I've noticed my girlfriend encourages me to pursue my hobbies, but at the same time, if I started tearing up machines she'd probably be quite pissed. I spend a lot less money now that I don't try to turn everything I already own into something else. I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing, heh.
I did get away with making speaker mounts for my car a few weekends ago, which kills me because now I'm getting rid of the car for something more family friendly (managed to sneak a turbo in there, though.)
I used to have a veritech fighter toy, I loved that thing. It was pretty big, almost large enough to fit a GI Joe in the cockpit. It used to blow the crap out of all my other toys. All those poor GI Joes and Hot Wheels never stood a chance.
That and a big Battletech toy had to be about my favorites. I still have the Battletech in a box somewhere.
I have fond memories of sneaking into the computer labs at Syracuse University and loading up Mosaic on the computers there.
My favorite lab was this little Mac lab. The door to get in the building required a key card, but if you pulled on it hard it just opened, and security never kicked you out (they even let me in a few times when the door was being a real pain and they happened to be walking by.)
I was working at a large bank about 3 years back, and we still had some 386's floating around. Windows 3.11 running happily on them, doing word processing and that was about it. They replaced a lot of the typewriters.
We have a routine for getting the machines up and going, but of course it doesn't work for all cases. If it's doing a virus scan for 45 minutes, but we can work on another machine, that doesn't fall into the time worked. But it has gotten a lot worse, and we do a lot more backups and reinstalls now then we did even a few months back.
I do the same with the antispyware programs and Firefox, too! Only one customer so far hasn't liked Firefox, and we've had quite a few calls thanking us when the machines aren't immediatly reinfected. I've found that educating our customers is in everyone's best interests, especially if they come and purchase their next machine from us.
Nice to see another business that feels the same way mine does.
I can't agree more. At least 75% of my business comes from spyware removal, and we're starting to get a lot of new customers who were sick of other shops just wiping their systems, not evening performing backups properly. The fact that we actually fix the machines, and in a worst case scenerio, create a real backup and then reinstall, brings us a ton of customers.
I luckily don't have to deal with the family removal issues. The one family member that is constantly infecting her machine lives no where near me, and my local family is very knowledgable (only one Windows user, my mom, and she keeps her machine so clean. Uses Firefox, and used Opera before that, with no input from me. Only problem is if she does call me, it means something is really broken and beyond her ability to fix it.)
I'll also agree that figure is pretty spot on for removal costs.
This is what I do for a living. I own a PC shop, and sell quite a large amount of machines. Many of our machines are branded through our wholesaler, Seneca Data (systems are branded Nexlink, wholesaler has been around for 25 years.) They are a lot stricter than Dell is with compatibility, and as a small shop, maybe I don't have the ability to do this testing, but they do. Any decent white box builder can go this route. Oh, it's cheaper in the long run, too, because they provide the warranty, so even if the worst happens, and we aren't around, the customer can take the machine directly to the wholesaler (with the way our company is growing, I really don't see this as a problem.) Of course, we handle any warranty issues ourself, the client doesn't need to see the wholesaler, and I'm sure our showroom is a lot nicer, with better coffee.
The most reliable servers I have ever worked on are also from them. There are actually two of them that come to mind immediatly (I work with this client on a daily basis,) both Wintel boxes running Server 2003 (not my choice, customers is very Wincentric.) I've had no hardware issues with these at all. Really, Windows Server 2003 has been pretty decent.
I'm to the point that the only machines I really put together completely at the store myself are high end gaming rigs, and that's because I do very custom machines, including all the bling bling and lights that the kids seem to love.
In your case you're not specifically a "bad person" for doing what you did but I also think you [from what you wrote and some extrapolation] probably deserved to be shoved out of the education system.
A large part of this happened from the lack of education I was receiving. I was never challenged, I was bored. And this was with taking every advanced class they offered. I found myself more interested in doing my thing, be it hanging out with frieds or heading up to Syracuse University, getting into one of the labs, and hacking the day away on whatever I happened to be working on. In a strange way, the school systems failure to stimulate me intellectually helped me learn the trade I do today. Most kids aren't going to be so lucky, though. This was also a much different time, we didn't have coding classes offered (or even computer classes when I think of it.)
I would not classify myself as a bad person, either. I didn't fight, I didn't cause mayhem for people around me. I never saw the point.
Sadly my highschool career failure started when one day I decided to skip school to finish coding a door for my BBS. Sad that my downfall ends up being so nerdy and not "cool." (Last comment tastes best with salt.) Would I change things if I could? I don't think so. I struggled because of it, but at the same time it strengthened me and has gotten me where I am today.
Did I deserve to be shoved out, though? How about when I went to the school, and asked for help? The fact was they did nothing, and I didn't expect miracles. Sometimes a shoulder to lean on for a short time is all it takes. And yes, I'm sure parental responsibility can be brought into the picture. But, the school never once contacted them with my behaviour (or more like lack of attendence.) And I hid it well. Am I proud of it? I wouldn't say I am. Have I made the best of my mistakes and learned from the consequences? I would like to think so.
I am not advocating drugs and drinking but seriously...Expulsion??? Lots of kids these days don't care about ANYTHING much less their academic careers.
I didn't care about my academics, I cared more about beer and being punk. This is during high school, not college. I watched my grades slip from straight A's to barely passing. The fact that I could pass at all when I was lucky to show up once a week was amazing. I was kicked out (I was asked to leave, really) and I didn't care. Then I realised, I had all this computer knowledge, and not even a high school diploma. I woke up. But not at 18. It took travelling across the country and experiencing real life for me to realise what I moron I had been.
I straightened my life out, found real work, and continued my education some. I own a business now, and I don't think I would have done that if I hadn't gotten kicked out. The knowledge I gained of the real world by having it thrown in my face was the best teacher I could have ever had. But I'm probably the minority. A lot of kids would be happy to be janitors and keep up their lifestyle. Now I'm just the guy in the suit and tie, who happens to be listening to punk or hardcore on the drive to work. How things change. But I'm doing what I want, which is what I always did. But now I take charge, and I run my own life.
I think it comes down to more than just kicking the kids out, actually working with them can do wonders. No one ever tried to help me, even when I did seak it out. I had to help myself.
I remember when people first started using "Mickey-dees" around me, and I had no idea what they were talking about. But then, I almost never watched TV at that point (how age can change things) and am a vegetarian. I had no idea that came from commercials...
And in this case Apple would be taking away software that people are easily making a living on. I can always switch anti-virus software (hell, I use ClamAV on all my boxes.)
I still just prefer to buy CD's at a store, anyways.
There's a small chain store (there are 3 of them I believe) in my area that has a great collection of music (and DVDs) for sale. And not just maintstream stuff, they had the new Pride Kills album, released on Thorp Records (http://thorprecords.com/) the day it was released.
I ended up buying new copies of Pride Kills and the new Terror CD for myself, and some older Blood for Blood and All Out War for a friend who just moved to the middle of nowhere, Ohio. At most online music stores I'd be hard pressed to find this kind of music (iTunes does carry Thorp stuff, though, I was sorta surprised.) But I think my friend would prefer a nice packaged CD over a CD-R anyday.
I guess I look at this from a slightly different light. Yes, I agree, 300 pound bench is HUGE. But I don't think 6'2" and 180lbs is always that big, lot of it depends on build. I'm a bit shorter, 6'1", and at 155 pounds I'm pratically a stick yet. I do work out, trying to get to the gym more often as I feel I've been lazy recently, but I am pretty skinny.
I'm not really underweight, but I'm told constantly by people I need to gain weight. I can't even wear a full sized man's watch. I need to get the ones with the medium sized face, which damn near cover my entire wrist.
I doubt that even if I get to 180 pounds, and do it while working out, that I'll be able to bench 300 pounds, though. That's a lot of weight.
I'm 6'1" and 155 pounds, and I'm skinny as hell. 6'2" and 180 pounds isn't really that big. I definetely don't have a 300 lb bench, either. I top off at around 150 if I don't want to hurt myself (and that's like once or twice, not really what I lift if I want get a work out and not leave myself injured.)
"Why do people want 2-4 machines for different purposes when they can have just one that does everything?"
I like to have multiple machines for different things for a few reasons.
Console on 52" TV for gaming with friends? Check.
Work PC (laptop) for actually doing real work? Check
Gaming/Photo rig for those 2 tasks? Check, and it doesn't feel like I'm working on it, where my laptop sets me into work (or slashdot) mode.
Misc old systems for random stupid crap? Check, because I'm a damn pack rat and those old Macs are fun.
But then, I also have an iPod, a regular cell phone, and recently decided to scrap the palm for a Dilbert orginizer. Why? Because I like not breaking all my devices when I drop one. And I will, normally the iPod (man, those things bounce! Keep on ticking, though.)
It all comes down to preference. My mother loves her PS2 for gaming, and uses her PC for pretty much everything but gaming (email, web, newsgroups, etc, etc.) Where as my girlfriend loves to game on her PC, playing all the sim type games. Me? I have all that equipment, but work so much that I feel like I can never enjoy it =D
I did this for a friend awhile back. We built him a nice gaming machines, sans video card. The motherboard had an onboard GeForce4 MX and an AGP slot. He used the onboard video for quite some time, then upgraded to a GeForce FX (forget which) card 6 months later when he had the extra cash. The motherboard also allowed us to allocate anywhere from 32 to 128 megs for the video card. He really didn't even need to upgrade when he did, because it was working out great for him and he only had a second hand 15" monitor.
The money he saved on the video card at first we dropped into important things like memory and better components (no cheap never heard of them before ram or hard drive, etc.) If I could have only had him drop some of it on a decent monitor.
I have a lot of super powers! I can talk endlessly about computers, putting even the most vile criminal asleep. I have the ability to repel women! And my most super power is that of the ability to thrive without sunlight or real food (just chips and soda) for months!
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations, you have now turned into an old woman. Please leave your balls at the nearest store.
Just remember that I'm going home to a beautiful woman tonight, and many times hobbies take a backseat to other more interesting "pursuits."
I've noticed my girlfriend encourages me to pursue my hobbies, but at the same time, if I started tearing up machines she'd probably be quite pissed. I spend a lot less money now that I don't try to turn everything I already own into something else. I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing, heh.
I did get away with making speaker mounts for my car a few weekends ago, which kills me because now I'm getting rid of the car for something more family friendly (managed to sneak a turbo in there, though.)
Was curious and found out which mech is what. It's a Hellbringer. I should go home tonight and dig it out.
I used to have a veritech fighter toy, I loved that thing. It was pretty big, almost large enough to fit a GI Joe in the cockpit. It used to blow the crap out of all my other toys. All those poor GI Joes and Hot Wheels never stood a chance.
That and a big Battletech toy had to be about my favorites. I still have the Battletech in a box somewhere.
I have fond memories of sneaking into the computer labs at Syracuse University and loading up Mosaic on the computers there.
My favorite lab was this little Mac lab. The door to get in the building required a key card, but if you pulled on it hard it just opened, and security never kicked you out (they even let me in a few times when the door was being a real pain and they happened to be walking by.)
I was working at a large bank about 3 years back, and we still had some 386's floating around. Windows 3.11 running happily on them, doing word processing and that was about it. They replaced a lot of the typewriters.
We have a routine for getting the machines up and going, but of course it doesn't work for all cases. If it's doing a virus scan for 45 minutes, but we can work on another machine, that doesn't fall into the time worked. But it has gotten a lot worse, and we do a lot more backups and reinstalls now then we did even a few months back.
I do the same with the antispyware programs and Firefox, too! Only one customer so far hasn't liked Firefox, and we've had quite a few calls thanking us when the machines aren't immediatly reinfected. I've found that educating our customers is in everyone's best interests, especially if they come and purchase their next machine from us.
Nice to see another business that feels the same way mine does.
I can't agree more. At least 75% of my business comes from spyware removal, and we're starting to get a lot of new customers who were sick of other shops just wiping their systems, not evening performing backups properly. The fact that we actually fix the machines, and in a worst case scenerio, create a real backup and then reinstall, brings us a ton of customers.
I luckily don't have to deal with the family removal issues. The one family member that is constantly infecting her machine lives no where near me, and my local family is very knowledgable (only one Windows user, my mom, and she keeps her machine so clean. Uses Firefox, and used Opera before that, with no input from me. Only problem is if she does call me, it means something is really broken and beyond her ability to fix it.)
I'll also agree that figure is pretty spot on for removal costs.
This is what I do for a living. I own a PC shop, and sell quite a large amount of machines. Many of our machines are branded through our wholesaler, Seneca Data (systems are branded Nexlink, wholesaler has been around for 25 years.) They are a lot stricter than Dell is with compatibility, and as a small shop, maybe I don't have the ability to do this testing, but they do. Any decent white box builder can go this route. Oh, it's cheaper in the long run, too, because they provide the warranty, so even if the worst happens, and we aren't around, the customer can take the machine directly to the wholesaler (with the way our company is growing, I really don't see this as a problem.) Of course, we handle any warranty issues ourself, the client doesn't need to see the wholesaler, and I'm sure our showroom is a lot nicer, with better coffee.
The most reliable servers I have ever worked on are also from them. There are actually two of them that come to mind immediatly (I work with this client on a daily basis,) both Wintel boxes running Server 2003 (not my choice, customers is very Wincentric.) I've had no hardware issues with these at all. Really, Windows Server 2003 has been pretty decent.
I'm to the point that the only machines I really put together completely at the store myself are high end gaming rigs, and that's because I do very custom machines, including all the bling bling and lights that the kids seem to love.
In your case you're not specifically a "bad person" for doing what you did but I also think you [from what you wrote and some extrapolation] probably deserved to be shoved out of the education system.
A large part of this happened from the lack of education I was receiving. I was never challenged, I was bored. And this was with taking every advanced class they offered. I found myself more interested in doing my thing, be it hanging out with frieds or heading up to Syracuse University, getting into one of the labs, and hacking the day away on whatever I happened to be working on. In a strange way, the school systems failure to stimulate me intellectually helped me learn the trade I do today. Most kids aren't going to be so lucky, though. This was also a much different time, we didn't have coding classes offered (or even computer classes when I think of it.)
I would not classify myself as a bad person, either. I didn't fight, I didn't cause mayhem for people around me. I never saw the point.
Sadly my highschool career failure started when one day I decided to skip school to finish coding a door for my BBS. Sad that my downfall ends up being so nerdy and not "cool." (Last comment tastes best with salt.) Would I change things if I could? I don't think so. I struggled because of it, but at the same time it strengthened me and has gotten me where I am today.
Did I deserve to be shoved out, though? How about when I went to the school, and asked for help? The fact was they did nothing, and I didn't expect miracles. Sometimes a shoulder to lean on for a short time is all it takes. And yes, I'm sure parental responsibility can be brought into the picture. But, the school never once contacted them with my behaviour (or more like lack of attendence.) And I hid it well. Am I proud of it? I wouldn't say I am. Have I made the best of my mistakes and learned from the consequences? I would like to think so.
I am not advocating drugs and drinking but seriously...Expulsion??? Lots of kids these days don't care about ANYTHING much less their academic careers.
I didn't care about my academics, I cared more about beer and being punk. This is during high school, not college. I watched my grades slip from straight A's to barely passing. The fact that I could pass at all when I was lucky to show up once a week was amazing. I was kicked out (I was asked to leave, really) and I didn't care. Then I realised, I had all this computer knowledge, and not even a high school diploma. I woke up. But not at 18. It took travelling across the country and experiencing real life for me to realise what I moron I had been.
I straightened my life out, found real work, and continued my education some. I own a business now, and I don't think I would have done that if I hadn't gotten kicked out. The knowledge I gained of the real world by having it thrown in my face was the best teacher I could have ever had. But I'm probably the minority. A lot of kids would be happy to be janitors and keep up their lifestyle. Now I'm just the guy in the suit and tie, who happens to be listening to punk or hardcore on the drive to work. How things change. But I'm doing what I want, which is what I always did. But now I take charge, and I run my own life.
I think it comes down to more than just kicking the kids out, actually working with them can do wonders. No one ever tried to help me, even when I did seak it out. I had to help myself.
I remember the first time I heard piracy used was when I had my C64.
I remember when people first started using "Mickey-dees" around me, and I had no idea what they were talking about. But then, I almost never watched TV at that point (how age can change things) and am a vegetarian. I had no idea that came from commercials...
So sad, really.
And in this case Apple would be taking away software that people are easily making a living on. I can always switch anti-virus software (hell, I use ClamAV on all my boxes.)
I still just prefer to buy CD's at a store, anyways.
There's a small chain store (there are 3 of them I believe) in my area that has a great collection of music (and DVDs) for sale. And not just maintstream stuff, they had the new Pride Kills album, released on Thorp Records (http://thorprecords.com/) the day it was released.
I ended up buying new copies of Pride Kills and the new Terror CD for myself, and some older Blood for Blood and All Out War for a friend who just moved to the middle of nowhere, Ohio. At most online music stores I'd be hard pressed to find this kind of music (iTunes does carry Thorp stuff, though, I was sorta surprised.) But I think my friend would prefer a nice packaged CD over a CD-R anyday.
"E.g., would I pay some thousands of dollars on 3DS Max just to mod a $40 game like "X2 - The Threat"?
Yes, yes I would! But I've been saving up waiting for some amazing deals on bridges first.
I guess I look at this from a slightly different light. Yes, I agree, 300 pound bench is HUGE. But I don't think 6'2" and 180lbs is always that big, lot of it depends on build. I'm a bit shorter, 6'1", and at 155 pounds I'm pratically a stick yet. I do work out, trying to get to the gym more often as I feel I've been lazy recently, but I am pretty skinny.
I'm not really underweight, but I'm told constantly by people I need to gain weight. I can't even wear a full sized man's watch. I need to get the ones with the medium sized face, which damn near cover my entire wrist.
I doubt that even if I get to 180 pounds, and do it while working out, that I'll be able to bench 300 pounds, though. That's a lot of weight.
I'm 6'1" and 155 pounds, and I'm skinny as hell. 6'2" and 180 pounds isn't really that big. I definetely don't have a 300 lb bench, either. I top off at around 150 if I don't want to hurt myself (and that's like once or twice, not really what I lift if I want get a work out and not leave myself injured.)
I remember they did this in 2002 and called it the rotten apple. http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzUx
I also think what they did with the colors was a lot more interesting than this mod.
It also lets you post anonymously, and didn't reject going there from an anonymous proxy...
"Why do people want 2-4 machines for different purposes when they can have just one that does everything?"
I like to have multiple machines for different things for a few reasons.
Console on 52" TV for gaming with friends? Check.
Work PC (laptop) for actually doing real work? Check
Gaming/Photo rig for those 2 tasks? Check, and it doesn't feel like I'm working on it, where my laptop sets me into work (or slashdot) mode.
Misc old systems for random stupid crap? Check, because I'm a damn pack rat and those old Macs are fun.
But then, I also have an iPod, a regular cell phone, and recently decided to scrap the palm for a Dilbert orginizer. Why? Because I like not breaking all my devices when I drop one. And I will, normally the iPod (man, those things bounce! Keep on ticking, though.)
It all comes down to preference. My mother loves her PS2 for gaming, and uses her PC for pretty much everything but gaming (email, web, newsgroups, etc, etc.) Where as my girlfriend loves to game on her PC, playing all the sim type games. Me? I have all that equipment, but work so much that I feel like I can never enjoy it =D
" You can think of $100,000 as 5 teachers, which is pretty damn good. That's what Microsoft costs the school."
Now I understand why my teachers used to hand out a donations plate at the beginning of class. They wanted to be able to eat and still pay their rent!
" Can someone post the article text? For some reason, BBC News is blocked at work."
Because they are the new source of terrorist information!
I did this for a friend awhile back. We built him a nice gaming machines, sans video card. The motherboard had an onboard GeForce4 MX and an AGP slot. He used the onboard video for quite some time, then upgraded to a GeForce FX (forget which) card 6 months later when he had the extra cash. The motherboard also allowed us to allocate anywhere from 32 to 128 megs for the video card. He really didn't even need to upgrade when he did, because it was working out great for him and he only had a second hand 15" monitor.
The money he saved on the video card at first we dropped into important things like memory and better components (no cheap never heard of them before ram or hard drive, etc.) If I could have only had him drop some of it on a decent monitor.
I have a lot of super powers! I can talk endlessly about computers, putting even the most vile criminal asleep. I have the ability to repel women! And my most super power is that of the ability to thrive without sunlight or real food (just chips and soda) for months!