My favorite after getting a second car with an automatic (after driving a stickshift car for over 6 years), was my tendency to mash the brake with both feet whenever I needed to stop quickly. But after driving the automatic for a while, now I can hop into either car and just go without any mishaps.
That's because Windows 2000 does not natively support dual head video cards. It can span the desktop accross both displays, and it can clone the desktop accross multiple monitors, but that's it. It's up to the people who write the drivers to include dual head support for Windows 2000. Matrox does, and I believe that nVidia does for some of their cards. ATI does not. I don't know why Windows 2000 is this way, because Windows 98 does dual head just fine.
Dual head support for my ATI 9600Pro is one of the very few reasons I run Windows XP instead of 2k.
It's only because of the crazy amounts of money that Macs fetch on the used market. You can actually sell a 5 year old Macintosh to someone. A five year old PC is about at the point where you might be able to give it away if you find someone who is willing take it. It really has nothing to do with how long the hardware itself works, or what ancient hulk you can install the latest OS on.
Perhaps it's not the pain that causes the brain to shrink, but rather while the brain is occupied with the constant pain it is unable to think about other things and grow?
Perhaps I would say stop surfing the net from the server, O Master of Secure Computing.
Is this scenario really unlikely? 1. There is some problem with server. 2. Fire up IE and use Google to see if anyone else has the same problem. 3. Click on a few links. 4. ???? 5. Compromised server.
Actually, the batteries would generate more power on a cold day, not less. Your car is hard to start in the cold because of the increased viscosity of the engine oil, not because of the battery.
Spoken by someone who has obviously never lived in a cold climate.
No, the latest version for EVERYONE is IE6 SP2. If they're still using an older OS, that's tough shit for them. You can't say "Well the latest version of Windows is XP, but some people decided not to upgrade so the latest version for them is 2000." It just makes no sense.
Yet another disadvantage of tying the web browser to the OS. Atleast the latest versions of Opera and Firefox run on Windows 95 just fine.
Besides, I don't think IE6SP2 runs on Windows 2003 Server. What do you have to say to users of that OS?
The other difference I've noted with headlights is that in most new cars the headlight optics are simply better, resulting in the car being able to throw more light in front of it with the same wattage bulb. This is part of the reason the headlights on newer cars seem so bright.
The standard for this kind of thing is that when it puts out 50% or less of the light than when it was new, it's "burned out". From what I have seen from LED traffic lights, they have serveral circuits of LEDs wired in series, and when they start to fail, parts of the light will be dimmer than others.
I've heard of people building bridge rectifiers to solve this. You basically use four diodes, and use this to reverse the negative part of the AC wave when the LED isn't on. Click for more information. You will still get some flicker with the bridge, but you can throw in a largish capacitor and that will get rid of most of it. Otherwise, if you can get your hands on a higher voltage DC power supply (100-150V or so) you could probably drive the LEDs off of that.
Any hints for making turning on a computer in such a situation more hassle-free?
I do the same thing too. My motherboard has an option on the BIOS that allows me to tweak it's power on behavior - I can set it to always turn on, never turn on, or to turn on only if there was a power outage. So I just set the system to the right setting, and go. Something you could do though would be to extend the powerswitch to your desk. It's just two wires and a simple switch, and would only take minutes for a quick-and-dirty job. If you are ambitious, you could make something fancy and run the reset switch and LEDs to your desk too.
Other hints for hiding computers like this include using a flat panel (no signal degradation over DVI), and powered USB hubs.
I'm also concerned about the heat, so I usually open the door up when no one's around to let it cool down in there a bit.
It's more of a matter of noticing when the buggers are starting to go out and replace them as needed. Also, every once and a while, open the case up and blow out the accumulated dust.
Case fans are so cheap (both in price and quality), that I've comtemplated simply replacing them all after a set amount of time (say, 1 year) - rather than deal with them as they fail.
I just wish that video card manufacturers would start making video cards with fans that are meant to be replaced (such as not gluing them on), and it would be even better if they could standardize on some kind oy system to attach the coolers.
Not only was the newscast peppered with ads, I remember the news itself was pretty badly slanted. It's been a while, but one example that sticks out in my head is after the verdict on the OJ trial was announced, they interviewed a whole bunch of people, and not one of them thought that OJ was guilty.
Anyway, our school was the same way about the quizzes initially, but after a while the teachers caught onto how useless the show was, and stopped giving quizzes or even caring if we watched it. Most of the time after that, us students would just unplug the TVs so we wouldn't have to endure it.
Here's the difference between computers, and paper and pencil: The ease and number of people involved.
With networked computers, a handful of people, or maybe even just one person (say, a programmer in Diebold, who is clever enough with his obfuscated cade to fool his coworkers) could throw an election. Not to mention the chances of getting caught are somewhat low, as this could be done at the comfort of one's home computer, and with no paper trail and closed source software.
In order to throw an election in several states using ballot stuffing, you would probably need several hundred people, spread out over a large area. Futhermore, I would expect atleast a few may be caught, in which case you better hope the whole scheme isn't uncovered.
Apart from that, LCDs are crap! Another con is for fast moving objects on the monitor, like the mouse pointer, an LCD would leave shadow trails because they don't handle motion very well.
A good LCD is not crap. Refresh rates are to the point where the mouse cursor looks exactly the same way as one a CRT. You can pry my 20.1" Sony screen from my cold, dead fingers.
A few points to consider: *Many laptops tend to have crummier screens. Part of this is cost, part of it is size[1], and part of it is power usage. Desktop screens have higher refresh, much better viewing angle, and better brightness and contrast. *If you have a LCD, if at all possible use the DVI connection. Using the analog VGA connection looks like crap, especially if the monitor is not propertly adjusted. *Lastly, if your school is like mine, they buy the cheapest Compaq garbage they can find, use the VGA connection, and then don't even run the monitors at the right resolution! Yes, this looks like total ass (and can't be adjusted either). If your school also buys iMacs like mine, go check one out to see how a good LCD looks.
[1] - For some reason laptop screens have surpassed desktop screens in terms of dot pitch. I'd really like to see desktop screens with resolution something like 2000x1500 in the size of current 19" LCDs.
I've got a KrogerPlus card that my sister (on the outher coast) got with an old address of hers a few years ago when she was visiting. In two years, I've never heard a peep from them, or any suspect vendor, for that matter. So they're either "stealth marketing" (aka doing nothing) or they don't bother correlating.
They probably link it in their database, so they know who you are. But they let you walk around with your fake card, thinking you've just beaten "the man", knowing that if they took the trouble to bother you about the fake card, you would most likely do something that they could not so easily track.
Holy crap! You dump Winamp because it's too bloated (a valid complaint, I suppose, but you really should try Winamp 5). But then you use WMP 10? That just boggles the mind. That would be like saying that the Linux 2.6 kernel is too big, so you installed Windows XP. It just doesn't make any sense!
Winamp is not dead for me as long as there is no other video player with dual head support, powerful but easy to use playlist system, global hotkeys, and all the other things that make Winamp great (like Milkdrop).
The only other thing that comes close is Zoom Player (which is certainly nice application too, especially for sorting through Windows codec hell).
Doesn't sound like you've really tried iTunes at all, actually. Let's look at this paragraph: Actually, it sounds like he has. Lets have a look.
For example, if I download/rip some songs outside of iTunes, how do you make iTunes rescan your music folder? You can't... you have to manually add all the new tracks or folders.
Simple solution: drag-and-drop the files from the folder into iTunes. It's a song database, not a filesystem with automatic indexing, and it's never been touted as such. So you have MANUALLY drag and drop the files into iTunes. Isn't that exactly what he's complaining about? (in Winamp, you can just have it rescan your directories, and it will automatically pick up all the new files)
You can add the whole music folder again, but it takes forever, and then all of your tracks will be listed twice and there's no easy way to delete them.
Or you can add the specific songs you just ripped or downloaded, instead of dropping the entire music folder again. And of course it takes forever, if you're telling iTunes to make duplicate entries. As someone coming from Winamp, that would be a logical move. If I tell Winamp to add a music folder again, it will just go through that folder and add the new stuff. Winamp is smart enough to not duplicate everything (as an aside, I don't think you could make duplicates in Winamp if you wanted to though, short of making two copies of a file. Why you would want to do this, I don't know.)
A reason for wanting to do this, instead of telling Winamp to simply rescan everything, is that it's faster to tell Winamp to scan areas that I have changed.
Of course, he could add the songs manually, as you oh so helpfully suggested.
(You can list them with the duplicate tracks tool, but I find it to be FAR too loose with its rules, for example, it thinks "Intro Theme (3:20)" and "Intro Theme (TV version) (0:30)" are the same track.)
So now you're whining because you told it to create duplicates but it's not identifying them as precisely as you'd like so you can remove them after the fact?
Yes he is, the duplicates tool in iTunes is pretty stupid, and there is no handy options like "only display exactly identical entries", which would make cleaning up an iTunes mess a lot easier. The problem is that Apple's fuzzy logic is way too fuzzy, and it can't be adjusted. Two songs with a very simular name and within a few seconds of each other are probably duplicates. Two songs with a somewhat simular name but far different lengths are probably not duplicates.
Meanwhile, Winamp 5 can very quickly and automatically rescan my music folder for new songs or changed tags.
Meanwhile, Winamp can't rip and burn CDs unless you pay for the functionality, doesn't provide an easy way to share songs across a network (no, shoutcast is neither easy nor simple), and you have to use third-party tools with limited features to sync with your iPod. I agree that Winamp has some advantages over iTunes, like a smaller memory footprint, but your problems with iTunes all seem to originate between the chair and your input device.
Why would I need Winamp to share files accross the network? Windows has that functionality built into it, it's called Windows shares (aka Samba). This is better than iTunes, as anyone can read those files and play them with whatever media player they want (even iTunes). I have Audiograbber and EAC to rip CDs, which don't play too well with iTunes, but isn't a problem with Winamp as it can easily find the newly ripped tracks. Likewise I have a bunch of CD burning programs already, so I don't really need another.
And I don't have an iPod, so I could care less about syncing to one. With iTunes, it installs a service which you can't turn off (atleast easily) for syncing with iPods. I don't need or want extraneous services running, especially ones originating from shoddy software.
Anyhow, this guy has some valid complaints about iTunes, and you respond by telling to do exactly what he's complaining about. Sounds like a typical Apple zealot to me.
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My favorite after getting a second car with an automatic (after driving a stickshift car for over 6 years), was my tendency to mash the brake with both feet whenever I needed to stop quickly. But after driving the automatic for a while, now I can hop into either car and just go without any mishaps.
That's because Windows 2000 does not natively support dual head video cards. It can span the desktop accross both displays, and it can clone the desktop accross multiple monitors, but that's it. It's up to the people who write the drivers to include dual head support for Windows 2000. Matrox does, and I believe that nVidia does for some of their cards. ATI does not. I don't know why Windows 2000 is this way, because Windows 98 does dual head just fine.
Dual head support for my ATI 9600Pro is one of the very few reasons I run Windows XP instead of 2k.
It's only because of the crazy amounts of money that Macs fetch on the used market. You can actually sell a 5 year old Macintosh to someone. A five year old PC is about at the point where you might be able to give it away if you find someone who is willing take it. It really has nothing to do with how long the hardware itself works, or what ancient hulk you can install the latest OS on.
Perhaps it's not the pain that causes the brain to shrink, but rather while the brain is occupied with the constant pain it is unable to think about other things and grow?
Perhaps I would say stop surfing the net from the server, O Master of Secure Computing.
Is this scenario really unlikely?
1. There is some problem with server.
2. Fire up IE and use Google to see if anyone else has the same problem.
3. Click on a few links.
4. ????
5. Compromised server.
Actually, the batteries would generate more power on a cold day, not less. Your car is hard to start in the cold because of the increased viscosity of the engine oil, not because of the battery.
Spoken by someone who has obviously never lived in a cold climate.
No, the latest version for EVERYONE is IE6 SP2. If they're still using an older OS, that's tough shit for them. You can't say "Well the latest version of Windows is XP, but some people decided not to upgrade so the latest version for them is 2000." It just makes no sense.
Yet another disadvantage of tying the web browser to the OS. Atleast the latest versions of Opera and Firefox run on Windows 95 just fine.
Besides, I don't think IE6SP2 runs on Windows 2003 Server. What do you have to say to users of that OS?
The other difference I've noted with headlights is that in most new cars the headlight optics are simply better, resulting in the car being able to throw more light in front of it with the same wattage bulb. This is part of the reason the headlights on newer cars seem so bright.
Compact flourescents nowadays are bright. The compact flourescents rated to replace 60W and 100W bulbs are brighter than the bulbs they replace.
The problem with hotels is that many of them converted over to flourescents early on, and still continue to run the dated fixtures.
The standard for this kind of thing is that when it puts out 50% or less of the light than when it was new, it's "burned out". From what I have seen from LED traffic lights, they have serveral circuits of LEDs wired in series, and when they start to fail, parts of the light will be dimmer than others.
I've heard of people building bridge rectifiers to solve this. You basically use four diodes, and use this to reverse the negative part of the AC wave when the LED isn't on. Click for more information. You will still get some flicker with the bridge, but you can throw in a largish capacitor and that will get rid of most of it. Otherwise, if you can get your hands on a higher voltage DC power supply (100-150V or so) you could probably drive the LEDs off of that.
Ever use one of those? They are total dogs when they come to performance. I swear I've seen PIII systems that run circles around them.
Any hints for making turning on a computer in such a situation more hassle-free?
I do the same thing too. My motherboard has an option on the BIOS that allows me to tweak it's power on behavior - I can set it to always turn on, never turn on, or to turn on only if there was a power outage. So I just set the system to the right setting, and go. Something you could do though would be to extend the powerswitch to your desk. It's just two wires and a simple switch, and would only take minutes for a quick-and-dirty job. If you are ambitious, you could make something fancy and run the reset switch and LEDs to your desk too.
Other hints for hiding computers like this include using a flat panel (no signal degradation over DVI), and powered USB hubs.
I'm also concerned about the heat, so I usually open the door up when no one's around to let it cool down in there a bit.
It's more of a matter of noticing when the buggers are starting to go out and replace them as needed. Also, every once and a while, open the case up and blow out the accumulated dust.
Case fans are so cheap (both in price and quality), that I've comtemplated simply replacing them all after a set amount of time (say, 1 year) - rather than deal with them as they fail.
I just wish that video card manufacturers would start making video cards with fans that are meant to be replaced (such as not gluing them on), and it would be even better if they could standardize on some kind oy system to attach the coolers.
Not only was the newscast peppered with ads, I remember the news itself was pretty badly slanted. It's been a while, but one example that sticks out in my head is after the verdict on the OJ trial was announced, they interviewed a whole bunch of people, and not one of them thought that OJ was guilty.
Anyway, our school was the same way about the quizzes initially, but after a while the teachers caught onto how useless the show was, and stopped giving quizzes or even caring if we watched it. Most of the time after that, us students would just unplug the TVs so we wouldn't have to endure it.
Of the industrialized countries, we have the cheapest labor force.
Have you ever heard of a place called China? Or Russia?
Here's the difference between computers, and paper and pencil: The ease and number of people involved.
With networked computers, a handful of people, or maybe even just one person (say, a programmer in Diebold, who is clever enough with his obfuscated cade to fool his coworkers) could throw an election. Not to mention the chances of getting caught are somewhat low, as this could be done at the comfort of one's home computer, and with no paper trail and closed source software.
In order to throw an election in several states using ballot stuffing, you would probably need several hundred people, spread out over a large area. Futhermore, I would expect atleast a few may be caught, in which case you better hope the whole scheme isn't uncovered.
Anyone know whats happening with that?
Probably right around the corner, being that I bought a 20.1" LCD for just under a grand.
Summer 2004: $970 for 20.1"
Summer 2005: $300 for 50"
Doh!
Apart from that, LCDs are crap! Another con is for fast moving objects on the monitor, like the mouse pointer, an LCD would leave shadow trails
because they don't handle motion very well.
A good LCD is not crap. Refresh rates are to the point where the mouse cursor looks exactly the same way as one a CRT. You can pry my 20.1" Sony screen from my cold, dead fingers.
A few points to consider:
*Many laptops tend to have crummier screens. Part of this is cost, part of it is size[1], and part of it is power usage. Desktop screens have higher refresh, much better viewing angle, and better brightness and contrast.
*If you have a LCD, if at all possible use the DVI connection. Using the analog VGA connection looks like crap, especially if the monitor is not propertly adjusted.
*Lastly, if your school is like mine, they buy the cheapest Compaq garbage they can find, use the VGA connection, and then don't even run the monitors at the right resolution! Yes, this looks like total ass (and can't be adjusted either). If your school also buys iMacs like mine, go check one out to see how a good LCD looks.
[1] - For some reason laptop screens have surpassed desktop screens in terms of dot pitch. I'd really like to see desktop screens with resolution something like 2000x1500 in the size of current 19" LCDs.
That depends on your definition of "few". I bought a 19" CRT at WorstBuy for $189 4 years ago, and at that point the price was already pretty steady.
How many of them still work?
Well, if they do, they aren't letting on.
I've got a KrogerPlus card that my sister (on the outher coast) got with an old address of hers a few years ago when she was visiting. In two years, I've never heard a peep from them, or any suspect vendor, for that matter. So they're either "stealth marketing" (aka doing nothing) or they don't bother correlating.
They probably link it in their database, so they know who you are. But they let you walk around with your fake card, thinking you've just beaten "the man", knowing that if they took the trouble to bother you about the fake card, you would most likely do something that they could not so easily track.
Holy crap! You dump Winamp because it's too bloated (a valid complaint, I suppose, but you really should try Winamp 5). But then you use WMP 10? That just boggles the mind. That would be like saying that the Linux 2.6 kernel is too big, so you installed Windows XP. It just doesn't make any sense!
Winamp is not dead for me as long as there is no other video player with dual head support, powerful but easy to use playlist system, global hotkeys, and all the other things that make Winamp great (like Milkdrop).
The only other thing that comes close is Zoom Player (which is certainly nice application too, especially for sorting through Windows codec hell).
Doesn't sound like you've really tried iTunes at all, actually. Let's look at this paragraph:
Actually, it sounds like he has. Lets have a look.
For example, if I download/rip some songs outside of iTunes, how do you make iTunes rescan your music folder? You can't... you have to manually add all the new tracks or folders.
Simple solution: drag-and-drop the files from the folder into iTunes. It's a song database, not a filesystem with automatic indexing, and it's never been touted as such.
So you have MANUALLY drag and drop the files into iTunes. Isn't that exactly what he's complaining about? (in Winamp, you can just have it rescan your directories, and it will automatically pick up all the new files)
You can add the whole music folder again, but it takes forever, and then all of your tracks will be listed twice and there's no easy way to delete them.
Or you can add the specific songs you just ripped or downloaded, instead of dropping the entire music folder again. And of course it takes forever, if you're telling iTunes to make duplicate entries.
As someone coming from Winamp, that would be a logical move. If I tell Winamp to add a music folder again, it will just go through that folder and add the new stuff. Winamp is smart enough to not duplicate everything (as an aside, I don't think you could make duplicates in Winamp if you wanted to though, short of making two copies of a file. Why you would want to do this, I don't know.)
A reason for wanting to do this, instead of telling Winamp to simply rescan everything, is that it's faster to tell Winamp to scan areas that I have changed.
Of course, he could add the songs manually, as you oh so helpfully suggested.
(You can list them with the duplicate tracks tool, but I find it to be FAR too loose with its rules, for example, it thinks "Intro Theme (3:20)" and "Intro Theme (TV version) (0:30)" are the same track.)
So now you're whining because you told it to create duplicates but it's not identifying them as precisely as you'd like so you can remove them after the fact?
Yes he is, the duplicates tool in iTunes is pretty stupid, and there is no handy options like "only display exactly identical entries", which would make cleaning up an iTunes mess a lot easier. The problem is that Apple's fuzzy logic is way too fuzzy, and it can't be adjusted. Two songs with a very simular name and within a few seconds of each other are probably duplicates. Two songs with a somewhat simular name but far different lengths are probably not duplicates.
Meanwhile, Winamp 5 can very quickly and automatically rescan my music folder for new songs or changed tags.
Meanwhile, Winamp can't rip and burn CDs unless you pay for the functionality, doesn't provide an easy way to share songs across a network (no, shoutcast is neither easy nor simple), and you have to use third-party tools with limited features to sync with your iPod. I agree that Winamp has some advantages over iTunes, like a smaller memory footprint, but your problems with iTunes all seem to originate between the chair and your input device.
Why would I need Winamp to share files accross the network? Windows has that functionality built into it, it's called Windows shares (aka Samba). This is better than iTunes, as anyone can read those files and play them with whatever media player they want (even iTunes). I have Audiograbber and EAC to rip CDs, which don't play too well with iTunes, but isn't a problem with Winamp as it can easily find the newly ripped tracks. Likewise I have a bunch of CD burning programs already, so I don't really need another.
And I don't have an iPod, so I could care less about syncing to one. With iTunes, it installs a service which you can't turn off (atleast easily) for syncing with iPods. I don't need or want extraneous services running, especially ones originating from shoddy software.
Anyhow, this guy has some valid complaints about iTunes, and you respond by telling to do exactly what he's complaining about. Sounds like a typical Apple zealot to me.
Maybe if I could run MacOS on reasonable hardware for a reasonable price.
And no, PearPC is not what I mean.