However, no one asked a very important question. Are you running a legit copy of XP with all the updates installed?
Everyone seems to assume this is the case.
I know back in the day, I ran a pirated version of XP(Windows ME came pre-installed, whats a guy to do!), and you can't get all the security updates on it.
If this is the case you probably have about half a million viruses, malware, adware, Trojans, worms, keyloggers, and are apart of at least 6 botnets, and this only after being attached to the internet for about 30min.
You can run various antivirus, anti-malware, anti-adware, etc... programs, but typically one will miss some while another will miss others, and they all detect each other as viruses.
Anyone of these missed baddies may be causing problems, and not all show up in your process list (or at least not in a easily identifiable way). Applying the various software guards, and hard and software firewalls will help, but I know my old machine would eventually chug to a halt, at which time I would do a clean install, usually a couple times a year.
Eventually I got tired of all this and installed Linux. However while I no longer had any more problems of that sort, getting any, even older games to run, was a major chore (if you could get it to run at all). I have since got a more current machine and run a legit copy of Vista on it. So long as you are not a dope and install some sketchy internet file, there is no problems.
Also even with a legit copy of XP, you will eventually, have enough dust bunnies in your OS closet, from stupid programs in your start up, in your task menu, and silly stuff clogging up this and that... I am sure you can use various tools like CCleaner etc.. to try and clean house, and while they may help, it would probably take just about as long to do a fresh clean install, and update your settings again. I know that was one benefit to running pirate XP, I could install the thing blind, and it forced me to keep good backup practices...:)
My sister told me a couple of weeks ago that Keanu was making the Bebop movie. My first reaction was "Aw fuck is he going to play Spike". However her response was that she wasn't sure but she thought he might be "Making" the movie maybe not also "Staring" in it. That perhaps Keanu is wanting to branch out into Producing or possibly Directing the live action version of Bebop. Perhaps I am just deluding myself.
However if you RTFA, and then RTFA tha TFA is based on, it makes me wonder how much of this is fact and how much is just writers speculation. The only fact is that Keanu's association to the project was leaked. The writer said Keanu "would" play Spike. Not that it was leaked that "Keanu WAS playing spike". I think the writer chose their words most carefully to be more sensationalistic and get more people reading the stupid article.
Anyway thats my 2 cents.
It will probably suck anyway, as most of these things don't translate very well. I tried watching the live action version of Deathnote not too long ago and didn't get very far. I am sure the new live action DragonBall Z will also win some Oscars. It is however fun to speculate who will play each. Someone mentioned Bruce Willis as Jet, and that might not be too bad.
I have seen this and have had legal folks talk to me about this. I am not sure of the technical term, but in order for it to be binding, it has to be a legal contract.
For example I could make a contract with Bob. It would state "I will pay Bob 5$ for the right to kill him and suffer no repercussions".
The fact is, criminal law would trump this, and the contract would be null and void as it isn't a legal contract.
The specific example that came up for me, was working for the government, collecting data. We wanted to put something on the form to allow or disallow the dissemination of certain types of data. However the lawyers basically said you can put all the wording you like but it won't make a piss of difference if a Freedom of Information (Act) request comes in, as it would supersede whatever wording we had as a disclaimer. It might HELP build a case towards the intent of use, but is pretty much meaningless in the face of a Act of Law.
I imagine the same holds true for any contract, agreement, disclaimer, etc...
When I was younger my Dad told me a story (I have no idea if he made this shit up), about when he was in university. He got his BA and then went on to get his Law degree. I am not sure which (as they were different universities) this happened at.
So this is before my time, back in the 1970's. So before laptops, email, slashdot (oh noes!) and everything else.
Anyway back then I guess the thing to do was bring in a recorder to class. That way you could pay attention to the lecture, and get your notes later. Eventually students being students, people started coming to class, starting their recorders and then leaving, coming back after to pick up their notes. I guess one day Dad was late for class and rushed in to find that the cheeky professor has taped his lecture and was playing it and had left, to a classroom filled with tape recorders, and nary a human being in sight!
Anyway that is the story as I remember it. Never even thought of it again until today!
I know when I went to university I wasn't a fan of the big lecture halls. It is a bit moot anyway as it was really only 1st year classes. After that class size diminished drastically, so that by the end they are very small. On top of that all my classes had other components that were smaller. My science classes had labs, my arts classes had seminars, both would range from 10-30 students. Science was usually with a TA, arts would be the actual prof. If you had a question your asked then. You could also ask via email, or simply camp their office.
I did find most 1st year lectures pointless for one reason or another. Most are pretty simple basic stuff and if you read the book and remember stuff you are good to go. Some even said that they would email all the slide notes to all the students, which was my flag not to go anymore, or at least irregularly at best.
My biggest pet peeve was how is it decided that all science classes are in the morning and all arts classes in the evening? Math at 8:30am on Monday morning is just cruel and unusual punishment...
One horrible act I did one year was for a full year credit course, I only ever attended one lecture (Environmental Science 100). They played a movie on the Colorado river and dam. I never went again. I also didn't buy the book (which was 120$). At the end of the year I borrowed a textbook from a friend a week before the exam. I went and wrote the exam, and passed the course. Now I didn't do well by any means, but I got credit for the course.
My fav answer in hindsight was a short answer definition on what "Deep Ecology" was. I BS'ed some answer about sub-marine trenches in the Atlantic ocean. The TA must have had a fun time with my exam, lol.
1) It did, and does. 2) It was and did not work, hence the WHOLE problem. DHCP was returning the wrong IP address. 3) You must be tech support yourself I see.
It is very hard to re-install when you do not have any disks is it not (which I stated)? If I had disks I would have. You will find that you do not always have the luxury of having everything you need on hand, or working with the best material. Sometimes you have to make do with what you have. Heck if I had XP I would have installed that. I only had what my parents had in their house, which was squat. I can't even go buy an OS that would run on the POS, so I couldn't even buy one and my parents refuse to hear me when I start talking about linux.
Oh and I never said I was a consultant.
You seem pretty much what I was talking about. An arrogant idiot tech support guy, who does not understand what he is talking about and refuses to hear what others are saying. You also seem to want to pile high the insults upon someone whom you assume you know more than, which I assure you, is not the case.
Disclaimer: I work in IT and consider myself pretty handy with computer technology in general. (though after the story you may disagree)
So its this year and Christmas. I am at home with my parents. Sis comes home with her laptop (Macbook). Parents are kind of thinking of getting a new computer eventually (as what they have is horrible). My advice is basically get a basic laptop and a wireless router so they can use it where ever and not chained to the basement. Dad's response is "you can do that"? He also asks if I can do it and still have the POS (my wording not his) still running down below. I say sure, set one up on my desktop a couple of months ago. Took me all of 10 minutes... maybe if that.
So Dad proclaims let it be so. Of course there is no decent stores in the little town I am from and I have to grit my teeth and get him something from Staples. A dlink 628 I believe it was.
However in my haste I forgot how big a POS their old computer is. I have older less powerful systems in my house, but none are as crappy as this. Mostly because in my opinion it has never been wiped and is carrying 8 years of bad decisions inside. Anyway it is an old Dell, Celeron 700 or 800 Mhz I believe. The kicker is, it is running Windows ME. The original install of Windows ME and is over 8 years old. My parents also use DSL, which being a cable user since day 1 I am not as fluent with.
So I hook everything up, and of course, it doesn't work, it couldn't be easy. I cannot access the router configuration page. No matter what I try it will not automatically detect the correct settings. The manual is less than useless giving me excellent advice about ensuring my cable is plugged in. Thanks. Anyway the advice for anything really beyond that is to call tech support.
Understand I abhor tech support with a passion. I will avoid calling almost at any cost. Most I find do not understand what they are taking about, and are simply reading procedures out of a binder. I had friends that work in tech support. None of them knew squat and did a couple weeks training course to qualify them. It really is laughable.
I did end up calling tech support. Not only did I call tech support for the router, but also for the dsl line. I did so because I figure they deal with this stuff every day, it might just be faster to ask them, than for me to figure it out on my own (which I ended up doing anyway).
Admittedly the first guy I got was pretty good. I assume the call went to India, but he knew his stuff. He was frustrated like I was with the POS computer. However he did have the best advice of the bunch (which I should have though of myself, but guess I was being too focused) which was to abandon ship on the desktop and setup the router using the Mac (which I did later with no problems).
However I still needed the get the desktop networked in and working so I was only partially done. Having at least one computer with working connection did help a lot so I could google out the answer in the end.
The desktop with Windows ME still was not detecting the right IP address, no matter what I did. Perhaps with a clean install, who knows, but they have no system disks or backup so out of the question. At this point I figure fine I will just manually configure it instead. Make it see what it needs to see but cannot currently find. However the last time I did anything like that was over 10 years ago, and I haven't done since, and couldn't remember what the heck I used to do.
So again I call good old tech support. First I call the DSL ISP support. As it is their internet connection I am trying to connect to. All they do is internet support. Surly they ALL know how to set up a manual connection in windows. Answer: A) No they do not, and even if they did they won't help you anyway. As soon as they found out that I had attached a router to "their" dsl modem, it was no longer their problem. The problem was the router. End of story. I said no, this has nothing to do with the router, I simply want to configure my windows
My first though as a Canadian was "We have a nuke-resistant bunker?"
My second thought as a Nova Scotian was "WTF? Pass me a Keiths!"
Seriously though, how bizarre. Kinda surprised that we had any (outside of the women packed mine shafts of Carlton U. Everyone knows its not a real university anyway).
Though I suppose if I were going to waste a nuke on Canada I would probably hit Vancouver and Halifax (and maybe Ottawa because of the dirty politicians, and perhaps Toronto, well just because its Toronto, smug bastards...) due to the ports and the possibility the USA using them.
So the bunker is probably in Halifax.
Then again I already have a nuke-resistant bunker in Nova Scotia. Its called my parents place who I will be visiting for Christmas in Kentville. No one in there right mind is going to hit Kentville.
Alternative punchline would be any house in Sask. except maybe Moosejaw (Air force base with jets and everything!).
That said, I think its cool that they are turning it into an IT data center. Fun times.
Its a bit stupid to do a price performance without any consideration to anything else. Someone else mentioned DDR2 VS DDR3 and price and availability, also if anyone does one whit of looking you will see that you can have a nice dual-core or quad-core motherboard for like 150-200$. I looked a few weeks ago for the 7's and the cheapest was like 350-375$, most seemed to be over 400$. Which to me, is simply nuts.
Anyway like a good slashdotter I didn't RTFA, so it may be that the 7's are the bees knees. However I would caution anyone from basing their decision on a benchmark and a price tag, as there is more involved that that. Anyway my two cents...
OK this just reminded me of a project I did in College. It was using VB (6 maybe?) with a GIS add-on called "MapObjects" made by ESRI. I am sure it is good for little projects that look cool, but it certainly wasn't a powerhouse.
I remember I had to fudge the program a bit by adding a splash screen on an extra long timer, as it took our program sooo long to load. I swear it wasn't my programming!:) Anyway the data we had was just too large, both in database and in graphic files. No matter how we tried to load it (in pieces, by task, whatever) it took forever for it to chug through it.
It is useful to me now if I want to do something to a table in access. Between that and in combination with SQL you can pretty much do anything. I even did one that took a couple of tables, and wrote a HUGH SQL data migration sequence into a text file, which fed into an Oracle console. Worked like a charm, and because it was so uncomplex took no time to process. Plus the lazy man in me likes the idea of code writing code for me...
I know the folks here will hate it, but probably VB would be a good starter language. Its easy, fun, and an easy GUI and you can build pretty windows, and quickly make basic (heh no pun intended) windows programs.
I have done a large number of languages (probably not so many for this crowd) growing up and through university. Though I think I had that generational gap where all the stuff I learned was obsolete before I graduated. Not the theory of course. I grew up trying to get BASIC to run on a TRS80 (which sucked), or using tapes that never worked, in university, it was Pascal, which halfway through they switched standards to C (thx a bunch!, and later C++, did Assembly language which also sucked, but intriguing from a machine level perspective, also did the dead language (kinda) Cobol, which was surprisingly easy and interesting, and also did stints of various versions of VB, and a host of scripting languages. I never got into any of the Pearl or Python, or even Java which is too bad, but I have little use for now, so I can't be bothered to self learn it just for kicks. I did have a friend that basically taught himself Pearl over a weekend for a job.
Ideally, I think you would go from teaching a low generation language to a high one as they would get an appreciation of the complexity involved and how languages build on one another. However trying to teach a young one Base2 math, assembly, etc... might be a bit much.
VB is super easy (though not particularly powerful or efficient), fun, visual, and I know from personal experiance very useful later on just writing little scrips to automate little jobs in excel and access etc... also a bunch of big expensive software suites like those produced by ESRI (ArcMap, etc)... have dropped their proprietary scripting languages like Avenue (which I also learned... sigh)... and now use VB to do all their automation tasks (for good or ill). An edu copy is also cheap (or it was anyway).
Anyway that's my two cents. As a disclaimer, I obviously don't program much anymore as most of my languages seem to be antiquated now... however I still think VB would be the way to go initially.
However there remains the fact that they are trying to say their method is proof because of this find. The find being a super massive hot Jupiter.
So I am calling BS.
When they use the method to find a world, that is at least in the same category as earth sized, then I might start giving what they say some credence. As it stands, it doesn't really matter of they use a smelloscope to find the world, if it can only find the really big ones, it is quite useless if the purpose is to find habitable worlds.
"NASA hailed the news as proof that Kepler will be able to do its job of finding planets capable of supporting life."
Seeing as it can only seem to spot super massive planets the size of Jupiter or larger, this will likely not help one whit.
Is it a good first step? Sure.
So there is water vapor and CO2? Big deal. It is also over 1000 degrees K, a bit hot no? It is also not solid, sometimes a problem. It is also frickin huge, so unless you want to transform yourself into a diamond due to being crushed by unbelievable pressures, you may want to look else where.
To my understanding (which may be limited) this stuff is figured out by observing the "wobble" of light from a star. This is apparently caused by small gravitational effects caused by planetary bodies. How they get composition I am not entirely sure. However it seems that unless your planetary body is of a significant mass, the "wobble" isn't as easily seen. Which is why we are getting news about a super massive hot Jupiter being proof that a technology will fulfill its roll in finding planets suitable for life.
Perhaps they mean to do it by subtraction. Simply identify all those that are unsuitable, subtract that from the total, and what you are left are bountiful earth like paradises with green amazon women.
I think Canada would have likely legalized marijuana by now if it wasn't for the US and their continual "war on drugs".
It would be political suicide otherwise, regardless of how much common sense it makes. As it stands a lot of pot crosses our borders illegally and many times it seems the payment of choice is illegal guns from the US.
Personally I would like to see a Canadian Politician grow some balls and legalize it. For all the flak we would take it just doesn't seem right in the current situation.
It sort of pisses me off that we can't have legal pot due to the US and yet also due to the right to bear arms and weak gun laws in the US we also have to put up with the spill over into Canada. Due to the fact that pot is illegal gangs and organized crime sell it and were do you suppose they get most of their guns? Not Canadian Tire I can tell you that much...
So when innocents are killed, who is at fault? The guy that pulls the trigger certainly, but there are a host of enablers that could also be stopped that would improve the situation and it least make the situation less likely.
Bikini Car Washes also distract people. Shall we get rid of them too and make them illegal? I think not!
(I actually got in an accident looking at one when I was younger (17). I waited for the police, and had to explain WHY I got into the accident to a female cop. Funtimes.)
Also some people find shiny objects pretty distracting, doesn't mean that you need a law for everyone.
The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead. [a man puts a body on the cart] Large Man with Dead Body: Here's one. The Dead Collector: That'll be ninepence. The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead. The Dead Collector: What? Large Man with Dead Body: Nothing. There's your ninepence. The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead. The Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead. Large Man with Dead Body: Yes he is. The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not. The Dead Collector: He isn't. Large Man with Dead Body: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill. The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm getting better. Large Man with Dead Body: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment. The Dead Collector: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations. The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I don't want to go on the cart. Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, don't be such a baby. The Dead Collector: I can't take him. The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I feel fine. Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, do me a favor. The Dead Collector: I can't. Large Man with Dead Body: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long. The Dead Collector: I promised I'd be at the Robinsons'. They've lost nine today. Large Man with Dead Body: Well, when's your next round? The Dead Collector: Thursday. The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I think I'll go for a walk. Large Man with Dead Body: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Isn't there anything you could do? The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I feel happy. I feel happy. [the Dead Collector glances up and down the street furtively, then silences the Body with his a whack of his club] Large Man with Dead Body: Ah, thank you very much. The Dead Collector: Not at all. See you on Thursday. Large Man with Dead Body: Right.
Yeah one of my pet peeves. Certainly not a isolated case. In fact the norm to various degrees.
I get sick watching all the get rich quick schemes, lose weight by taking this pill, etc... they are blatantly lying and there doesn't seem to be any oversight or regulation.
These people take advantage of the stupid, gullible, desperate, people out there and it sickens me. I don't have too much sympathy for someone who is just an idiot, but for those out there that are truly desperate (money, relationships, health, weight, etc...) or perhaps a bit easy to take advantage of like the elderly, well that's just not right. If there is a hell, I bet there is a special place reserved for assclowns that do this sort of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
When talking about the destruction of our planet I want to hear more "Will not" VS "Should not" tyvm.
Hey at least it will probably be able to play media as it will have all the popular codecs installed. Sheesh, how hard is that?
That is what Viagra is for...
I am seen mostly good advice.
However, no one asked a very important question. Are you running a legit copy of XP with all the updates installed?
Everyone seems to assume this is the case.
I know back in the day, I ran a pirated version of XP(Windows ME came pre-installed, whats a guy to do!), and you can't get all the security updates on it.
If this is the case you probably have about half a million viruses, malware, adware, Trojans, worms, keyloggers, and are apart of at least 6 botnets, and this only after being attached to the internet for about 30min.
You can run various antivirus, anti-malware, anti-adware, etc... programs, but typically one will miss some while another will miss others, and they all detect each other as viruses.
Anyone of these missed baddies may be causing problems, and not all show up in your process list (or at least not in a easily identifiable way). Applying the various software guards, and hard and software firewalls will help, but I know my old machine would eventually chug to a halt, at which time I would do a clean install, usually a couple times a year.
Eventually I got tired of all this and installed Linux. However while I no longer had any more problems of that sort, getting any, even older games to run, was a major chore (if you could get it to run at all). I have since got a more current machine and run a legit copy of Vista on it. So long as you are not a dope and install some sketchy internet file, there is no problems.
Also even with a legit copy of XP, you will eventually, have enough dust bunnies in your OS closet, from stupid programs in your start up, in your task menu, and silly stuff clogging up this and that... I am sure you can use various tools like CCleaner etc.. to try and clean house, and while they may help, it would probably take just about as long to do a fresh clean install, and update your settings again. I know that was one benefit to running pirate XP, I could install the thing blind, and it forced me to keep good backup practices... :)
I am calling BS.
My sister told me a couple of weeks ago that Keanu was making the Bebop movie. My first reaction was "Aw fuck is he going to play Spike". However her response was that she wasn't sure but she thought he might be "Making" the movie maybe not also "Staring" in it. That perhaps Keanu is wanting to branch out into Producing or possibly Directing the live action version of Bebop. Perhaps I am just deluding myself.
However if you RTFA, and then RTFA tha TFA is based on, it makes me wonder how much of this is fact and how much is just writers speculation. The only fact is that Keanu's association to the project was leaked. The writer said Keanu "would" play Spike. Not that it was leaked that "Keanu WAS playing spike". I think the writer chose their words most carefully to be more sensationalistic and get more people reading the stupid article.
Anyway thats my 2 cents.
It will probably suck anyway, as most of these things don't translate very well. I tried watching the live action version of Deathnote not too long ago and didn't get very far. I am sure the new live action DragonBall Z will also win some Oscars. It is however fun to speculate who will play each. Someone mentioned Bruce Willis as Jet, and that might not be too bad.
Agreed.
Here in Canada as well.
I have seen this and have had legal folks talk to me about this. I am not sure of the technical term, but in order for it to be binding, it has to be a legal contract.
For example I could make a contract with Bob. It would state "I will pay Bob 5$ for the right to kill him and suffer no repercussions".
The fact is, criminal law would trump this, and the contract would be null and void as it isn't a legal contract.
The specific example that came up for me, was working for the government, collecting data. We wanted to put something on the form to allow or disallow the dissemination of certain types of data. However the lawyers basically said you can put all the wording you like but it won't make a piss of difference if a Freedom of Information (Act) request comes in, as it would supersede whatever wording we had as a disclaimer. It might HELP build a case towards the intent of use, but is pretty much meaningless in the face of a Act of Law.
I imagine the same holds true for any contract, agreement, disclaimer, etc...
Considering there is:
1) Porn
2) Hardcore Porn
3) Crazy Hardcore Porn
4) OMG doesn't that hurt Ultra Hardcore Porn
5) German Porn
The Germans want to censor the internet now?
I can just see their internet filter:
If Hoff = Protrayed.Badway
Then Internets = NIEN!
Else
Then Internets = JA!
Endif
I am sorry, but I don't feel a whole lot of sympathy for her.
It is somehow the OS's fault that she can't take online courses?
No it is her fault. Take fucking responsibility for your actions and stop trying to foist it onto everybody but yourself. Geez.
Oh and that is a "Tape" recorder (analog) for all you young whippersnappers out there! ;)
This is nothing new.
When I was younger my Dad told me a story (I have no idea if he made this shit up), about when he was in university. He got his BA and then went on to get his Law degree. I am not sure which (as they were different universities) this happened at.
So this is before my time, back in the 1970's. So before laptops, email, slashdot (oh noes!) and everything else.
Anyway back then I guess the thing to do was bring in a recorder to class. That way you could pay attention to the lecture, and get your notes later. Eventually students being students, people started coming to class, starting their recorders and then leaving, coming back after to pick up their notes. I guess one day Dad was late for class and rushed in to find that the cheeky professor has taped his lecture and was playing it and had left, to a classroom filled with tape recorders, and nary a human being in sight!
Anyway that is the story as I remember it. Never even thought of it again until today!
I know when I went to university I wasn't a fan of the big lecture halls. It is a bit moot anyway as it was really only 1st year classes. After that class size diminished drastically, so that by the end they are very small. On top of that all my classes had other components that were smaller. My science classes had labs, my arts classes had seminars, both would range from 10-30 students. Science was usually with a TA, arts would be the actual prof. If you had a question your asked then. You could also ask via email, or simply camp their office.
I did find most 1st year lectures pointless for one reason or another. Most are pretty simple basic stuff and if you read the book and remember stuff you are good to go. Some even said that they would email all the slide notes to all the students, which was my flag not to go anymore, or at least irregularly at best.
My biggest pet peeve was how is it decided that all science classes are in the morning and all arts classes in the evening? Math at 8:30am on Monday morning is just cruel and unusual punishment...
One horrible act I did one year was for a full year credit course, I only ever attended one lecture (Environmental Science 100). They played a movie on the Colorado river and dam. I never went again. I also didn't buy the book (which was 120$). At the end of the year I borrowed a textbook from a friend a week before the exam. I went and wrote the exam, and passed the course. Now I didn't do well by any means, but I got credit for the course.
My fav answer in hindsight was a short answer definition on what "Deep Ecology" was. I BS'ed some answer about sub-marine trenches in the Atlantic ocean. The TA must have had a fun time with my exam, lol.
In case you are wondering, it really means this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology
I still like my answer better! :)
Zombie Research!
Scientist1: "Braaains..."
Scientist2: "Braaains!"
Scientist3: "Braaains?"
Scientist2: "Braains!"
Your reading skills are truly elite.
1) It did, and does.
2) It was and did not work, hence the WHOLE problem. DHCP was returning the wrong IP address.
3) You must be tech support yourself I see.
It is very hard to re-install when you do not have any disks is it not (which I stated)? If I had disks I would have. You will find that you do not always have the luxury of having everything you need on hand, or working with the best material. Sometimes you have to make do with what you have. Heck if I had XP I would have installed that. I only had what my parents had in their house, which was squat. I can't even go buy an OS that would run on the POS, so I couldn't even buy one and my parents refuse to hear me when I start talking about linux.
Oh and I never said I was a consultant.
You seem pretty much what I was talking about. An arrogant idiot tech support guy, who does not understand what he is talking about and refuses to hear what others are saying. You also seem to want to pile high the insults upon someone whom you assume you know more than, which I assure you, is not the case.
Disclaimer: I work in IT and consider myself pretty handy with computer technology in general. (though after the story you may disagree)
So its this year and Christmas. I am at home with my parents. Sis comes home with her laptop (Macbook). Parents are kind of thinking of getting a new computer eventually (as what they have is horrible). My advice is basically get a basic laptop and a wireless router so they can use it where ever and not chained to the basement. Dad's response is "you can do that"? He also asks if I can do it and still have the POS (my wording not his) still running down below. I say sure, set one up on my desktop a couple of months ago. Took me all of 10 minutes... maybe if that.
So Dad proclaims let it be so. Of course there is no decent stores in the little town I am from and I have to grit my teeth and get him something from Staples. A dlink 628 I believe it was.
However in my haste I forgot how big a POS their old computer is. I have older less powerful systems in my house, but none are as crappy as this. Mostly because in my opinion it has never been wiped and is carrying 8 years of bad decisions inside. Anyway it is an old Dell, Celeron 700 or 800 Mhz I believe. The kicker is, it is running Windows ME. The original install of Windows ME and is over 8 years old. My parents also use DSL, which being a cable user since day 1 I am not as fluent with.
So I hook everything up, and of course, it doesn't work, it couldn't be easy. I cannot access the router configuration page. No matter what I try it will not automatically detect the correct settings. The manual is less than useless giving me excellent advice about ensuring my cable is plugged in. Thanks. Anyway the advice for anything really beyond that is to call tech support.
Understand I abhor tech support with a passion. I will avoid calling almost at any cost. Most I find do not understand what they are taking about, and are simply reading procedures out of a binder. I had friends that work in tech support. None of them knew squat and did a couple weeks training course to qualify them. It really is laughable.
I did end up calling tech support. Not only did I call tech support for the router, but also for the dsl line. I did so because I figure they deal with this stuff every day, it might just be faster to ask them, than for me to figure it out on my own (which I ended up doing anyway).
Admittedly the first guy I got was pretty good. I assume the call went to India, but he knew his stuff. He was frustrated like I was with the POS computer. However he did have the best advice of the bunch (which I should have though of myself, but guess I was being too focused) which was to abandon ship on the desktop and setup the router using the Mac (which I did later with no problems).
However I still needed the get the desktop networked in and working so I was only partially done. Having at least one computer with working connection did help a lot so I could google out the answer in the end.
The desktop with Windows ME still was not detecting the right IP address, no matter what I did. Perhaps with a clean install, who knows, but they have no system disks or backup so out of the question. At this point I figure fine I will just manually configure it instead. Make it see what it needs to see but cannot currently find. However the last time I did anything like that was over 10 years ago, and I haven't done since, and couldn't remember what the heck I used to do.
So again I call good old tech support. First I call the DSL ISP support. As it is their internet connection I am trying to connect to. All they do is internet support. Surly they ALL know how to set up a manual connection in windows. Answer: A) No they do not, and even if they did they won't help you anyway. As soon as they found out that I had attached a router to "their" dsl modem, it was no longer their problem. The problem was the router. End of story. I said no, this has nothing to do with the router, I simply want to configure my windows
My first though as a Canadian was "We have a nuke-resistant bunker?"
My second thought as a Nova Scotian was "WTF? Pass me a Keiths!"
Seriously though, how bizarre. Kinda surprised that we had any (outside of the women packed mine shafts of Carlton U. Everyone knows its not a real university anyway).
Though I suppose if I were going to waste a nuke on Canada I would probably hit Vancouver and Halifax (and maybe Ottawa because of the dirty politicians, and perhaps Toronto, well just because its Toronto, smug bastards...) due to the ports and the possibility the USA using them.
So the bunker is probably in Halifax.
Then again I already have a nuke-resistant bunker in Nova Scotia. Its called my parents place who I will be visiting for Christmas in Kentville. No one in there right mind is going to hit Kentville.
Alternative punchline would be any house in Sask. except maybe Moosejaw (Air force base with jets and everything!).
That said, I think its cool that they are turning it into an IT data center. Fun times.
Its a bit stupid to do a price performance without any consideration to anything else. Someone else mentioned DDR2 VS DDR3 and price and availability, also if anyone does one whit of looking you will see that you can have a nice dual-core or quad-core motherboard for like 150-200$. I looked a few weeks ago for the 7's and the cheapest was like 350-375$, most seemed to be over 400$. Which to me, is simply nuts.
Anyway like a good slashdotter I didn't RTFA, so it may be that the 7's are the bees knees. However I would caution anyone from basing their decision on a benchmark and a price tag, as there is more involved that that. Anyway my two cents...
OK this just reminded me of a project I did in College. It was using VB (6 maybe?) with a GIS add-on called "MapObjects" made by ESRI. I am sure it is good for little projects that look cool, but it certainly wasn't a powerhouse.
I remember I had to fudge the program a bit by adding a splash screen on an extra long timer, as it took our program sooo long to load. I swear it wasn't my programming! :) Anyway the data we had was just too large, both in database and in graphic files. No matter how we tried to load it (in pieces, by task, whatever) it took forever for it to chug through it.
It is useful to me now if I want to do something to a table in access. Between that and in combination with SQL you can pretty much do anything. I even did one that took a couple of tables, and wrote a HUGH SQL data migration sequence into a text file, which fed into an Oracle console. Worked like a charm, and because it was so uncomplex took no time to process. Plus the lazy man in me likes the idea of code writing code for me...
*ducks*
I know the folks here will hate it, but probably VB would be a good starter language. Its easy, fun, and an easy GUI and you can build pretty windows, and quickly make basic (heh no pun intended) windows programs.
I have done a large number of languages (probably not so many for this crowd) growing up and through university. Though I think I had that generational gap where all the stuff I learned was obsolete before I graduated. Not the theory of course. I grew up trying to get BASIC to run on a TRS80 (which sucked), or using tapes that never worked, in university, it was Pascal, which halfway through they switched standards to C (thx a bunch!, and later C++, did Assembly language which also sucked, but intriguing from a machine level perspective, also did the dead language (kinda) Cobol, which was surprisingly easy and interesting, and also did stints of various versions of VB, and a host of scripting languages. I never got into any of the Pearl or Python, or even Java which is too bad, but I have little use for now, so I can't be bothered to self learn it just for kicks. I did have a friend that basically taught himself Pearl over a weekend for a job.
Ideally, I think you would go from teaching a low generation language to a high one as they would get an appreciation of the complexity involved and how languages build on one another. However trying to teach a young one Base2 math, assembly, etc... might be a bit much.
VB is super easy (though not particularly powerful or efficient), fun, visual, and I know from personal experiance very useful later on just writing little scrips to automate little jobs in excel and access etc... also a bunch of big expensive software suites like those produced by ESRI (ArcMap, etc)... have dropped their proprietary scripting languages like Avenue (which I also learned... sigh)... and now use VB to do all their automation tasks (for good or ill). An edu copy is also cheap (or it was anyway).
Anyway that's my two cents. As a disclaimer, I obviously don't program much anymore as most of my languages seem to be antiquated now... however I still think VB would be the way to go initially.
and here I thought they wanted to outlaw drinking and gaming! Might make my ET and WOW teams a bit more happy I suppose...
Perhaps...
However there remains the fact that they are trying to say their method is proof because of this find. The find being a super massive hot Jupiter.
So I am calling BS.
When they use the method to find a world, that is at least in the same category as earth sized, then I might start giving what they say some credence. As it stands, it doesn't really matter of they use a smelloscope to find the world, if it can only find the really big ones, it is quite useless if the purpose is to find habitable worlds.
"NASA hailed the news as proof that Kepler will be able to do its job of finding planets capable of supporting life."
Seeing as it can only seem to spot super massive planets the size of Jupiter or larger, this will likely not help one whit.
Is it a good first step? Sure.
So there is water vapor and CO2? Big deal. It is also over 1000 degrees K, a bit hot no? It is also not solid, sometimes a problem. It is also frickin huge, so unless you want to transform yourself into a diamond due to being crushed by unbelievable pressures, you may want to look else where.
To my understanding (which may be limited) this stuff is figured out by observing the "wobble" of light from a star. This is apparently caused by small gravitational effects caused by planetary bodies. How they get composition I am not entirely sure. However it seems that unless your planetary body is of a significant mass, the "wobble" isn't as easily seen. Which is why we are getting news about a super massive hot Jupiter being proof that a technology will fulfill its roll in finding planets suitable for life.
Perhaps they mean to do it by subtraction. Simply identify all those that are unsuitable, subtract that from the total, and what you are left are bountiful earth like paradises with green amazon women.
I think Canada would have likely legalized marijuana by now if it wasn't for the US and their continual "war on drugs".
It would be political suicide otherwise, regardless of how much common sense it makes. As it stands a lot of pot crosses our borders illegally and many times it seems the payment of choice is illegal guns from the US.
Personally I would like to see a Canadian Politician grow some balls and legalize it. For all the flak we would take it just doesn't seem right in the current situation.
It sort of pisses me off that we can't have legal pot due to the US and yet also due to the right to bear arms and weak gun laws in the US we also have to put up with the spill over into Canada. Due to the fact that pot is illegal gangs and organized crime sell it and were do you suppose they get most of their guns? Not Canadian Tire I can tell you that much...
So when innocents are killed, who is at fault? The guy that pulls the trigger certainly, but there are a host of enablers that could also be stopped that would improve the situation and it least make the situation less likely.
...and here I went out and bought one, damn! He just hangs around all day now, staring at me, judging me.
Bikini Car Washes also distract people. Shall we get rid of them too and make them illegal? I think not!
(I actually got in an accident looking at one when I was younger (17). I waited for the police, and had to explain WHY I got into the accident to a female cop. Funtimes.)
Also some people find shiny objects pretty distracting, doesn't mean that you need a law for everyone.
The Dead Collector: Bring out yer dead.
[a man puts a body on the cart]
Large Man with Dead Body: Here's one.
The Dead Collector: That'll be ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: What?
Large Man with Dead Body: Nothing. There's your ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Large Man with Dead Body: Yes he is.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not.
The Dead Collector: He isn't.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm getting better.
Large Man with Dead Body: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
The Dead Collector: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I don't want to go on the cart.
Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, don't be such a baby.
The Dead Collector: I can't take him.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I feel fine.
Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, do me a favor.
The Dead Collector: I can't.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
The Dead Collector: I promised I'd be at the Robinsons'. They've lost nine today.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, when's your next round?
The Dead Collector: Thursday.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I think I'll go for a walk.
Large Man with Dead Body: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Isn't there anything you could do?
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I feel happy. I feel happy.
[the Dead Collector glances up and down the street furtively, then silences the Body with his a whack of his club]
Large Man with Dead Body: Ah, thank you very much.
The Dead Collector: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
Large Man with Dead Body: Right.
Yeah one of my pet peeves. Certainly not a isolated case. In fact the norm to various degrees.
I get sick watching all the get rich quick schemes, lose weight by taking this pill, etc... they are blatantly lying and there doesn't seem to be any oversight or regulation.
These people take advantage of the stupid, gullible, desperate, people out there and it sickens me. I don't have too much sympathy for someone who is just an idiot, but for those out there that are truly desperate (money, relationships, health, weight, etc...) or perhaps a bit easy to take advantage of like the elderly, well that's just not right. If there is a hell, I bet there is a special place reserved for assclowns that do this sort of thing.
Anyway my 2 cents.