I've never seen that. Wouldn't the sensor turn on the backlight during the day too? Also, wouldn't it randomly turn it on as you moved around? I would think that such a feature would run the battery down pretty quickly.
I doubt they'll let things stagnate either. There is just too much money to be made in new OS releases. If Longhorn isn't going to be ready for several years, they'll just cobble together some peice of crap like Windows ME, which really only came to be because XP Home was taking too long.
I actually got caught with that, after buying two disk drives, installing them, booting up Windows 2000 Pro, and I was like WTF??? It seems that Windows 2000 Pro is intentionally crippled to me, as Windows 2000 Pro does support striping. I would think it could do mirroring too! I could understand having the Raid 5 just in Server, but geeze Microsoft, don't you think that the "Professionals" out there *might* want mirroring?
I ended up using the cheap built in Promise card in the motherboard. I really did not want to use it, but in the end it works fine, as long as you do not ever try to boot off of it. Windows 2000 flat out refuses to do so, and no Voodoo or other tricks will work (Windows 98 doesn't have a problem though, go figure). So the computer has a single boot drive + huge ass mirror array now.
Keep in mind that the drive controller is the circuit board on the disk drive itself. The thing on the motherboard really isn't a controller but more of a host adaptor. I assume that's what you are talking about? You haven't had seperate controllers on HDDs since the RLL days.
For the record, I have seen bad controllers on hard drives, that have been fixed by swapping a circuit board off of a working drive. I've never seen a failure of the host adaptor on any motherboard.
How could you *not* find My Documents on an XP machine? It seems like no matter where you go in XP, there is always something on the screen pointing you to My Documents.
If you mean where it's stored on the hard drive, then that's not so obvious because XP tries to hide details like that.
IE is only the fastest because it cheats by loading itself up when Windows boots up, so when you click on the icon the browser instantly appears. Of course, by having it load up like tha a means longer boot time, and a more sluggish system by having all that crap in memory (not really an issue with 2+ Ghz processors with 512MB of ram, but try comparing IE-free Windows 95 vs. 98 on a P133 with 24MB of ram and it's very obvious.)
Once it's loaded up though, IE is not that fast loading and rendering pages. Opera 7 easily smokes it.
I've seen some newer traffic lights where the Don't Walk sign, instead of just flashing to warn people to get out of the intersection, counts down the time until it goes solid red. Maybe they should put a count down timer on yellow lights too?
The worst part about RPC is, you basically have to leave it running on Windows 2000 or XP all the time if you want the computer to function at all. Even if you never plan on using it to administer a computer remotely.
I've used Mandrake and Knoppix and in both cases they managed to magically set themselves up on my networks all by themselves without issues. If you have some things like proxies,or maybe you don't have a DHCP server - that could be a problem.
I should also note that once I load in the drivers for my network card, even Windows 95 has no problem hooking up to my network without any additional help.
AMD Athlons are rated to run up to 85C, which is 185F, so it's not that far off if you like running your chips at their upper heat limit. However, in real life my Athlon's stability plummets at about 75C. I bet the 85C temp is actually where it will self-destruct and set the computer on fire, or something like that.
That pump in your water fountain probably only runs for a few seconds at a time. Before you put it in a computer, I would make sure it's capable of running 24/7. My guess is that it's not, and will probably burn out in a day or so. But I may be wrong.
From my expepience, the AMD chips don't get unstable until about 75C. Mine runs around 60-70C without problems. I basically yanked out all the case fans in my computer but the two inside the power supply, and the intake one for the disk drives. I figure as long as the disk drives stay cool I don't care how hot the rest of the computer gets as long as it's stable.
Am I missing something, but why run the pumps off of the computer's 12V? I would use 120V AC pumps. It would be cheaper, and more efficent. Plus AC pumps don't have brushings that will go bad.
I thought the LED replacement lighting generally failed from the circuitry that converts 120V AC down to 4.5V DC (or whatever the LEDs use). The LEDs may last a long time, but the power supplies don't. Or am I wrong?
The thing is, no matter how cheap they make LED lightbulbs, I doubt they'll ever get as cheap as the incandescent bulb, as the incandescent bulb is just plain out cheaper to make as it is much more simple. Therefore, the Wal-mart crowds will still buy the standard bulbs for years to come.
What they should do if they want people to adopt these new bulbs is make it so all lightbulb packages have to display the average cost of the lightbulb over its lifetime. People may see that the LED or flourescent lights sitting on the shelf right now cost a lot more and don't buy them, but I bet they will when they see on the box that the bulb over it's lifetime costs a fraction as much in electricity used.
Well Windows 3.1 and earlier was not designed with networking in mind, just a single user workstation. Even with Windows 3.11 it seemed like an add-on that wasn't well thought out. Windows 95-98-ME all came from the Windows 3.1 lineage and therefore I would agree with you on those OSes, even though networking was much improved.
With Windows NT and beyond there is no excuse, considering NT stands for "Networking Technology". NT was designed for this kind of thing from the ground up. The networking in NT and beyond does work ok *if* you know what you are doing.
Yeah, colleges LANs are a breeding grounds for viruses. Most of the computers sitting on the LAN have their default share settings - that is My Documents shared with full read/write. Any joe can go on a LAN and delete many kid's homework with a few clicks. Most of the computers are full of viruses and continously scan the LAN for machines to infect. If you sit in front of many of these computers, you'll find it bogged down with all kinds of crap, and spyware roaming free.
Luckily the school I went to offered free tech support for kid's on campus computers. Yes, they would take a computer, and do things like reinstall Windows and stuff - for free (that had to be a sucky job!) So when people went to me for help, I just refered them to the computer people and let them deal with their crashing, virus infected, Compaq computer with no reinstall disks.
And when my computer was on the LAN, you better believe I had my Windows 2000 up to date, and was running Zonealarm with all the settings maxed. Never had a problem.
Two months after that recall Ford issues a recall for steering wheels, that they can crack and make it hard to control the car. Three months later they issue a recall for their electric adjusted seats which when hit by a certain radio signal fold forward on the occupants of the car. Then only one month after that they issue another for the radio again, this time if playing any old CD the radio may emit a really loud tone until disconnected. Then five months after that they issue a recall for their A/C in which the improper placement in relation to the engine of a connecting hose that can cause it to start burning emitting a nasty smoke unless the A/C is turned off. Two months later a recall is done for door locks that when jarred (such as slapping the door or slamming it) may unlock it coupled with Fords new Easy Go(tm) keyless one button start feature.
Wow, that almost sounds like all the problems Ford has had with the 2000 Focus!
Even if they bring a security level like that to the PC, do you think that they won't manage to somehow screw it up to the point where there will be dozens of exploits that people can use to make the machine run any code they want?
I mean, take a look at the X-box. Microsoft controls both the hardware and the software, and people have managed to run anything they want on unmodified X-Boxes.
Not every company is willing to open source all their software and make it free. If we want many of the commercial software companies to take Linux seriously, we have to convey the message that we find it acceptable to pay for some software that will run in Linux.
Until then, they will continue to develop only for OSes like Windows and MacOS.
I have CD-Rs from 3-4 years ago that are just fine too. Granted they are 95% music CDs so errors will be a bit more hidden.
The only time I have lost a CD-R is when I've put a scratch through the foil on the data side because of careless handling. So far, in all cases those were just copies of my music CDs (and the prime reason I copy many of my favorite CDs), so all I had to do was fish out the original and burn another copy.
Well my backup consists of an external harddrive with a USB 2.0 interface. Readable by millions of machines everywhere, and I don't see USB going anywhere soon. Granted, USB 2.0 is not nearly as universal, but it is backwards compatible with USB 1.1, so it can be read - though very slowly.
This is an addition to the 2 disk RAID 1 array I have inside the computer. I feel my data is pretty safe.
Slashdot Mirror
I've never seen that. Wouldn't the sensor turn on the backlight during the day too? Also, wouldn't it randomly turn it on as you moved around? I would think that such a feature would run the battery down pretty quickly.
I doubt they'll let things stagnate either. There is just too much money to be made in new OS releases. If Longhorn isn't going to be ready for several years, they'll just cobble together some peice of crap like Windows ME, which really only came to be because XP Home was taking too long.
I actually got caught with that, after buying two disk drives, installing them, booting up Windows 2000 Pro, and I was like WTF??? It seems that Windows 2000 Pro is intentionally crippled to me, as Windows 2000 Pro does support striping. I would think it could do mirroring too! I could understand having the Raid 5 just in Server, but geeze Microsoft, don't you think that the "Professionals" out there *might* want mirroring?
I ended up using the cheap built in Promise card in the motherboard. I really did not want to use it, but in the end it works fine, as long as you do not ever try to boot off of it. Windows 2000 flat out refuses to do so, and no Voodoo or other tricks will work (Windows 98 doesn't have a problem though, go figure). So the computer has a single boot drive + huge ass mirror array now.
Keep in mind that the drive controller is the circuit board on the disk drive itself. The thing on the motherboard really isn't a controller but more of a host adaptor. I assume that's what you are talking about? You haven't had seperate controllers on HDDs since the RLL days.
For the record, I have seen bad controllers on hard drives, that have been fixed by swapping a circuit board off of a working drive. I've never seen a failure of the host adaptor on any motherboard.
How could you *not* find My Documents on an XP machine? It seems like no matter where you go in XP, there is always something on the screen pointing you to My Documents.
If you mean where it's stored on the hard drive, then that's not so obvious because XP tries to hide details like that.
...and call it the "Cannibal" for whenever it sucks up all the Legos you carelessly left on the floor.
IE is only the fastest because it cheats by loading itself up when Windows boots up, so when you click on the icon the browser instantly appears. Of course, by having it load up like tha a means longer boot time, and a more sluggish system by having all that crap in memory (not really an issue with 2+ Ghz processors with 512MB of ram, but try comparing IE-free Windows 95 vs. 98 on a P133 with 24MB of ram and it's very obvious.)
Once it's loaded up though, IE is not that fast loading and rendering pages. Opera 7 easily smokes it.
I've heard that if all the gold in Fort Knox was sitting on the moon, free for the taking, it would still not be profitable to go up there and get it.
I doubt Mars would be any different.
I've seen some newer traffic lights where the Don't Walk sign, instead of just flashing to warn people to get out of the intersection, counts down the time until it goes solid red. Maybe they should put a count down timer on yellow lights too?
The worst part about RPC is, you basically have to leave it running on Windows 2000 or XP all the time if you want the computer to function at all. Even if you never plan on using it to administer a computer remotely.
And that's just plain dumb.
I've used Mandrake and Knoppix and in both cases they managed to magically set themselves up on my networks all by themselves without issues. If you have some things like proxies ,or maybe you don't have a DHCP server - that could be a problem.
I should also note that once I load in the drivers for my network card, even Windows 95 has no problem hooking up to my network without any additional help.
AMD Athlons are rated to run up to 85C, which is 185F, so it's not that far off if you like running your chips at their upper heat limit. However, in real life my Athlon's stability plummets at about 75C. I bet the 85C temp is actually where it will self-destruct and set the computer on fire, or something like that.
That pump in your water fountain probably only runs for a few seconds at a time. Before you put it in a computer, I would make sure it's capable of running 24/7. My guess is that it's not, and will probably burn out in a day or so. But I may be wrong.
From my expepience, the AMD chips don't get unstable until about 75C. Mine runs around 60-70C without problems. I basically yanked out all the case fans in my computer but the two inside the power supply, and the intake one for the disk drives. I figure as long as the disk drives stay cool I don't care how hot the rest of the computer gets as long as it's stable.
Am I missing something, but why run the pumps off of the computer's 12V? I would use 120V AC pumps. It would be cheaper, and more efficent. Plus AC pumps don't have brushings that will go bad.
I thought the LED replacement lighting generally failed from the circuitry that converts 120V AC down to 4.5V DC (or whatever the LEDs use). The LEDs may last a long time, but the power supplies don't. Or am I wrong?
The thing is, no matter how cheap they make LED lightbulbs, I doubt they'll ever get as cheap as the incandescent bulb, as the incandescent bulb is just plain out cheaper to make as it is much more simple. Therefore, the Wal-mart crowds will still buy the standard bulbs for years to come.
What they should do if they want people to adopt these new bulbs is make it so all lightbulb packages have to display the average cost of the lightbulb over its lifetime. People may see that the LED or flourescent lights sitting on the shelf right now cost a lot more and don't buy them, but I bet they will when they see on the box that the bulb over it's lifetime costs a fraction as much in electricity used.
Well Windows 3.1 and earlier was not designed with networking in mind, just a single user workstation. Even with Windows 3.11 it seemed like an add-on that wasn't well thought out. Windows 95-98-ME all came from the Windows 3.1 lineage and therefore I would agree with you on those OSes, even though networking was much improved.
With Windows NT and beyond there is no excuse, considering NT stands for "Networking Technology". NT was designed for this kind of thing from the ground up. The networking in NT and beyond does work ok *if* you know what you are doing.
Yeah, colleges LANs are a breeding grounds for viruses. Most of the computers sitting on the LAN have their default share settings - that is My Documents shared with full read/write. Any joe can go on a LAN and delete many kid's homework with a few clicks. Most of the computers are full of viruses and continously scan the LAN for machines to infect. If you sit in front of many of these computers, you'll find it bogged down with all kinds of crap, and spyware roaming free.
Luckily the school I went to offered free tech support for kid's on campus computers. Yes, they would take a computer, and do things like reinstall Windows and stuff - for free (that had to be a sucky job!) So when people went to me for help, I just refered them to the computer people and let them deal with their crashing, virus infected, Compaq computer with no reinstall disks.
And when my computer was on the LAN, you better believe I had my Windows 2000 up to date, and was running Zonealarm with all the settings maxed. Never had a problem.
Two months after that recall Ford issues a recall for steering wheels, that they can crack and make it hard to control the car. Three months later they issue a recall for their electric adjusted seats which when hit by a certain radio signal fold forward on the occupants of the car. Then only one month after that they issue another for the radio again, this time if playing any old CD the radio may emit a really loud tone until disconnected. Then five months after that they issue a recall for their A/C in which the improper placement in relation to the engine of a connecting hose that can cause it to start burning emitting a nasty smoke unless the A/C is turned off. Two months later a recall is done for door locks that when jarred (such as slapping the door or slamming it) may unlock it coupled with Fords new Easy Go(tm) keyless one button start feature.
Wow, that almost sounds like all the problems Ford has had with the 2000 Focus!
Even if they bring a security level like that to the PC, do you think that they won't manage to somehow screw it up to the point where there will be dozens of exploits that people can use to make the machine run any code they want?
I mean, take a look at the X-box. Microsoft controls both the hardware and the software, and people have managed to run anything they want on unmodified X-Boxes.
Oracle? I mean, it may not be the best out there, but certainly not in the same class as Microsoft and SCO.
Not every company is willing to open source all their software and make it free. If we want many of the commercial software companies to take Linux seriously, we have to convey the message that we find it acceptable to pay for some software that will run in Linux.
Until then, they will continue to develop only for OSes like Windows and MacOS.
I have CD-Rs from 3-4 years ago that are just fine too. Granted they are 95% music CDs so errors will be a bit more hidden.
The only time I have lost a CD-R is when I've put a scratch through the foil on the data side because of careless handling. So far, in all cases those were just copies of my music CDs (and the prime reason I copy many of my favorite CDs), so all I had to do was fish out the original and burn another copy.
Well my backup consists of an external harddrive with a USB 2.0 interface. Readable by millions of machines everywhere, and I don't see USB going anywhere soon. Granted, USB 2.0 is not nearly as universal, but it is backwards compatible with USB 1.1, so it can be read - though very slowly.
This is an addition to the 2 disk RAID 1 array I have inside the computer. I feel my data is pretty safe.