I used to do this a long time ago, take some text, encrypt it, and pad the.exe with the data. The program ran fine, the filesize may or may not go up, depending on where in the program I hid it (some MS apps have a quarter meg or so of empty space right in the middle of the.exe...).
I usually padded the.exe through a hex editior...it was slow and painful, but what better way to encrypt and hide data did you have at the time....steganography in a.gif? Please...in most cases you could tell it was tampered with...given in some you couldnt, but at the time the technology just wasnt all that good.
Oh, well...back to talking about how when I was your guy's age, i used to have to climb mt.everest to get my CPUs, and how I had to wrestle alligtors to get money for floppy disks...
However, those cell phones are not being given away...even the PDAphones run about $300 and up with service plan discounts. The phone I wanted was nearly $600...forget that. Now if I could use it as a mini-notebook of sorts, I would consider that a great deal.
I look at it this way, a notebook PC can be bought new for as low as $700. A cellphone has far fewer components than a notebook, possibly less than 10% of the components that are in a notebook...so why should we be paying prices this high? I'm pretty sure most of it is going to markup and whatnot, since apparently the chip makers aren't doing well.
I also see the insane markup on cell phones as being the single largest stopping block. I can buy all sorts of great things for how much a top end phone costs, such as a top of the line Raleigh hardtail mountain bike, or an entry level audiophile sound system, or even a nice vacation in cancun...
Plus I'm kinda biased...i just want a simple phone that gets good reception and I can reliably check my hotmail from...nothing more, nothing less. My samsung N400 sucks on both of those counts:(
Really, I see dedicated components as teh way of the future..at least for the smart shoppers.
Sure you spend more to buy the separate speakers, display, and tuner...BUT...you don't have to RMA the entire set when the tuner screws up, you have your choice of spakers to fit your tastes and budget, and you have a display that takes less room for the same screen size, thus making room layout a bit easier.
Given you do pay more, ahve more set-up to do, and it ultimately may take up more space...but it's all about weighing in what's more important.
Now....i see the potential for a yamaha reciever, some athena shelf speakers, and using the DishNW tuner, and having it all for very close to what was paid for jsut teh retail set...and you get better sound, easy upgradability to surround (just add a center, rears and sub), and also can play music through the reciever...bonus features!:p...Had to put in my $0.02
The pontiac/chevy thing about the cars only having body cladding being different is a bit off. Pontiac did share some things with Chevy, but the pontiac sunbird was the one with the most performance options (not body kits, but actual engine choices), and the firebird had entirely different engines from the camaro...given the camaro was the more powerful of the bunch, but the firebird was the looker.
Interiors were slightly different as well, but that's of little signifigance.
Now GM has been trying to make the engines cross-platform though. I saw the FWD Buick 3800 MKII engine find its way into chevy and pontiac as well. Heck I remeber when the old RWD 3.8 "Evenfire" came out...I had one...great engines, few are near as tough as those anymore.
But yeah, there will alwyas be cross branding, even though in the car market I wish it would stop, and jsut make a "executive" model or something to the likes that is equal to the luxury car...since it is after all, a trim level./sick of seeing things repackaged...it's like calling steak fliggyflarg....it's still a freaking steak.
I would not go so far as saying legally, but if they don't they will be cutting into their profits since very few will want to go through the timesink of making a new character all over again.
Legally binding anyone over a game is kinda weak, but there have bene times I wished I could smack the companies around a bit for basically giving crap service and not expecting angry customers.
I really do wnat to see the EULAs used for these to get challeneged in court though. Some of the terms on those are outright retarded.
That's when they start up another EQ MMORPG that allows for "with gear" character transfers if your between level x and y.
what this does is allow them to control the amount of characters of any level on teh server, and the quantity of them. And the big bonus is that this allows to stop both the newbie rush and the instant economy crush of having extreme amounts of high-end charaters (like the server I play EQ on....most guys are working on their 5th or 6th high level character, newbies are like finding 2 identical snowflakes).
Actually, I only give a brand my faith until they screw up, then they are gone for good. So even if they come out first, they might get that one sale, but after that the other company that made the good product will have my buisiness, possibly many times.
Yes, I am anal about the stuff I buy...if a manufacturer gives me one lemon...they can be assured I won't buy form them anymore. i don't pay out my cash for a half-baked product, and am surprised anyone else would as well.
From what I just heard on the Lyra, RCA is now on my list of companies I wont buy from...doesnt matter if they got bought...they wont see a dime from me. If it's a mistkae, maybe a second time, but something as deliberate as that...first strike is out. Many name brands are on that list..too many of them that just don't think.
If the feature isn't ready, leave the feature off the unit until it is, then spin a nice revision on it and sell the new and improved model...just might make you some more money as well.
First look at who put out hte specific product, and who knew about it. Marketing would be hte first to go, then the VPs, then anyone else that was part of this.
Very rarely is a whole company part of something like this...but in cases like this, there are always at least 10 people at fault....and that's in a company that's too small for anyone to give a crap about.
My Alarm clock...that "soundscape" crap drives me nuts...replaced it with Filter's "hey man, nice shot"...I now can actually get to sleep using my clocks feature....tranquil bells my shiny bottom..
My stereo reciever..I added a few nice features, like a switch to turn on an integrated Zobel network I added in, and also swapped out the bare wire binding posts for 5-way posts. Also added an IEC socket so I could detatch the power cord easily.
Sooner or later my answering machine will be next...the though of making it ask the person to verify that their message is correct kinda puts a grin on my face.
The way I see it, you simply place the executable on your computer, make a copy osmehwere read only (cdrom), and start cracking. Sure it may change, but that's what your rad only backup is for. if your scared of the app phoning home, remove your phone line or network cable.
Really this kind of protection is not more secure, or even more difficult to work with. Remeber polymorphic code has existed since the 80's. Only this time it's being used on more complex programs, and as such is more likely to generate bug or reveal existing ones.
Anyways, do you remeber the whole AI spiel? So where's my computer that knows when I'm home and start up my games on it's own?....oh wait...I have to program it to....so much for AI...sure it's around still, but it's practically still a toy, much like I feel polymorphic code will never take off.
IANAL, but here is what goes through my mind after my experience inbeing a smartass and trying to redeem my cent.
You cant't redeem 20 of them for 1 cent, even by the manufacturer.
Therefore, it is arguable that the coupon either has no value, or is worth more than 1/20 of a cent. It obviously isn't worth nothing due to the grocer taking it, and who would take something and give you a discount if it was worth nothing? So where does that leave us?
On top of that, isn't focing a value on a ware "price-fixing"? What if I wnated to sell mine for 1/30th of a cent to outsell bob? Not that coupon selling is a buisiness, but it is a thought.
I think that 1/20th of a cent thing is some convoluted form of legalese.
"If a computer is turned on in the forest, and no one is there to hear it,,, does it make a sound.??"
Yes, it sings showtunes. Your computer was designed to not only sing showtunes, but walk and talk and frolic htrough the forest, but is scared to do such things around anything that wields a screwdriver.
"If the computer that isturned on in the forest crashes, will the squarles cuss out Windows and the Bears mawl on Bill Gates???"
Nah, the squirrels have better things to do, like mess with their linux powered nautilus class starships. The bears...they just wnat fish, they could care less about servers.
Damn, those bears had it right all along...hose tech, eat more fish..:P
Anti-spammer spray....well it's not a spray, you just gotta bug-bomb em with this:
One massive ghettoblaster placed in a spot wherre it cannot be removed without massive amounts of cost and trouble, playing that "badger badger badger badger mushroom MUSHROOM" song on loop.
I gurantee after hearing it for hours on end, they will be so mentally numbed that even doorknobs will be too complicated to use.
Ceramique is not paste, at least in the traditional sense.
It's a phase-change material (AKA Thermal Interface Material, or TIM), and to compare it with artic silver, or even dow corning thermal grease is like comparing a V8 engine to an airplane motor, apples to oranges.
They do the same task, but the way each one actually does this is totally different. Heatsink compound has to be spread thin, thermal interface doesnt have to be spread at all, the heat and pressure from using it with a moutned heatsink forces it to properly spread itself, then solidify into a far superior thermal bond.
The difference from ceramique and the cheap thermal interfaces found on stock heatsinks is that ceramique is a better designed material. Many TIMs tend to become rubbery, or don't flow right under heat and pressure, others become brittle and can cause problems.
If you bought their product from an online retailer, check your old emails.
I've made it a point to save ALL emails regarding online purchases. I have some dating as far back as 1999, and have no intent on deleting them. I also buy a majority of my hardware online, so if I did happen to have bought a tube of OCZ, all I would have to do is go through my CD of past orders, find the order, and print it out.
Case solved, new paste, and a t-shirt richer. Go go go CD-RW, go broncos.
Sun has announced that CSS will be added to their line of Java-cooling(tm) systems. So now geeks can have their DVD decoding, cool CPUs, and the ability to drink it too;)
Sorry Mr. Anderson, you can't pay for your coffee today, see Verisign revoked their security certificate today, so we can't process your money. Would you like to pay in the form of rolex instead?
At least when it came to be time to replace the cpu fan in my latitude CPX, I had some trouble, but managed to find the part.
Problem is this fan is custom made for dell by sunon. Bonus is dell does not hold the inventory of this stuff. I managed to trace the unit down to Allied Electronics. The best part is they do accept personal orders. Well, $25 and a week later, I had my CPU fan.
Point is, most laptop parts can be bought from 3rd parties. It's a lot of work, but in the end is often worth it. Another good point to keep in mind is that there are only a handful of laptop makers, so you'll see many clones on the market. Look at alienware's old area-51m (the pre alien look one), then look at an older offering from clevo.....look similar? That's because it's the exact same unit. Usually the only custom parts are outer body parts, and the occaisional gimmick (sound systems, lockslots, docking hardware, etc)
Here is how I quieted down an athlonXP 1700 system to the point that I got driven nuts instead by the motor noise of my hard drives:
Power supply: antec TRUEpower 380w. This unit puts out plenty of nice clean power, and also has a dedicated 3.3v rail as opposed to being a fork from teh 5v rail. This just means it's a more robust unit. Also runs incredibly quiet.
CPU Fan: Zalman flower (I think 3500). This clip on unit has a bracket fan and a speed knob. I echewed the speed knob and replaced teh 92mm fan on the bracket with a 120mm enermax variable RPM fan, reason for this is further down.
VGA cooling: Zalman heatpipe cooler (something 80) This unit has NO fans, and uses a massive surface area to dissipate heat. It uses heatpipes to achieve efficient heat transfer to both heatsink elements on this cooler. This cooler works so well that the mere circulation effect from my 120mm fan was enough to keep a GeForce4 TI4400 running smoothly.
Motherboard cooling: I yanked the fan off my motherboard, that 120mm fan was more than enough to keep it cool due to it's proximity to the CPU socket, and how large that fan is.
The system overall was so quiet I turned it off on accident a few times becuase I wanted to turn it on, and couldn't hear it. The hard drive noise is only noticable at very short distances, but hard drive access will be very audible due to teh low noise floor, and I found it to be slightly bothersome.
Ultimately I moved to watercooling, to get quiet with more powerful components. I cannot reccomend watercooling to everyone however, since it still has many risks that even a skilled PC assembler may have trouble with.
I use some sterilite (cheap rubbermaid knockoff) drawers and modular drawers in my room, and they work great. The modular drawers are huge, and 4 of them can easily hold 20-odd laptops with power bricks and extrenal drives, etc etc. Cheap too, About $15-20 each.
For smaller objects I just get small storage boxes, kinda like a tackle box without the giant open space at the bottom. A few of those can hold insane amounts of stuff. I even have a very flat one I use for holding my watches and jewelery.
Just look for places to tuck drawer units under, like that section of an "L" shaped desk nobody really uses. Or that small space in the bookshelf that sits open, unless you're like me, then your bookshelf is stacked double-row:)
Under-bed rolling bins are great for putting your out-of season clothes in, giving you a bit more usuable closet and dresser space, and maybe even hiding some of those keyboards all of use seem to accumulate.
..but the gloss may be wearing off the magazine pages.
A typical IT dept is based on:
helpdesk: helping the other employess use the technology at hand
solutions: finding the right answer for the employee's needs.
implementation: installing/configuring said technology.
maintenace: backups, user profile management, repair, etc.
Of course a contactor's duties may vary slightly from this, but is still quite similar.
IT used to be the holy grail of buisiness, if you didn't have it, you looked lame. Truth be told, some buisinesses don't need IT, but a good large portion of them should think about having some IT in their organization.
Large retail establishments can benefit greatly from this, for inventory and cash tracking perspectives it's practically a requesite. But a small convenience store may not need any IT. Maybe a security camera of two, but that's it.
Auto garages can benefit from IT as well. They could have a system that does automatic quotes based on the car and type of service needed, as well as inventory of common parts, tracking of man-hours, and performance metrics. A small garage though may not need all of this however, as it might not be financially reasonable.
Basically, if an IT solution cannot pay itself off after a year, it's not a good idea. If it can be paid off in less than a year, it just might be an improvement worth paying for.
You have to sue the agency the spammer is representing.
If you want to make the point across without litigation, every time you get a spam for say, "Salted Seabass Inc", you would farm out a list of email addresses for that company, and subscribe them to 50-odd mailing lists. Then using an anonymizer announce tot eh head honcho of the company since they feel spam is a legitimate buisiness model, you felt you had some offers they would be interested in.
Even the best corporate filters will mess up on blocking a certain amount of spam. And being on that many mailing lists will guarantee a steady influx of this crap.
You have to remeber, shooting the messenger only works until the writer can find another messenger. If enough of these companies learn that using the services of a spammer is not acceptable, the more they will want to steer clear of them.
Sure you will have your non-US entities trying to sell stuff, but you have to admit, 90% of this crep is about US-ran websites, so going after the firm being advertised is the wiser choice.
I was given a PC with internet access in my room at age 16.
I did have a mother who was rather suspicious of my doings anyways, which taught me to always be covert in everything I do. She also over-reacts to everything, constantly. This behavior taught me to constantly lie to her on a regular basis, especially about my online activities. So don't be a snoop and go looking for things to give your kida hell over, and be level-headed if you do find your kid in posession of porn or doing other "undesirable" things online. Going thermo-nucler over everything will only tech him or her to lie to you , and that's not a good thing.
If you do catch your kid looking at stuff they shouldn't be, make sure they understand why you don't like them to look at this material. Something more than "because I say so". That line has irked me for all time, and probably lead to my being a major pain in the ass in my teenage years more than anything else. Why should I do something just because it's said so? I want to know what grounds that decision was made on, and at that age I felt I deserved to know.
I do understand how you wnat them to ahve an "open-door" policy, but the internet is almost like using the phone anymore, and I doubt you would have your kids conduct a private talk with their friends in open doors. Kids need their bit of privacy too. Doesn't mean you totally ignore them, but let them do as kids do.
Some DSL routers have fitler lists that will email you when innapropriate sites are visited, those can be of some use, just let your kid know if you are using that.
Really the same concepts as dealing with your kid in general extend to online behavior, don't treat them like some sort of criminal, it will only make them sneaky about things, just be open and level-headed. It makes things so much easier for the kid, and will probably make it easier for you.
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I used to do this a long time ago, take some text, encrypt it, and pad the .exe with the data. The program ran fine, the filesize may or may not go up, depending on where in the program I hid it (some MS apps have a quarter meg or so of empty space right in the middle of the .exe...).
.exe through a hex editior...it was slow and painful, but what better way to encrypt and hide data did you have at the time....steganography in a .gif? Please...in most cases you could tell it was tampered with...given in some you couldnt, but at the time the technology just wasnt all that good.
I usually padded the
Oh, well...back to talking about how when I was your guy's age, i used to have to climb mt.everest to get my CPUs, and how I had to wrestle alligtors to get money for floppy disks...
I would love to see this idea happen.
:(
However, those cell phones are not being given away...even the PDAphones run about $300 and up with service plan discounts. The phone I wanted was nearly $600...forget that. Now if I could use it as a mini-notebook of sorts, I would consider that a great deal.
I look at it this way, a notebook PC can be bought new for as low as $700. A cellphone has far fewer components than a notebook, possibly less than 10% of the components that are in a notebook...so why should we be paying prices this high? I'm pretty sure most of it is going to markup and whatnot, since apparently the chip makers aren't doing well.
I also see the insane markup on cell phones as being the single largest stopping block. I can buy all sorts of great things for how much a top end phone costs, such as a top of the line Raleigh hardtail mountain bike, or an entry level audiophile sound system, or even a nice vacation in cancun...
Plus I'm kinda biased...i just want a simple phone that gets good reception and I can reliably check my hotmail from...nothing more, nothing less. My samsung N400 sucks on both of those counts
What trips me out is that some shop installed that front display for her...I see the possibility of a legal poostorm stirring up.
Really, I see dedicated components as teh way of the future..at least for the smart shoppers.
:p ...Had to put in my $0.02
Sure you spend more to buy the separate speakers, display, and tuner...BUT...you don't have to RMA the entire set when the tuner screws up, you have your choice of spakers to fit your tastes and budget, and you have a display that takes less room for the same screen size, thus making room layout a bit easier.
Given you do pay more, ahve more set-up to do, and it ultimately may take up more space...but it's all about weighing in what's more important.
Now....i see the potential for a yamaha reciever, some athena shelf speakers, and using the DishNW tuner, and having it all for very close to what was paid for jsut teh retail set...and you get better sound, easy upgradability to surround (just add a center, rears and sub), and also can play music through the reciever...bonus features!
The pontiac/chevy thing about the cars only having body cladding being different is a bit off. Pontiac did share some things with Chevy, but the pontiac sunbird was the one with the most performance options (not body kits, but actual engine choices), and the firebird had entirely different engines from the camaro...given the camaro was the more powerful of the bunch, but the firebird was the looker.
/sick of seeing things repackaged...it's like calling steak fliggyflarg....it's still a freaking steak.
Interiors were slightly different as well, but that's of little signifigance.
Now GM has been trying to make the engines cross-platform though. I saw the FWD Buick 3800 MKII engine find its way into chevy and pontiac as well. Heck I remeber when the old RWD 3.8 "Evenfire" came out...I had one...great engines, few are near as tough as those anymore.
But yeah, there will alwyas be cross branding, even though in the car market I wish it would stop, and jsut make a "executive" model or something to the likes that is equal to the luxury car...since it is after all, a trim level.
I would not go so far as saying legally, but if they don't they will be cutting into their profits since very few will want to go through the timesink of making a new character all over again.
Legally binding anyone over a game is kinda weak, but there have bene times I wished I could smack the companies around a bit for basically giving crap service and not expecting angry customers.
I really do wnat to see the EULAs used for these to get challeneged in court though. Some of the terms on those are outright retarded.
That's when they start up another EQ MMORPG that allows for "with gear" character transfers if your between level x and y.
what this does is allow them to control the amount of characters of any level on teh server, and the quantity of them. And the big bonus is that this allows to stop both the newbie rush and the instant economy crush of having extreme amounts of high-end charaters (like the server I play EQ on....most guys are working on their 5th or 6th high level character, newbies are like finding 2 identical snowflakes).
Actually, I only give a brand my faith until they screw up, then they are gone for good. So even if they come out first, they might get that one sale, but after that the other company that made the good product will have my buisiness, possibly many times.
Yes, I am anal about the stuff I buy...if a manufacturer gives me one lemon...they can be assured I won't buy form them anymore. i don't pay out my cash for a half-baked product, and am surprised anyone else would as well.
From what I just heard on the Lyra, RCA is now on my list of companies I wont buy from...doesnt matter if they got bought...they wont see a dime from me. If it's a mistkae, maybe a second time, but something as deliberate as that...first strike is out. Many name brands are on that list..too many of them that just don't think.
If the feature isn't ready, leave the feature off the unit until it is, then spin a nice revision on it and sell the new and improved model...just might make you some more money as well.
As far as who to jail...
First look at who put out hte specific product, and who knew about it. Marketing would be hte first to go, then the VPs, then anyone else that was part of this.
Very rarely is a whole company part of something like this...but in cases like this, there are always at least 10 people at fault....and that's in a company that's too small for anyone to give a crap about.
My Alarm clock...that "soundscape" crap drives me nuts...replaced it with Filter's "hey man, nice shot"...I now can actually get to sleep using my clocks feature....tranquil bells my shiny bottom..
My stereo reciever..I added a few nice features, like a switch to turn on an integrated Zobel network I added in, and also swapped out the bare wire binding posts for 5-way posts. Also added an IEC socket so I could detatch the power cord easily.
Sooner or later my answering machine will be next...the though of making it ask the person to verify that their message is correct kinda puts a grin on my face.
The way I see it, you simply place the executable on your computer, make a copy osmehwere read only (cdrom), and start cracking. Sure it may change, but that's what your rad only backup is for. if your scared of the app phoning home, remove your phone line or network cable.
Really this kind of protection is not more secure, or even more difficult to work with. Remeber polymorphic code has existed since the 80's. Only this time it's being used on more complex programs, and as such is more likely to generate bug or reveal existing ones.
Anyways, do you remeber the whole AI spiel? So where's my computer that knows when I'm home and start up my games on it's own?....oh wait...I have to program it to....so much for AI...sure it's around still, but it's practically still a toy, much like I feel polymorphic code will never take off.
Practice for next year's "talk like a pirate day"
ARRR, we be geting tech suhPAAAAAAAAAAAARt matey. AHOY YE SCURVY DOGS!!!!!
No.
IANAL, but here is what goes through my mind after my experience inbeing a smartass and trying to redeem my cent.
You cant't redeem 20 of them for 1 cent, even by the manufacturer.
Therefore, it is arguable that the coupon either has no value, or is worth more than 1/20 of a cent. It obviously isn't worth nothing due to the grocer taking it, and who would take something and give you a discount if it was worth nothing? So where does that leave us?
On top of that, isn't focing a value on a ware "price-fixing"? What if I wnated to sell mine for 1/30th of a cent to outsell bob? Not that coupon selling is a buisiness, but it is a thought.
I think that 1/20th of a cent thing is some convoluted form of legalese.
"If a computer is turned on in the forest, and no one is there to hear it,,, does it make a sound.??"
:P
Yes, it sings showtunes. Your computer was designed to not only sing showtunes, but walk and talk and frolic htrough the forest, but is scared to do such things around anything that wields a screwdriver.
"If the computer that isturned on in the forest crashes, will the squarles cuss out Windows and the Bears mawl on Bill Gates???"
Nah, the squirrels have better things to do, like mess with their linux powered nautilus class starships. The bears...they just wnat fish, they could care less about servers.
Damn, those bears had it right all along...hose tech, eat more fish..
Anti-spammer spray....well it's not a spray, you just gotta bug-bomb em with this:
One massive ghettoblaster placed in a spot wherre it cannot be removed without massive amounts of cost and trouble, playing that "badger badger badger badger mushroom MUSHROOM" song on loop.
I gurantee after hearing it for hours on end, they will be so mentally numbed that even doorknobs will be too complicated to use.
Ceramique is not paste, at least in the traditional sense.
It's a phase-change material (AKA Thermal Interface Material, or TIM), and to compare it with artic silver, or even dow corning thermal grease is like comparing a V8 engine to an airplane motor, apples to oranges.
They do the same task, but the way each one actually does this is totally different. Heatsink compound has to be spread thin, thermal interface doesnt have to be spread at all, the heat and pressure from using it with a moutned heatsink forces it to properly spread itself, then solidify into a far superior thermal bond.
The difference from ceramique and the cheap thermal interfaces found on stock heatsinks is that ceramique is a better designed material. Many TIMs tend to become rubbery, or don't flow right under heat and pressure, others become brittle and can cause problems.
If you bought their product from an online retailer, check your old emails.
I've made it a point to save ALL emails regarding online purchases. I have some dating as far back as 1999, and have no intent on deleting them. I also buy a majority of my hardware online, so if I did happen to have bought a tube of OCZ, all I would have to do is go through my CD of past orders, find the order, and print it out.
Case solved, new paste, and a t-shirt richer. Go go go CD-RW, go broncos.
Sun has announced that CSS will be added to their line of Java-cooling(tm) systems. So now geeks can have their DVD decoding, cool CPUs, and the ability to drink it too ;)
I can see it now...
Sorry Mr. Anderson, you can't pay for your coffee today, see Verisign revoked their security certificate today, so we can't process your money. Would you like to pay in the form of rolex instead?
At least when it came to be time to replace the cpu fan in my latitude CPX, I had some trouble, but managed to find the part.
Problem is this fan is custom made for dell by sunon. Bonus is dell does not hold the inventory of this stuff. I managed to trace the unit down to Allied Electronics. The best part is they do accept personal orders. Well, $25 and a week later, I had my CPU fan.
Point is, most laptop parts can be bought from 3rd parties. It's a lot of work, but in the end is often worth it. Another good point to keep in mind is that there are only a handful of laptop makers, so you'll see many clones on the market. Look at alienware's old area-51m (the pre alien look one), then look at an older offering from clevo.....look similar? That's because it's the exact same unit. Usually the only custom parts are outer body parts, and the occaisional gimmick (sound systems, lockslots, docking hardware, etc)
Here is how I quieted down an athlonXP 1700 system to the point that I got driven nuts instead by the motor noise of my hard drives:
Power supply: antec TRUEpower 380w. This unit puts out plenty of nice clean power, and also has a dedicated 3.3v rail as opposed to being a fork from teh 5v rail. This just means it's a more robust unit. Also runs incredibly quiet.
CPU Fan: Zalman flower (I think 3500). This clip on unit has a bracket fan and a speed knob. I echewed the speed knob and replaced teh 92mm fan on the bracket with a 120mm enermax variable RPM fan, reason for this is further down.
VGA cooling: Zalman heatpipe cooler (something 80) This unit has NO fans, and uses a massive surface area to dissipate heat. It uses heatpipes to achieve efficient heat transfer to both heatsink elements on this cooler. This cooler works so well that the mere circulation effect from my 120mm fan was enough to keep a GeForce4 TI4400 running smoothly.
Motherboard cooling: I yanked the fan off my motherboard, that 120mm fan was more than enough to keep it cool due to it's proximity to the CPU socket, and how large that fan is.
The system overall was so quiet I turned it off on accident a few times becuase I wanted to turn it on, and couldn't hear it. The hard drive noise is only noticable at very short distances, but hard drive access will be very audible due to teh low noise floor, and I found it to be slightly bothersome.
Ultimately I moved to watercooling, to get quiet with more powerful components. I cannot reccomend watercooling to everyone however, since it still has many risks that even a skilled PC assembler may have trouble with.
I use some sterilite (cheap rubbermaid knockoff) drawers and modular drawers in my room, and they work great. The modular drawers are huge, and 4 of them can easily hold 20-odd laptops with power bricks and extrenal drives, etc etc. Cheap too, About $15-20 each.
:)
For smaller objects I just get small storage boxes, kinda like a tackle box without the giant open space at the bottom. A few of those can hold insane amounts of stuff. I even have a very flat one I use for holding my watches and jewelery.
Just look for places to tuck drawer units under, like that section of an "L" shaped desk nobody really uses. Or that small space in the bookshelf that sits open, unless you're like me, then your bookshelf is stacked double-row
Under-bed rolling bins are great for putting your out-of season clothes in, giving you a bit more usuable closet and dresser space, and maybe even hiding some of those keyboards all of use seem to accumulate.
..but the gloss may be wearing off the magazine pages.
A typical IT dept is based on:
helpdesk: helping the other employess use the technology at hand
solutions: finding the right answer for the employee's needs.
implementation: installing/configuring said technology.
maintenace: backups, user profile management, repair, etc.
Of course a contactor's duties may vary slightly from this, but is still quite similar.
IT used to be the holy grail of buisiness, if you didn't have it, you looked lame. Truth be told, some buisinesses don't need IT, but a good large portion of them should think about having some IT in their organization.
Large retail establishments can benefit greatly from this, for inventory and cash tracking perspectives it's practically a requesite. But a small convenience store may not need any IT. Maybe a security camera of two, but that's it.
Auto garages can benefit from IT as well. They could have a system that does automatic quotes based on the car and type of service needed, as well as inventory of common parts, tracking of man-hours, and performance metrics. A small garage though may not need all of this however, as it might not be financially reasonable.
Basically, if an IT solution cannot pay itself off after a year, it's not a good idea. If it can be paid off in less than a year, it just might be an improvement worth paying for.
You have to sue the agency the spammer is representing.
If you want to make the point across without litigation, every time you get a spam for say, "Salted Seabass Inc", you would farm out a list of email addresses for that company, and subscribe them to 50-odd mailing lists. Then using an anonymizer announce tot eh head honcho of the company since they feel spam is a legitimate buisiness model, you felt you had some offers they would be interested in.
Even the best corporate filters will mess up on blocking a certain amount of spam. And being on that many mailing lists will guarantee a steady influx of this crap.
You have to remeber, shooting the messenger only works until the writer can find another messenger. If enough of these companies learn that using the services of a spammer is not acceptable, the more they will want to steer clear of them.
Sure you will have your non-US entities trying to sell stuff, but you have to admit, 90% of this crep is about US-ran websites, so going after the firm being advertised is the wiser choice.
I was given a PC with internet access in my room at age 16.
I did have a mother who was rather suspicious of my doings anyways, which taught me to always be covert in everything I do. She also over-reacts to everything, constantly. This behavior taught me to constantly lie to her on a regular basis, especially about my online activities. So don't be a snoop and go looking for things to give your kida hell over, and be level-headed if you do find your kid in posession of porn or doing other "undesirable" things online. Going thermo-nucler over everything will only tech him or her to lie to you , and that's not a good thing.
If you do catch your kid looking at stuff they shouldn't be, make sure they understand why you don't like them to look at this material. Something more than "because I say so". That line has irked me for all time, and probably lead to my being a major pain in the ass in my teenage years more than anything else. Why should I do something just because it's said so? I want to know what grounds that decision was made on, and at that age I felt I deserved to know.
I do understand how you wnat them to ahve an "open-door" policy, but the internet is almost like using the phone anymore, and I doubt you would have your kids conduct a private talk with their friends in open doors. Kids need their bit of privacy too. Doesn't mean you totally ignore them, but let them do as kids do.
Some DSL routers have fitler lists that will email you when innapropriate sites are visited, those can be of some use, just let your kid know if you are using that.
Really the same concepts as dealing with your kid in general extend to online behavior, don't treat them like some sort of criminal, it will only make them sneaky about things, just be open and level-headed. It makes things so much easier for the kid, and will probably make it easier for you.