4 - NT4 and W2K on decent hardware maintained by competent IT will go 2 years on a server and at least 2-3 months on a workstation...
Yep, that's entirely dependent on the hotfix and SP schedule out of MS. Is NT4/W2K stable enough to run your business on? Yep, properly managed it's good enough to get the job done 99% of the time. Most of our downtime is either hardware that failed, or having to reboot after installing a hotfix/SP.
Unfortunately, it suffers from the swiss army knife syndrome (a.k.a. jack of all trades, master of none) while a Novell file and print server is pretty much turn it on and forget about it. Also, because it can do the same things that an office workstation can, it suffers from tinker disease... admins that just can't resist touching the box to install some shiny new gizmo or change a setting.
I forsee a lot of money laundering in store for me at the local quicky-mart (using that fresh $20 that I just withdrew to buy a newspaper or a piece of candy). While the ATM may record that I was given serial #23423423423, I don't think most small business owners will cooperate with continuing the trail.
Page I looked at had 12 60k images on it... thumbnailed versions probably would have been 6k (okay maybe 10k). So that's a probable waste of 0.5Mb per visitor per page (not many folks would click on every single linked full-size image). 1,000 visitors (very conservative for a/.'ing) is 50Mb of wasted bandwith per page.
Or take something like EffexorXR for a few months and then miss a day's dose. Getting off EffexorXR was worse then quitting smoking a pack a day (cold-turkey too). Even with a 2 week taper it made for a rough time. EffexorXR is not considered to be addictive, yet I suffered withdrawal symptoms when I missed a dose.
Everyone has slightly different biology, what is addictive to one person may not be (as) addictive to another. Some substances are addictive to broader swaths of the population, or may have more powerful effects then other substances.
Pretty much same options as any other behavior modification therapy. Go cold-turkey, exchange one habit for another (take up a sport), moderate, set a schedule (6am-7am only), use goals (clean the house first, then surf for a set period, do a task then allow yourself to read a single article), time limits (use a kitchen timer)...
Yep, just wish there was a way that those notifications could be delayed by a set amount of time. That would (hopefully) result in less temptation to get into a reply-match with whoever replied.
Also, CD-ROM had pretty much taken over as the medium for software installation by that point.
CD-R probably wasn't that far behind, and I'm pretty sure Iomega ZIP drives were pretty popular by the time 2.88Mb came out.
Was more a matter of too little, too late. The 100Mb floppies were tempting, but they didn't beat CD-R(W) and Iomega ZIP to the market.
I'm leaning towards hoping that things like this will get IPSec rolling. I currently use it on both the home network and the work network, but have yet to figure out how to get it to work between 2 windows domains.
Key exchange seems to be the weak point of IPSec between systems that don't share a common key repository. Ideally, any communication between 2 ad-hoc hosts would be encrypted automagically by IPSec without having to manually configure anything.
Of course, the gov't will make that sort of thing illegal.
Watching the re-mastered Star Wars - there's only a single effect that I think was really just plain dumb.
When the death star blows up at the end, they added an explostion "donut" to the scene. Since then, I'm sure you've seen this edge-on view explosion in the shape of a ring numerous times since then.
The problem? It's a great effect for an atmospheric explosion (e.g. the ground shockwave), but it looks really stupid in space where there is no gravity / groundplane to "shape" the shockwave. If they had lined it up with the DS's mid-line (which would be a natural weak point) it would have looked proper. Instead, it just looked tacked on. "Hey! Here's a neat effect that we'll gratuitously add to this scene!"
Like I said, I've seen the effect in a few other places and I think it was added solely for the sake of being added. Must have been someone's "pet effect" that they were all giddy about and just "had to put it in somewhere".
Costs at our work are more like $1200 for a desktop and $2400-$2800 for a laptop. That's the price to get something that will last 3-4 years with maybe only a RAM upgrade in the last year of life.
Why so much for the desktop? OfficeXP adds $250, plus we go for 512Mb of RAM. And we're still upgrading to 17" CRTs around the office (hoping to switch to 1280x1024 15" LCDs next spring as the standard).
At work, I buy a new laptop every 2 years, and hand off my old one to someone else to use for another 2-3 years. They're still 2x-3x as expensive as buying an equivalent desktop system though (corp desktops cost around US$1200, my laptop costs US$3000).
Usually, what does a system in for us is lack of memory - which causes more swapping to the HD. That shortens lifespan of the HD, plus the HD is slower then desktop systems so it's a double-whammy. Currently, the minimum amount of memory that we will purchase a system with is 512Mb. Come this fall, that minimum requirement will probably be 1Gb RAM. (Right now, with 13 browser windows, MSOutlookXP, WinXP Pro, and half a dozen other apps open, I'm using 390Mb.)
We go around the office once a year and look for any systems that are running less then the average amount of RAM. Usually, dropping another 128Mb or 256Mb into those systems can add as much as 24 months to a lifecycle.
I still wouldn't give up my laptop for anything (used to travel up to NYC once a month) and if I had to buy out of pocket I probably would. I have a seperate game system at home for hard-core gaming. That gets me the best of both worlds, something portable and something powerful.
Hmmmm, heat generation savings in the summer... that's an angle I hadn't thought of.
Last time I ran the numbers for a 17" CRT vs 17" LCD, cost savings was in the vicinity of US$50 to US$75 per year (2000 hours of use per year). It wasn't enough to justify buying a LCD monitor solely based on power-savings ROI.
640x480 or 800x600 when displayed on a 1024x768 LCD does look horrible due to the jaggies. However, if the LCD DPI goes up to say 200dpi (instead of 85-115dpi which is common today), resolution scaling will become a lot less noticable. My latop is 125dpi (if I did the math right), which makes text much crisper as a result. Image scaling still looks funky though which means that the resolution at which you won't really notice it is probably 200dpi or so.
IBM had a display that was 200 or 300 dpi - they were selling it as a way to view digital X-Rays.
I was taught 10/2 as well, but IIRC, airbags in the center of the steering wheel change the equation. Now I think it's either 9 and 3 or 8 and 4 so that your arms/wrists aren't in the path of the airbag when it deploys.
I also recall that you're not supposed to steer using the over/under(?) method at the top of the wheel, but instead do a shifting motion with your hands at the sides of the steering wheel. (Same reason, keep your wrists/arms out of the airbag deployment zone.)
Big difference between a phone call and a passenger.
A passenger is in the same environment as you, which means there's a second set of senses (semi) paying attention to what's going on outside the glass. A cell-caller has no such cues or abilities.
Passengers also have vested interest in NOT bringing up volatile, emotion-laden, or stressful topics. OTOH the PHB is completely comfortable with chewing you out over the cell phone just like he would over regular land-lines. Most passengers are aware of when a conversation has become too complex/difficult for the situation and will defer the conversation or change topics.
CB radio really doesn't map 1:1 because stressful, emotional-laden, or private topics are rarely discussed over CB. (No expectation of privacy.) Plus, the pattern of conversation is different with radio/CB. Pauses between replies are normal in radio/CB - but in phone usage, we're accustomed to interpreting silence as having meaning. So we don't like to leave the channel silent or we might be construed as being rude to the other party. You're also paying per minute for cell (less of a factor now that cell is cheaper), so there's incentive to push more information across in the same time period.
The other thing to consider is the topic being discussed. Some topics require more concentration then others. Talking about the weather is pretty light conversation, and probably doesn't affect driving ability. Trying to troubleshoot a Beowolf Cluster over the phone is a lot more complex and probably has a big impact on your ability to drive.
Reminds me of one of the first 386s that our company got straight from Intel to test (Intel supplied the case AFAIK).
Well, the system had a RAID card, with lots of pretty lights that were fun to watch. Since we were evaluating the box for production use, we'd leave the case off to watch the lights. Problem was, after an hour or so, the system would become horribly unstable (lots of random and strange errors).
Turns out, the airflow in the case was designed to pull from the front lower (fullsize tower), across the motherboard, and then up through the drive bays and out the top back. So when we had the side panel off, the fans at the top of the case were sucking wind instead of pulling air properly through the entire case. Once we figured out that heat was the problem, it was a bit of a "oh duh!" moment. However, I'm pretty sure they didn't roll that particular server out to the production sites as conditions in the field were pretty brutal on equipment (if the office where the servers was stored stayed below 80F you were in heaven).
Assuming you can - put all of the WAPs on a seperate network and force the users to VPN/PPTP into the LAN through a firewall/proxy/vpn/bit-of-toast.
That gets rid of the need to use WEP (which isn't very compatible between different manufacturers), allows you to leverage existing authentication systems, and encrypts the traffic between the laptop and the LAN. Only traffic that isn't encrypted would be if 2 laptops decided to talk to each other directly on the wireless subnet.
Downside is that it's one more VPN/firewall system that you have to setup and support (depending on site plan), plus the cost of supporting a 2nd tier network.
100,000 users per hour... eeep! (watches his web array fall over)
Just what kind of hardware are we talking about that can handle the/. effect?
At work, we measure our capacity in form submissions per hour and the current setup of (2) dual-CPU PIII-700Mhz feeding a PIII-1.4Ghz database server is capable of roughly 65,000/hour. That's with 95% CPU on the 2 web servers and a completely saturated 10Mbps ethernet on the database server (db server is capable of 165k/hr). The old system (just replace) was only capable of 45k/hour. Of course, this is using IISv5 / SQLServer2k.
Reminds me of the personal shield tech in Dune (the book). Something about having to slow the knife thrusts in order to get past the shield (too fast and you got blocked).
Slashdot Mirror
4 - NT4 and W2K on decent hardware maintained by competent IT will go 2 years on a server and at least 2-3 months on a workstation...
Yep, that's entirely dependent on the hotfix and SP schedule out of MS. Is NT4/W2K stable enough to run your business on? Yep, properly managed it's good enough to get the job done 99% of the time. Most of our downtime is either hardware that failed, or having to reboot after installing a hotfix/SP.
Unfortunately, it suffers from the swiss army knife syndrome (a.k.a. jack of all trades, master of none) while a Novell file and print server is pretty much turn it on and forget about it. Also, because it can do the same things that an office workstation can, it suffers from tinker disease... admins that just can't resist touching the box to install some shiny new gizmo or change a setting.
Thanks for the recommendation (chuckle)... already added to my Amazon.com wishlist!
I forsee a lot of money laundering in store for me at the local quicky-mart (using that fresh $20 that I just withdrew to buy a newspaper or a piece of candy). While the ATM may record that I was given serial #23423423423, I don't think most small business owners will cooperate with continuing the trail.
That, or it will soon be time to emigrate.
If it's placed there by the Gideons?
They'll stand up and cheer and put another one in its place. (Hint: They're there for the taking.)
Page I looked at had 12 60k images on it... thumbnailed versions probably would have been 6k (okay maybe 10k). So that's a probable waste of 0.5Mb per visitor per page (not many folks would click on every single linked full-size image). 1,000 visitors (very conservative for a /.'ing) is 50Mb of wasted bandwith per page.
Or take something like EffexorXR for a few months and then miss a day's dose. Getting off EffexorXR was worse then quitting smoking a pack a day (cold-turkey too). Even with a 2 week taper it made for a rough time. EffexorXR is not considered to be addictive, yet I suffered withdrawal symptoms when I missed a dose.
Everyone has slightly different biology, what is addictive to one person may not be (as) addictive to another. Some substances are addictive to broader swaths of the population, or may have more powerful effects then other substances.
Pretty much same options as any other behavior modification therapy. Go cold-turkey, exchange one habit for another (take up a sport), moderate, set a schedule (6am-7am only), use goals (clean the house first, then surf for a set period, do a task then allow yourself to read a single article), time limits (use a kitchen timer)...
Yep, just wish there was a way that those notifications could be delayed by a set amount of time. That would (hopefully) result in less temptation to get into a reply-match with whoever replied.
/.'s homepage.)
(Wants a 24hr delayed version of
Also, CD-ROM had pretty much taken over as the medium for software installation by that point. CD-R probably wasn't that far behind, and I'm pretty sure Iomega ZIP drives were pretty popular by the time 2.88Mb came out.
Was more a matter of too little, too late. The 100Mb floppies were tempting, but they didn't beat CD-R(W) and Iomega ZIP to the market.
I'm leaning towards hoping that things like this will get IPSec rolling. I currently use it on both the home network and the work network, but have yet to figure out how to get it to work between 2 windows domains.
Key exchange seems to be the weak point of IPSec between systems that don't share a common key repository. Ideally, any communication between 2 ad-hoc hosts would be encrypted automagically by IPSec without having to manually configure anything.
Of course, the gov't will make that sort of thing illegal.
Blue screen exists... drop a faulty memory module in and watch the fun.
Biggest problem that I have with XP is that it won't alway recognize a mounted PGPDisk which requires a logout/login.
So I try to go to http://www.pgdp.net/ - only to find out that the page won't load unless you enable JavaScript!
Um... I thought PG was all about not using the latest bells and whistles? (semi-facetious)
Watching the re-mastered Star Wars - there's only a single effect that I think was really just plain dumb.
When the death star blows up at the end, they added an explostion "donut" to the scene. Since then, I'm sure you've seen this edge-on view explosion in the shape of a ring numerous times since then.
The problem? It's a great effect for an atmospheric explosion (e.g. the ground shockwave), but it looks really stupid in space where there is no gravity / groundplane to "shape" the shockwave. If they had lined it up with the DS's mid-line (which would be a natural weak point) it would have looked proper. Instead, it just looked tacked on. "Hey! Here's a neat effect that we'll gratuitously add to this scene!"
Like I said, I've seen the effect in a few other places and I think it was added solely for the sake of being added. Must have been someone's "pet effect" that they were all giddy about and just "had to put it in somewhere".
Costs at our work are more like $1200 for a desktop and $2400-$2800 for a laptop. That's the price to get something that will last 3-4 years with maybe only a RAM upgrade in the last year of life.
Why so much for the desktop? OfficeXP adds $250, plus we go for 512Mb of RAM. And we're still upgrading to 17" CRTs around the office (hoping to switch to 1280x1024 15" LCDs next spring as the standard).
At work, I buy a new laptop every 2 years, and hand off my old one to someone else to use for another 2-3 years. They're still 2x-3x as expensive as buying an equivalent desktop system though (corp desktops cost around US$1200, my laptop costs US$3000).
Usually, what does a system in for us is lack of memory - which causes more swapping to the HD. That shortens lifespan of the HD, plus the HD is slower then desktop systems so it's a double-whammy. Currently, the minimum amount of memory that we will purchase a system with is 512Mb. Come this fall, that minimum requirement will probably be 1Gb RAM. (Right now, with 13 browser windows, MSOutlookXP, WinXP Pro, and half a dozen other apps open, I'm using 390Mb.)
We go around the office once a year and look for any systems that are running less then the average amount of RAM. Usually, dropping another 128Mb or 256Mb into those systems can add as much as 24 months to a lifecycle.
I still wouldn't give up my laptop for anything (used to travel up to NYC once a month) and if I had to buy out of pocket I probably would. I have a seperate game system at home for hard-core gaming. That gets me the best of both worlds, something portable and something powerful.
Hmmmm, heat generation savings in the summer... that's an angle I hadn't thought of.
Last time I ran the numbers for a 17" CRT vs 17" LCD, cost savings was in the vicinity of US$50 to US$75 per year (2000 hours of use per year). It wasn't enough to justify buying a LCD monitor solely based on power-savings ROI.
640x480 or 800x600 when displayed on a 1024x768 LCD does look horrible due to the jaggies. However, if the LCD DPI goes up to say 200dpi (instead of 85-115dpi which is common today), resolution scaling will become a lot less noticable. My latop is 125dpi (if I did the math right), which makes text much crisper as a result. Image scaling still looks funky though which means that the resolution at which you won't really notice it is probably 200dpi or so.
IBM had a display that was 200 or 300 dpi - they were selling it as a way to view digital X-Rays.
I was taught 10/2 as well, but IIRC, airbags in the center of the steering wheel change the equation. Now I think it's either 9 and 3 or 8 and 4 so that your arms/wrists aren't in the path of the airbag when it deploys.
I also recall that you're not supposed to steer using the over/under(?) method at the top of the wheel, but instead do a shifting motion with your hands at the sides of the steering wheel. (Same reason, keep your wrists/arms out of the airbag deployment zone.)
Big difference between a phone call and a passenger.
A passenger is in the same environment as you, which means there's a second set of senses (semi) paying attention to what's going on outside the glass. A cell-caller has no such cues or abilities.
Passengers also have vested interest in NOT bringing up volatile, emotion-laden, or stressful topics. OTOH the PHB is completely comfortable with chewing you out over the cell phone just like he would over regular land-lines. Most passengers are aware of when a conversation has become too complex/difficult for the situation and will defer the conversation or change topics.
CB radio really doesn't map 1:1 because stressful, emotional-laden, or private topics are rarely discussed over CB. (No expectation of privacy.) Plus, the pattern of conversation is different with radio/CB. Pauses between replies are normal in radio/CB - but in phone usage, we're accustomed to interpreting silence as having meaning. So we don't like to leave the channel silent or we might be construed as being rude to the other party. You're also paying per minute for cell (less of a factor now that cell is cheaper), so there's incentive to push more information across in the same time period.
The other thing to consider is the topic being discussed. Some topics require more concentration then others. Talking about the weather is pretty light conversation, and probably doesn't affect driving ability. Trying to troubleshoot a Beowolf Cluster over the phone is a lot more complex and probably has a big impact on your ability to drive.
Short answer: Use one-time, throwaway, free e-mail addresses for the sign-up.
Reminds me of one of the first 386s that our company got straight from Intel to test (Intel supplied the case AFAIK).
Well, the system had a RAID card, with lots of pretty lights that were fun to watch. Since we were evaluating the box for production use, we'd leave the case off to watch the lights. Problem was, after an hour or so, the system would become horribly unstable (lots of random and strange errors).
Turns out, the airflow in the case was designed to pull from the front lower (fullsize tower), across the motherboard, and then up through the drive bays and out the top back. So when we had the side panel off, the fans at the top of the case were sucking wind instead of pulling air properly through the entire case. Once we figured out that heat was the problem, it was a bit of a "oh duh!" moment. However, I'm pretty sure they didn't roll that particular server out to the production sites as conditions in the field were pretty brutal on equipment (if the office where the servers was stored stayed below 80F you were in heaven).
Assuming you can - put all of the WAPs on a seperate network and force the users to VPN/PPTP into the LAN through a firewall/proxy/vpn/bit-of-toast.
That gets rid of the need to use WEP (which isn't very compatible between different manufacturers), allows you to leverage existing authentication systems, and encrypts the traffic between the laptop and the LAN. Only traffic that isn't encrypted would be if 2 laptops decided to talk to each other directly on the wireless subnet.
Downside is that it's one more VPN/firewall system that you have to setup and support (depending on site plan), plus the cost of supporting a 2nd tier network.
100,000 users per hour... eeep! (watches his web array fall over)
/. effect?
Just what kind of hardware are we talking about that can handle the
At work, we measure our capacity in form submissions per hour and the current setup of (2) dual-CPU PIII-700Mhz feeding a PIII-1.4Ghz database server is capable of roughly 65,000/hour. That's with 95% CPU on the 2 web servers and a completely saturated 10Mbps ethernet on the database server (db server is capable of 165k/hr). The old system (just replace) was only capable of 45k/hour. Of course, this is using IISv5 / SQLServer2k.
Reminds me of the personal shield tech in Dune (the book). Something about having to slow the knife thrusts in order to get past the shield (too fast and you got blocked).
Higher up in the thread was information on how to disable the Windows key under MS-Windows.
I always disable my Windows key.