You could also create a domain for users of that application only. Use VLANs and install a small domain controller. Prevent any cross-contamination between the two domains.
After that, just let the users have at it. Most likely, they won't fuck up too bad. And their curosity to go sniffing around will be sated once they find that all that's out there is X-number of PCs exactly like theirs. No e-mail. No personal documents. No pr0n.
Give those users a laptop or another desktop with a KVM switch so they can access the companies' real domain when they need to. Just make sure the wallpapers on the secure box show that they don't need to be fucking around.
Rubber grommets are cheap. Computer modding gear is expensive. Buying rubber grommets in a computer store or from an online modding site will be expensive.
I think you missed the point of the knife. You aren't cutting grommets out of the intertube, you are cutting strips the size of the drive. There should be *no* contact between the drive and the case.
"9-11 certified" is my offices' nickname for a box cutter. We get pretty raw on weekends and nights. Coming up with new shit to piss people off is one great way of passing time.
As for dryer sheets, did you ever smoke in your room? We used to take toilet-paper rolls and stuff them with dryer sheets. We'd exhale through that. In goes smoky air, our comes clean air. Or so we thought:/ In any event, as long as some jackass doesn't try and cram 50 sheets into a small pipe, you'll be OK. 90-degree bends are the best, but can be time/space consuming. It might also be overkill. A 120mm fan wired to use 5v vice 12v is already just about inaudible. Adding a few dryer sheets or a layer of pantyhose over the exaust will make it completely silent.
Keep the computer under a box and behind the desk. No one will ever see it. No one will hear it.
A friend of mine did one better. He had a bedroom closet on the other side of the wall from his office. He cut a small hole in the wall and ran a single USB cable and a monitor cable through. He installed a USB hub and plugged his KB and mouse into that. He also plugged a USB CD-ROM into the hub. Then he stuffed the hole with paper and put his desk right in front of it.
His office is *dead quiet*. When he needs to play a game, He uses USB headphones and turns on the power to the USB CD-ROM drive.
Put it on the floor and put a cardboard box over it. Make a hole in the top and route the cables out of that. Dissolve some rat poision in water and then use that to treat the box.
You'll pay a premium for "rubber grommets for component mounting". Instead, grab a bicycle intertube from WalMart for a few bucks. Use 9-11 certified utility knife to cit it into strips. Put a strip between the drives and the mounting bracket.
Sometimes, the brackets are kinda tight. You can get over that by prying it open a bit. It'll come back together when you screw it down.
Use all the screws you can. I see people just using one or two per side. Most CD-ROMs can take 4 screws per side; use all of them!
Don't screw it down too tight. I've never seen a spec for how tight to torque a hard drive screw. Too tight and your dampener will be for naught. If you are concerned about the drive coming loose, grab some LokTite. If you are clever, a drop of rubber cement will server the same purpose as LokTite and costs a lot less.
Get big fans and run them at lower RPMs. I know a lot of people are concerned over heat. Truth is, computers can run really fucking hot with no problems. 50c is a good number to be happy with. Even 60c isn't a big problem. Just make sure the hard drives are getting cool, fresh air.
Make sure to select a good power supply with a 120mm fan. There is little you can do to quite a bad power supply.
As for the other fans, get some baffles or thin foam. On the back of the PC, tape in some ducting to allow the fan to breathe without having a direct shot to the open air. A fan in the middle of a tube will be quieter than a fan at either end of the tube. Between the fan and the exit, stuff in some crumpled dryer sheets. These allow air flow but really deaden the noise. You can also use several stacked dryer sheets over the intake fans as well.
Finally, take the fucking thing off the desk. There is no reason to have the PC on your desk. Put it under the desk or behind it. You know that box that the thing came in, use that to make a "computer cozy". Cut a few holes for air and cover them with dryer sheets. Cut another hole for the CD-ROM and cover that with a dryer sheet hinge. There will usually be a 1~2" gap between the box and the case. No dust or dirt will get in. It'll be dead quiet from inches away.
Unfortunately, NOCDs are going the way of the dodo. More and more, we are seeing mini-images that, when loaded in Daemon Tools, fool the game into thinking that the CD is present.
The problem is that, eventually, games will refuse to install if DT is present. Some try to refuse to load, but DT is pretty stealthy.
In the arms race between DT and DRM, the only sure thing is that the customer will lose.
StarForce are really showing their colours here. These guys are basicly acting like mobsters. "Buy our software or we'll show (with links) where people can pirate your game." There really needs to be a day of recokning for these Russian Mobsters, as well as any company who buys their product.
Ubi is officially on my shit list. I actively encourage piracy of Ubi games until they stop using SF. I give classes at local LAN parties on how to use BitTorrent, VMWare, GameCopyWorld, and Daemon tools to actively circumvent copy protection.
I should have elaborated. In the edition you download from GalCiv2.com, you *must* install StarDock in order to download and play the game.
What's interesting about the d/l edition: It actually costs more to d/l the game vice purchacing it in the store. The publisher didn't want to piss off retailers, so they price the game at MSRP both on the boxes and on the website. However, retailers are allowed to price below MSRP while the website cannot. The game costs $44 to download and I saw it at WalMart for $35.
But, Wally World is evil, so I downloaded it anyway.
Wikis are great when you know what you want to know. For instance, when I see someone use a term like "mukluk", I can right-click and Wikipedia for it. A few seconds later, I feel a tad bit smarter.
Wikis are terrible when you don't know what you want to know. I recently started playing Galactic Civilizations 2. They have very little information in the manual (but excellent video tutorials in-game) about exactly how to play the game. I looked around and found this wiki. And, while it's a great database when you want to know something, it sucks when you just want to browse a new topic.
I know that some will say there is a random subject button. But sometimes, you want a good outline to follow. Without a decent table of contents, 99% of the crap in a wiki will remain unseen.
GalCiv2 does have DRM of a type; you have to install StarDock in order to unpack the game data files. Think of it as almost like Steam.
You also need an official CD key in order to download patches and other additional content.
GC2 allows (and encourages) you to install a copy of the game on as many computers as possible. I even got instructions in the official IRC channel (irc.stardock.com #galciv) to make it easier to move the files between PCs.
The only other commerical game I can think of that has no real DRM is Falcon: Allied Force. The only time you need the CD is when you install a patch. There is no CD key and the game is huge online. If you ever wanted to learn more than the common person wants to know about the F-16 Fighting Falcon, grab Allied Force and a joystick.
I'd like to second the ginger root and the head bob. Just chew or suck on a slice of ginger root before playing. Commercial over the counter motion sickness medicine works too, but is more expensive.
The AV industry has never worked. My company got hit by ILUVU; we were running Norton. My company (along with many others) have been affected by most of the major AV breakouts. As always, we are running the latest definitions.
AV products can protect you from what happened two weeks ago, but the will never protect you from what's going to happen next week. Never.
If you rely on AV to protect your assets, then you might as well declare bankruptcy.
Since SP2 was released, we've taken a different approach. We use the WinXP firewall coupled with non-admin users. On top of that, we VLAN every office off and implement severe traffic shaping between offices. We use MRTG with RRD Tool and a 24/7 watch center to notice any "spikes" in traffic. If the spike can't be identified, the VLAN is shut down until further notice.
The recent GDI bug really scared us. AV wasn't helping and LUA+firewalls were useless. We had even considered blocking all images at the firewall. Fortunately, it turned out to be a flash in the pan. But it still shows how useless computer security and information assurance is.
Now that you have these counters running, fire up a game that you like. After you play a few rounds, you can look back at the charts and see the data. Interpreting the results can be very difficult.
If you are seeing processor usage 100%, then your video card may be holding you back. If you see excessive hard drive activity, maybe more RAM or a RAID0 setup could help.
Just look at the charts and see what jumps and when.
Most games are optimized to use RAM and proc when in-game. But if you see excessive periods where one line is 100% while the other lines are 70~80%, you'll know where the bottleneck is.
Dude, instead of unplugging the drives, there is another way:
1. On BIOS, change the IDE detection to "No Drive Connected" or "Disabled" 2. Boot WinXP. It'll ignore the BIOS report of drives and do it's own detection. WinXP will find the CDROM. 3. Install Daemon tools. 4. Install your pirated game from the image you downloaded. 5. Open up your Device Manager and disable the physical CDROM. 6. Run the SFCrack or SFFuck tools to remove SF. 7. Play the game.
It works in almost every case. If you have a NForce3 mobo, you don't need to do anything. SF can't determone which drives are real and which are fake on NF3 chipsets.
If you hate copy protection., look at Falcon Allied Force. It's a flightsim with no copy protection. It does ask for the original CD when you apply patches, but that's all.
LOMAC Gold, another flightsim, asks for the disc once a week. If you play daily, it's nice to not have to dig out the cd all the time. However, it is protected by StarForce, so YMMV.
I generally go through cycles of piracy. Last year was a bad piracy year for me. I wanted to buy some things, but I can't justify giving a publisher $50 if he wants to install Star Force. However, I still want to play the games.
So, publishers lost money on me. Instead of buying FEAR, Silent Hunter3, X3: The Reunion, and a few others, I just downloaded them. And no, I won't be buying them.
I will not buy copy protected games. And I'll protest that by downloading them and letting everyone who would have bought them just grab a copy from me. At our LAN parties, I regularly teach classes on BITTORRENT, VMWARE, Daemon Tools, and creating, obtaining, and using pirated games.
We usually block categories and then unblock things as people complain. And, as odds would have it, lots of US military officers like Rush and Fox. And, as odds would have it, not too many like Al Franken.
It isn't a conspiracy. It isn't malicious. There is no ill intent.
You could also complain that NFL sites are unblocked while IGN and GameSpot are blocked.
Over in Japan, we can get 384kbps data service for about $90/month. Eventually, some US ISP will provide the same service to drive the demand for mobile internet connectivity.
Today, if you walked into a RBOC and asked to buy/lease local loops or rackspace, they'd have to let you. 30 years ago, they'd have laughed in your face.
In fact, when you buy a SpeakEasy line, that's what happens. You buy the line from SE. SE buys a slot on the local DSLAM and pays to have it connected to your loop. Because SE is buying 1000 lines at a time, they can get them cheaper than if you bought it directly from your RBOC.
While I doubt everyone in the Utah government is LDS, I'd be willing to bet that a large majority are.
Re:if we could get them to compare similar hardwar
on
MacBook Pro Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
Here's a fair comparison:
1. Price a top-of-the-line MacBook. 2. Take that same budget and buy a WinTel laptop. 3. Install the same version of OSX on both. 4. Run your benchmarks.
While I'll concede that there is a "geek factor" to using OSX on a Macbook, I'm not willing to pay twice as much just to get an "authorized" OSX machine. If I can pay $1000 for a commodity laptop and get similar performance, then why should I pay $2000 just to get a cool bitten apple on my case?
Conan's response to the Mongol General is an abbreviation of a real quote attributed to Gengis Khan: "The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters."
Well, I'm glad you think that computers are for surfing and typing. However, there are other people that actually use their PCs for other things.
Try ripping some CDs to MP3 or OGG on there. It'll take you at least twice as long to rip 20 CDs as someone with a better computer.
Try doing some real research. It's not uncommon for me to have several Firefox sessions with 10+ tabs in each session. Not to mention having PuTTY up and listening to MP3s. On top of that, I'm running Word to type up my report. You could do the same; have fun watching your disk thrash as your pagefile fills up.
My home PC records TV for me, outputs recorded video to the entertainment center, has 3 users (with fast user switching) running multiple programs, rips DVDs and MP3s, plays games, and much more.
If you are happy running a lightweight desktop on an ageing PC, fine. But realise that other people value their time. Other people hate watching the desktop while Firefox loads. Other people watch videos and listen to music. For you to sit behind your old-school box and pretend that 90% of the people out there are just like you is dumb.
Slashdot Mirror
VLANs are your friend. KVMs are useful too. Problem solved...
You could also create a domain for users of that application only. Use VLANs and install a small domain controller. Prevent any cross-contamination between the two domains.
After that, just let the users have at it. Most likely, they won't fuck up too bad. And their curosity to go sniffing around will be sated once they find that all that's out there is X-number of PCs exactly like theirs. No e-mail. No personal documents. No pr0n.
Give those users a laptop or another desktop with a KVM switch so they can access the companies' real domain when they need to. Just make sure the wallpapers on the secure box show that they don't need to be fucking around.
Rubber grommets are cheap. Computer modding gear is expensive. Buying rubber grommets in a computer store or from an online modding site will be expensive.
:/ In any event, as long as some jackass doesn't try and cram 50 sheets into a small pipe, you'll be OK. 90-degree bends are the best, but can be time/space consuming. It might also be overkill. A 120mm fan wired to use 5v vice 12v is already just about inaudible. Adding a few dryer sheets or a layer of pantyhose over the exaust will make it completely silent.
I think you missed the point of the knife. You aren't cutting grommets out of the intertube, you are cutting strips the size of the drive. There should be *no* contact between the drive and the case.
"9-11 certified" is my offices' nickname for a box cutter. We get pretty raw on weekends and nights. Coming up with new shit to piss people off is one great way of passing time.
As for dryer sheets, did you ever smoke in your room? We used to take toilet-paper rolls and stuff them with dryer sheets. We'd exhale through that. In goes smoky air, our comes clean air. Or so we thought
Keep the computer under a box and behind the desk. No one will ever see it. No one will hear it.
A friend of mine did one better. He had a bedroom closet on the other side of the wall from his office. He cut a small hole in the wall and ran a single USB cable and a monitor cable through. He installed a USB hub and plugged his KB and mouse into that. He also plugged a USB CD-ROM into the hub. Then he stuffed the hole with paper and put his desk right in front of it.
His office is *dead quiet*. When he needs to play a game, He uses USB headphones and turns on the power to the USB CD-ROM drive.
Put it on the floor and put a cardboard box over it. Make a hole in the top and route the cables out of that. Dissolve some rat poision in water and then use that to treat the box.
You'll pay a premium for "rubber grommets for component mounting". Instead, grab a bicycle intertube from WalMart for a few bucks. Use 9-11 certified utility knife to cit it into strips. Put a strip between the drives and the mounting bracket.
Sometimes, the brackets are kinda tight. You can get over that by prying it open a bit. It'll come back together when you screw it down.
Use all the screws you can. I see people just using one or two per side. Most CD-ROMs can take 4 screws per side; use all of them!
Don't screw it down too tight. I've never seen a spec for how tight to torque a hard drive screw. Too tight and your dampener will be for naught. If you are concerned about the drive coming loose, grab some LokTite. If you are clever, a drop of rubber cement will server the same purpose as LokTite and costs a lot less.
Get big fans and run them at lower RPMs. I know a lot of people are concerned over heat. Truth is, computers can run really fucking hot with no problems. 50c is a good number to be happy with. Even 60c isn't a big problem. Just make sure the hard drives are getting cool, fresh air.
Make sure to select a good power supply with a 120mm fan. There is little you can do to quite a bad power supply.
As for the other fans, get some baffles or thin foam. On the back of the PC, tape in some ducting to allow the fan to breathe without having a direct shot to the open air. A fan in the middle of a tube will be quieter than a fan at either end of the tube. Between the fan and the exit, stuff in some crumpled dryer sheets. These allow air flow but really deaden the noise. You can also use several stacked dryer sheets over the intake fans as well.
Finally, take the fucking thing off the desk. There is no reason to have the PC on your desk. Put it under the desk or behind it. You know that box that the thing came in, use that to make a "computer cozy". Cut a few holes for air and cover them with dryer sheets. Cut another hole for the CD-ROM and cover that with a dryer sheet hinge. There will usually be a 1~2" gap between the box and the case. No dust or dirt will get in. It'll be dead quiet from inches away.
Damn straight! I did the d/l edition too.
It's good to run keygens and other "unknowns" before trying them on your production system.
Unfortunately, NOCDs are going the way of the dodo. More and more, we are seeing mini-images that, when loaded in Daemon Tools, fool the game into thinking that the CD is present.
The problem is that, eventually, games will refuse to install if DT is present. Some try to refuse to load, but DT is pretty stealthy.
In the arms race between DT and DRM, the only sure thing is that the customer will lose.
StarForce are really showing their colours here. These guys are basicly acting like mobsters. "Buy our software or we'll show (with links) where people can pirate your game." There really needs to be a day of recokning for these Russian Mobsters, as well as any company who buys their product.
Ubi is officially on my shit list. I actively encourage piracy of Ubi games until they stop using SF. I give classes at local LAN parties on how to use BitTorrent, VMWare, GameCopyWorld, and Daemon tools to actively circumvent copy protection.
I should have elaborated. In the edition you download from GalCiv2.com, you *must* install StarDock in order to download and play the game.
What's interesting about the d/l edition: It actually costs more to d/l the game vice purchacing it in the store. The publisher didn't want to piss off retailers, so they price the game at MSRP both on the boxes and on the website. However, retailers are allowed to price below MSRP while the website cannot. The game costs $44 to download and I saw it at WalMart for $35.
But, Wally World is evil, so I downloaded it anyway.
Wikis are great when you know what you want to know. For instance, when I see someone use a term like "mukluk", I can right-click and Wikipedia for it. A few seconds later, I feel a tad bit smarter.
Wikis are terrible when you don't know what you want to know. I recently started playing Galactic Civilizations 2. They have very little information in the manual (but excellent video tutorials in-game) about exactly how to play the game. I looked around and found this wiki. And, while it's a great database when you want to know something, it sucks when you just want to browse a new topic.
I know that some will say there is a random subject button. But sometimes, you want a good outline to follow. Without a decent table of contents, 99% of the crap in a wiki will remain unseen.
GalCiv2 does have DRM of a type; you have to install StarDock in order to unpack the game data files. Think of it as almost like Steam.
You also need an official CD key in order to download patches and other additional content.
GC2 allows (and encourages) you to install a copy of the game on as many computers as possible. I even got instructions in the official IRC channel (irc.stardock.com #galciv) to make it easier to move the files between PCs.
The only other commerical game I can think of that has no real DRM is Falcon: Allied Force. The only time you need the CD is when you install a patch. There is no CD key and the game is huge online. If you ever wanted to learn more than the common person wants to know about the F-16 Fighting Falcon, grab Allied Force and a joystick.
I'd like to second the ginger root and the head bob. Just chew or suck on a slice of ginger root before playing. Commercial over the counter motion sickness medicine works too, but is more expensive.
The AV industry has never worked. My company got hit by ILUVU; we were running Norton. My company (along with many others) have been affected by most of the major AV breakouts. As always, we are running the latest definitions.
AV products can protect you from what happened two weeks ago, but the will never protect you from what's going to happen next week. Never.
If you rely on AV to protect your assets, then you might as well declare bankruptcy.
Since SP2 was released, we've taken a different approach. We use the WinXP firewall coupled with non-admin users. On top of that, we VLAN every office off and implement severe traffic shaping between offices. We use MRTG with RRD Tool and a 24/7 watch center to notice any "spikes" in traffic. If the spike can't be identified, the VLAN is shut down until further notice.
The recent GDI bug really scared us. AV wasn't helping and LUA+firewalls were useless. We had even considered blocking all images at the firewall. Fortunately, it turned out to be a flash in the pan. But it still shows how useless computer security and information assurance is.
Start >> Run >> "perfmon.msc"
You should start recordings for:
Physical Disk >> Reads/sec and Writes/sec
Memory >> Avalable MBytes
Processor >> Priviliged, Processor, and User Time
Now that you have these counters running, fire up a game that you like. After you play a few rounds, you can look back at the charts and see the data. Interpreting the results can be very difficult.
If you are seeing processor usage 100%, then your video card may be holding you back. If you see excessive hard drive activity, maybe more RAM or a RAID0 setup could help.
Just look at the charts and see what jumps and when.
Most games are optimized to use RAM and proc when in-game. But if you see excessive periods where one line is 100% while the other lines are 70~80%, you'll know where the bottleneck is.
Dude, instead of unplugging the drives, there is another way:
1. On BIOS, change the IDE detection to "No Drive Connected" or "Disabled"
2. Boot WinXP. It'll ignore the BIOS report of drives and do it's own detection. WinXP will find the CDROM.
3. Install Daemon tools.
4. Install your pirated game from the image you downloaded.
5. Open up your Device Manager and disable the physical CDROM.
6. Run the SFCrack or SFFuck tools to remove SF.
7. Play the game.
It works in almost every case. If you have a NForce3 mobo, you don't need to do anything. SF can't determone which drives are real and which are fake on NF3 chipsets.
BTW, X3 was a shitty game anyway.
If you hate copy protection., look at Falcon Allied Force. It's a flightsim with no copy protection. It does ask for the original CD when you apply patches, but that's all.
LOMAC Gold, another flightsim, asks for the disc once a week. If you play daily, it's nice to not have to dig out the cd all the time. However, it is protected by StarForce, so YMMV.
I generally go through cycles of piracy. Last year was a bad piracy year for me. I wanted to buy some things, but I can't justify giving a publisher $50 if he wants to install Star Force. However, I still want to play the games.
So, publishers lost money on me. Instead of buying FEAR, Silent Hunter3, X3: The Reunion, and a few others, I just downloaded them. And no, I won't be buying them.
I will not buy copy protected games. And I'll protest that by downloading them and letting everyone who would have bought them just grab a copy from me. At our LAN parties, I regularly teach classes on BITTORRENT, VMWARE, Daemon Tools, and creating, obtaining, and using pirated games.
We usually block categories and then unblock things as people complain. And, as odds would have it, lots of US military officers like Rush and Fox. And, as odds would have it, not too many like Al Franken.
It isn't a conspiracy. It isn't malicious. There is no ill intent.
You could also complain that NFL sites are unblocked while IGN and GameSpot are blocked.
Over in Japan, we can get 384kbps data service for about $90/month. Eventually, some US ISP will provide the same service to drive the demand for mobile internet connectivity.
Today, if you walked into a RBOC and asked to buy/lease local loops or rackspace, they'd have to let you. 30 years ago, they'd have laughed in your face.
In fact, when you buy a SpeakEasy line, that's what happens. You buy the line from SE. SE buys a slot on the local DSLAM and pays to have it connected to your loop. Because SE is buying 1000 lines at a time, they can get them cheaper than if you bought it directly from your RBOC.
While I doubt everyone in the Utah government is LDS, I'd be willing to bet that a large majority are.
Here's a fair comparison:
1. Price a top-of-the-line MacBook.
2. Take that same budget and buy a WinTel laptop.
3. Install the same version of OSX on both.
4. Run your benchmarks.
While I'll concede that there is a "geek factor" to using OSX on a Macbook, I'm not willing to pay twice as much just to get an "authorized" OSX machine. If I can pay $1000 for a commodity laptop and get similar performance, then why should I pay $2000 just to get a cool bitten apple on my case?
From IMBD:
Well, I'm glad you think that computers are for surfing and typing. However, there are other people that actually use their PCs for other things.
Try ripping some CDs to MP3 or OGG on there. It'll take you at least twice as long to rip 20 CDs as someone with a better computer.
Try doing some real research. It's not uncommon for me to have several Firefox sessions with 10+ tabs in each session. Not to mention having PuTTY up and listening to MP3s. On top of that, I'm running Word to type up my report. You could do the same; have fun watching your disk thrash as your pagefile fills up.
My home PC records TV for me, outputs recorded video to the entertainment center, has 3 users (with fast user switching) running multiple programs, rips DVDs and MP3s, plays games, and much more.
If you are happy running a lightweight desktop on an ageing PC, fine. But realise that other people value their time. Other people hate watching the desktop while Firefox loads. Other people watch videos and listen to music. For you to sit behind your old-school box and pretend that 90% of the people out there are just like you is dumb.