it comes to running Linux. In fact, I'm in the market for an "upgrade" to that laptop.
No, you idiot! You use PKzip to zip images, not the Internet!
While not Linux:
1 - Blackbox for Windows (explorer != good shell)
2 - ObjectDock (Windows taskbar != good interface)
3 - WindowBlinds (XP default theme == waste of space)
So by the time I'm here on my list, my computer no longer looks like a Windows box. (As much as I like Macs, I can't afford one. And I need Flash MX compatibility so no Linux--it doesn't run very well under WINE.)
Once upon a time I made a software pirate costume for Halloween. My trusty pirate sidearm was a floppy drive that shot a disk out at medium velocity. It's very effective against drunk people and/or eyes.
As my next big idea, I think I'll put these magnet-driven motors in PCs too cool down hard drives. I mean, it's quiet and uses 80% less power than our normal fans!
To provide a story from another point of view... There was a comment earlier about how the martial arts is a bad idea for someone who isn't very coordinated. I agree. I studied martial arts (judo and some kung fu, to be specific) from first to fifth grade, and I was not good at it. I did not have the physical coordination to actually accomplish anything, and people actually made fun of me in the classes and that really sucked. At least in school I could add and multiply a whole lot better than the people who mock me and shove me against walls. Worse still is when I try to fight back using what I've learned. Not only do I not accomplish anything, I get hit harder. It's not to say that physical activity isn't good. What did it for me, actually, were yoga and dance. I was (and am) still uncoordinated, but the way the classes were taught and the atmosphere of the classes (and the diciplines in general, at least at the beginner level) did not punish failure. Granted, yoga and dance don't really attract girls and aren't the most masculine activities, but the fact that the classes are usually female dominated and the first step to getting a girlfriend (assuming the subject here is not gay) is to be able to talk to and be around girls. It helps to have females friends first. It's sort of like an investment for later sex.
Our network was "down" for several hours because the DDoSers used up all the bandwidth... As much as I hate SCO, I want my porn, damnit!
Personal experience: I wanted to talk to my girlfriend and found that she was playing a game online. (Puzzle Pirates, which is cute and silly unlike most other MMO games.) In fact, she's been playing said game ever since she got broadband a few days ago. Well, I like Puzzle Pirates, she plays it all the time, why not talk to her in the game world?
So I logged into the game and sent her a private message. She finished what she was doing and came to where I was and we started "talking". Let's call me A and her B.
A: Hey! I haven't talked to you in a while. *hug*
B: *hug* Wanna fight?
A: Did you get my letter?
(B challenges A to a duel.)
B: Fight me!!!
A: Um, okay...
(A and B fight. A wins.)
B: =( Not fair! You have a better sword! (I've been playing on and off for longer than she has.)
A: Aww... *hug*
B: I'm off to earn more money and buy a better sword now. =P
(B leaves the island on a pirate ship to plunder some loot.)
A: But but I wanted to talk about our relationship...
Really, talking and communicating are two different things. Even when you're not busy killing rabbits for EXP or shooting each other and manage to have meaningful conversations about non-game stuff they wouldn't be anything more signifigant than "I had tuna for dinner". When you're in a game--especially when you're a serious gamer--you're going to keep your focus on your party member's positions and their abilities and cool combos you can perform with them, limiting your chat only to "heal me I'm dying!!!" or the occasional "wow you suck I ownzed you" (don't say that with your SO unless she/he says it to you too =). Meaningful, deep conversations about your relationship (which I assume is what the original poster's girlfriend wanted) don't really happen in games, with the exception of something like a tabletop role-playing game--but by definition everything that goes on in the game is restricted to inside the game and whatever romance you develop is for your characters only, not you. (I can't really imagine how many girl gamers smacked a guy whose character has a relationship with hers so he thought they would be involved in real life too.)
And besides, when you're trying to communicate, do it as yourself and not "GoblinSlayer256" or some other fictional character. If she really wanted to date a half-orc barbarian or a Navy SEAL she probably wouldn't even have looked at you in the first place. (Unless you're actually a half-orc Navy SEAL, in which case I apologize.)
Copied directly from my course syllabus: "(Be warned that the author has another cheaper book simply called Algebra, which should not be confused with our textbook.)" This is from an algebra class. He was also the same professor who decided to switch over to a more expensive textbook when he took over the linear algebra class. Although the department did do some good when they decided to switch textbook vendor/authors after the publisher switched over the a new edition for their calculus books (Stewart's 5th Edition, a $60 or so price increase for a few more pictures).
Currently the design department I work for uses an older model Canon color copier that has conterfiet protection built in, so if you try to photocopy American currency it will come out black and green. Personally, I don't really see why it was installed, since the photocopier's quality isn't all that good to begin with. The problem is just that--the copier sucks. So it thinks EVERYTHING that has some green in it is American currency. (Oh, if only people thought the same.) So we have to bypass all protection by copying everything at 100.5%. Yes, apprantly Canon thinks that people cannot tell the difference between a real dollar bill and one printed on lower-quality paper and is signifigantly different in tone and color, while anyone can tell that a dollar bill that is 100.5% bigger is a fake. It's annoying, but we deal with it--we spent the money on an $4000 G5 instead. Mmmm...
Believe me when I say that whenever I buy any piece of music online now I spend twenty minutes before-hand to research whether said label/artist is part of the RIAA.
I have resolved to start my own anti-RIAA fund: everytime they make /. I will put five bucks into a jar, and every time I have twenty I'll go and buy myself a CD-worth of independent music. I suggest that other people do the same--imagine, every /. reader spending five bucks, that's like... a lot.
Where I go to school (I also work for IT here) we basically combine all the techniques everyone here described: a login script that scans for the patch and prompts the user to patch if the machine isn't patched, have the login script run an anti-virus tool, postering the ENTIRE college, recruiting residential life and handing out patch CDs to every RA on campus, and banning MAC addresses AND closing off ports via hourly scans of the network. So far it's been doing really well. The only problem we have now, actually, is the 5000 or so SPAM (and mostly infected) messages that comes in every hour, slowing our e-mail servers to a crawl.
I'm currently reading Walter Hunt's The Dark Wing. He's a relatively new author (it's his first book) and I haven't been sleeping much.
Ahh, her origami models for her undergrad math thesis still floats gloriously in the Amherst College math building. Here's another link: http://web.merrimack.edu/hullt/OrigamiMath.html Tom's a graph theorist who's been studying this subject basically for as long as mathematics and origami were linked. There are some very interesting stuff there, like curricula to courses involving origami that he's taught.