One of these days you need to find an original IBM AT computer - regular desktop computer (a 286 8Mz generally) that weighed about 40 or 50 lbs. I think it was made of 1/8th inch plate steel and you could literally stand on it to use it as a stepladder (stand on the top of the case around the edges where it had support.)
The indestructible toy is very useful for destroying other toys.
Even better thought, he could decide that there actually is a distinction between server duty and workstation duty and decide which this particular machine is going to pull. If he needs the machine to run as a workstation, quit trying to use an unstable environment as a server. If the files and stability of the system are of any importance whatsoever then it is a server, treat it as such and buy another computer to use as a workstation (they are dirt cheap now.) Pretty simple.
Want to see your uptime and stability rise incredibly on the server? Put it in the closet on a UPS and once it is running turn off the monitor, unplug the keyboard, and tape a piece of cardboard over the power switch so it doesn't get turned off by accident. Where the machine used to sit put a cheap replacement computer to use as a workstation - even new entry level boxes are starting at under $500 fully loaded (a little wimpy, but including all the necessary parts including a monitor) and used hardware has gotten insanely cheap (ie $200 for a full machine that is a generation or two old, PIII.5 to 1GHz range with a CRT.)
That said, I am going to read every post in this thread to get a better understanding of how to do this - now you have my interest up.
I worked IT/MIS for a company that had several older buildings including one that had a System 32 in it from way back when. Someone decided that they wanted that computer gone and since it was a computer and I was a computer guy it was my problem. Having never seen a S/32 before I grabbed my little leatherette pouch of little tiny screwdrivers, needlenose plyers and wirecutters just in case.
Boss stopped me, suggested I leave those behind and we stopped at the diesel mechanics shop for crowbars, a hacksaw, and a few 4 pound sledgehammers. I was like... WTF and he asked if I had ever seen the machine in question. D'oh, no.
Get there and this thing is a beast. The printer frame was cast aluminum about the same size and strength as the intake manifold and heads on a Chevy V8 engine. The computer itself was made of 1" steel square tubing that was like a quarter inch thick, the bolts that held it together looked like something you would use on a house. The hard drive was a single platter, and the base housing was cast bronze or something, weighed about 20 - 25 lbs or so, about the size of a current ATX desktop case, and the motor for the drive was a monster 220V electric motor about the size of a small pumpkin - half horsepower maybe?
I have no clue why I was there taking that monster apart, but I got a real good appreciation for how Tonka tough IBM used to make their computers. Probably less powerful than my $50 calculator but built like a tank.
-If anyone has recommendations on good, low to medium end PC vendors that include nice software builds (windows I'm afraid) please post here!
Bah - get the machine out of the box (I buy Dells) and turn it on to see if everything works. Download the drivers for all the hardware from their support site, burn them to CD, repartition the drive so the primary drive is about 4G smaller and add a secondary partition of that 4G, format the drives (format the D: drive as FAT32) and reinstall the OS onto the C: drive.
Once the clean OS is installed with the drivers you burned onto CD, do a Microsoft Update to get the latest updates from Microsoft. Install your favorite anti-virus (McAfee with the web install / updates is a good idea, cost +/- $30 a year), WinZip, Adobe, Office or whatever came with the box, any toys you think they are going to need and know do not have spyware. Add their users and passwords.
Reboot the machine using the boot CD you made, and make a (Ghost / Drive Image / whatever) of the nicely configured C: drive onto the D: drive, splitting the files into 680M sized chunks if the box has a CD burner, or 2G sized chunks if it has a DVD burner. Reboot the machine, burn those to CDs or DVDs and make two copies, one for you, one for them. Burn the app you used to make them onto the media also, and make it bootable.
Voila! Takes a few hours but from then on when (not if) they hose it up you simply walk them through restoring that image - if you are nice and if their machine is limping along well enough you can walk them through backing up their documents first.
Or they could get 10 million users signed up during their 'perpetual free beta' and sell the whole dang thing to AOL or Microsoft. Worked for ICQ, to the tune of... like $400M.
Yea, just teach her to do it in notepad. Want (or feel that she needs) WYSIWYG? Get a box of crayons. The world needs a bunch of things, but more gimp drag-n-drop web'masters isn't one of them.
No offense intended. Heck turn her loose with an HTML book and notepad - she may amaze you (11 year old children do that.)
You are not alone in believing that Reparations were due those most greatly harmed by slavery and injustice in America inflicted upon the black people. It has been said over and over that America could only be forgiven if it went out and obtained a massive expanse of land, fertile seacoast land perhaps on the African continent, gave free transportation for any so harmed person that desired, helped in the establishment of a social infrastructure and with cash loans / grants of money and supplies to help the new people get started in the development of a new country of free people allowed to govern themselves. Nothing else would be enough - even Louis Farrakhan said as much.
I agree 100%. You sound like you would also agree, ya? The late President Monroe also agreed - in fact he agreed enough to actually make it happen. In the early 1800's (ie, 1816 the first ship (the Elizabeth) sailed and shortly thereafter a second ship (the Nautilus) arrived. A nation of Liberty (Liberia) was born. It wasn't any easier for the initial settlers than it was for the Pilgrims that landed in America, well maybe a little because the American Congress made available to the new settlers some American advisors to help them build their new infrastructure, money and supplies to help it happen.
Every newly freed person that was interested was given his 40 acres and a mule, or the rough equivalent, in a new country made up Of, For, and By those most recently harmed by slavery in America. Not 7 generations down the line, but the actual people who had been slaves.
http://mo.essortment.com/liberiahistory_rkew.htm
Google : history Liberia Monroe for more details.
The question as to whether or not 'Reparations' is a good idea is no longer relevant as they have already been made in a very large way. The question becomes - ok, now what?
Maybe a year ago I gave much thought to that question and wrote a massive diatribe that now of course I can't find. The basics, however, mirrored my own life. I can talk with authority on this subject because I was even more disadvantaged at 17 than most African Americans : from a one parent family, abusive alcoholic father, poor, no money for college, kicked out of the house three weeks before I graduated from high school, nowhere to turn, no real job opportunities, nothing but the clothes on my back.
Well that isn't exactly true. My only material possessions were the clothes on my back but I also had self discipline, the understanding of the importance of education, and a militant distain for drugs (my father was military so that is where those came from - ingrained in my upbringing.) My father was a high school dropout, not particularly good at staying out of trouble, and a lifer in the military. I don't approve of his methods but he left me with those things and the belief that if I wanted more for myself education was the key.
The basics for black prosperity in three easy steps: Step 1. An entire generation of young black men and women join the military. Therein they learn self respect, discipline, respect for authority and honesty, the ability to provide for themselves, and most importantly a strong military discipline. Start on some random date and every single person without exception join the military for say... the next 20 years. Step 2. They marry each other and have a single or maybe two legitimate children. They stay married and raise the child together. In the military they have safe housing, good schools, good medical, and protection from gangs, drugs, and crime, and a reasonable income (some of which is saved / invested for Step 3.) Step 3. 18 years later the first of the babies from these unions are graduating from high school (all of them with self discipline and self respect, and respect for the importance of education) with enough money set aside in Step 2 to go to college. 100% of them go to college with the discipline to graduate with college degrees
--"Crime Rates - statistically 25% of all black men in the nation GO TO PRISON during some part of their life - there is no reason for that (contrast white males at 4%.)" -Ok, your a Troll, have a nice day.
I'm not trolling you, I am quoting often referenced materials widely available.
(Remove any spaces in the URLs)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Prison_System/ Pr ison_System.html : "In 1999, though Blacks were only 13 percent of the U.S. population, they were half of all prison inmates. In 2000, one out of three young Black men was either locked up, on probation, or on parole."
http://archive.aclu.org/news/n022696c.html : "-- On any given day, almost one in three black men between the ages of 20-29 are in prison or jail, on probation or parole."
These are not pretty facts, but I trust the ACLU to tell the truth.
-No, it's just that you don't understand what the problem is.
Ok, maybe I don't. But I am open minded. What is the core problem? What, once fixed, makes all the symptoms go away?
My desire to make the world a better place is unconditional, meaning I do not need to convince you that that is my goal nor do I need you to encourage me or support me to that effect; I will continue doing what I can regardless and possibly in spite of you not understanding it. I have seen how unfair and harsh real life is, was homeless with little more than the clothes on my back at 17 and once again at 20 when I had to choose between tuition and rent. Until about a year ago my roommate was a black woman (lesbian at that) and a lot of my perspective on the issues were shaped by many discussions with her on the subject.
I listen to you now and give you my full attention and completely open mind - I am suggesting that if the list of problems I enumerated were fixed all the symptoms would magically go away. You disagree - and I encourage you to have another opinion but please tell me what you honestly believe needs to be fixed instead.
I think we both agree that the nomenclature associated with IDE hard drives has nothing to do with ultimately resolving this issue. That said, what does?
Ever stop to think that maybe I was trying to make a point, or even perhaps that I am on your side?
-And you have hit very succinctly on the problem with institutional racism. They would rather hire...
In the context of this entire thread we find that you are pointing at the symptoms, while I am pointing at the problem. If a patient that is throwing up, has a fever, and has the squirts is going to get well you don't treat the fever, vomiting, diarrhea - you try to diagnose that he has the flu and you treat the flu.
Now because this disease has been allowed to grow undiagnosed and unchecked in America the symptoms have become incredibly overwhelming and may even look like new diseases - but just as the fever, vomiting, diarrhea all go away when the flu is gone, so too will the symptoms like institutional racism (jobs, college admissions, even a Black President,) uneven living conditions, etc when the real problems are cured.
Chris Rock (popular black comedian) said it best when he said in a stand up 'I love black people, but I haaaaate niggers.' He said that a few bad apples go a long way toward making the entire bunch look bad. It only took 19 arabs to make most of America angry enough at most arabs to let Bush unleash the dogs of war and overthrow an entire government in Iraq.
Colin Powell. Michael Jordan. Oprah. Bill Cosby. Tiger Woods. Vanessa Williams. Janet Jackson (who I would marry in a heartbeat.) Richard Pryor.
The list of successful and attractive African Americans goes on and on, and in every case the reason for their success is easily attributed to hard work, dedication, education, and self discipline.
What do I suggest is the real problem, that can be fixed in order that the 'symptoms' go away? The entitlement attitude (welfare.) The demands for Reparations (look up the history of Monrovia and Liberia.) Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Louis Farrakhan. A 70% illegitimacy rate (69.3% in 1998.) Inner city Gangs. Crack Cocaine. Richard Pryor had it all - career, money, fame, until when? When did he lose everything? The minute he put the crack pipe in his mouth. Crime Rates - statistically 25% of all black men in the nation GO TO PRISON during some part of their life - there is no reason for that (contrast white males at 4%.) Voluntary Disenfranchisement - 13% of all black men have lost the right to VOTE (result of felony conviction of a crime they chose to commit.) Third, fourth, even fifth generation welfare babies. Car Jackings. The glamorization of the Pimp lifestyle (MTV's Cribs.) And now : Politically Correctness. In the wake of the Texaco (google : black jelly bean texaco) fiasco you have to wonder just how bad the process has been destroyed. Yes they have to have a certain percentage of this and that - but if they intentionally promote blacks that are not capable of handling the positions they set them up to fail, and now all hiring managers from companies across America point to that PC event to justify (in their head, not out loud) institutional discrimination.
Nothing that dedication, education, discipline wouldn't (or can't) clean up. The Asian Americans are even a smaller minority in America (less than 5%) but they don't have these problems. Figure out why the differences and that will show you the way to equality, possibly even preferential treatment.
Brakes on your car have a master cylinder and slave cylinders. You and I are not offended by this, but it could be twisted into some PC crap if you try hard enough.
Basically you sound like you want to use / establish a vocabulary that is guaranteed not to offend anybody in the workplace, ya?
Easy : keep on using your existing vocabulary and just don't hire niggers or bitches. Voila! nobody at the office gets offended, guaranteed!
An alternative, of course, is to expect that all employees work in the existing environment and accept that words may be used that if they really, really wanted to they could twist into totally unintended meanings and be offended by them (ie, Master/Slave hard drive settings, cylinders in automobile settings) - by accepting the existing work environment as it stands ensuring that they (and others like them) are welcome to the workplace now and in the future.
This Politically Correct crap has done nothing towards making work environments better for the 'oppressed' (ie, blacks, latins, women) and has done quite a bit towards making hiring managers very, very biased against hiring any of those and being very, very subtle about working towards that effect. I will give you a 100% written guarantee that none of the above are ever getting past zillions of employment screenings in corporate America, and the hiring managers know better than to admit my true motives in which candidate gets chosen.
They are all totally upset with the direction employment is going in corporate America, and yet they are bringing it on themselves. They scream about not being able to get a job, and yet the ones that did get hired pull this PC shit. Well there we go - can't say they weren't asking for it. Big time.
No, I would guess that companies are not going to invest the time and money to get their goods working on Linux until the Linux community adopts a mantra and outlook other than 'FREE SOFTWARE! SOFTWARE NEEDS TO BE FREE!'
Ten thousand seats of installed software doesn't mean a whole lot if the gross revenue for those seats totals zero (0). Ditto 10e+06 seats.
In theory the companies (and end users) that are running Windows or Apple boxes tend to acknowledge that business software, the software that enables them to conduct their business, costs money and is seen as an investment in their company. Contrast that with a company / school / user that has decided to adopt Linux as a symbol of rebellion from the hoards of overpriced closed source software, getting free warez to run his computers - if his attitude is that his OS should be free what are his odds of paying for business packages?
As for the soccer moms, maybe if they would just offer to give up the goods while the toddlers are off at day care, geeks and hackers would be lined up to help her get and keep her machine running. I mean if an OS doesn't help you get laid, what good is it?
They apprenticed for many, many years. Often as one of a mere handful of underlings of a master engineer who received daily attention of the master and were not set free to do actual engineering work until the master deemed them ready.
They didn't wake up when they were 18 years old without formal training and education and start building a boat or a bridge - they spent plenty of time getting a formal education in the matters at hand. Something tells me they actually got a piece of paper to that effect, although I am not going to look it up.
Net net, however, is that even the coveted greek engineers paid their dues learning the formalities of their trade and as apprentices did a lot of shit work and things way worse than our taking art and history classes; if they didn't stick it out and get the approval of the master they most certainly did not go out and start building ships and bridges.
Even ships built today leak a buttload of water the first time they hit the water so I have to call bullshit on drinking all the salt water that leaked when their ship first hit the water.
Getting a degree shows a prospective employer that you know how to learn a great myriad of topics in a short order, can handle a bunch of different high pressure situations at the same time (successfully), and that you are willing to stick to it and finish a project and not bail because you changed your mind or something funner came along. Getting a degree shows that you are not only intelligent and persistant, but that you are able to draw from the experiences, intelligence and persistance of those before you to build upon those foundations and make advances much greater than if you just decided that you know it all and are willing to be punished if it fails. Businesses do not succeed by punishing the losers, but by hiring and promoting those that show the aptitude to succeed and deliver on that aptitude.
JennE - I had intended not to come across as a prick when writing that post, but looks like I may have anyways. Two decades ago there were two degrees in 'computers' : MIS (Management of Information Systems) under the school of business, and CS (Computer Science, aka Software Engineering) under the department of EE. It sounds like your college has similar offerings, using the monikers CS and CE in place of MIS and CS.
What I had hoped to get across (but failed, according to some of the feedback I got) was that if you are very close to having a degree in engineering it may be very worth taking a semester or two during the down market to finish it. In order to be deemed PE (Professional Engineer) in many states (requirements differ from state to state) in the US you need to have taken and massed the PE exam - which you can only take if you have a degree in engineering (or 20 years paid professional work as an engineer in the state of Delaware.) Until you actually graduate that door isn't even open. The job market is full of HR pricks asking the moon in job listings (which is pretty much the original topic for this thread) including a degree.
I would still be coding at the same level regardless of whether or not I had gone back for that art class and US history class - it isn't about me (or you), it is about perceptions of the hiring manager and whether or not the opportunities are even available to me (or you.) Many of them would not have been, over my career, without a degree. There is an element of 'good ol boys' in the hiring process, and more than once behind closed doors I have heard things to the effect of 'well dammit if he couldn't even finish college, how is he going to finish this project', 'he couldn't stick it out in college to get the degree (seen as the golden ring, the prize, the payoff for going to college) so how long is he going to last here?' etc...
-I don't see a degree being much of an asset beyond a certain point, though. Once I'm properly established, I'll just
The experts agree. In the same way that high school is very, very important in getting you into college and totally worthless thereafter, college is very important in getting your first few jobs and much less important (although will still carry with it some weight, but not nearly as much) after you have 5 years paid experience behind you. Nobody checks a famous race car driver for his drivers license, but ask if the early opportunities that lead to where he is now would have been available if he hadn't gotten his drivers license in the first place.
If only given the chance, odds are you will succeed on a very grand scale. Some times having that degree weighs strongly in the decision as to whether or not you get that chance. If it is only another semester or two, go back and get it because it stacks the deck in your favor.
Just for the record, a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science under the Department of Electrical Engineering is not an analog measurement like how full your gas tank is or how fat a woman is - either you have a BS/CS under the department of EE, or you do not. This was a point I contemplated quite heavily my last semester in college oh so long ago when all I had standing between me and my degree (BS/CS (dept of EE)) was an art class and a US history class, 6 hours total. What does art have to do with CS? Not a damn thing. What does US History (1830-present) have to do with software engineering? Not a damn thing. If I had said screw that and went and got a job without those classes I would have been completely without a degree. Not 'have most of a degree', but 'don't have a degree.' In retrospect, I am glad I finished. Having finished those classed didn't make me any better a programmer or 'well rounded as a person' but they did let me finish the requirements and get my degree.
Just a thought, if the job scene is 'teh suxor' right now maybe it is a good opportunity to finish that degree.
Personally I am a big fan of Power Quest's Drive Image - boot to a Win98 DOS disk (the emergency boot disk you create for 98 has boot drivers, a bunch of important DOS files for fdisking and formatting a drive on a ram disk, and it has drivers for just about every CD-ROM known to man) and run it in DOS mode. Only requirement is a second partition or drive formatted FAT32 to put the image on.
That said, I am moving towards virtual machines (VMware.) Tell it to break the files up into 2G chunks and they back up two to a DVD-R, the host operating system really only needs three installed apps (Windows 2000 is a good choice for OS, Nero or some DVD burning software, and VMware.) Need to replicate a machine - just copy the VMware files to another directory. Need a new install - ditto. Want to back a machine up entirely - burn the files two per DVD or just put em on a backup server with a LOT of free space. Want to restore - copy the files back from the DVD.
Granted VMware has two drawbacks (1 - system resources, takes a LOT of memory to do it right, 2 - no 3D games as the video is a virtual video card, not direct access to you nVidia fx5900 or whatever) but for pure business it is a wet dream.
Granted this only applies to my machines, not a managed environment of 1000 mouth breathing end users.
The 12M V2 cards retailed day one at Best Buy for $300 plus tax = $324 out the door. Man was I uber, for about a month. That was the card that taught me to just be cool for a month or two and buy hardware for half of what it cost day one.
As for SLI, I think that as long as the two cards matched they would SLI and in SLI mode it only made use of 16M total (so either the 8M or 12M cards were exactly the same if you bought two and SLI'ed them.) I did not ever SLI mine, one $300 card was enough for me, thanks.
Damn, I think I put that card in a machine I paid $1,600 for to start with - bringing the total over $2k. I only WISH I could justify dropping $2k on a machine today.
I look at the original question and wonder if perhaps it is too narrow in scope. What about ALL computer programs, and all data storage and management systems.
A few years ago I was called in by a city to give an estimate and recommendations on a data management system. The systems at the time were document control packages, perfect for CAD and they were doing civil and architectual engineering so in theory we were a perfect fit. When I went to look at their historical data, however, it was paper archives that date back to the mid 1700s. Two hundred and fifty years later we can still access the data that was stored in their data warehouse (lots of hand drawn and written documentation, land deeds, etc...) It would have been a crime to try and convince them that we had a solution that would have been able to serve them in any manner better than their slow, antique hand method of tracking these documents - not because it wouldn't have worked nicely for a few years, but because there is no system that is going to survive the tests of time measured in centuries.
Maybe the question shouldn't be 'should the software in cars be open source?', maybe it should be 'should cars have software based controls in the first place?' Not just cars, but lots of things.
I wrote them an email that explained that I wasn't directing my misgivings at them specifically, but at Belkin overall - and he actually wrote me back. According to EricD they are going to be undoing what has been done and they have pretty much decided against ever doing that again.
As for cock-up vs marketing, remember that after the 6 month trial it was a pay service. Given that, a pop-up in your face offer for a free trial to their pay service, it was pretty much marketing. Putting a signup sheet and stamped envelope in the box is also marketing, and probably a much better way than what they did.
They hadn't thought through the ramifications of using a hardware router to serve up unsolicted marketing information, and they probably didn't listen to the techs that screamed not to do it there in their office, with that I agree.
As the official "JerryMouse" in question I sadly admit it - yea this is 100% true. I tried to tell those fuckers in Marketing this would happen but Nooo... we don't want to listen to the techs.
The good news, of course, is that I can fuck with all kinds of settings on your Belkin routers from the comfort of my office. I figured that since I had to make it so we could change settings on your router from outside the firewall, completely bypassing all security on the unit, I might as well go for broke and added the ability to do all kinds of shit to your routers.
Actually this was by design. When the 0.99 version of the router was ready to ship the HTTP hijack code wasn't ready so they had two choices : not ship until the spyware code was ready, or break your shit so you had to come get the patch later (by that time they would have the spyware code working and in place.) Pretty nifty, ya?
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One of these days you need to find an original IBM AT computer - regular desktop computer (a 286 8Mz generally) that weighed about 40 or 50 lbs. I think it was made of 1/8th inch plate steel and you could literally stand on it to use it as a stepladder (stand on the top of the case around the edges where it had support.)
The indestructible toy is very useful for destroying other toys.
Even better thought, he could decide that there actually is a distinction between server duty and workstation duty and decide which this particular machine is going to pull. If he needs the machine to run as a workstation, quit trying to use an unstable environment as a server. If the files and stability of the system are of any importance whatsoever then it is a server, treat it as such and buy another computer to use as a workstation (they are dirt cheap now.) Pretty simple.
.5 to 1GHz range with a CRT.)
Want to see your uptime and stability rise incredibly on the server? Put it in the closet on a UPS and once it is running turn off the monitor, unplug the keyboard, and tape a piece of cardboard over the power switch so it doesn't get turned off by accident. Where the machine used to sit put a cheap replacement computer to use as a workstation - even new entry level boxes are starting at under $500 fully loaded (a little wimpy, but including all the necessary parts including a monitor) and used hardware has gotten insanely cheap (ie $200 for a full machine that is a generation or two old, PIII
That said, I am going to read every post in this thread to get a better understanding of how to do this - now you have my interest up.
I worked IT/MIS for a company that had several older buildings including one that had a System 32 in it from way back when. Someone decided that they wanted that computer gone and since it was a computer and I was a computer guy it was my problem. Having never seen a S/32 before I grabbed my little leatherette pouch of little tiny screwdrivers, needlenose plyers and wirecutters just in case.
... WTF and he asked if I had ever seen the machine in question. D'oh, no.
Boss stopped me, suggested I leave those behind and we stopped at the diesel mechanics shop for crowbars, a hacksaw, and a few 4 pound sledgehammers. I was like
Get there and this thing is a beast. The printer frame was cast aluminum about the same size and strength as the intake manifold and heads on a Chevy V8 engine. The computer itself was made of 1" steel square tubing that was like a quarter inch thick, the bolts that held it together looked like something you would use on a house. The hard drive was a single platter, and the base housing was cast bronze or something, weighed about 20 - 25 lbs or so, about the size of a current ATX desktop case, and the motor for the drive was a monster 220V electric motor about the size of a small pumpkin - half horsepower maybe?
I have no clue why I was there taking that monster apart, but I got a real good appreciation for how Tonka tough IBM used to make their computers. Probably less powerful than my $50 calculator but built like a tank.
-If anyone has recommendations on good, low to medium end PC vendors that include nice software builds (windows I'm afraid) please post here!
Bah - get the machine out of the box (I buy Dells) and turn it on to see if everything works. Download the drivers for all the hardware from their support site, burn them to CD, repartition the drive so the primary drive is about 4G smaller and add a secondary partition of that 4G, format the drives (format the D: drive as FAT32) and reinstall the OS onto the C: drive.
Once the clean OS is installed with the drivers you burned onto CD, do a Microsoft Update to get the latest updates from Microsoft. Install your favorite anti-virus (McAfee with the web install / updates is a good idea, cost +/- $30 a year), WinZip, Adobe, Office or whatever came with the box, any toys you think they are going to need and know do not have spyware. Add their users and passwords.
Reboot the machine using the boot CD you made, and make a (Ghost / Drive Image / whatever) of the nicely configured C: drive onto the D: drive, splitting the files into 680M sized chunks if the box has a CD burner, or 2G sized chunks if it has a DVD burner. Reboot the machine, burn those to CDs or DVDs and make two copies, one for you, one for them. Burn the app you used to make them onto the media also, and make it bootable.
Voila! Takes a few hours but from then on when (not if) they hose it up you simply walk them through restoring that image - if you are nice and if their machine is limping along well enough you can walk them through backing up their documents first.
Or they could get 10 million users signed up during their 'perpetual free beta' and sell the whole dang thing to AOL or Microsoft. Worked for ICQ, to the tune of ... like $400M.
This is pretty much what every manual and help file I have ever read says, once you boil off all the buzzwords.
Given any points I woulda marked you +1: Insightful.
Yea, just teach her to do it in notepad.
Want (or feel that she needs) WYSIWYG? Get a box of crayons. The world needs a bunch of things, but more gimp drag-n-drop web'masters isn't one of them.
No offense intended. Heck turn her loose with an HTML book and notepad - she may amaze you (11 year old children do that.)
Dude you just described the yard trash on some of the zones my guild clears for fun. The real boss mobs in those zones are pretty nasty, however.
I agree with your list but add
Jumpman
Gunship
You are not alone in believing that Reparations were due those most greatly harmed by slavery and injustice in America inflicted upon the black people. It has been said over and over that America could only be forgiven if it went out and obtained a massive expanse of land, fertile seacoast land perhaps on the African continent, gave free transportation for any so harmed person that desired, helped in the establishment of a social infrastructure and with cash loans / grants of money and supplies to help the new people get started in the development of a new country of free people allowed to govern themselves. Nothing else would be enough - even Louis Farrakhan said as much.
: ... the next 20 years.
I agree 100%. You sound like you would also agree, ya? The late President Monroe also agreed - in fact he agreed enough to actually make it happen. In the early 1800's (ie, 1816 the first ship (the Elizabeth) sailed and shortly thereafter a second ship (the Nautilus) arrived. A nation of Liberty (Liberia) was born. It wasn't any easier for the initial settlers than it was for the Pilgrims that landed in America, well maybe a little because the American Congress made available to the new settlers some American advisors to help them build their new infrastructure, money and supplies to help it happen.
Every newly freed person that was interested was given his 40 acres and a mule, or the rough equivalent, in a new country made up Of, For, and By those most recently harmed by slavery in America. Not 7 generations down the line, but the actual people who had been slaves.
http://mo.essortment.com/liberiahistory_rkew.htm
Google : history Liberia Monroe for more details.
The question as to whether or not 'Reparations' is a good idea is no longer relevant as they have already been made in a very large way. The question becomes - ok, now what?
Maybe a year ago I gave much thought to that question and wrote a massive diatribe that now of course I can't find. The basics, however, mirrored my own life. I can talk with authority on this subject because I was even more disadvantaged at 17 than most African Americans : from a one parent family, abusive alcoholic father, poor, no money for college, kicked out of the house three weeks before I graduated from high school, nowhere to turn, no real job opportunities, nothing but the clothes on my back.
Well that isn't exactly true. My only material possessions were the clothes on my back but I also had self discipline, the understanding of the importance of education, and a militant distain for drugs (my father was military so that is where those came from - ingrained in my upbringing.) My father was a high school dropout, not particularly good at staying out of trouble, and a lifer in the military. I don't approve of his methods but he left me with those things and the belief that if I wanted more for myself education was the key.
The basics for black prosperity in three easy steps
Step 1. An entire generation of young black men and women join the military. Therein they learn self respect, discipline, respect for authority and honesty, the ability to provide for themselves, and most importantly a strong military discipline. Start on some random date and every single person without exception join the military for say
Step 2. They marry each other and have a single or maybe two legitimate children. They stay married and raise the child together. In the military they have safe housing, good schools, good medical, and protection from gangs, drugs, and crime, and a reasonable income (some of which is saved / invested for Step 3.)
Step 3. 18 years later the first of the babies from these unions are graduating from high school (all of them with self discipline and self respect, and respect for the importance of education) with enough money set aside in Step 2 to go to college. 100% of them go to college with the discipline to graduate with college degrees
--"Crime Rates - statistically 25% of all black men in the nation GO TO PRISON during some part of their life - there is no reason for that (contrast white males at 4%.)"
/ Pr ison_System.html : "In 1999, though Blacks were only 13 percent of the U.S. population, they were half of all prison inmates. In 2000, one out of three young Black men was either locked up, on probation, or on parole."
-Ok, your a Troll, have a nice day.
I'm not trolling you, I am quoting often referenced materials widely available.
(Remove any spaces in the URLs)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Prison_System
http://archive.aclu.org/news/n022696c.html : "-- On any given day, almost one in three black men between the ages of 20-29 are in prison or jail, on probation or parole."
These are not pretty facts, but I trust the ACLU to tell the truth.
-No, it's just that you don't understand what the problem is.
Ok, maybe I don't. But I am open minded. What is the core problem? What, once fixed, makes all the symptoms go away?
My desire to make the world a better place is unconditional, meaning I do not need to convince you that that is my goal nor do I need you to encourage me or support me to that effect; I will continue doing what I can regardless and possibly in spite of you not understanding it. I have seen how unfair and harsh real life is, was homeless with little more than the clothes on my back at 17 and once again at 20 when I had to choose between tuition and rent. Until about a year ago my roommate was a black woman (lesbian at that) and a lot of my perspective on the issues were shaped by many discussions with her on the subject.
I listen to you now and give you my full attention and completely open mind - I am suggesting that if the list of problems I enumerated were fixed all the symptoms would magically go away. You disagree - and I encourage you to have another opinion but please tell me what you honestly believe needs to be fixed instead.
I think we both agree that the nomenclature associated with IDE hard drives has nothing to do with ultimately resolving this issue.
That said, what does?
-Mmm hmm.
...
Ever stop to think that maybe I was trying to make a point, or even perhaps that I am on your side?
-And you have hit very succinctly on the problem with institutional racism. They would rather hire
In the context of this entire thread we find that you are pointing at the symptoms, while I am pointing at the problem. If a patient that is throwing up, has a fever, and has the squirts is going to get well you don't treat the fever, vomiting, diarrhea - you try to diagnose that he has the flu and you treat the flu.
Now because this disease has been allowed to grow undiagnosed and unchecked in America the symptoms have become incredibly overwhelming and may even look like new diseases - but just as the fever, vomiting, diarrhea all go away when the flu is gone, so too will the symptoms like institutional racism (jobs, college admissions, even a Black President,) uneven living conditions, etc when the real problems are cured.
Chris Rock (popular black comedian) said it best when he said in a stand up 'I love black people, but I haaaaate niggers.' He said that a few bad apples go a long way toward making the entire bunch look bad. It only took 19 arabs to make most of America angry enough at most arabs to let Bush unleash the dogs of war and overthrow an entire government in Iraq.
Colin Powell.
Michael Jordan.
Oprah.
Bill Cosby.
Tiger Woods.
Vanessa Williams.
Janet Jackson (who I would marry in a heartbeat.)
Richard Pryor.
The list of successful and attractive African Americans goes on and on, and in every case the reason for their success is easily attributed to hard work, dedication, education, and self discipline.
What do I suggest is the real problem, that can be fixed in order that the 'symptoms' go away?
The entitlement attitude (welfare.)
The demands for Reparations (look up the history of Monrovia and Liberia.)
Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Louis Farrakhan.
A 70% illegitimacy rate (69.3% in 1998.)
Inner city Gangs.
Crack Cocaine. Richard Pryor had it all - career, money, fame, until when? When did he lose everything? The minute he put the crack pipe in his mouth.
Crime Rates - statistically 25% of all black men in the nation GO TO PRISON during some part of their life - there is no reason for that (contrast white males at 4%.)
Voluntary Disenfranchisement - 13% of all black men have lost the right to VOTE (result of felony conviction of a crime they chose to commit.)
Third, fourth, even fifth generation welfare babies.
Car Jackings.
The glamorization of the Pimp lifestyle (MTV's Cribs.)
And now : Politically Correctness. In the wake of the Texaco (google : black jelly bean texaco) fiasco you have to wonder just how bad the process has been destroyed. Yes they have to have a certain percentage of this and that - but if they intentionally promote blacks that are not capable of handling the positions they set them up to fail, and now all hiring managers from companies across America point to that PC event to justify (in their head, not out loud) institutional discrimination.
Nothing that dedication, education, discipline wouldn't (or can't) clean up. The Asian Americans are even a smaller minority in America (less than 5%) but they don't have these problems. Figure out why the differences and that will show you the way to equality, possibly even preferential treatment.
Brakes on your car have a master cylinder and slave cylinders. You and I are not offended by this, but it could be twisted into some PC crap if you try hard enough.
Basically you sound like you want to use / establish a vocabulary that is guaranteed not to offend anybody in the workplace, ya?
Easy : keep on using your existing vocabulary and just don't hire niggers or bitches. Voila! nobody at the office gets offended, guaranteed!
An alternative, of course, is to expect that all employees work in the existing environment and accept that words may be used that if they really, really wanted to they could twist into totally unintended meanings and be offended by them (ie, Master/Slave hard drive settings, cylinders in automobile settings) - by accepting the existing work environment as it stands ensuring that they (and others like them) are welcome to the workplace now and in the future.
This Politically Correct crap has done nothing towards making work environments better for the 'oppressed' (ie, blacks, latins, women) and has done quite a bit towards making hiring managers very, very biased against hiring any of those and being very, very subtle about working towards that effect. I will give you a 100% written guarantee that none of the above are ever getting past zillions of employment screenings in corporate America, and the hiring managers know better than to admit my true motives in which candidate gets chosen.
They are all totally upset with the direction employment is going in corporate America, and yet they are bringing it on themselves. They scream about not being able to get a job, and yet the ones that did get hired pull this PC shit. Well there we go - can't say they weren't asking for it. Big time.
No, I would guess that companies are not going to invest the time and money to get their goods working on Linux until the Linux community adopts a mantra and outlook other than 'FREE SOFTWARE! SOFTWARE NEEDS TO BE FREE!'
Ten thousand seats of installed software doesn't mean a whole lot if the gross revenue for those seats totals zero (0). Ditto 10e+06 seats.
In theory the companies (and end users) that are running Windows or Apple boxes tend to acknowledge that business software, the software that enables them to conduct their business, costs money and is seen as an investment in their company. Contrast that with a company / school / user that has decided to adopt Linux as a symbol of rebellion from the hoards of overpriced closed source software, getting free warez to run his computers - if his attitude is that his OS should be free what are his odds of paying for business packages?
As for the soccer moms, maybe if they would just offer to give up the goods while the toddlers are off at day care, geeks and hackers would be lined up to help her get and keep her machine running. I mean if an OS doesn't help you get laid, what good is it?
They apprenticed for many, many years. Often as one of a mere handful of underlings of a master engineer who received daily attention of the master and were not set free to do actual engineering work until the master deemed them ready.
They didn't wake up when they were 18 years old without formal training and education and start building a boat or a bridge - they spent plenty of time getting a formal education in the matters at hand. Something tells me they actually got a piece of paper to that effect, although I am not going to look it up.
Net net, however, is that even the coveted greek engineers paid their dues learning the formalities of their trade and as apprentices did a lot of shit work and things way worse than our taking art and history classes; if they didn't stick it out and get the approval of the master they most certainly did not go out and start building ships and bridges.
Even ships built today leak a buttload of water the first time they hit the water so I have to call bullshit on drinking all the salt water that leaked when their ship first hit the water.
Getting a degree shows a prospective employer that you know how to learn a great myriad of topics in a short order, can handle a bunch of different high pressure situations at the same time (successfully), and that you are willing to stick to it and finish a project and not bail because you changed your mind or something funner came along. Getting a degree shows that you are not only intelligent and persistant, but that you are able to draw from the experiences, intelligence and persistance of those before you to build upon those foundations and make advances much greater than if you just decided that you know it all and are willing to be punished if it fails. Businesses do not succeed by punishing the losers, but by hiring and promoting those that show the aptitude to succeed and deliver on that aptitude.
JennE - I had intended not to come across as a prick when writing that post, but looks like I may have anyways. Two decades ago there were two degrees in 'computers' : MIS (Management of Information Systems) under the school of business, and CS (Computer Science, aka Software Engineering) under the department of EE. It sounds like your college has similar offerings, using the monikers CS and CE in place of MIS and CS.
What I had hoped to get across (but failed, according to some of the feedback I got) was that if you are very close to having a degree in engineering it may be very worth taking a semester or two during the down market to finish it. In order to be deemed PE (Professional Engineer) in many states (requirements differ from state to state) in the US you need to have taken and massed the PE exam - which you can only take if you have a degree in engineering (or 20 years paid professional work as an engineer in the state of Delaware.) Until you actually graduate that door isn't even open. The job market is full of HR pricks asking the moon in job listings (which is pretty much the original topic for this thread) including a degree.
I would still be coding at the same level regardless of whether or not I had gone back for that art class and US history class - it isn't about me (or you), it is about perceptions of the hiring manager and whether or not the opportunities are even available to me (or you.) Many of them would not have been, over my career, without a degree. There is an element of 'good ol boys' in the hiring process, and more than once behind closed doors I have heard things to the effect of 'well dammit if he couldn't even finish college, how is he going to finish this project', 'he couldn't stick it out in college to get the degree (seen as the golden ring, the prize, the payoff for going to college) so how long is he going to last here?' etc...
-I don't see a degree being much of an asset beyond a certain point, though. Once I'm properly established, I'll just
The experts agree. In the same way that high school is very, very important in getting you into college and totally worthless thereafter, college is very important in getting your first few jobs and much less important (although will still carry with it some weight, but not nearly as much) after you have 5 years paid experience behind you. Nobody checks a famous race car driver for his drivers license, but ask if the early opportunities that lead to where he is now would have been available if he hadn't gotten his drivers license in the first place.
If only given the chance, odds are you will succeed on a very grand scale. Some times having that degree weighs strongly in the decision as to whether or not you get that chance. If it is only another semester or two, go back and get it because it stacks the deck in your favor.
Just for the record, a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science under the Department of Electrical Engineering is not an analog measurement like how full your gas tank is or how fat a woman is - either you have a BS/CS under the department of EE, or you do not. This was a point I contemplated quite heavily my last semester in college oh so long ago when all I had standing between me and my degree (BS/CS (dept of EE)) was an art class and a US history class, 6 hours total. What does art have to do with CS? Not a damn thing. What does US History (1830-present) have to do with software engineering? Not a damn thing. If I had said screw that and went and got a job without those classes I would have been completely without a degree. Not 'have most of a degree', but 'don't have a degree.' In retrospect, I am glad I finished. Having finished those classed didn't make me any better a programmer or 'well rounded as a person' but they did let me finish the requirements and get my degree.
Just a thought, if the job scene is 'teh suxor' right now maybe it is a good opportunity to finish that degree.
Personally I am a big fan of Power Quest's Drive Image - boot to a Win98 DOS disk (the emergency boot disk you create for 98 has boot drivers, a bunch of important DOS files for fdisking and formatting a drive on a ram disk, and it has drivers for just about every CD-ROM known to man) and run it in DOS mode. Only requirement is a second partition or drive formatted FAT32 to put the image on.
That said, I am moving towards virtual machines (VMware.) Tell it to break the files up into 2G chunks and they back up two to a DVD-R, the host operating system really only needs three installed apps (Windows 2000 is a good choice for OS, Nero or some DVD burning software, and VMware.) Need to replicate a machine - just copy the VMware files to another directory. Need a new install - ditto. Want to back a machine up entirely - burn the files two per DVD or just put em on a backup server with a LOT of free space. Want to restore - copy the files back from the DVD.
Granted VMware has two drawbacks (1 - system resources, takes a LOT of memory to do it right, 2 - no 3D games as the video is a virtual video card, not direct access to you nVidia fx5900 or whatever) but for pure business it is a wet dream.
Granted this only applies to my machines, not a managed environment of 1000 mouth breathing end users.
Never underestimate the bandwidth provided by a station wagon full of DVDs.
The 12M V2 cards retailed day one at Best Buy for $300 plus tax = $324 out the door. Man was I uber, for about a month. That was the card that taught me to just be cool for a month or two and buy hardware for half of what it cost day one.
As for SLI, I think that as long as the two cards matched they would SLI and in SLI mode it only made use of 16M total (so either the 8M or 12M cards were exactly the same if you bought two and SLI'ed them.) I did not ever SLI mine, one $300 card was enough for me, thanks.
Damn, I think I put that card in a machine I paid $1,600 for to start with - bringing the total over $2k. I only WISH I could justify dropping $2k on a machine today.
I look at the original question and wonder if perhaps it is too narrow in scope. What about ALL computer programs, and all data storage and management systems.
A few years ago I was called in by a city to give an estimate and recommendations on a data management system. The systems at the time were document control packages, perfect for CAD and they were doing civil and architectual engineering so in theory we were a perfect fit. When I went to look at their historical data, however, it was paper archives that date back to the mid 1700s. Two hundred and fifty years later we can still access the data that was stored in their data warehouse (lots of hand drawn and written documentation, land deeds, etc...) It would have been a crime to try and convince them that we had a solution that would have been able to serve them in any manner better than their slow, antique hand method of tracking these documents - not because it wouldn't have worked nicely for a few years, but because there is no system that is going to survive the tests of time measured in centuries.
Maybe the question shouldn't be 'should the software in cars be open source?', maybe it should be 'should cars have software based controls in the first place?' Not just cars, but lots of things.
I wrote them an email that explained that I wasn't directing my misgivings at them specifically, but at Belkin overall - and he actually wrote me back. According to EricD they are going to be undoing what has been done and they have pretty much decided against ever doing that again.
As for cock-up vs marketing, remember that after the 6 month trial it was a pay service. Given that, a pop-up in your face offer for a free trial to their pay service, it was pretty much marketing. Putting a signup sheet and stamped envelope in the box is also marketing, and probably a much better way than what they did.
They hadn't thought through the ramifications of using a hardware router to serve up unsolicted marketing information, and they probably didn't listen to the techs that screamed not to do it there in their office, with that I agree.
As the official "JerryMouse" in question I sadly admit it - yea this is 100% true. I tried to tell those fuckers in Marketing this would happen but Nooo... we don't want to listen to the techs.
The good news, of course, is that I can fuck with all kinds of settings on your Belkin routers from the comfort of my office. I figured that since I had to make it so we could change settings on your router from outside the firewall, completely bypassing all security on the unit, I might as well go for broke and added the ability to do all kinds of shit to your routers.
All your router are belong to us!!!1
Actually this was by design. When the 0.99 version of the router was ready to ship the HTTP hijack code wasn't ready so they had two choices : not ship until the spyware code was ready, or break your shit so you had to come get the patch later (by that time they would have the spyware code working and in place.) Pretty nifty, ya?