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User: one_who_uses_unix

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  1. Re:Damn yank cars! on Utah Teens Invent Better Air Conditioner · · Score: 1

    I would be glad to get rid of my Chevy Suburban - just as soon as someone can provide a vehicle capable of carrying the 6 children and 2 adults that I need to carry and that can navigate the 2 miles of gravel from my house to the hardtop after a good rain or snow!

  2. Re:thoughts from heavy Office user on OpenOffice.org Is 4 Today · · Score: 1

    The real problem has to do with the different object models between OOo and Excel for example. Code that performs significant work against spreadsheets using the Excel object model will have to be reworked for OOo. I would like to be able to drop macros in and see them run.

    VBAs big appeal is the ability to focus on very narrow interests, specific tasks and perform significantautomation very quickly for those tasks. "porting" is not something I want to deal with when using VBA.

  3. thoughts from heavy Office user on OpenOffice.org Is 4 Today · · Score: 1

    I rely heavily on MS Office for my day job - but I run OOo almost exclusively for personal stuff. I love being able to edit docs on the nearest unix/windows box without worrying which platform I am dealing with.

    Before reading the following you must understand that I have 17 years experience working with C on UNIX variants. Please do not underestimate my intelligence due to ....

    The biggest feature I would like to see would be tools more similar to Excel VBA. It would be nice to move macros and non-trivial VBA code, not to mention leverage existing skills in VBA.

  4. mile high club no longer exclusive on A Flying Leap for Cars? · · Score: 1

    One of my chief concerns is the effect that flying cars will have on the membership in the mile high club. This is currently a fairly exclusive group - joining takes money, connections, courage and a very cooperative partner!

    Judging by the activity currently conducted in ground cars - we can expect membership in the mile high club to become jsut another 'been there, done that' experience.

    sigh.

  5. CHEVY SUBURBAN on EPA Fuel Economy Myth: Too High, Too Low? · · Score: 1

    My 1999 4x4 Chevy Suburban is rated at 12/14 but on a recent trip to Wisconsin we consistently got 17mpg!

    I have found that the EPA ratings are inaccurate - but they are mostly uniformly inaccurate so they give you something to use to compare vehicles.

  6. what about famileis that NEED SUVs? on Engineers Design Safer SUV · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We live in the country off 2 miles of dirt road that tends to turn impassible in poor weather. A 4WD with high ground clearance is essential if we need to get to/from our home. Add to this that we often carry my brothers kids with us (his 3 plus our 3) means we need to seat 8 people for an average of 3-4 days / week.

    If my wife wants to do any grocery shopping while she is in town then nothing short of a suburban will do. The alterantive of making multiple trips is simply silly and would use more fuel anyway.

    If anyone can build a vehicle that meets my needs without the disadvantages I will buy it - till then I wish people would think before they dismiss SUVs out of hand.

  7. Re:Overclockers ? on Scientists Set New Coldest Temperature Record · · Score: 4, Funny

    As a matter of fact, you are correct, I mentioned overclockers to get their attention. This was a blatant attempt to introduce humor into the otherwise serene and serious atmosphere maintained on /. If I could retract the sentence and replace it with....

    "No facetious observations regarding the relationship between extremely low temperatures and overclocking are permitted."

    I have a few comments on this observation that should server to vindicate me in the mind of those who might be concerned by the gratuitous use of technology buzzwords:

    1. What is wrong with getting /. editor's attention?
    2. Smile - you will find it is healthy.
    3. Made ya look.

  8. Re:Replicated MySQL on Open Source Database Clusters? · · Score: 1

    The kind of asshole that lives off 2 miles of dirt road that becomes impassable to non-4WD vehicles once winter sets in and has 3 kids (often plus his brother's 3 kids) to get to school every morning.

    If you can suggest an alternative vehicle that can carry 7 people (safely/seatbelted) and can make it over our roads then I will happily buy it.

  9. oops on Cloning Yields Human-Rabbit Hybrid Embryo · · Score: 1

    that wasn't supposed to happen

  10. Re:Starting a large diesel engine on Truck Stops Get Wireless Internet · · Score: 2, Informative

    As a matter of fact, diesel will burn at atmospheric pressure and ambient temperatute (although not well). I have used it to light bonfires as recently as last month.

    Your equation looks cool, but I can tell you that when I pour it over a pile of logs and hold a match to it, it lights.

  11. good, uplifting classics on A Good Summer Read? · · Score: 1

    I feel a need to understand many culteral references to great literature that pop up in conversation with intelligent/well read people. In my school age and early career my focus was completely on technical/hard-skill related books which left me deficient with regard to the great classics. If you would like to improve yourself and educate yourself in a meaningful way I can recommend the following good, uplifting classics:

    - "Silas Marner", George Elliot, short, easy to read, takes place a few hunder years ago, good human element, nice ending

    - "A Tale of Two Cities", Charles Dickens, long, exciting account of a few individuals around the time of the French revolution, very well written

    - "Crime and Punishment", Fyodor Dostoyevsky, very well written, fascinating view of human psyche, long but worth the read, unexpected but arguably pleasant ending

  12. Re:investigate your cable connection on What Software Do Cable Installers Place on Your PC? · · Score: 1

    because you want to catch traffic at startup - as an alternative you could try to "restart" the connection by not powering up the cable modem until you were able to start an ethereal capture.

    I find it easier to follow the ath outlined above since I always have a few extra boxes laying around.

  13. investigate your cable connection on What Software Do Cable Installers Place on Your PC? · · Score: 5, Interesting
    To understand exactly what is happening with your broadband connection follow these steps:

    1.Connect PC, cable modem and a second PC (everyone has one :) ) to a simple hub ($20).
    2.Run a network capture tool (tcpdump, snoop, ethereal, etc.) on the 2nd PC.
    3.Boot your broadband PC.
    4.Look at the traffic.

    You should be able to recognize the DHCP negotiations and see whether anything unusual is going on. Odds are, all it needs to do is negotiate for an address, everything else is probably frill.

    The next step is to install a 2nd NIC in the 2nd PC, load linux, connect the cable modem to that and the other NIC to your little LAN and use IP tables to set up a firewall and NAT.

  14. a semicolon worth about $40K on Examples of Programming Gone Wrong? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Almost a decade ago when I worked for a differect credit card company that shall remain nameless, a member of my team (I was the lead) introduced a defect that was responsible for about $40K is mis-applied credits. I am not sure whether we ever got the money back.

    The program was written in C, and he had changed a do-while loop to a for loop, in editing he had kept the line that contained the original condition (including the trailing semicolon). As many of you C-ers out there are aware, a semicolon following a for() statement will not execute the subsequent code block in the loop!

    A very memorable lesson in the value of lint and thorough regression testing!

    This may not qualify as a disaster, but I distinctly remember having to give an account for the defect to the corporate controller with an aufience of grand and exalted poobahs. She was a very intolerant and technically ignorant person that actually intimated that this had been done maliciously.

  15. disaster for healthcare industry on Flat Screen Monitors Sales to Reign This Year · · Score: 2, Funny

    It is a closely held secret in the health care industry that 90% of all hernias in the IT sector are caused by monitors. What most people don't realize is that HMOs have been underwriting the purchase of lead weights for Sun monitors for years. With widespread adoption of LCDs, they expect dramatic decreases in fees collected for hernia operations on out-of-shape IT professionals. The future of low cost high quality health care in the US is in jeapardy!

  16. identifying cheaters is difficult on Using MAC Address to Uniquely Identify Computers · · Score: 2, Informative

    I have been accused of cheating at CounterStrike more than once, and have been banned from the KGB servers for killing clan members too often (I guess) - but I NEVER cheat. People get bent out of shape when you kill them too frequently, they assume that if you are much better than they are that you must be cheating. Good grief. Fortunately there are a large number of good alternative servers out there - for these guys, I hope they are careful before they ban someone for being ACCUSED of cheating.

  17. just look at your friends on Ready, Steady, Evolve · · Score: 2, Funny

    If you doubt the theory of evolution just take at your friends (I am addressing geeks on this one). Their bodies are already adapting to their environment:
    - the most highly tuned muscles in their bodies are their hands/fingers (how many geeks have "hardbodies"?)
    - most wear glasses (what is there to see more than 18 inches away?)
    - they do not use vocal speech effectively (excluding expletvies that are equally applied to machines and other humans)
    - have you seen the children of real geeks!

    Wait! you complain - I know some exceptions to these observations. Of course you do - they are by definition not real geeks, or will be culled from the herd over time.

    I can't wait to see what people look like 1000 years from now - extra fingers?, permanent near sightedness?, no legs?

  18. Re:The situation at the Interior Department on Slashback: Encumbrance, Silence, Internalization · · Score: 1

    As a matter of fact I know of a large company that still buys new mahcines (delivered with 2000 or XP) and then prompty loads windows 95 on them before delivering them to employees desktops. Granted - this is likely to change soon, but this is a perfect example of how slow moving extremely large IT departments can be.

  19. be reasonable people on Directors Counter-Sue Movie Bowdlerizing Company · · Score: 1

    I have two arguments in favor of clean flicks:

    1. As a parent with small children, I desperately need help finding things suitable for them to watch. If I can not show them a 'clean' film then they will not see it at all - this is my perogative as a parent in the fine US of A. In fact, I prefer not having to watch garbage in a film that would otherwise be pleasant to see. This has NO EFFECT on those of you that prefer the original content. Me and my family would be able to see what we want , other could see what they want - everyone is happy. What is the real reason they (Hollywood) don't want us editing the films (artistic expression...riiiight).

    2. If I buy a film and edit it myself, am I going to have to answer to the govt? If I change/replace a few DLLs in Windows on my PC, can Microsoft come after me. If I sell some software that changes the way Windows works - will I be sued? Clean Flicks is not claiming to have produced the films, they are not claiming credi for any of the films content. How is this really violating Copyright? If you think that it is a stretch to make the analogy from film to software - think again, remember that our legal system is based on precedent. Future cases will be decided based on previous decisions that are even marginally related!

  20. X11 with shells is an IDE on Are GUI Dev Tools More Advanced than CLI Counterparts? · · Score: 1

    After 14 years as a developer, my favorite IDE is X11. I can launch as many GVIM sessions as I need to (syntax highlighting etc., fastest editor - period), I can launch debuggers at will (dbx, gdb, ddd if needed) and have a FULL toolbox at my disposal for anything that might need to be done. There is a web browser or xman for on-line help. Proprietary IDEs feel like a straight jacket to me.

  21. SunWorkshop C++/Solaris on SPARC on What Debugger Is Best For Multithreaded Apps? · · Score: 2

    I have authored some pretty intense multi-threaded network servers and find that the tools and environment offered by Sun are far and above the best. The Sun Workshop 5.0 C++ compiler and debuggers are amazing. The OS is rock solid, and the envionment is a genuine joy to work in. You can outfit your developers with Ultra-5 workstations including the compiler all for just $3000 through the end of December too. Solaris 2.6, 7, or 8 are all a good choice.

  22. UltraSparc IIi has 2mb cache on Which Processor Is Best For Real-Time Computations? · · Score: 1

    Consider the Ultra-10 from Sun. You can get a 400mhz Ultra-IIi CPU with 2mb cache that just SCREAMS for less than $2000. The UltraSparc kicks booty when dealing with FP. Another good choice would be for the Alpha line of CPUs - very strong FP performance for a very reasonable price tag. The PIII is a weak also-ran when it comes to scaling with multiple-CPUs vs. the UltraSparc. Sun ships systems with 64 CPUs - just try and find an Intel based multi-processor stacked like that.

  23. Re:What's left? on 3Com Spinning Off US Robotics · · Score: 1

    A tremendous percentage of RAS implementations world-wide are done using 3Com(USR) Total Control Chassis. our division accounted for 30% of 3Com's revenue this past quarter. There is quite a bit more to 3Com than NICS etc.

    (FYI - I work for 3Com Carrier R&D)

  24. Re:I work for part of old USR - we are not spun! on 3Com Spinning Off US Robotics · · Score: 1

    My area of concern is network mgmt. (TCM/UNIX) - I can not speak to the condition of the modem or OS code in TC. If you have a beef with TCM/Solaris or TCM/HP-UX for RAS, then you might be able to pin some blame on me ;)

  25. I work for part of old USR - we are not spun! on 3Com Spinning Off US Robotics · · Score: 1

    I work for the Carrier Systems group at 3Com on the Total Control Chassis. This is USR's carrier equipment line - we are alive and well and will continue as part of 3Com. The only piece that got chucked was the old modem stuff.