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User: CrayDrygu

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Comments · 292

  1. Re:Living in a cash economy on How Feasible is a Cash-Less Society? · · Score: 2
    There are about as many places that won't take your Visa card as won't take the $20 in your wallet (or at least will give you grief over it, like a friend got the other day at Best Buy)

    Why was your friend hassled over a $20 at BestBuy? I don't know if I've ever paid cash for anything there myself, so I can't offer a counter...but I can't see why they would hassle anyone over cash unless you were trying to use a lot of it.

  2. Re:Kinda a FYI on World's First XP System Sold · · Score: 2
    hibernate ACTUALLY WORKS (third times a charm)

    That's funny, hibernate ACTUALLY WORKS on my Win2k box every night. I haven't actually shut it down in weeks (though I'm thinking of rebooting to get rid of a systray icon that won't go away...can probably just log off and back on, though). And it ACTUALLY WORKS just the same for the two other people I personally know who run 2k.

    So did you mean it actually works WITH YOUR HARDWARE, or am I missing something?

  3. Did you even... on PCs That Can Be Managed From a Serial Port? · · Score: 2
    Did you even read the post?

    "I'm also not interested in the RealWeasel..."

  4. When was "liberal" redefined? on Remote Breathalyzer · · Score: 2
    Because the liberals/socialists want to be the "big brother" of society... they don't believe in people taking responsibility for themselves

    Excuse me, but when was "liberal" redefined? You're not the only the only one who's baffled me with this, but you're the latest, so I'm picking on you today.

    I've always thought of myself as very liberal. I've taken a couple of those online tests that are supposed to show your political leaning and what party matches your beliefs the closest -- all have told me I'm liberal. But the idea that I want to be "big brother" and that I don't think people can take care of themselves is utter bullshit.

    Big Brother is the last thing I want to be or to see, sadly it seems we're getting closer every day. And furthermore, I'm a great believer in personal responsibility. I can't believe some of the lawsuits I'm seeing these days, where someone screws up and blames everyone else.

    So what am I now? The opposite of liberal would be conservative, right? And I'm sure as hell not conservative. So what's "liberal" mean now, and what's my new label?

    I'm starting to think this redefining of "liberal" is some far-right strategy to make people think, "Well if that's what the liberals think, I'm gonna start voting for the conservatives!"

  5. Re:in my Highschool on South Carolina's On-Again, Off-Again Filtering · · Score: 2
    "Problem is that the proxy is in front of the internet/school-lan router, which means just removing the proxy from the web browser bypasses ALL filtering - I don't even have to bother with public proxies. Sad part is that the sysadmins are to stupid to realize this problem."

    When I was a high school student (99-2000, I'm not that old) our network was like that too. Now, I'm an administrator of that network (go figure, eh?).

    If your admins are anything like the one here, they're well aware of the problem. Unfortunately, it isn't always easy to fix. Before I graduated, I was friendly with the admin here, and got to watch what he was going through trying to get Microsoft Proxy to work properly. He reinstalled MSProxy, WinNT 4, and whatever the most recent service pack for NT was at the time at least six times, and every time, Proxy just crashed.

    Even better, of course, was the fact that he couldn't get security policies to work right either (call him incompetent if you want, but nobody else could figure it out either), so you could "log in" by hitting escape at the login screen and get to the 'net that way, and to programs and printers, everything but your home folder.

    So what did he do to fix it? Well, he trashed the NT servers and switched to Novell Netware, and that's the network I inherited. I love it. First, you must log in to do anything, including access the 'net. Also, the 'net can only be accessed by people in the "Internet" group, so access can actually be restricted for people who abuse it now, without revoking access to everything else. Most importantly, though, the proxy is transparent now -- nothing's set in the web browser, all HTTP traffic goes through BorderManager, which in turn goes through the filtering proxy.

    I still don't know why people deal with NT.

  6. Oh, man... on Office-Worker Linux: It's Here and It Works · · Score: 2
    This story almost made me cream my shorts, seriously.

    I've been thinking (off and on in my spare time) about what it would take to convert my office to something like this. I'm the IT guy for a town even smaller than the one in the article, but I'm still f'ing sick of Windows and the headaches it gives me. We have a Unix server, thankfully, and it never gives me problems. We're bringing in another one soon -- had a choice between NT and SCO. Went for SCO.

    I'm only seeing two problems, really. One is office programs. We need to read from and probably write to MS format documents. I suppose that could be solved at least partially with WINE, but that's not a real solution.

    The other is the database software that runs the financial side of the town. It wasn't a problem until recently, as it used to be run as a console app off the server, through telnet, a modem connection, or a dumb terminal. They've got some weird GUI client for it now, though. To be honest, it looks like one of the Unix widget sets or maybe an X server ported to Windows, but I'm not sure. I'd have to talk with them about it. Anybody know anything about Four J's? They're the ones who made it.

    If I can get around those two things, I'm almost positive I could do a slow migration over to linux. Well, if I can get X configured to use these POS SiS on-board video cards.

  7. Um, no. No, wait... NO! on Microsoft Case Slogs Forward · · Score: 3
    "I guess I don't understand the system. Under capitalism, being the top dog and driving your competitors out of business is the whole point... right?"

    No, sorry, thanks for playing. The "whole point" is being top dog by attracting customers, usually done by offering a better product. Is the point of a 100 meter race to beat your opponents mercilessly about the knees with a lead pipe so they can't run as well as you? No (unless you're Tonya Harding), the point is to run faster than they do.

    "It's not as if they did anything criminal, after all."

    Yes, they did. Whether or not you think it's fair, there are laws, and MS broke them.

    "No, I'm not talking about startups, but the real companies who can make a difference - the IBMs of the world."

    Funny you should mention IBM. OS/2, anyone?

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  8. Re:Suuuuuure it was a Cisco... on Slashdot Back Online · · Score: 2
    "(yes, both were down. However, sebastian.slashdot.org (AnimeFu) was up. How mysterious...)?"

    Not at all, if you'd take less than 5 minutes to look at why. But here, I'll do it for you.

    Let's sart with slashdot.org's IP address as a base, so we know where "home" is -- 64.28.67.150 (Exodus). Now, looking up slashdot.org's info in NSI's database tells me that the first name server (64.28.67.55) is in the same netblock, but the second one (209.192.217.105) is somewhere else entirely (belonging to Shore.net).

    So we've established that even if our link to "home" is severed, we can still do DNS lookups.

    Now let's look up sebastian.slashdot.org -- 206.170.14.75, yet another netblock entirely (appears to belong to Up Networks).

    So in a nutshell, router to Exodus goes down, so the dns lookup for sebastian.slashdot.org goes to Shore.net instead, where it gets pointed to Up Networks.

    nslookup and traceroute are your friends. Use them.

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  9. hype up what? on Return of The Holy Grail to the Silver Screen · · Score: 2
    "it's only being shown in certain cities on certain days to hype up the release of the movie on DVD"

    Say what? I've had the Holy Grail on DVD for months now, and I know it was out for quite some time before *I* bought it...

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  10. Re:Out of the PC realm on Insanely Audiophile · · Score: 2
    Hmm...you know, I didn't even think to check that, but you're right. Oh well, I could make up that $80 elsewhere =)

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  11. Re:What about adding on Insanely Audiophile · · Score: 2
    Network card is built in to the mobo.

    As for the rest of it, the guy did say "general purpose" PC rig. A gamer could make use of that $870 inkjet, not as much as someone doing graphics maybe, but everyone needs to print stuff sometimes. But what's a gamer gonna do with a slide scanner and a drawing tablet?

    That DVD decoder has a TV-Out, btw, so that could export analog video...you're right, though, I should add a capture card. Gamers could use it for watching TV. =)

    Hell, I suppose a gamer could make use of that projector too. Imagine playing Quake on a huge wall...

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  12. Re:Out of the PC realm on Insanely Audiophile · · Score: 2
    "I challenge someone here to rough up some specs for a US$140,000 general purpose PC rig, running whatever OS is appropriate for its purpose."

    Alright, I'm bored, I've got some time to kill...let's see how close I can get.

    [A couple hours pass]

    Alright, I suppose I could keep adding things onto this, but I won't. I got it up to $10,103.46, though. It's a multimedia workstation designed for graphics and digital video editing, high-performance gaming, DVD playback, and DVD authoring, with all the accessories.

    • Case: PC 60 Aluminum w/3 Case Fans and Window Kit, $229.99
    • Power supply: Antec PP403X 400W Power Supply $84.10
    • Motherboard: ASUS CUV4X-DLS w/SCSI $333.62
    • Processors: 2 x Intel Coppermine PIII 933mhz $398.00 ($199.00 ea)
    • Processor fans (x2): Antec Heavy Duty CPU Fan $33.54 (16.77 ea)
    • RAM: 256mb Kingston PC133 DIMM $156.64
    • IDE cable (x2): Rounded $25.98 ($12.99 ea)
    • Floppy drive: Compaq LS-120 internal IDE $127.99
    • DVD/CD-RW Drive: HP CD-Writer 9900ci 12x10x32x DVD 8x $349.99
    • DVD Decoder: Creative Labs Dxr3 $79.99
    • CD Drive: Creative Labs CD-ROM Blaster 52x $49.99
    • DVD-RAM Drive: Panasonic LF-D201U SCSI-2 $649.00
    • SCSI Cable (x3): Rounded $38.97 ($12.99 ea)
    • SCSI Hard drive (x2): Seagate Cheetah73 73GB U160 $1576.00 ($788.00 ea)
    • RAID Controller: Asus PCI-DA2100 SCSI RAID $609.00
    • IEEE 1394 Card: Belkin F5U501 PCI $79.95
    • Video: VisionTek GeForce3 64mb AGP $389.99
    • Monitor: Samsung 18" Syncmaster TFT LCD $1891.00
    • Sound: Creative Labs SBLive X-Gamer $99.99
    • Speakers: Creative Labs/Cambridge SoundWorks DTT3500 Dolby 5.1 Digital $299.99
    • Printer: Epson Stylus 2000P Inkjet Printer $869.99
    • Scanner: HP ScanJet 6300Cxi 1200dpi $387.36
    • Mouse: Razer Boomslang 2000 $82.99
    • Mouse Pad: 3m Precise Mousing Service $8.49
    • Keyboard: IBM Preferred 104-key Black $59.00
    • Joystick: Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback 2 $109.00
    • Steering Wheel: Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback Wheel USB $159.00
    • Game Pad: Gravis Eliminator GamePad Pro $26.99
    • UPS: APC Smart-UPS 1000 XL $577.92
    • Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional $319.00

    That's right, Win2K. I know we all love linux in here, Win2K is actually a decent OS, especially for all of the tasks I've specced this out for.

    --

  13. Re:Possible Reason: Better ears on Insanely Audiophile · · Score: 2
    "My hearing petered out around 14KHz. When we hit 16KHz, several of the nearby people were covering their ears in pain, while others (and myself) were completely unphazed."

    I have a program that'll generate pretty much any tone you want it to, and tested out my hearing compared to a few of my friends.

    I can hear tones it generates up to about 18kHz. I don't know if that's where my hearing peters out or where my sound card/speakers do, but that's (apparently) pretty damn high. Quite a few of my friends (and, actually, my mother) hear absolutely nothing at 16kHz and even lower. Meanwhile, I'm flinching from the pain. I can hear television sets and older computer monitors from a few rooms over (my Apple IIe's monitor produces a particularly painful shriek that doesn't bother anyone else in the house).

    You know what, though? I have an extensive collection of MP3s, most encoded at 128k, and they sound just fine to me, thank you. Granted, this doesn't mean much, but I don't get audiophiles either. I'm picky with my audio, but I'm not a 'phile.

    P.S. You can get that tone generator here. Click "other tools", it's the only one in the category. Windows-only.

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  14. Re:i'm more of a bass audiophile.... on Insanely Audiophile · · Score: 2
    "Accordingly I bought an Alpine Multimedia head unit and Alpine in dash DVD player. Now we can watch The Matrix while cruising down the road :) People say to me, you're mad, spending $10500 on a car stereo, but what the hell, it's my money, I'm going to enjoy it the way I want to."

    You don't work for the Tweeter store in Framingham, MA, do you? 'Cause the guy I bought my head unit from told me he was putting a system into his car just like that... I don't think the price tag he mentioned was quite as high, though.

    Anyway, I've seen the Alpine in-dash DVD players, and while it's definitely a sweet gadget to show off, well...when you're usually the only one in your car, and usually not for more than an hour at a time, it's most definitely not worth the $3-4k =)

    I still need to get the factory speakers out of my car and put some decent ones in (one that don't have paper cones), and a subwoofer (I like to *feel* my bass). They're decent for now, though. My next step is to check out playing MP3s through it with my laptop that should be arriving on Monday. *grin*

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  15. Re:Nyah, nyah, nyah... on RC5-64 Project Teeters At The Halfway Mark · · Score: 1
    Hey, nice ranking. What kind of system are you running it on?

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  16. Chairman on Amusing Job Titles for Business Cards? · · Score: 3
    I've always been fond of "Chairman of the Bored." And some days, it sure feels accurate.

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  17. Re:Hmmm... on What Do You Do To Relieve Lower Back Pain? · · Score: 2
    1. Do not visit a chiropractor, there just idiots

    A few months ago, I started getting some pretty severe back pain. At first it only happened when I bent down, like to tie my shoes or something. As time went on, the pain got worse, and not only that, but I didn't have to bend down as far for it to hurt. By the time I decided to get help, I could only bend down a couple of inches before the pain was unbearable, and since it's essentially the same motion, I was also having trouble walking, epsecially up and down stairs.

    The first thing I did was go to see my doctor. He checked out my symptoms, and told me he wanted me to get an MRI and a few other things. Well, this is the first time in my life that I've done this, but I completely ignored his advice. I went to find myself a chiroprator instead.

    The chiropractor had me get an x-ray, but that was just to confirm his suspicions (which were correct, btw). One of the discs in my back, near the bottom, had slipped out of place a little bit. Ironically, the rest of my back was so good he said he'd use my x-ray as an example of what a "normal" back looks like.

    So he gave me some light PT (10 minutes per visit with a TENS machine, and some bending and twisting, popping almost every vertebra in the process), and some stretches and excercises to do. I'm not 100% better yet (partly my fault, I don't do the stretches as much as I should), but I can actually walk now without discomfort. I'm back to the beginning symptoms, where only bending over/extending my legs really far causes pain.

    Especially considering that my doctor probably would have put me on all sorts of pain killers, and maybe even put me in for surgery, and since the chiropractor was covered by my insurance, I think I made the right choice.

    So maybe you'd like to explain why you think chiropractors are idiots?

    --

  18. Re:FUD! on AOL 6.0 Bundled with Windows XP? · · Score: 2
    "Gee, that's funny, the NT box I use at work has a selection on the Start menu called "Command Prompt" and it has the MSDOS logo next to it."

    Yeah, too bad it's not DOS. NT has never ever ever never not ever had DOS in it.

    What it does have is -- and if you'd read that label again you'd see this -- a command prompt which looks and acts like a DOS shell. This command prompt, however, isn't DOS any more than running Bash on a Win98 machine makes it Linux.

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  19. Here's a good overview on On Starting a Successful ISP? · · Score: 2
    My boyfriend chose this question for a project for one of his college classes. His report goes into a lot of details you probably already know or don't need, and doesn't go as far in-depth as it should if you were actually using it as a guide to starting an ISP, but it should be a good starting point.

    How to Build an ISP

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  20. Re:Plesk *sucks* on Webhosting Control Panels? · · Score: 2
    Yes, well, for someone who wasn't familiar with editing the conf files for a few of those packages to begin with, it made things very "interesting" when half the steps in the directions I'm trying to follow were wrong.

    Maybe I'm just biased because it made trying to administer my server a hellish task, having to work around Plesk instead of just with-or-without it.

    Or maybe web-based interfaces just don't like me, since Webmin wrote me some BIND conf files that were just plain wrong...gave up on that one, too. The plus side is I can now configure Apache, BIND, and qmail all by hand.

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  21. Plesk *sucks* on Webhosting Control Panels? · · Score: 2
    I had a dedicated server with Plesk preinstalled a while back, so I figured I'd make use of it. And for a while, it was pretty good.

    The problem, though, is that if you ever want/need to edit any configurations by hand, Plesk will make your life hell. It stores configuration information in its own files, and overwrites the real files with that when you change anything. You can edit a few of those files, but IIRC, they're added to the end of the conf files. So, if you want to mess with Apache's conf, you'll be having to fight Plesk for the rest of your days with the server.

    Of course, if you can live with the fairly limited options that Plesk offers, you're fine.

    The other thing I didn't like about Plesk is that it moves everything around, putting all the program files, conf files, and data under /usr/local/plesk. For example, your website gets put in:

    /usr/local/plesk/apache/vhosts/hostname/httpdocs/

    And your BIND files?

    /usr/local/plesk/named/

    So, if you plan on never touching the conf files yourself, you can live with its limited options, and you don't mind things being moved around, you'll be okay. Otherwise, stay away.

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  22. Re:Wha....? on Is the Payphone Dead? · · Score: 2
    Two theories:

    1) The law in question only applies to "normal" service and not pre-pay. This would make sense when you consider that normal service involves a contract, and minors cannot enter into a legal contract.

    2) Just because Verizon doesn't have a restriction...

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  23. Re:Pay phones very much needed on Is the Payphone Dead? · · Score: 2
    Also, think of all of the people, like me, who don't pay $45 or more a month to afford the "luxury" of being interrupted all of the time by a portable ringing nuisance.
    I'm amazed at the number of people who forget (ignore?) that the things can be turned off. I can respect you not wanting one. But don't use a lame excuse to defend that, there's plenty of better reasons you can come up with.

    Not to mention you can get pre-paid service in most areas. It's what I use, and I love it. I pay about half of what a monthly plan would cost, since I don't use it much, and with no obligation.

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  24. Re:Yeah.....er...whatever on I Won A Lawsuit Against A Spammer · · Score: 2
    I don't know about you, but I value my personal days at quite a bit more than $50 too.
    True. It depends on how long I'd be in court, I suppose...I've never done it before, so I don't know if it'd be an all-day thing, or if I could be out of there by lunchtime and take the rest of the day.
    However, your desire for revenge may be stronger than mine, perhaps the satisfaction of being told that you're right is worth enough to you to take a vacation day.
    Depends on the case. I wouldn't have done it for this Kozmo thing, personally...but then, the case was aiming for $500, not $50, which I would probably be more inclined to take a day off for.

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  25. Re:Yeah.....er...whatever on I Won A Lawsuit Against A Spammer · · Score: 2
    $50...If I take a day off I lose more money than that.
    For you to even consider comparing $50 to a days wages tells me that:
    Okay, two points:

    One, I don't follow your logic. He said "I lose more than $50 if I take a day off." That's true whether you make $51 a day or $5000 a day. I think what he's trying to say is it's not worth the time off from work to win $50 in court.

    Two is your assumption that he's either in high school, or (I assume) crap. Not everybody makes $104k/year (your $50 for 1/8 day figure). The system administrator at the high school in town makes $50k/year. I make even less, doing a similar job for Town Hall, due to various factors that I won't get into. Gov't tech jobs suck, in terms of salary.

    Either way, I don't care if you lose $50 for taking off an entire day, or if you lose $50 for taking an extra 10 minutes at the end of your lunch break. The point (as I see it) is that, unless you're making less than $50/day, it's not worth taking the time off to go to court and fight for it. Unless you're just doing it to prove a point and can spare the cash.

    Of course, my first thought was that you could just take a personal day...

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