Up until a year ago, i had a Pentium 180Mhz in active duty as my firewall (Running LRP) it died of RAM failure.
Now my router is a Pentium II 266Mhz acer aspire with an old fujitsu 2GB drive (the 4GB seagate it came with died), running RedHat8 and Shorewall, runs like a champ, and with it's new power supply and cpu fans (the originals crapped out within a week of each other, had been in continuous use since 1997), it's quiet and uptime would be in months except for the ups's unreliability...
The 2 oldest components still in use: Packard Hell 13" monitor VGA, dated 12/1993 used on a much newer PII 350 running win2k, serves torrents, sharereactor and other goodies on demand.
2nd oldest and most useful: Sound Blaster 16 Pro ISA dated 1995. Huge card when compared to the audigy, gives it a good run fore it's money when playing MP3's (installed in the above mentioned 350, my alarm clock:) )
my friend, and resident uber geek, has a trio of working Cromemco systems (google = friend) one of them is still in production, running a local furniture shop (with linux frontends on 486+ boxes to boot)
the fax machine here in my home office gets flooded with fax spam, currently it all goes to the computer 9it's a canon multipass laser), gonna hopefully switch to WinFAX pro soon but all i do is push DELETE.
I've used winamp since the 2.1 days (on a 56k 266PII and first saw the acronym "MP3"), currently using 2.91 (i don't trust 3... yet)
no mem leaks, OOG plugin available.
use FFDShow for X-vid/Divx stuff w/ AC3 filtering.
Winamp 2.91 has a decent video player built in (supports above mentioned codecs well), plays the videos like any other file (mass playlists too )
If not Winamp, then WiMP 6.4 (stock with win2k, i avoid 7+ like the plague)
for FTP, i either use SmartFTP or WS_FTP LE (lightweight, free, fast).
Virus scanning: AVG personal ed.
Alt virus scanner: kaspersky (gets more then AVG, lot slower though)
Office dox: OpenOffice
(.doc files == work of satan)
System stats: Statbar http://www.statbar.nl
has: CPU/RAM monitor, network monitor, Winamp 2x/3x controls, master volume controls, CD Tray controls, time sync, keyboard lock indicators, LogOff/Restart/Shutdown/Lock Workstation, Windows Uptime, Drive usage stats, etc
Music encode: CDex
works very well.
here, here!
marketers who have no knowledge of an industry (in this case, gaming) have absolutly no business whatsoever marketing those products.
You don't have marketers for cars who don't drive.
You don't have marketers for TV shows who don't actually watch them, oh... wait... yeah, you do, damn UPN marketing.
but you have marketers for computers and games who have no clue about what they're selling, and people wonder why this industry is in chaos... damn marketing. back in the day when game developing was a small time operation, you did your own marketing, and a springboard was created, now, mass market is the key.
oy.
i use whatever pen is available, i write so rarely (math class i use a pencil, only thing to use there)
i do carry a pen with me out of convenience, it can vary depending on what i can grab on my way out the door. i type an average of 45 WPM with only ONE HAND, my left hand to boot, granted i do make a few mistakes here and there and have a tendency to murder my keyboards.
unlike most geeks i know, i have small fingers, and, since i type one-handed anyway i have an easier time with small keypads and such than most, in fact, i'm much more at home on a laptop keyboard than i am a standard sized one.
Oh well, back to the pens, no real comment here, my handwriting has been called heiroglyphic, chicken-scratch, etc. though it is distinctive (anyone who's seen my handwriting instantly knows it's from me.)
in a few months, when i get some 'real' money and/or job, i'm gonna procure a T-mobie sidekick (scuttlebutt has is that they are negotiating to use AT&T's network), my current phone, a AT&T Nokia 81x is bulky to say the least, the SK is about the same size, has a handsfre earpiece 9a must), plus internet connectivity and base PDA functions to boot. I got a 1st hand look at a iPod the other day, definatly want one, smaller than i expected. those two items can easily be load-balanced in two pockets.
Definatly keep a SAK or leatherman on you, never know when you'll need one, though if you're in school, don't even think about a simple screwdriver:(
My bat-belt at the moment consists of a Nokia phone and a 128MB USB flash stick on my keyring (said memstick contains putty, trillian, openOffice, winamp, winzip, teamspeak, etc. (geek survival tools)
I worked as a computer lab assistant for two years at a local college (satellite office of a bigger college out of state), i was 16 at the time (2000). my friend, who scored the job of netadmin (MCP in NT4.0... MSCE track... guy can't build a box to save his life, knows squat about linux, etc) got me the job of lab assistant (read: assistant admin guru). I knew squat about linux back then, didn't know any better:).
The job was 3 hours a week, 9-12 every saturday babysitting two labs (12 and 9 computers, respectivly) for $9.25 per hour, not too shabby considering i had unfettered access to the lab's T1 line every saturday:) i mostly surfed/. for those 3 hours, repaired the occasional (usually 1 a week... 98SE POS, later 2k/98 dual boots (with removable racks... that was real fun installing em (fried 6 20GB HDs, the cheap racks never said anything about they keylock killing power/data...)
anywho, june 2002, i hear from my friend that they're reorganizing and can no longer afford to have a full time tech staff (read: us) and announce tha they are outsourcing from then on. He gets let go from a full time spot, and gets the outsourcing contract (substantially less pay, i'd imagine), i hand on for another 8 weeks, wind up moving furniture and taking down old lans for most of it, then i'm let go, quietly. Ive gone the freelance route since, i can't say it's lucrative, but it's semi-stable work that fits my schedule (High school, ya know). I am searching for a non burger-flipping job, but no one wants to hire a computer geek with 0 retail experience or HS diploma... yet...
I hate the 22 (!) minutes of commericials in prime time TV. I watch... lets see...
NCIS
JAG
Enterprise
Smallville
Stargate SG-1
occasional History Channel stuff
the worst commercial offenders are the prime time gigs (top 4), Skiffy and History Channel have fewer commercials by comparison (on cable makes a difference), SG-1's format was 45 minutes commercial free (on showtime) for the first 5 seasons and, thusly has only 15 minutes of commercials, that format, IIRC/AFAIK has remained unchanged in seasons 6 and 7 on skiffy (when they show the reruns, they are unedited).
Enterprise is 40 minutes (thereabouts), the other treks are 44 (TNG/DS9 and early VOY), while TOS (aired in the 60's) was a whopping 50 minutes long.
If we had 50 minute shows these days, i'd be a lot happier.
I stick to cable for the most part, longer shows:) (2 minutes translates to 1 extra 30-second spot every break in a 1 hour show)
agreed, if it's not distracting, i.e. you don't notice it, i could care less. E.T. being a perfect example, it was perfect in context, and the bag being logo up... 50/50 shot there, turning anything towards the camera... BLATENT!!!! i have more respect for a show that uses real products in context than making up fake stores/products, etc, just don't throw it in our faces, mm'kay.
I've seen IT companies advertised in TV shows... doesn't bother me too much. Watching NCIS last night, every computer/monitor was a Dell (the new flat panel and/or CRT design and the pizza boxen cases), aside from one camera tracking shot that had the rear of a CRT in the shot (with a big DELL logo on it), i didn't really notice (though when it comes to IT stuff, i go out of my way to point stuff out) because the action was still there. In fact, they (the producers, et al) should be commended for using real stuff (windows included) rather than the uber fake shells seen in TV/movies past (joe sixpak using some fake psudo shell thingy irks me more than same person using MS windows (or god forbid, XFree86)).
fanless is VERY doable, just get a C3 based Mitx board with no fan and a fanless DC-DC PSU, buckets of ram and a small, quiet HD. load to RAM, and cron the/var stuff from ramdisk to the hard drive (which has/boot and/backup, while / [root] is imaged to the RAM disk. set the apm on the HD to it's highest setting and have the thing cron/var to the HD every 2 hours (or whatever suits your fancy). having a super quiet box is next to impossible without going the CF/RAMDisk route. Example: mITX board (fanless( fanless DC-DC psu w/ external brick 512MB RAM 128MB CF card 12v SLA/Lantern battery for UPS mount everything to ramdisk, copy/var back every day (say, noon). if power blinks, ups keeps ram alive. assuming you check your mail several times a day you'll never have to worry.
my setup:
Athlon 1.3
256MB PC2700
KT333 Motherboard
2 WD800JB (80Gb 8mb cache) hard drives
1 WD1200JB (120GB 8mb cache) hard drive
Red Hat 8
the 80GB drives are 100% RAID partitions, with an equal share of the 120 added to it (software RAID5 throretical @160GB actual: 147GB)
the remaining 40GB of the big drive is for/boot,/, and a separate 30GB partition used to store big ass files that i don't need long (DVD VOB's and the like).
The system is on a 100 megabit, full duplex network and serves a maximum of 4 boxes at a time, pushing out DivX/Xvid movies, MP3's and CD ISO's without breaking a sweat (add a file transfer in the mix and you start having issues) but that saturation is the network talking. for home use software RAID5 is a good solution.
everything is using the standard ATA133 controller onboard, i was using the o/b raid back when the entire thing was 80GB RAID1 but the drivers were a PITA and performance 'boost' not worth the hassle.
my problem is that the 150GB i have has now only 25GB left (granted 60+ is just DivX/Svid stuff, 2/3 of which is backed up on CD (trust my movies to a hard drive alone i will not).
Am moving the server from a SX1000 case to a 2U rackmount sometime this week, have room for another RAID array. Will slap a gigabit card in when i get the $ for a gigabit switch.
If you do anything, Go RAID, 5 is best, though you need more drives, it's cheaper per gig than RAID1
ex: RAID 1 80GB array @ $100/drive (2x 80GB's): $200 or $2.50 per GB
RAID 5 160GB array @100/drive (3x80GB's): $1.87 per GB
of course YMMV, YCMV, etc, the $100 was for ease of calc.
RAID5 gives piece of mind against mechanical failure, i've lost many gigs of data (notably 80% of my Napster collected MP3'S) when 40GB died on me, and almost lost everything when a hard drive got fried when everything was in my game box (the system drive and not the data drive got blown, but it coulda been the other way around).
even with RAID5, BACKUP YOUR DATA!, burn to CD or DVD-R for archival purposes in case something happens (data gets deleted, box fragged, etc), also makes a nice way to loan your collection to friends (i have most of my videos on a series of CD's all wrapped in a 64-piece carrier, very portable. havent burned the others yet (lack of time, lack of the 13 CD's to burn DS9 season 4, etc)
future plans are to add a promise ATA100 controller and 4 200GB hard drives, placing 3 in a RAID5 and keeping the 4th as a hot spare for either array.
the rackmount has 7 bays, 3 3.5's in the rear with an 80mm near em, and 4 up front (2 5.25's, gonna put 2 200's there with coolers) and 2 3.5's (other 2 there, shouldn't have a major problem.
though i may one day do a little box hacking and get a 4U drive array holder box, bust a hole in the top of the 2U and bottom of the 4U to route the cables: instant uber storage device.
but it seems to me that a small army of Mini-ITX boxes (the fanless, DC-DC variety) with 128MB of RAM. PXE booted, connecting to a linux rdesktop/X/VNC server and you have an inexpensive thin client for under $400 with a monitor.
Put together a server for a few G's (say... 5k)at 50:1 and you have user systems for $500 a piece complete with software. that is assuming that you're deploying from the ground up using OpenOffice, etc.
I've had crapcast HSI since january 2000, with the exception of a few minor outtages i've had no trouble.
When my second modem started getting quirky, (the first had already fried, they replaced no charge), a call to them and a day of intermittent service found that the cable modem had a defective power plug (RCA cable modem, 4 prong thingy) that had been known about for MONTHS, this modem, BTW had the nack for resetting if you so much as touched the thing. they replaced it with a SA Webstar and it's been stable ever since, as stable as my linux router.
I run KaZaa, only a few hours at a go when i want something (during which time it uploads stuff), but the box it's on hates it (PII 266, 256MB win2kPro) as it sucks CPU cycles. Most of my downloading is done with BitTorrent, during the day, i cap the uploads at 10k/s (the entire line grinds to a halt otherwise while BT is blowing packets 30k/s upstream (max cap, also slows the downstream due to the half duplex nature of the beast).
I would switch to DSL if it was cheap, but it isn't, a friend of mine has a 768K SDSL line through IJ.net, runs several web servers including 2 of my own (pay him $35 a month for it) and it costs him $150/mo for said service. granted it's static IP (why mainstream providors dont do static is beyond me... oh right, 90% of users cant even to winipcfg... granted comcast's idea of static is 1 IP per MAC address on their network, so swapping which NIC is the WAN link in my router is the only way to change the thing (convenient for getting around IP bans ).
I RARELY pull 300k/down 30k/up and the worst thing i serve is a 5 person teamspeak server for personal use (beats the crap outta the phone for group chats).
i went to Windows update yesterday, and to my complete surprise, the only patch that my box didn't have was the DRm client, i looked it over real good, then realized that if i did that, it'd be nothing short of large amounts of PAIN!
I run 3 2k machines on top of a linux backend, the only reason I run 2k is for software compatibility (I have yet to seea headache free way of getting my All-in-wonder card working in linux, ditto for the GF4 for gaming, not to mention the games themselves). I will not run XP/2k3/longhorn unless absolutly necessary (read: 2k isn't supported and my new box has some gadget that will not run on 2k, which thanks to 2k and XP being so close together hasn't happened yet. I will probably run 2k til hell freezes over.
linux is looking a whole lot better these days, if it was only good for something other than basic office work (sans headaches), and servers (there is no such thing as a M$ server (M$ server = big honkin 'HACK ME' sign)
i'm a tech, usually do work in the field, who has dreams of having other such techs work for me in the future.
Being on time for appointments are a MUST (i add 10 minutes to every travel time, usually arriving 10 mins early), tho in an office situation i think this works:
if you are expected at 7:30, get there at 7:30 and clock in, get to wherever you need to be and get organized for the workday (late penalty 7:35, timepiece variation), though as company policy, no meetings, etc. start until 7:45 (if person mans a helpdesk effective at 7:45, he has time to get to work, clock in, get the latest info, check the inboxes, etc before the phones start ringing.)Ending times are similar, clock out at 4:00.
5 minute grace for the clock is law, 10-15 before management comes a kncking is common sense (who likes being bothered by the boss on their way to their desk when coming in? getting cought with your proverbial pants down isn't good for productivity, nor morale.
In a professional organization, you wouldn't use that first 15 minutes as an excuse to be late (must be clocked in no later than 5 minutes after scheduled start time else late, won't be expected for any meetings, appts, etc til 15 mins after start time (if you're late for that, however, shit hits the fan, no excuse for being late when you've been in the building for 15 minutes already.)
there may be flaws here, but on paper it works
*braces for eventual modding down*
I am a two-handed, ten fingered person who, thanks to a stroke at age 3 days, have only 50% use of my right arm, hand and leg (ultra mild case of CP) (i walk with a slightly noticible limp)
being one handed is bad enough, but with said one hand being the left it presents its own challenges here in a right handed world.
I have trained myself, over time to type one handed, with a sustained rate of 30-35 WPM, burst rate at 60 (!), with one hand (i look at the board, so sue me). I can now also work a gas pedal with the right foot, after an aftermarket left foot accelerator pedal malfunctioned, (a crossover module) causing the throttle to stick half way down when accelerating into city traffic (yiep).
anywho, back on topic. I'm all over the keyboard, and since my work is mostly field work thus far (novice programmer), i stick to the standard QWERTY keyboard size and config, and the 'right handed" mouse button config. I HATE ergo boards for obvious reasons, and haven't found a suitable solution to RSI that hasn't happened with any severity... yet.
Finding a mouse that's lefty friendly is hard, i currently use a MS intellimouse optical (5 button) the side buttons are great strafe keys (gamer too, hee), since all my right fingers can do is up and down.
foot pedals for keyboard commands are an option, but lacking manual dexterity makes me pretty bad with a soldering iron.
those pedals look interesting... hmm, pricy though, eh. all i can really say is, i've adapted out of nesessity over the years (am 18 now). Having never used my right hand for computer ops, i can't comment on those who have lost the use of their right hand, as i've never had it.
and if anyone know where to find a 3+ button lefty friendly trackball, lemme know.
i've already rigged my router to redirect all internel tarffic to said IP to the routers local web server that nicely says "Web Site not found" on 80, and bungs up everything else.
indeed, i believe someone once said that same thing about ARPAnet way back when "if we can get these computers talking to each other, why not all of em"
Space travel is expensive yes, but because companies still profit from it (the supplies of the rockets, fuels, etc) they don't want to change because they would loose $, unless the supply runs out (we'll run out of rocket parts (metal) long before we run out of LOx and LHx.
But, by the same token, we'll run out of Fossil fuels very shortly, and OPEC et. al. are doing SQUAT, those engineers working on Fuel cells for the common man should be commended, after the tech is perfected, and the cost becomes reasonable, bye-bye internal combustion for transportation.
Nuclear power's only obstruction is those damned tree-hugging idiots who apparently would rather see us burn up all the hydrocarbons on the planet than risk localized irradiation (the risk in itself is extremly low compared to the pollution that coal and oil put out).
Have someone replace half the coal plants in the US with nuclear facilities and watch power bills drop like a stone on jupiter.
when the fuel's used up, seal it in big drums, and sink it in the mariannas trench in the pacific or shoot it into orbit.
these guys are concerned about nothing.
i went from the old ball and chain mice to one of the first intellimouse optical USB's back in 98/99, two buttons on the left, used one, couldn't reach the other (i'm a perpetual southpaw, 40% paralysis of my right side), screwy wiring (i think i abused the cord too much) and even screwier USB hub drivers (HP box, go figure) caused strange things in Win 98...
went to a logitech ifeel, busted the wheel in 4 months, went through 4 regular logitech opti's, finally settling on the new MS optical explorer (the two add'l buttons are in symmetrical flanking the mouse), perfect for strafe keys (my right hand has enough dexterity to wok UP and DN, not the arrows, alas...
before the 5 button mouse, i used a joystick in FPS's and was damn good considering, got me the nickname "The one-armed bandit" at LANs.
now, said 5 button mouse is wearing thin (the LMB clicks randomly) am looking into a trackball, are they any good for games?
...!= real life violence.
frankly i have more concern over those kids who start paintballing at -+10 than those who start playing Quake at the same age.
Simple reasoning, if a kid handles a gun, he will naturally become adept as using said weapon, and it would nly take a momentray lapse in judgement for said kid to point a loaded paintball gun not at a player wearing protective gear to an unprotcted bystander's cranium at near point-blank.
The quake junkie, on the other hand, will have lightning quick reflexes, hand-eye coordination, etc, all without being prone to violence.
My parents didn't let me play any violent game til i was 10 (1995, doom it was), and that was free shareware, i didn't buy one til i was 13 (the Q3 based Star Trek: Elite Force).
All this talk about violent video games, poppycock i say.
now physical violence, thats another story.
Reset button == degauss
on
MRAM in 2004?
·
· Score: 1
it stands to reason that once we have MRAM devices in practical use, the 'reset' button on today's boxes (read: instacrash/restart) will become a degauss memory/restart) button, thereby triggering a reboot of the system from a different set of MRAM sticks (assuming one stick holds kernel, drivers, software, docs ala Hard Drive while another is used for temp storage (read: modern RAM), so that if it necessary to reboot (i.e. cold reboot, it's gonna happen) it can be done without fragging the o/s and stuff, after all one doesn't reload the HD after resetting a box now do they, though some *nix gurus might
i've been running a linux powered x86 box for a few years now, first an aging P-200 running LRP and now a PII 400 running RedHat8 and shorewall.
all inbound connections (SSH, HTTP, FTP) are bound to certain external IP's only (3 to be exact, the IP of my friendly neighborhood linux guru, who helped me set the stuff up, the LAN party HQ (owned by same guru) and my school), likewise, all internal requests are bound to certain boxes (only HTTP goes through the gateway, even that's not on 80) FTP and SSH stop cold at the gateway.
during the peak of the Blaster worm, even with near zero internet activity from lan boxes (the switch showed no activity, likewise the LAN-side NIC), the cable modem was having a field day, thankfully i have logging disabled, else i fear all those iris hits would have overwhelmed the thing's 2GB HD.
no need for a subnet on my home LAN, nor a VPN at this point.
The home net:
192.168.2.0
(it's.2.x because the guy who gave me a linux router setup 2 years back had his lan as.1 and set the software as.2, never bothered to change to 1 *shrug*)
Router: 192.168.2.254 (top, easy to remember)
Server: 192.168.2.200 (easy to remember)
DHCP address space: 201-253
Static share box (runs all dem nasty file sharing programs, must be addressable drectly from the firewall).100
i used 10.x for awhile (easier to type) but then the router changed and it was easier to change 2 static boxes than the entire networking config of the router (shorewall, local net, DHCPD, etc).
IANAP, but I can tell you for server apps, M$ crap sucks (it may be easier to get working, but working well (read: fast, reliable, AND secure) forget it.)
M$ general purpose workgroup server (file, printer, etc)(10 clients): Windows Server 2003 (2000 svr comparitivly priced): $1,199 Hardware: $2,000 (rough figure, YMMV here, arbitrary)
That's $3,200 just for ten people to connect to your server (add to that the client boxen liscenses themselves, which are separate from Client Access Liscenses IIRC)
Linux: Hardware: $2,000 (see above) Software: $0.00 Per seat cost: $0.00
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Up until a year ago, i had a Pentium 180Mhz in active duty as my firewall (Running LRP)
:) )
it died of RAM failure.
Now my router is a Pentium II 266Mhz acer aspire with an old fujitsu 2GB drive (the 4GB seagate it came with died), running RedHat8 and Shorewall, runs like a champ, and with it's new power supply and cpu fans (the originals crapped out within a week of each other, had been in continuous use since 1997), it's quiet and uptime would be in months except for the ups's unreliability...
The 2 oldest components still in use:
Packard Hell 13" monitor VGA, dated 12/1993
used on a much newer PII 350 running win2k, serves torrents, sharereactor and other goodies on demand.
2nd oldest and most useful:
Sound Blaster 16 Pro ISA
dated 1995.
Huge card when compared to the audigy, gives it a good run fore it's money when playing MP3's (installed in the above mentioned 350, my alarm clock
my friend, and resident uber geek, has a trio of working Cromemco systems (google = friend)
one of them is still in production, running a local furniture shop (with linux frontends on 486+ boxes to boot)
the fax machine here in my home office gets flooded with fax spam, currently it all goes to the computer 9it's a canon multipass laser), gonna hopefully switch to WinFAX pro soon but all i do is push DELETE.
I've used winamp since the 2.1 days (on a 56k 266PII and first saw the acronym "MP3"), currently using 2.91 (i don't trust 3... yet) no mem leaks, OOG plugin available. use FFDShow for X-vid/Divx stuff w/ AC3 filtering. Winamp 2.91 has a decent video player built in (supports above mentioned codecs well), plays the videos like any other file (mass playlists too ) If not Winamp, then WiMP 6.4 (stock with win2k, i avoid 7+ like the plague) for FTP, i either use SmartFTP or WS_FTP LE (lightweight, free, fast). Virus scanning: AVG personal ed. Alt virus scanner: kaspersky (gets more then AVG, lot slower though) Office dox: OpenOffice (.doc files == work of satan) System stats: Statbar http://www.statbar.nl has: CPU/RAM monitor, network monitor, Winamp 2x/3x controls, master volume controls, CD Tray controls, time sync, keyboard lock indicators, LogOff/Restart/Shutdown/Lock Workstation, Windows Uptime, Drive usage stats, etc Music encode: CDex works very well.
here, here! marketers who have no knowledge of an industry (in this case, gaming) have absolutly no business whatsoever marketing those products. You don't have marketers for cars who don't drive. You don't have marketers for TV shows who don't actually watch them, oh... wait... yeah, you do, damn UPN marketing. but you have marketers for computers and games who have no clue about what they're selling, and people wonder why this industry is in chaos... damn marketing. back in the day when game developing was a small time operation, you did your own marketing, and a springboard was created, now, mass market is the key. oy.
i use whatever pen is available, i write so rarely (math class i use a pencil, only thing to use there) i do carry a pen with me out of convenience, it can vary depending on what i can grab on my way out the door. i type an average of 45 WPM with only ONE HAND, my left hand to boot, granted i do make a few mistakes here and there and have a tendency to murder my keyboards. unlike most geeks i know, i have small fingers, and, since i type one-handed anyway i have an easier time with small keypads and such than most, in fact, i'm much more at home on a laptop keyboard than i am a standard sized one. Oh well, back to the pens, no real comment here, my handwriting has been called heiroglyphic, chicken-scratch, etc. though it is distinctive (anyone who's seen my handwriting instantly knows it's from me.)
in a few months, when i get some 'real' money and/or job, i'm gonna procure a T-mobie sidekick (scuttlebutt has is that they are negotiating to use AT&T's network), my current phone, a AT&T Nokia 81x is bulky to say the least, the SK is about the same size, has a handsfre earpiece 9a must), plus internet connectivity and base PDA functions to boot.
:(
I got a 1st hand look at a iPod the other day, definatly want one, smaller than i expected. those two items can easily be load-balanced in two pockets.
Definatly keep a SAK or leatherman on you, never know when you'll need one, though if you're in school, don't even think about a simple screwdriver
My bat-belt at the moment consists of a Nokia phone and a 128MB USB flash stick on my keyring (said memstick contains putty, trillian, openOffice, winamp, winzip, teamspeak, etc. (geek survival tools)
I worked as a computer lab assistant for two years at a local college (satellite office of a bigger college out of state), i was 16 at the time (2000). my friend, who scored the job of netadmin (MCP in NT4.0... MSCE track... guy can't build a box to save his life, knows squat about linux, etc) got me the job of lab assistant (read: assistant admin guru). I knew squat about linux back then, didn't know any better :).
:) i mostly surfed /. for those 3 hours, repaired the occasional (usually 1 a week... 98SE POS, later 2k/98 dual boots (with removable racks... that was real fun installing em (fried 6 20GB HDs, the cheap racks never said anything about they keylock killing power/data...)
The job was 3 hours a week, 9-12 every saturday babysitting two labs (12 and 9 computers, respectivly) for $9.25 per hour, not too shabby considering i had unfettered access to the lab's T1 line every saturday
anywho, june 2002, i hear from my friend that they're reorganizing and can no longer afford to have a full time tech staff (read: us) and announce tha they are outsourcing from then on. He gets let go from a full time spot, and gets the outsourcing contract (substantially less pay, i'd imagine), i hand on for another 8 weeks, wind up moving furniture and taking down old lans for most of it, then i'm let go, quietly.
Ive gone the freelance route since, i can't say it's lucrative, but it's semi-stable work that fits my schedule (High school, ya know). I am searching for a non burger-flipping job, but no one wants to hire a computer geek with 0 retail experience or HS diploma... yet...
I hate the 22 (!) minutes of commericials in prime time TV. I watch... lets see... NCIS JAG Enterprise Smallville Stargate SG-1 occasional History Channel stuff the worst commercial offenders are the prime time gigs (top 4), Skiffy and History Channel have fewer commercials by comparison (on cable makes a difference), SG-1's format was 45 minutes commercial free (on showtime) for the first 5 seasons and, thusly has only 15 minutes of commercials, that format, IIRC/AFAIK has remained unchanged in seasons 6 and 7 on skiffy (when they show the reruns, they are unedited). Enterprise is 40 minutes (thereabouts), the other treks are 44 (TNG/DS9 and early VOY), while TOS (aired in the 60's) was a whopping 50 minutes long. If we had 50 minute shows these days, i'd be a lot happier. I stick to cable for the most part, longer shows :) (2 minutes translates to 1 extra 30-second spot every break in a 1 hour show)
agreed, if it's not distracting, i.e. you don't notice it, i could care less. E.T. being a perfect example, it was perfect in context, and the bag being logo up... 50/50 shot there, turning anything towards the camera... BLATENT!!!!
i have more respect for a show that uses real products in context than making up fake stores/products, etc, just don't throw it in our faces, mm'kay.
I've seen IT companies advertised in TV shows... doesn't bother me too much. Watching NCIS last night, every computer/monitor was a Dell (the new flat panel and/or CRT design and the pizza boxen cases), aside from one camera tracking shot that had the rear of a CRT in the shot (with a big DELL logo on it), i didn't really notice (though when it comes to IT stuff, i go out of my way to point stuff out) because the action was still there. In fact, they (the producers, et al) should be commended for using real stuff (windows included) rather than the uber fake shells seen in TV/movies past (joe sixpak using some fake psudo shell thingy irks me more than same person using MS windows (or god forbid, XFree86)).
now pixeleting store names out.. never seen that.
fanless is VERY doable, just get a C3 based Mitx board with no fan and a fanless DC-DC PSU, buckets of ram and a small, quiet HD. load to RAM, and cron the /var stuff from ramdisk to the hard drive (which has /boot and /backup, while / [root] is imaged to the RAM disk. set the apm on the HD to it's highest setting and have the thing cron /var to the HD every 2 hours (or whatever suits your fancy). having a super quiet box is next to impossible without going the CF/RAMDisk route. Example: /var back every day (say, noon). if power blinks, ups keeps ram alive. assuming you check your mail several times a day you'll never have to worry.
mITX board (fanless(
fanless DC-DC psu w/ external brick
512MB RAM
128MB CF card
12v SLA/Lantern battery for UPS
mount everything to ramdisk, copy
my setup: Athlon 1.3 256MB PC2700 KT333 Motherboard 2 WD800JB (80Gb 8mb cache) hard drives 1 WD1200JB (120GB 8mb cache) hard drive Red Hat 8 the 80GB drives are 100% RAID partitions, with an equal share of the 120 added to it (software RAID5 throretical @160GB actual: 147GB) the remaining 40GB of the big drive is for /boot, /, and a separate 30GB partition used to store big ass files that i don't need long (DVD VOB's and the like).
The system is on a 100 megabit, full duplex network and serves a maximum of 4 boxes at a time, pushing out DivX/Xvid movies, MP3's and CD ISO's without breaking a sweat (add a file transfer in the mix and you start having issues) but that saturation is the network talking. for home use software RAID5 is a good solution.
everything is using the standard ATA133 controller onboard, i was using the o/b raid back when the entire thing was 80GB RAID1 but the drivers were a PITA and performance 'boost' not worth the hassle.
my problem is that the 150GB i have has now only 25GB left (granted 60+ is just DivX/Svid stuff, 2/3 of which is backed up on CD (trust my movies to a hard drive alone i will not).
Am moving the server from a SX1000 case to a 2U rackmount sometime this week, have room for another RAID array. Will slap a gigabit card in when i get the $ for a gigabit switch.
If you do anything, Go RAID, 5 is best, though you need more drives, it's cheaper per gig than RAID1
ex: RAID 1 80GB array @ $100/drive (2x 80GB's): $200 or $2.50 per GB
RAID 5 160GB array @100/drive (3x80GB's): $1.87 per GB
of course YMMV, YCMV, etc, the $100 was for ease of calc.
RAID5 gives piece of mind against mechanical failure, i've lost many gigs of data (notably 80% of my Napster collected MP3'S) when 40GB died on me, and almost lost everything when a hard drive got fried when everything was in my game box (the system drive and not the data drive got blown, but it coulda been the other way around).
even with RAID5, BACKUP YOUR DATA!, burn to CD or DVD-R for archival purposes in case something happens (data gets deleted, box fragged, etc), also makes a nice way to loan your collection to friends (i have most of my videos on a series of CD's all wrapped in a 64-piece carrier, very portable. havent burned the others yet (lack of time, lack of the 13 CD's to burn DS9 season 4, etc)
future plans are to add a promise ATA100 controller and 4 200GB hard drives, placing 3 in a RAID5 and keeping the 4th as a hot spare for either array.
the rackmount has 7 bays, 3 3.5's in the rear with an 80mm near em, and 4 up front (2 5.25's, gonna put 2 200's there with coolers) and 2 3.5's (other 2 there, shouldn't have a major problem.
though i may one day do a little box hacking and get a 4U drive array holder box, bust a hole in the top of the 2U and bottom of the 4U to route the cables: instant uber storage device.
but it seems to me that a small army of Mini-ITX boxes (the fanless, DC-DC variety) with 128MB of RAM. PXE booted, connecting to a linux rdesktop/X/VNC server and you have an inexpensive thin client for under $400 with a monitor. Put together a server for a few G's (say... 5k)at 50:1 and you have user systems for $500 a piece complete with software. that is assuming that you're deploying from the ground up using OpenOffice, etc.
I've had crapcast HSI since january 2000, with the exception of a few minor outtages i've had no trouble. When my second modem started getting quirky, (the first had already fried, they replaced no charge), a call to them and a day of intermittent service found that the cable modem had a defective power plug (RCA cable modem, 4 prong thingy) that had been known about for MONTHS, this modem, BTW had the nack for resetting if you so much as touched the thing. they replaced it with a SA Webstar and it's been stable ever since, as stable as my linux router. I run KaZaa, only a few hours at a go when i want something (during which time it uploads stuff), but the box it's on hates it (PII 266, 256MB win2kPro) as it sucks CPU cycles. Most of my downloading is done with BitTorrent, during the day, i cap the uploads at 10k/s (the entire line grinds to a halt otherwise while BT is blowing packets 30k/s upstream (max cap, also slows the downstream due to the half duplex nature of the beast). I would switch to DSL if it was cheap, but it isn't, a friend of mine has a 768K SDSL line through IJ.net, runs several web servers including 2 of my own (pay him $35 a month for it) and it costs him $150/mo for said service. granted it's static IP (why mainstream providors dont do static is beyond me... oh right, 90% of users cant even to winipcfg... granted comcast's idea of static is 1 IP per MAC address on their network, so swapping which NIC is the WAN link in my router is the only way to change the thing (convenient for getting around IP bans ). I RARELY pull 300k/down 30k/up and the worst thing i serve is a 5 person teamspeak server for personal use (beats the crap outta the phone for group chats).
anything that can be slashdotted, has been slashdotted... all those mirrors are FUBAR, i'd hate to be the sysadmin of the main site right now.
i went to Windows update yesterday, and to my complete surprise, the only patch that my box didn't have was the DRm client, i looked it over real good, then realized that if i did that, it'd be nothing short of large amounts of PAIN!
I run 3 2k machines on top of a linux backend, the only reason I run 2k is for software compatibility (I have yet to seea headache free way of getting my All-in-wonder card working in linux, ditto for the GF4 for gaming, not to mention the games themselves).
I will not run XP/2k3/longhorn unless absolutly necessary (read: 2k isn't supported and my new box has some gadget that will not run on 2k, which thanks to 2k and XP being so close together hasn't happened yet. I will probably run 2k til hell freezes over.
linux is looking a whole lot better these days, if it was only good for something other than basic office work (sans headaches), and servers (there is no such thing as a M$ server (M$ server = big honkin 'HACK ME' sign)
i'm a tech, usually do work in the field, who has dreams of having other such techs work for me in the future. Being on time for appointments are a MUST (i add 10 minutes to every travel time, usually arriving 10 mins early), tho in an office situation i think this works: if you are expected at 7:30, get there at 7:30 and clock in, get to wherever you need to be and get organized for the workday (late penalty 7:35, timepiece variation), though as company policy, no meetings, etc. start until 7:45 (if person mans a helpdesk effective at 7:45, he has time to get to work, clock in, get the latest info, check the inboxes, etc before the phones start ringing.)Ending times are similar, clock out at 4:00. 5 minute grace for the clock is law, 10-15 before management comes a kncking is common sense (who likes being bothered by the boss on their way to their desk when coming in? getting cought with your proverbial pants down isn't good for productivity, nor morale. In a professional organization, you wouldn't use that first 15 minutes as an excuse to be late (must be clocked in no later than 5 minutes after scheduled start time else late, won't be expected for any meetings, appts, etc til 15 mins after start time (if you're late for that, however, shit hits the fan, no excuse for being late when you've been in the building for 15 minutes already.) there may be flaws here, but on paper it works *braces for eventual modding down*
I am a two-handed, ten fingered person who, thanks to a stroke at age 3 days, have only 50% use of my right arm, hand and leg (ultra mild case of CP) (i walk with a slightly noticible limp)
being one handed is bad enough, but with said one hand being the left it presents its own challenges here in a right handed world.
I have trained myself, over time to type one handed, with a sustained rate of 30-35 WPM, burst rate at 60 (!), with one hand (i look at the board, so sue me). I can now also work a gas pedal with the right foot, after an aftermarket left foot accelerator pedal malfunctioned, (a crossover module) causing the throttle to stick half way down when accelerating into city traffic (yiep).
anywho, back on topic.
I'm all over the keyboard, and since my work is mostly field work thus far (novice programmer), i stick to the standard QWERTY keyboard size and config, and the 'right handed" mouse button config.
I HATE ergo boards for obvious reasons, and haven't found a suitable solution to RSI that hasn't happened with any severity... yet.
Finding a mouse that's lefty friendly is hard, i currently use a MS intellimouse optical (5 button) the side buttons are great strafe keys (gamer too, hee), since all my right fingers can do is up and down.
foot pedals for keyboard commands are an option, but lacking manual dexterity makes me pretty bad with a soldering iron.
those pedals look interesting... hmm, pricy though, eh. all i can really say is, i've adapted out of nesessity over the years (am 18 now). Having never used my right hand for computer ops, i can't comment on those who have lost the use of their right hand, as i've never had it.
and if anyone know where to find a 3+ button lefty friendly trackball, lemme know.
i've already rigged my router to redirect all internel tarffic to said IP to the routers local web server that nicely says "Web Site not found" on 80, and bungs up everything else.
indeed, i believe someone once said that same thing about ARPAnet way back when "if we can get these computers talking to each other, why not all of em" Space travel is expensive yes, but because companies still profit from it (the supplies of the rockets, fuels, etc) they don't want to change because they would loose $, unless the supply runs out (we'll run out of rocket parts (metal) long before we run out of LOx and LHx. But, by the same token, we'll run out of Fossil fuels very shortly, and OPEC et. al. are doing SQUAT, those engineers working on Fuel cells for the common man should be commended, after the tech is perfected, and the cost becomes reasonable, bye-bye internal combustion for transportation. Nuclear power's only obstruction is those damned tree-hugging idiots who apparently would rather see us burn up all the hydrocarbons on the planet than risk localized irradiation (the risk in itself is extremly low compared to the pollution that coal and oil put out). Have someone replace half the coal plants in the US with nuclear facilities and watch power bills drop like a stone on jupiter. when the fuel's used up, seal it in big drums, and sink it in the mariannas trench in the pacific or shoot it into orbit. these guys are concerned about nothing.
i went from the old ball and chain mice to one of the first intellimouse optical USB's back in 98/99, two buttons on the left, used one, couldn't reach the other (i'm a perpetual southpaw, 40% paralysis of my right side), screwy wiring (i think i abused the cord too much) and even screwier USB hub drivers (HP box, go figure) caused strange things in Win 98...
went to a logitech ifeel, busted the wheel in 4 months, went through 4 regular logitech opti's, finally settling on the new MS optical explorer (the two add'l buttons are in symmetrical flanking the mouse), perfect for strafe keys (my right hand has enough dexterity to wok UP and DN, not the arrows, alas...
before the 5 button mouse, i used a joystick in FPS's and was damn good considering, got me the nickname "The one-armed bandit" at LANs.
now, said 5 button mouse is wearing thin (the LMB clicks randomly) am looking into a trackball, are they any good for games?
...!= real life violence. frankly i have more concern over those kids who start paintballing at -+10 than those who start playing Quake at the same age. Simple reasoning, if a kid handles a gun, he will naturally become adept as using said weapon, and it would nly take a momentray lapse in judgement for said kid to point a loaded paintball gun not at a player wearing protective gear to an unprotcted bystander's cranium at near point-blank. The quake junkie, on the other hand, will have lightning quick reflexes, hand-eye coordination, etc, all without being prone to violence. My parents didn't let me play any violent game til i was 10 (1995, doom it was), and that was free shareware, i didn't buy one til i was 13 (the Q3 based Star Trek: Elite Force). All this talk about violent video games, poppycock i say. now physical violence, thats another story.
it stands to reason that once we have MRAM devices in practical use, the 'reset' button on today's boxes (read: instacrash/restart) will become a degauss memory/restart) button, thereby triggering a reboot of the system from a different set of MRAM sticks (assuming one stick holds kernel, drivers, software, docs ala Hard Drive while another is used for temp storage (read: modern RAM), so that if it necessary to reboot (i.e. cold reboot, it's gonna happen) it can be done without fragging the o/s and stuff, after all one doesn't reload the HD after resetting a box now do they, though some *nix gurus might
i've been running a linux powered x86 box for a few years now, first an aging P-200 running LRP and now a PII 400 running RedHat8 and shorewall. all inbound connections (SSH, HTTP, FTP) are bound to certain external IP's only (3 to be exact, the IP of my friendly neighborhood linux guru, who helped me set the stuff up, the LAN party HQ (owned by same guru) and my school), likewise, all internal requests are bound to certain boxes (only HTTP goes through the gateway, even that's not on 80) FTP and SSH stop cold at the gateway. during the peak of the Blaster worm, even with near zero internet activity from lan boxes (the switch showed no activity, likewise the LAN-side NIC), the cable modem was having a field day, thankfully i have logging disabled, else i fear all those iris hits would have overwhelmed the thing's 2GB HD.
no need for a subnet on my home LAN, nor a VPN at this point. The home net: 192.168.2.0 (it's .2.x because the guy who gave me a linux router setup 2 years back had his lan as .1 and set the software as .2, never bothered to change to 1 *shrug*)
Router: 192.168.2.254 (top, easy to remember)
Server: 192.168.2.200 (easy to remember)
DHCP address space: 201-253
Static share box (runs all dem nasty file sharing programs, must be addressable drectly from the firewall) .100
i used 10.x for awhile (easier to type) but then the router changed and it was easier to change 2 static boxes than the entire networking config of the router (shorewall, local net, DHCPD, etc).
IANAP, but I can tell you for server apps, M$ crap sucks (it may be easier to get working, but working well (read: fast, reliable, AND secure) forget it.)
M$ general purpose workgroup server (file, printer, etc)(10 clients):
Windows Server 2003 (2000 svr comparitivly priced): $1,199
Hardware: $2,000 (rough figure, YMMV here, arbitrary)
That's $3,200 just for ten people to connect to your server (add to that the client boxen liscenses themselves, which are separate from Client Access Liscenses IIRC)
Linux:
Hardware: $2,000 (see above)
Software: $0.00
Per seat cost: $0.00
hmm, they're using some severely fscked up math.