College is frackin' expensive. I could not afford to finish if it wasn't for the G.I. Bill... It's costing me ~ $10,000 a year for 27 credits. (3 semesters 3 classes each)
I have a home I'm paying a mortgage on, and finishing would not be an option otherwise; racking up $30,000 in debt is not acceptable.
I just noticed here we lost TLC, HGTV, TOON, and a few other channels. Called up Comcast and they tell me that they've moved the channels to digital. I either need to upgrade my service and get boxes or rent boxes for each of my TV's.
I pay more than enough for freakin' extended basic let alone any of the other obscenely priced packages. Once the scale tips and they've taken enough away I will just stop watching.
This is also slowly rendering the tuner cards in our desktops and the media PC useless. Not happy.
1.) He knew what he was doing was scummy.
2.) He continued to do it anyway.
3.) It ruined his reputation.
4.) He wished he hadn't done it.
5.) Instead of eating shit for doing something stupid, he whips up a new name and used it to be 'reputable'; except he is not reputable. And he instead further proved how disreputable he is.
I'm not familiar with him, his blog, or much anything else to do with this story, but this is what you get when you behave poorly. So take your smug ass and your piles of cash, fuck off, and go away.
No one trusts you anymore, nor should they.
You rate right up there with every loser CEO who thinks he can do wtf he wants because he has piles of money and need not regard anyone around him.
I use Beyond TV on Windows 7 x64, previously on Vista and it works ok. My chief complaint is that I can't stream live tv to any other platform but Windows using their Beyont TV Link program for which they charge a per computer licenses, which is really pretty B.S.
It does auto convert recordings to divx format each night (it does other formats as well) and I can access them from the shared out folder it drops them in after converting them or through the web interface it provides. Since they're saved in divx format I can watch them on pretty much any platform I want as well.
You can also set up multiple tuners and designate which channels each is able to record for; for instance I have a PoS Pinnacle 800i that is incapable of recording channels 5 & 6, so I have those disabled on it, while my Hauppauge 2250 is able to.
Of course because it's running on windows that means I can also have no problem with netflix and other programs that require windows...
Beyond TV isn't perfect; I sometimes have problems with the Media Specific Player links starting streaming correctly, and seems to not work at all with teh divx web player 2.0, though vlc works fine; overall it's a pretty good program though.
I haven't read the article, so you may have answered this; still it seems silly that you haven't considered virtualization to try them both.
I have hardware running Fedora 12, Windows 7, and OS X 10.6. But that's not enough for me personally. Just for keeping tabs on whats going on with the different operating systems and each ones nuances I like to have several more installed.
In my case, I use VMware Fusion on my Macbook to run desktop environments on various OS's; Fedora, Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, and whatever else I can shove on its undersized hard drive... hell building OpenOffice.org 3.1 on my new FreeBSD 8.0 vm, just finished up at some gawd aweful hour this morning completing its setup.
Not only that you can set up multiple systems to run at the same time and allow them to interact in server/client environments and see each shine in its own right.
Since my mac is too underpowered to be running multiple VM's I use KVM to launch servers to connect them to as I see fit... hell I have DNS, DHCP, Kerberos, 389 Directory Server, etc. etc. It's a lot to keep in your head, and fiddling with it until your comfortable with it more than most admins is your key to success. I have lists of other things I want to build up when lulls in personal and work life hit; puppet, ruby, cobbler, more nagios, and so on... By virtue of using virtualization you also become familiar with those technologies... sometimes I'll even download an eval license of Windows Server and go through the effort of promoting it to a DC setting up RIS and another service or two just so I can remember how to do so. I don't even admin windows anymore, but it's still good to know.
And in the end I can keep the two or three real systems quite clean and problem free, because if I want to try something I do it in a vm, rather than blowing up one of my host/base operating systems...
That's my two cents; like I said you may have already answered the question, but it just seems silly not to take an approach like this.
mod me troll, whatever, I have karma to burn baby.
Web 2.0, Software 1.0, Cloud computing; this useless jargon needs to die. It's a waste of time and has no solid definition whatsoever. What a fucking tragic waste of peoples time effort and money.
I could be considered as much an internet junky as anyone and I can tell you it's bullshit... after 6 years in IT I needed a break and went for the real thing. I joined the Marine Corps and went off to boot camp. 3 months and I didn't shake, shiver, flip out, or have a break down. People have some crazy shit in their heads. Whatever; go on thinking you need to be born again. Or just walk away from the computer. I'm back doing the system administrator thing now and just as happy in front of the computer; I do take time out to go outside and do some camping, hiking, or even just walking trails in the park for a few hours.
It's not the product that I necessarily have a problem with. I've had bad experiences with Novell support, as I said in my original post. I also said others (probably you) may disagree.
My experience with Novell have tended to yield the result that their software can and does work, but you can't rely on their phone support for anything.
I've actually had them tell me a file on a sles server wasn't part of their distribution, which I countered with a couple rpm commands; to me that's just a sad thing to dispute when you're looking for an answer to something that's already bad enough to have prompted you to call phone support...
1.) RHDS - Red Hat Directory Server
2.) Active Directory
3.) OpenLDAP
4.) Novell eDirectory (personally my least favorite)
I would probably jump for RHDS first, then AD. The only problem with OpenLDAP might be getting a similar level of support to the first two. Support is exactly why I would never choose eDirectory. I have (personally) had abysmal experiences dealing with Novell. Others may disagree though. And of course there probably are other options.
Would you appreciate being called a liar? I'm talking about actually being called a liar here; not them refuting that they received it. They accused me of having never sent the laptop.
They refused to look into it further; no if's and's or but's about it. I was a liar and a thief, and there was no way they could have it.
You know... unless they lost it in their shipping and receiving warehouse...
I bought two Alienware computers. One for my wife and one for me. Both being avid gamers, we loved them. I managed to spill water in mine though, and severely damanged it. Of course, this was completely my fault and no reflection of their system.
However, their handling of the replacement is. I shipped the laptop and called a few days later to ensure that they had received it, to which they claimed they had. Two weeks from the time I sent it in I had still heard nothing, so I called them, at which point they claimed to have never received it. I managed to misplace the shipping paperwork I had because I believed the laptop had showed up, etc...
They accused me of lying and having never sent in the laptop until I was able to get replacement paperwork, etc. from the post office. The reality was that they had misplaced it in their shipping warehouse. So after the two week delay I then had to wait 6 more weeks for the out of stock part to come in so that they could replace it.
And so, with prompt service, and considerate customer service like that, who needs anyone else.
Does anybody else think this is an extremely bad idea? Let's put all the best and brightest minds in ONE PLACE...
I didn't RTFA but did any of these asshats consult the best and brightest minds before they decided penning them all in in one place for any singe natural disaster or attack of any sort to take them out in one fell swoop....
I think in my work place, with the System Administrators I'm working with, it is largerly true that they could less about having access to the source.
That being said, I have personally found it invaluable to have access to the source; it has only been a handful of times, and probably only a couple where it was absolutely critical for work, but have access to the code was a life saver. One off the top of my head was the rm_ldap module crashing in freeradius. I filed a bugzilla and a kind soul at redhat pointed out how it could be fixed by editing the source and rebuilding the RPM. I did so and it saved a critical part of a project. Granted I did not diagnose the problem because I had access to the source, but I was sure as hell able to fix it within a few hours of posting my bug report. No software release cycle from any company could have made that change, tested it, and released it to world+dog that fast, even if they wanted to...
I used to do this kind of mystery work for our help desk to find PC's if they were infected with a virus, had a web server running, or a variety of other problems before the wild wild west days there ended and they got some management tools, policies, centrally managed virus scan, etc in place.
it's not like you shouldnt even be able to narrow it down even closer than that with a properly segregated network, unless you have a class A network doing the broadcast storm of doom; if you know its there you must have an IP address no? by then you should know its hanging off one of a series of switches; look at the arp tables and then at the mac address tables; you should be able to determine which port the mac address is hanging off of; without too terribly much effort; after that you trace the ethernet cable and go see where it's at...
i was doing this with extreme networks switches eons ago, but it should be just as doable with just about any switch
I have a 30GB 5th Gen iPod my wife bought me for Christmas a year and a half ago. Among the simple to navigate interface, etc. the 12 hours and 30 minutes playtime (give or take 15 minutes) is outstanding.
I have just started road tripping between MA and VA because I was stationed in VA, recently got out and picked up a job in MA. My wife is still stationed in VA, so I've already had some good experience with iPod battery life. I don't monkey around with videos or constantly shift around from one band to another, etc., etc.; just select a band and play it out, then go for the next one.
My first trip was 13 hours non-stop except for one stop for gas, and I was no more than 45 minutes without my iPod at the end, and I never stopped playing until the batteries died.
My second trip I hit a lot less traffic, and I stopped a bit in Jersey where I had it paused, but 12 hours later when I was in VA it was still playing.
I understand that the batteries are not altogether easy to replace, however even after 19 months now if they are going that strong I can NOT complain.
I bought both my wife and I iPhones just a week or two ago; my wife is an ardent apple hater (I am not; I have a Macbook Pro, iPod, iPhone, and love them all) and even she loves the iPhone beyond words. The interface is simple and easy to navigate, there are some nice free apps (More Cowbell and Dicebag are my dorkiest favorites) and the phone does about everything you could want a computer in your pocket to do.
Yes, you can't tether; I knew that before I bought it; And I'm not terribly interested in jail breaking it just to tether... I mean why would I? So I can browse the web and check my email? Wait... I can already do that...
I play WoW as much as the next person (a way lot more too) but quite frankly do you want every WoW playing dork to be choking out AT&T's 3g access playing WoW when all you want to do is check your email? I can tell you with my old Samsung T309 with it's t-zones t-mobile access there were just a few times I NEEDED to check my email where it didn't work, and I can honestly say it was annoying as hell. I'd rather not have tethering available if they can in turn promise reliable service when I do need it.
And honestly I do really think that if you could tether iPhones with an unlimited data plan this would happen. Why have internet access at home if you can just tether your phone? Cancel Cox and go AT&T/iPhone. I don't AT&T can support that much bandwidth right now. Maybe in the future, but I don't think today is that day...
I think we're all overlooking the more important benefits of this here... if we grow all our meat in test tubes nad giant vats that means each and every time we can have a perfectly formed boneless cut of whatever the hell we want.
Let the vegans elevate the animals we take the samples from as glorious god creatures for all I care. Their suffering saved millions, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
Now I can consume my steak without excess gristle, fat, and bones.
If you are using Parallels with a Windows Vista Boot Camp install, do NOT try to install the service pack while running Windows Vista in Parallels. The install took 2-1/2 hours, failed at 100% of stage 3, took 2-1/2 hours to rollback the changes, and then things just went from bad to worse. Windows Vista complained that the trusted store had been tampered with, that my computer had been compromised, would not reactive, and stated that Windows would need to be reinstalled. I wasn't even able to boot Windows via Boot Camp before I uninstalled the Parallels software because it would blue screen. I did some reading, and there is apparently a known potential issue with installing the service pack from within Parallels while using a Boot Camp partition, though they didn't have any more information that specifically identified a situation like mine.
I had nothing overly important on the install, and really only use it because I purchased Office and Photoshop for my wife; figured since I have them I may as well be able to install and use them myself, since they allow for multiple computers. I guess it was almost a good thing in my case, because I use Windows so rarely I was considering converting it to a full VM and removing the Boot Camp partition, as it was basically a lot of wasted space, but I can see where this would really screw someone else over if they had something important on their Boot Camp partition. I'll reinstall it all later next week when I'm not so annoyed.
On the plus side the service pack did install on my wifes laptop without a hitch, and seems slightly more responsive at that...
There are in fact manufactures making motherboards with HDMI connectors. This is one I just bought for a basic media PC I'm in the process of putting together. You can search around Newegg and find more. They aren't all that uncommon anymore, and as you can see not too terribly expensive.
There are nVidia and ATI cards with HDMI outputs or adapters as well. I have seen nVidia 8600's with them on the web, as well as 7600's, and ATI X1600's I think... you have to search a little but you can find them.
What does HDMI get me? Well, in my case at least (don't know if it is true of all TV's), I need to use an HDMI connector to get 1080p resolution on my TV. Other connectors support up to 720p/1080i. If you've never looked at a computer screen rendered at 480i or 1080i (the i is for interlaced) I'll tell you now that it will make you insane in no time. Straight lines have a habit of flickering really badly because every other line is refreshed (odds and evens) at a time.
With 480p, 720p, and 1080p (p is for progressive, and is refreshed from top to bottom if I'm not mistaken) everything becomes better. 480p gives you a screen thats smaller than 640x480 and is very tough to work with, though I have done it by shrinking fonts, etc. It is kind of funny to look at a huge television screen with a tiny resolution like that. Anyway, 720p gets much better, and 1080p is just the icing on the cake.
This little project was inspired from loading Linux on my PS3. It's just that it's too damn slow. You can't even play a DVD full screen without it bogging down (when under Linux, the PS3 OS plays DVD's and Blu-Ray discs just fine.) Less intensive processing work OK, but with less than 256MB or RAM and Sony's Hypervisor in the way, it just tends to drag...
Once I get the PC up and running the plan is to be able to do anything from surfing the internet, streaming audio from pandora.com or similar, watch DVD's, or movies from Netflix (though that would require a VM to use their damn Windows only client) and maybe get World of Warcraft running under WINE (which is does quite fine) so that I can engage in some raids on the 60" big screen, just for the sake of saying I did it. Really anything you would do on your computer, but on a much much bigger display.
As far as audio goes, I'm not sure. My receiver is from the stone ages, and hopefully one day in the near future I will get the money to replace it, so that I can get true surround sound, to go with that great picture, and all those speakers, etc. I'm not exactly what I'd call an audiofile anyway, so I don't know if I would even be able to tell the difference...
NMCI is the devil, as evidenced by their phone number. 1-866-THE-NMCI. That spells THE-6624. Simple math reveals the beasts number THE-666 or "The Devil", if you prefer. I've had way too much time to think about this while waiting for their tech support on the phone. And let me tell you, they can't even get Windows right. (Some have a twinkle of life you cant detect in their voice, but not many) And not that I'm saying any OS is easier or harder to administrate on a grand scale, but better to perfect one before moving on to another... Personally I prefer my Mac laptop, and Linux home server, but I'd take even a good working Windows desktop if I could get my hands on it...
On another note, their definition of Legacy applications still escapes the laws of reality. It is actively developed by and used by the Marine Corps; but it's "Legacy"... Hmmmm....
Granted, I agree with this for the most part. However, it always seems like there is that one person that looks at a problem like this in a way that no one else had prior and manages something completely expected. It's only at the point that a virus is running amok across half the corporate networks in the world that we find out you did not really need administrative priveleges if you did x, y, z first...
History is full of examples, probably both within and out of the computing field where people thought that 'that' was impossible...
Slashdot Mirror
College is frackin' expensive. I could not afford to finish if it wasn't for the G.I. Bill... It's costing me ~ $10,000 a year for 27 credits. (3 semesters 3 classes each)
I have a home I'm paying a mortgage on, and finishing would not be an option otherwise; racking up $30,000 in debt is not acceptable.
I just noticed here we lost TLC, HGTV, TOON, and a few other channels. Called up Comcast and they tell me that they've moved the channels to digital. I either need to upgrade my service and get boxes or rent boxes for each of my TV's.
I pay more than enough for freakin' extended basic let alone any of the other obscenely priced packages. Once the scale tips and they've taken enough away I will just stop watching.
This is also slowly rendering the tuner cards in our desktops and the media PC useless. Not happy.
So I read the article, and what I get from it is:
1.) He knew what he was doing was scummy.
2.) He continued to do it anyway.
3.) It ruined his reputation.
4.) He wished he hadn't done it.
5.) Instead of eating shit for doing something stupid, he whips up a new name and used it to be 'reputable'; except he is not reputable. And he instead further proved how disreputable he is.
I'm not familiar with him, his blog, or much anything else to do with this story, but this is what you get when you behave poorly. So take your smug ass and your piles of cash, fuck off, and go away.
No one trusts you anymore, nor should they.
You rate right up there with every loser CEO who thinks he can do wtf he wants because he has piles of money and need not regard anyone around him.
Bastard.
I use Beyond TV on Windows 7 x64, previously on Vista and it works ok. My chief complaint is that I can't stream live tv to any other platform but Windows using their Beyont TV Link program for which they charge a per computer licenses, which is really pretty B.S.
It does auto convert recordings to divx format each night (it does other formats as well) and I can access them from the shared out folder it drops them in after converting them or through the web interface it provides. Since they're saved in divx format I can watch them on pretty much any platform I want as well.
You can also set up multiple tuners and designate which channels each is able to record for; for instance I have a PoS Pinnacle 800i that is incapable of recording channels 5 & 6, so I have those disabled on it, while my Hauppauge 2250 is able to.
Of course because it's running on windows that means I can also have no problem with netflix and other programs that require windows...
Beyond TV isn't perfect; I sometimes have problems with the Media Specific Player links starting streaming correctly, and seems to not work at all with teh divx web player 2.0, though vlc works fine; overall it's a pretty good program though.
I haven't read the article, so you may have answered this; still it seems silly that you haven't considered virtualization to try them both.
I have hardware running Fedora 12, Windows 7, and OS X 10.6. But that's not enough for me personally. Just for keeping tabs on whats going on with the different operating systems and each ones nuances I like to have several more installed.
In my case, I use VMware Fusion on my Macbook to run desktop environments on various OS's; Fedora, Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, and whatever else I can shove on its undersized hard drive... hell building OpenOffice.org 3.1 on my new FreeBSD 8.0 vm, just finished up at some gawd aweful hour this morning completing its setup.
Not only that you can set up multiple systems to run at the same time and allow them to interact in server/client environments and see each shine in its own right.
Since my mac is too underpowered to be running multiple VM's I use KVM to launch servers to connect them to as I see fit... hell I have DNS, DHCP, Kerberos, 389 Directory Server, etc. etc. It's a lot to keep in your head, and fiddling with it until your comfortable with it more than most admins is your key to success. I have lists of other things I want to build up when lulls in personal and work life hit; puppet, ruby, cobbler, more nagios, and so on... By virtue of using virtualization you also become familiar with those technologies... sometimes I'll even download an eval license of Windows Server and go through the effort of promoting it to a DC setting up RIS and another service or two just so I can remember how to do so. I don't even admin windows anymore, but it's still good to know.
And in the end I can keep the two or three real systems quite clean and problem free, because if I want to try something I do it in a vm, rather than blowing up one of my host/base operating systems...
That's my two cents; like I said you may have already answered the question, but it just seems silly not to take an approach like this.
mod me troll, whatever, I have karma to burn baby. Web 2.0, Software 1.0, Cloud computing; this useless jargon needs to die. It's a waste of time and has no solid definition whatsoever. What a fucking tragic waste of peoples time effort and money.
I could be considered as much an internet junky as anyone and I can tell you it's bullshit... after 6 years in IT I needed a break and went for the real thing. I joined the Marine Corps and went off to boot camp. 3 months and I didn't shake, shiver, flip out, or have a break down. People have some crazy shit in their heads. Whatever; go on thinking you need to be born again. Or just walk away from the computer. I'm back doing the system administrator thing now and just as happy in front of the computer; I do take time out to go outside and do some camping, hiking, or even just walking trails in the park for a few hours.
It's not the product that I necessarily have a problem with. I've had bad experiences with Novell support, as I said in my original post. I also said others (probably you) may disagree.
My experience with Novell have tended to yield the result that their software can and does work, but you can't rely on their phone support for anything. I've actually had them tell me a file on a sles server wasn't part of their distribution, which I countered with a couple rpm commands; to me that's just a sad thing to dispute when you're looking for an answer to something that's already bad enough to have prompted you to call phone support...
1.) RHDS - Red Hat Directory Server
2.) Active Directory
3.) OpenLDAP
4.) Novell eDirectory (personally my least favorite)
I would probably jump for RHDS first, then AD. The only problem with OpenLDAP might be getting a similar level of support to the first two. Support is exactly why I would never choose eDirectory. I have (personally) had abysmal experiences dealing with Novell. Others may disagree though. And of course there probably are other options.
Would you appreciate being called a liar? I'm talking about actually being called a liar here; not them refuting that they received it. They accused me of having never sent the laptop.
They refused to look into it further; no if's and's or but's about it. I was a liar and a thief, and there was no way they could have it.
You know... unless they lost it in their shipping and receiving warehouse...
I bought two Alienware computers. One for my wife and one for me. Both being avid gamers, we loved them. I managed to spill water in mine though, and severely damanged it. Of course, this was completely my fault and no reflection of their system.
However, their handling of the replacement is. I shipped the laptop and called a few days later to ensure that they had received it, to which they claimed they had. Two weeks from the time I sent it in I had still heard nothing, so I called them, at which point they claimed to have never received it. I managed to misplace the shipping paperwork I had because I believed the laptop had showed up, etc...
They accused me of lying and having never sent in the laptop until I was able to get replacement paperwork, etc. from the post office. The reality was that they had misplaced it in their shipping warehouse. So after the two week delay I then had to wait 6 more weeks for the out of stock part to come in so that they could replace it.
And so, with prompt service, and considerate customer service like that, who needs anyone else.
It was a reference to the Chewbacca Defense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewbacca_defense
rocket scientists... all of them... it only took them from the inception of gaming to realize their prices are assinine...
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/20/steams-left-4-dead-sale-increased-purchase-infection-by-3000/ 50% off 3000% increase in sales...
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/03/ut3-steam-sale-extended-due-to-2000-play-increase.ars 40% off 2000% percent increase in sales
Does anybody else think this is an extremely bad idea? Let's put all the best and brightest minds in ONE PLACE...
I didn't RTFA but did any of these asshats consult the best and brightest minds before they decided penning them all in in one place for any singe natural disaster or attack of any sort to take them out in one fell swoop....
The main page is ./'ed but it appears the mirrors are still fine. Just use the mirror list in Google Cache.
http://74.125.113.104/search?q=cache:chsA7FTyP3wJ:distribution.openoffice.org/mirrors/+mirrors+openoffice&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
I think in my work place, with the System Administrators I'm working with, it is largerly true that they could less about having access to the source.
That being said, I have personally found it invaluable to have access to the source; it has only been a handful of times, and probably only a couple where it was absolutely critical for work, but have access to the code was a life saver. One off the top of my head was the rm_ldap module crashing in freeradius. I filed a bugzilla and a kind soul at redhat pointed out how it could be fixed by editing the source and rebuilding the RPM. I did so and it saved a critical part of a project. Granted I did not diagnose the problem because I had access to the source, but I was sure as hell able to fix it within a few hours of posting my bug report. No software release cycle from any company could have made that change, tested it, and released it to world+dog that fast, even if they wanted to...
was supposed to be "integrates with your domain and all that fun stuff"
It wasn't swept under the rug, it was sucked into the blackhole!
The city IT personnel must be inept.
I used to do this kind of mystery work for our help desk to find PC's if they were infected with a virus, had a web server running, or a variety of other problems before the wild wild west days there ended and they got some management tools, policies, centrally managed virus scan, etc in place.
it's not like you shouldnt even be able to narrow it down even closer than that with a properly segregated network, unless you have a class A network doing the broadcast storm of doom; if you know its there you must have an IP address no? by then you should know its hanging off one of a series of switches; look at the arp tables and then at the mac address tables; you should be able to determine which port the mac address is hanging off of; without too terribly much effort; after that you trace the ethernet cable and go see where it's at...
i was doing this with extreme networks switches eons ago, but it should be just as doable with just about any switch
I have a 30GB 5th Gen iPod my wife bought me for Christmas a year and a half ago. Among the simple to navigate interface, etc. the 12 hours and 30 minutes playtime (give or take 15 minutes) is outstanding.
I have just started road tripping between MA and VA because I was stationed in VA, recently got out and picked up a job in MA. My wife is still stationed in VA, so I've already had some good experience with iPod battery life. I don't monkey around with videos or constantly shift around from one band to another, etc., etc.; just select a band and play it out, then go for the next one. My first trip was 13 hours non-stop except for one stop for gas, and I was no more than 45 minutes without my iPod at the end, and I never stopped playing until the batteries died.
My second trip I hit a lot less traffic, and I stopped a bit in Jersey where I had it paused, but 12 hours later when I was in VA it was still playing.
I understand that the batteries are not altogether easy to replace, however even after 19 months now if they are going that strong I can NOT complain.
I bought both my wife and I iPhones just a week or two ago; my wife is an ardent apple hater (I am not; I have a Macbook Pro, iPod, iPhone, and love them all) and even she loves the iPhone beyond words. The interface is simple and easy to navigate, there are some nice free apps (More Cowbell and Dicebag are my dorkiest favorites) and the phone does about everything you could want a computer in your pocket to do.
Yes, you can't tether; I knew that before I bought it; And I'm not terribly interested in jail breaking it just to tether... I mean why would I? So I can browse the web and check my email? Wait... I can already do that...
I play WoW as much as the next person (a way lot more too) but quite frankly do you want every WoW playing dork to be choking out AT&T's 3g access playing WoW when all you want to do is check your email? I can tell you with my old Samsung T309 with it's t-zones t-mobile access there were just a few times I NEEDED to check my email where it didn't work, and I can honestly say it was annoying as hell. I'd rather not have tethering available if they can in turn promise reliable service when I do need it.
And honestly I do really think that if you could tether iPhones with an unlimited data plan this would happen. Why have internet access at home if you can just tether your phone? Cancel Cox and go AT&T/iPhone. I don't AT&T can support that much bandwidth right now. Maybe in the future, but I don't think today is that day...
I think we're all overlooking the more important benefits of this here... if we grow all our meat in test tubes nad giant vats that means each and every time we can have a perfectly formed boneless cut of whatever the hell we want.
Let the vegans elevate the animals we take the samples from as glorious god creatures for all I care. Their suffering saved millions, blah, blah, blah, whatever.
Now I can consume my steak without excess gristle, fat, and bones.
If you are using Parallels with a Windows Vista Boot Camp install, do NOT try to install the service pack while running Windows Vista in Parallels. The install took 2-1/2 hours, failed at 100% of stage 3, took 2-1/2 hours to rollback the changes, and then things just went from bad to worse. Windows Vista complained that the trusted store had been tampered with, that my computer had been compromised, would not reactive, and stated that Windows would need to be reinstalled. I wasn't even able to boot Windows via Boot Camp before I uninstalled the Parallels software because it would blue screen. I did some reading, and there is apparently a known potential issue with installing the service pack from within Parallels while using a Boot Camp partition, though they didn't have any more information that specifically identified a situation like mine.
I had nothing overly important on the install, and really only use it because I purchased Office and Photoshop for my wife; figured since I have them I may as well be able to install and use them myself, since they allow for multiple computers. I guess it was almost a good thing in my case, because I use Windows so rarely I was considering converting it to a full VM and removing the Boot Camp partition, as it was basically a lot of wasted space, but I can see where this would really screw someone else over if they had something important on their Boot Camp partition. I'll reinstall it all later next week when I'm not so annoyed.
On the plus side the service pack did install on my wifes laptop without a hitch, and seems slightly more responsive at that...
There are in fact manufactures making motherboards with HDMI connectors. This is one I just bought for a basic media PC I'm in the process of putting together. You can search around Newegg and find more. They aren't all that uncommon anymore, and as you can see not too terribly expensive.
P6NGM-FIH
There are nVidia and ATI cards with HDMI outputs or adapters as well. I have seen nVidia 8600's with them on the web, as well as 7600's, and ATI X1600's I think... you have to search a little but you can find them.
What does HDMI get me? Well, in my case at least (don't know if it is true of all TV's), I need to use an HDMI connector to get 1080p resolution on my TV. Other connectors support up to 720p/1080i. If you've never looked at a computer screen rendered at 480i or 1080i (the i is for interlaced) I'll tell you now that it will make you insane in no time. Straight lines have a habit of flickering really badly because every other line is refreshed (odds and evens) at a time.
With 480p, 720p, and 1080p (p is for progressive, and is refreshed from top to bottom if I'm not mistaken) everything becomes better. 480p gives you a screen thats smaller than 640x480 and is very tough to work with, though I have done it by shrinking fonts, etc. It is kind of funny to look at a huge television screen with a tiny resolution like that. Anyway, 720p gets much better, and 1080p is just the icing on the cake.
This little project was inspired from loading Linux on my PS3. It's just that it's too damn slow. You can't even play a DVD full screen without it bogging down (when under Linux, the PS3 OS plays DVD's and Blu-Ray discs just fine.) Less intensive processing work OK, but with less than 256MB or RAM and Sony's Hypervisor in the way, it just tends to drag...
Once I get the PC up and running the plan is to be able to do anything from surfing the internet, streaming audio from pandora.com or similar, watch DVD's, or movies from Netflix (though that would require a VM to use their damn Windows only client) and maybe get World of Warcraft running under WINE (which is does quite fine) so that I can engage in some raids on the 60" big screen, just for the sake of saying I did it. Really anything you would do on your computer, but on a much much bigger display.
As far as audio goes, I'm not sure. My receiver is from the stone ages, and hopefully one day in the near future I will get the money to replace it, so that I can get true surround sound, to go with that great picture, and all those speakers, etc. I'm not exactly what I'd call an audiofile anyway, so I don't know if I would even be able to tell the difference...
NMCI is the devil, as evidenced by their phone number. 1-866-THE-NMCI. That spells THE-6624. Simple math reveals the beasts number THE-666 or "The Devil", if you prefer. I've had way too much time to think about this while waiting for their tech support on the phone. And let me tell you, they can't even get Windows right. (Some have a twinkle of life you cant detect in their voice, but not many) And not that I'm saying any OS is easier or harder to administrate on a grand scale, but better to perfect one before moving on to another... Personally I prefer my Mac laptop, and Linux home server, but I'd take even a good working Windows desktop if I could get my hands on it...
On another note, their definition of Legacy applications still escapes the laws of reality. It is actively developed by and used by the Marine Corps; but it's "Legacy"... Hmmmm....
Granted, I agree with this for the most part. However, it always seems like there is that one person that looks at a problem like this in a way that no one else had prior and manages something completely expected. It's only at the point that a virus is running amok across half the corporate networks in the world that we find out you did not really need administrative priveleges if you did x, y, z first...
History is full of examples, probably both within and out of the computing field where people thought that 'that' was impossible...