I agree. I work for a College IT Dept and we experience the same problems as High Schools. Kids always think they are the best hackers. You can spend your whole life playing cat and mouse with students or you can let them have full access and just expel them from the college when they break the rules. That is how the "harsh" college I work for does it. Surf Myspace.. never allowed on a school computer again.. download porn, not allowed on campus again. The thinking is with these "kids" the vast majority are over 18 and are adults and must experience adult repricussions for breaking rules they signed stating they wouldn't break. What may have been a slap in the wrist in High School now can cost you your college degree if you try it at certain colleges. We have all the normal "rules" that students have to sign so there is no "I never read/heard that" since we have their signature. We use DeepFreeze to lock down the OS, but the logon accounts have full admin rights (due to the fact that certain.. cough *adobe* cough products wont run unless your an admin. We have many other programs that are the same way. Yes, IE and MSOffice are fine with limited user rights.. but not the case for the majority of the software we install for students.
I always turn off the stupid windows firewall. There is an option in Security Center to check that says something to the effect of "I have my own firewall and will monitor it myself". Same goes for Antivirus. Then you don't get those task tray pop ups. I never really understood trying to run a firewall on the computer your trying to protect. Kinda defeats the purpose IMO. Even if your PC is secured, do you want someone messing around trying to get into it as your working on it? I think I would rather have another device in front of my work PC that gets attacked vs the computer I use to make $. I tossed out my linksys a while ago and have since just gone with a small computer (one of those micro Transmeta 800Mhz things) that I run Linux on and use that as my router/firewall and anything else I may need served. So far not a glitch in a couple years and never had any problems with network security.
But as pointed out, the article is meant for the masses, not that slashdot crowd, and I have seen all to often people with DSL/Cable modems plugged right into their PC. Makes me shiver every time.
How does it work with projectors? The projector is about 8' behind me and the screen is one with the drywall, framed into the wall, so where would I put those sensors? The Wii would have to go behind me to plug into the projector. Are the sensors wireless? I know no one has the answers yet, but I am really interested in this over the 360/PS3 and this is the first I read of sensors having to go on the TV.. argh, I don't own a TV, just a $10K projector.
I work for a college and today, after a 3 day weekend, every one of our "test" Macs we have in our IT shop for learning/troubleshooting has been infected with that Inqanta virus or whatever its called. So far almost 1/2 our Macs on campus got infected (while the campus was closed, no one was even using the Macs as they were locked up) but luckily we have Sophos AV installed on the Macs and it picked em all up. Still have to click 20+ times per Mac to clear the virus warning messages and deal with every phone call from users about it. Funny thing is we still have some Mac teachers who "swear on their life that Macs do not, and can not get a virus" lol.
Hmmm, on the Xbox you can buy one of these to get your keyboard/mouse support back (I hated FPS games on consoles before I bought this thing)
http://gear.ign.com/articles/558/558944p1.html
as well as one of these and you will get your precious monitor back and be able to play games in HDTV resolution on your monitor.
http://www.x2vga.com/
And you will be left with a pretty good and cheap gaming console that runs with KB/Mouse/Monitor
I have never considered using someone elses Wi-Fi that is wide open a crime. Maybe I am in the wrong but I don't think so.
During my last move from one town to another 20 miles away I had to have my Verizon DSL circuit moved (No cable broadband in the area). Getting the phone line part disconnected and reconnected at my new residence took hours to do, yet, to get DSL reactivated took over 30 days! (Meanwhile, DSL still continued to function for weeks at my old residence even without a dialtone, proving Verizon was full of shit when they told me an active phone line is required to get DSL service.)
I am a network admin and need access to my work from home. Where I moved to there are "a bunch of old people", lol, so I wasn't expecting any Wi-Fi signals from my neighbors.. but I found out that the local city police station which is a stones throw from my house had their Wi-Fi wide open so I just hopped on there network to check email/www. My opinion is, if I can receive a open access Wi-Fi signal from sitting on my couch in my own house, I should be able to use it. Just like any other radio waves that land on my property without encryption. If I have the device that can receive and use that signal without breaking any encryption then I should be entitled to use it. It is so painfully easy to enable encryption/Mac filtering on every WAP that if the person is to lazy to read the one page "Install" sheet that explains how to do it then they have no right to complain if a neighbor uses it from the comfort of their own home.
I am not trying to make an excuse for the guy in the article, he was an idiot parking directly in front of someones house for hours on end, but he was on a public street using an open Wi-Fi connection which I am sure happens thousands of times everyday throughout the world. I have done the same thing this guy did but to a much lesser extent. I have driven around just to find open Wi-Fi's and occasionally hopped on just to check my email, but never spent more than 5 minutes in front of someones house I don't know. At most this guy should get community service for his stupidity but any fine/jail time doesnt fit the so called "crime".
I also don't understand all the posts of people saying the homeowner was "stealing" from his ISP by having an open Wi-Fi. With Verizon DSL, when you sign up, they mail you a wireless router/DSL modem in one which comes preconfigured with no encryption. If they (ISP) were so worried about other people using the broadband, why would they give every customer a wireless router that is wide open? The answer, they don't care. The customer pays for an alway on broadband connection with limits on up/down speeds which you can't exceed. If you use your entire bandwith 24/7 for a month straight, your entitled to, you pay for it. I have done that very thing and never once recieved an email or phone call from my ISP about my usage.
I have been reading about this switchover since the early 90's. I remember the FCC stating that all TVs would be Digital by Dec 31, 1999 and all analog turned off. (I guess they hadnt thought about the Y2K issues when they first picked 1999 as the year) As we got closer to 1999, the dates kept getting delayed.
Simply to a google search for "FCC High Definition Delay" to see the numerous articles.
You will see every year since 1999 listed as the year analog goes away, 2000-2009. Every year we advance is another year HD gets bumped back. I read today that its 2008, yet, in the google search the FCC states that 2009 "is more realistic", 10 years late, and I am betting it will be delayed several more years after that date.
"The latest proposal is to have 85 percent of households using digital television by Jan. 1, 2009. The previous deadline was January 2007, but that has been determined to be too early."
Actually, in the US Govt (for which I work for repairing/patching computers) there is a loooong waiting list before your allowed to install patches. Windows XP was just recently approved to be used by the Military and SP2 will probably be another year before its been throughly tested and allowed to be used/installed. Usually for non Service Pack updates it is about a 6 month wait until "critical" patches deemed by MS are allowed to be installed and a year plus for Service Packs.
I am still sitting here scratching my head trying to figure out how this could be of any benifit at all. Every office I have worked (I work for the USAF in sunny California) leave all their lights and all their computers running 24/7. So no savings there. Next arguement, wont need to use oil for heating, true, we would have to run the A/C longer. Which one uses more power? Gas heat, or electric A/C? The last "Power Crunch" here in CA, we had rolling black outs during mid day, when A/C is most used. I can't even imagine how the people up on the hill would think this proposal would make any significant benefit. Maybe I am just too uneducated in these matters.
On a side note about gas. Today, gas prices in my area are now up to $2.89/gal. Gas has gone up more than 30cents a gallon in the last 2 weeks.
Show me where you can get 5x250GB HDs AND a Raid 5 controller for "around $500". That price is more than a little low. Current Pricewatch prices list a 250G at $105 + shipping, and the cheapest raid "5" controller I see is around $100. So your looking at closer to $650 if you dont have to pay tax, or $700 with tax. Also, try finding a 5400RPM 250GB HD. I can't.
I am 0 for 5 now and I have given up. I went all around town looking for a PSP on launch day and I did find a few stores with some left.
PSP1 - 3 dead pixels
PSP2 - 5 dead pixels
PSP3 - 2 dead pixels
PSP4 - 1 dead pixel
PSP5 - 8 dead pixels
Should have learned my lesson after #1 but its one of those cool gadgets I had to check out (plus I could have used it to control my media center on my XBox wirelessly) but I guess its not to be. I am of the firm belief that I was being sold a perfectly working peice of electronics and out of 5 chances I did not receive that. No more Sony products in my house from now on. I will probably have better luck buying Apex products at this point vs Sony.
I had the same concerns alot of people on here seem to have about watercooling. I shelled out around $900 for a Koolance case a little over 3 years ago and popped in a Intel MB w/ P4 1.7. I also have my 6 300GB HDs and GF FX Video card water cooled as well. I have been in the case quite a few times, and even upgraded it to a P4 3Ghz, new Intel MB, and new Vid card. I even had to replace my old socket 423 cooler for a socket 478 cooler and no probs. To this day (3+ years later) I have NEVER had a single problem with my case. No leaks, no overheating, no problems period. Yes, it only cools as much as the ambient temp in the room, but on a really hot day that is only 100degrees F. As I type this I am running at 92f.. during intense gaming (ie. Doom 3) The temp never exceeds 110f on the CPU (which is where the temp probes are). I have never been able to get my heatsink/fan CPUs to cool nearly this good under intense loads.
Just thought I would share my personal experience with watercooling.
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I agree. I work for a College IT Dept and we experience the same problems as High Schools. Kids always think they are the best hackers. You can spend your whole life playing cat and mouse with students or you can let them have full access and just expel them from the college when they break the rules. That is how the "harsh" college I work for does it. Surf Myspace.. never allowed on a school computer again.. download porn, not allowed on campus again. The thinking is with these "kids" the vast majority are over 18 and are adults and must experience adult repricussions for breaking rules they signed stating they wouldn't break. What may have been a slap in the wrist in High School now can cost you your college degree if you try it at certain colleges. We have all the normal "rules" that students have to sign so there is no "I never read/heard that" since we have their signature. We use DeepFreeze to lock down the OS, but the logon accounts have full admin rights (due to the fact that certain.. cough *adobe* cough products wont run unless your an admin. We have many other programs that are the same way. Yes, IE and MSOffice are fine with limited user rights.. but not the case for the majority of the software we install for students.
I always turn off the stupid windows firewall. There is an option in Security Center to check that says something to the effect of "I have my own firewall and will monitor it myself". Same goes for Antivirus. Then you don't get those task tray pop ups. I never really understood trying to run a firewall on the computer your trying to protect. Kinda defeats the purpose IMO. Even if your PC is secured, do you want someone messing around trying to get into it as your working on it? I think I would rather have another device in front of my work PC that gets attacked vs the computer I use to make $. I tossed out my linksys a while ago and have since just gone with a small computer (one of those micro Transmeta 800Mhz things) that I run Linux on and use that as my router/firewall and anything else I may need served. So far not a glitch in a couple years and never had any problems with network security.
But as pointed out, the article is meant for the masses, not that slashdot crowd, and I have seen all to often people with DSL/Cable modems plugged right into their PC. Makes me shiver every time.
How does it work with projectors? The projector is about 8' behind me and the screen is one with the drywall, framed into the wall, so where would I put those sensors? The Wii would have to go behind me to plug into the projector. Are the sensors wireless? I know no one has the answers yet, but I am really interested in this over the 360/PS3 and this is the first I read of sensors having to go on the TV.. argh, I don't own a TV, just a $10K projector.
I work for a college and today, after a 3 day weekend, every one of our "test" Macs we have in our IT shop for learning/troubleshooting has been infected with that Inqanta virus or whatever its called. So far almost 1/2 our Macs on campus got infected (while the campus was closed, no one was even using the Macs as they were locked up) but luckily we have Sophos AV installed on the Macs and it picked em all up. Still have to click 20+ times per Mac to clear the virus warning messages and deal with every phone call from users about it. Funny thing is we still have some Mac teachers who "swear on their life that Macs do not, and can not get a virus" lol.
Hmmm, on the Xbox you can buy one of these to get your keyboard/mouse support back (I hated FPS games on consoles before I bought this thing) http://gear.ign.com/articles/558/558944p1.html as well as one of these and you will get your precious monitor back and be able to play games in HDTV resolution on your monitor. http://www.x2vga.com/ And you will be left with a pretty good and cheap gaming console that runs with KB/Mouse/Monitor
I have never considered using someone elses Wi-Fi that is wide open a crime. Maybe I am in the wrong but I don't think so.
During my last move from one town to another 20 miles away I had to have my Verizon DSL circuit moved (No cable broadband in the area). Getting the phone line part disconnected and reconnected at my new residence took hours to do, yet, to get DSL reactivated took over 30 days! (Meanwhile, DSL still continued to function for weeks at my old residence even without a dialtone, proving Verizon was full of shit when they told me an active phone line is required to get DSL service.)
I am a network admin and need access to my work from home. Where I moved to there are "a bunch of old people", lol, so I wasn't expecting any Wi-Fi signals from my neighbors.. but I found out that the local city police station which is a stones throw from my house had their Wi-Fi wide open so I just hopped on there network to check email/www. My opinion is, if I can receive a open access Wi-Fi signal from sitting on my couch in my own house, I should be able to use it. Just like any other radio waves that land on my property without encryption. If I have the device that can receive and use that signal without breaking any encryption then I should be entitled to use it. It is so painfully easy to enable encryption/Mac filtering on every WAP that if the person is to lazy to read the one page "Install" sheet that explains how to do it then they have no right to complain if a neighbor uses it from the comfort of their own home.
I am not trying to make an excuse for the guy in the article, he was an idiot parking directly in front of someones house for hours on end, but he was on a public street using an open Wi-Fi connection which I am sure happens thousands of times everyday throughout the world. I have done the same thing this guy did but to a much lesser extent. I have driven around just to find open Wi-Fi's and occasionally hopped on just to check my email, but never spent more than 5 minutes in front of someones house I don't know. At most this guy should get community service for his stupidity but any fine/jail time doesnt fit the so called "crime".
I also don't understand all the posts of people saying the homeowner was "stealing" from his ISP by having an open Wi-Fi. With Verizon DSL, when you sign up, they mail you a wireless router/DSL modem in one which comes preconfigured with no encryption. If they (ISP) were so worried about other people using the broadband, why would they give every customer a wireless router that is wide open? The answer, they don't care. The customer pays for an alway on broadband connection with limits on up/down speeds which you can't exceed. If you use your entire bandwith 24/7 for a month straight, your entitled to, you pay for it. I have done that very thing and never once recieved an email or phone call from my ISP about my usage.
Just google it, comes up as $36.95 from http://www.overstock.com/cgi-bin/d2.cgi?PAGE=PRODU CT&PROD_ID=1498041&cid=25608&fp=F. The MSRP is $59.99. I have no idea where they came up with $70 unless they are including tax in the price as well.
I have been reading about this switchover since the early 90's. I remember the FCC stating that all TVs would be Digital by Dec 31, 1999 and all analog turned off. (I guess they hadnt thought about the Y2K issues when they first picked 1999 as the year) As we got closer to 1999, the dates kept getting delayed. Simply to a google search for "FCC High Definition Delay" to see the numerous articles. You will see every year since 1999 listed as the year analog goes away, 2000-2009. Every year we advance is another year HD gets bumped back. I read today that its 2008, yet, in the google search the FCC states that 2009 "is more realistic", 10 years late, and I am betting it will be delayed several more years after that date. "The latest proposal is to have 85 percent of households using digital television by Jan. 1, 2009. The previous deadline was January 2007, but that has been determined to be too early."
Actually, in the US Govt (for which I work for repairing/patching computers) there is a loooong waiting list before your allowed to install patches. Windows XP was just recently approved to be used by the Military and SP2 will probably be another year before its been throughly tested and allowed to be used/installed. Usually for non Service Pack updates it is about a 6 month wait until "critical" patches deemed by MS are allowed to be installed and a year plus for Service Packs.
ok, I see a 5400RPM there, but its $5 MORE than the 7200RPM on Pricewatch. So the price is going up for slower HDs. lol.
I am still sitting here scratching my head trying to figure out how this could be of any benifit at all. Every office I have worked (I work for the USAF in sunny California) leave all their lights and all their computers running 24/7. So no savings there. Next arguement, wont need to use oil for heating, true, we would have to run the A/C longer. Which one uses more power? Gas heat, or electric A/C? The last "Power Crunch" here in CA, we had rolling black outs during mid day, when A/C is most used. I can't even imagine how the people up on the hill would think this proposal would make any significant benefit. Maybe I am just too uneducated in these matters. On a side note about gas. Today, gas prices in my area are now up to $2.89/gal. Gas has gone up more than 30cents a gallon in the last 2 weeks.
Show me where you can get 5x250GB HDs AND a Raid 5 controller for "around $500". That price is more than a little low. Current Pricewatch prices list a 250G at $105 + shipping, and the cheapest raid "5" controller I see is around $100. So your looking at closer to $650 if you dont have to pay tax, or $700 with tax. Also, try finding a 5400RPM 250GB HD. I can't.
I am 0 for 5 now and I have given up. I went all around town looking for a PSP on launch day and I did find a few stores with some left. PSP1 - 3 dead pixels PSP2 - 5 dead pixels PSP3 - 2 dead pixels PSP4 - 1 dead pixel PSP5 - 8 dead pixels Should have learned my lesson after #1 but its one of those cool gadgets I had to check out (plus I could have used it to control my media center on my XBox wirelessly) but I guess its not to be. I am of the firm belief that I was being sold a perfectly working peice of electronics and out of 5 chances I did not receive that. No more Sony products in my house from now on. I will probably have better luck buying Apex products at this point vs Sony.
I had the same concerns alot of people on here seem to have about watercooling. I shelled out around $900 for a Koolance case a little over 3 years ago and popped in a Intel MB w/ P4 1.7. I also have my 6 300GB HDs and GF FX Video card water cooled as well. I have been in the case quite a few times, and even upgraded it to a P4 3Ghz, new Intel MB, and new Vid card. I even had to replace my old socket 423 cooler for a socket 478 cooler and no probs. To this day (3+ years later) I have NEVER had a single problem with my case. No leaks, no overheating, no problems period. Yes, it only cools as much as the ambient temp in the room, but on a really hot day that is only 100degrees F. As I type this I am running at 92f.. during intense gaming (ie. Doom 3) The temp never exceeds 110f on the CPU (which is where the temp probes are). I have never been able to get my heatsink/fan CPUs to cool nearly this good under intense loads. Just thought I would share my personal experience with watercooling.