Wow. I only wish! Even us in Canada don't have it anywhere near that good. I have one of the fastest ISPs here with 10mbit, but it costs 50$ USD a month, another 30$ for VoIP, and TV is another 25$ for ~30 channels.
Half the speed, and 3x the price overall... And I thought i was lucky:p
Microsoft in the 80/90's didn't really clone small utilities and bindle things quite like they are now. Only in it's recent versions you see things like built-in zip file support, a picture viewer (the "preview" - not paint), a fax client, a media player and all that stuff. They're getting into EVERYTHING lately, often making poor clones/copies/versions of it. They make software in just about every field: digital imaging, finances, encyclopedias, server stuff, office suites, programming, AV encoding/streaming/etc. Not to mention the hardware side: gaming consoles, PDAs and cell phones, rebranded hardware of all kinds. (And other stuff like search engines/portals/webmail...) 10 years ago there was dos, windows, office, visual studio and very little more. They've never been into so many fields at once, trying to take everybody's business, it's getting a bit scary...
AutoCAD, no alternatives? There's more alternatives to it than EVER. Intellicad is a well known one (uses.dwg files natively, autocad addons and everything). There's a bunch of others really (SmartSketch, Graphite, LinuxCAD, VariCAD, Cycas,...) including a lot of other well known/established ones (Solidworks, etc) and other specialized ones. Even QCad (for 2D stuff) surprised me. Lots of people nowadays are finding products that work better for them than CAD software too (like SmartDraw or Visio). There's never been so many cad programs out there, and (imho) there's less of a reason to stick to AutoCAD than ever. The only thing that keeps me using AutoCAD is because I already know it...
That's one thing that kinda worries me. One could make a simple USB device pretending to be a fingerprint reader using a microcontroller, using the same Device_ID/Product_ID as a real USB fingerprint reader (preferably a common one that's widely supported), that would send pre-recorded biometric data from a flash ram. It sounds pretty simple to do. I don't know in what format that data is stored (similar to some image file or very long hash I imagine), and once someone has a copy of it (if it's like an image file then it would be possible to fabricate one from fingerprints you leave everywhere), then they'd basically have a copy of what's meant to be proof of your identity... It sounds quite simple to intercept or copy the biometric data (stored inside some DB - risk of SQL injection and other threats). It doesn't sound exactly secure to me.
There's some decent password managers
on
Too Many Passwords
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· Score: 4, Informative
Too many passwords? Definately, especially if you work in IT, I have dozens of them to remember... Even for home stuff I got dozens: different forums (web related, IT related, AV related, etc), news sites like/., dozens of online stores, email, etc... It's just too much for my memory, so instead of using the same password everywhere or writing them down or such, I resorted to use a decent password manager. I've picked KeyPass (worth every penny they ask IMHO), but there's lots of others - including some F/OSS ones like KeePass or Oubliette, you can even find a bunch on sourceforge, and they're usually quite simple programs to "tweak or enhance" if they're not exactly like you wish they were (add new cryptos, GUI changes, new features, etc). I've looked at the code of a couple and it was nicely done, good quality code, pretty secure stuff. It would be quite simple to make a basic one from scratch too (using some of the high level languages with very complete libraries and frameworks like we have nowadays), the DPAPI could be useful too.
Ideally it should run without being installed (and without too many dependancies), off a memory stick or PDA for portability. Some browsers have password managers, but it's a partial solution (only good for websites, and only work in this specific browser on this very PC), and I have problems trusting some of them (IE) to keep passwords secure at all.
Thankfully for neurosurgeons they don't work in IT, or they'd be underqualified for most jobs. The requirements for a short contract job to write a "hello world" program at close to minimum wage (and without extras like appreciation or respect) is often along the lines of:
35 years of experience in C, C++ (as well as D E and F!), Java, DotNet, senior DBA skills, exact desired skillset including a half dozen weird apps no one's ever heard of before, and at least a BSc. You'll get to work 80h/week or more (not OT pay), with people that hardly know their left from their right, the old workplace politics, and management will change their requirements every 3 days, and still expect you to finish in time. Having all of these 53 certs is a bonus.
It would be funny if it wasn't so close to reality.
I bought a readily asembled PC at bestbuy (yeah i know!) 2 weeks ago for this much. It's much smaller than any of my normal towers (in every dimension), quite acceptable. Looks better than every PC I've had built with 150$ cases, better build than all these "nice" systems I've built (with expensive cases, asus boards and all)... Came with a P4 3.06GHz, 512MB of DDR2, a 200GB SATA HD, DVD+-RW DL with lightscribe and all, pretty kick-ass video (for onboard video at least-the new intel 915), 7.1 ch digital audio, usb2/fw and all. media readers at the front, everything one could ask for. (I threw in an extra 200GB and 1GB of ram and it makes a GREAT development PC). That even included a legit winblows license, keyboard, mouse and even shipping!
I had been looking at making something similarly spec'ed using an Athlon64 (assembled myself) but couldn't even remotely match the price... The Athlon 64 3000+ with venice core, dfi lanparty board, decent brand ram, case, video card and all always ended up costing 1000$ (CDN) at least - using the cheapest parts on the web across the country. Yes, it would have been cheaper using an ECS board and no name everything but quality wise... I'd rather save the troubles of having a PC to fix every second day.
I don't mind paying a bit more to have something smaller, but this thing is a mere 1GHz... Even if it's more efficient (in instr/clock cycles), it's still slow and under spec'ed (no HD???)
So either you opt for: 1) slightly bigger case or 2) slow CPU, no HD, no DVD burner, slow video (haven't checked if sound is decent), plus keyboard/mouse and shipping on all parts (separately?), time to put it together (hopefully nothing DOA, then you gotta deal with that...)
Anyways. Sounds like buying parts at full retail price nowadays just isn't worth it anymore. After this I doubt I'll bother assembling a PC anytime soon. Sad thought really.
As if DRM'ed AAC is an open format. You have to use the APPLE iPod (no thanks!) or the APPLE iTunes (not in a lifetime!). How about my car mp3 player? nope. How about on my linux box (as is)? nope. How about my iRiver (and nice grado headphones)? nope. How about in winamp/foobar/etc? nope. How about streaming it over my LAN or the internet with whatever app? nope. How about editing it with any software? nope. Using it as background music in homemade movies? nope. Playing with the music player built in some of my PC's biose's? nope. How about on my cell phone? still no...
It's very open - as long as you buy either apple stuff, other apple stuff, or perhaps apple stuff. I don't want anything to do with iTunes (worst player EVER) and don't want to buy an iPod.
The burn to CD and re-rip or analog hole are poor options that will degrade quality of the already lossy file. And the un-DRM tools are not exactly a perfect solution either (against EULA? illegal? even if not, it's not exactly a great solution).
So I'll stick to covnerting my music in TRUE open non-DRM'ed format (and at the bitrate I decide) that will play with EVERY company's player, software or hardware.
Or perhaps because this is apple, DRM is non-evil and non-restrictive? It's "Digital Rights Restriction" no matter what, and it DOES get in the way, enough to make these files useless/worthless to me. Not that I'm against alternative transmission methods (far from it). I can't wait for a better way to buy music than buying CDs, but iTMS isn't the solution (DRM will most likely always be in the way unfortunately).
I wonder who's drowning in kool-aid without even noticing... How ironic!
(Bashing apple on slashdot? wow, this'll get modded -500 Troll)
Yes, nice monitors are a starting point but there's lots more to consider. KVM (USB or PS/2 - choose carefully) or VNC or TS to switch between of course.
As for several PCs, I find 3 is sufficient for me (although more isn't necessarily a bad thing):
1) main development PC: the one you do most of your work at. The fastest of all 3, enough RAM for using VMWare and heavier apps at the same time (DBs, IDEs, office suite, etc).
2) server (will never have enough HD space): to backup your code, documents and everything like that. Also as a CVS server (or prefered versionning system). Also used as FTP/web server to the "outside world" (for showing projects and neat things to clients, friends, etc). Everything else (remoting in) goes over a VPN (SSH/IPSec or whatever). DB server. Network shares. (mine also does NAT/FW/VPN duties)
3) "junk" PC: play music. Surf web (webmail, articles, code snippets, slashdot, etc). Burn CDs/DVDs. IM. Download odd stuff (drivers, updates, anything really). That's the one PC that gets loaded with all the extra "junk" and does all the miscellaneous tasks (non-development). No important data is kept on it, ready to be reghosted when it's too much of a mess. The whole purpose of it is keeping that mess away from your production PCs.
A good keyboard (I like buckling spring ones, maltrons seem nice) and mouse (or trackball or both) is always a worthwhile investment, especially since it will be shared across all PCs. RSI sucks.
And all the other stuff: dependable network switch (I don't need GbE, but I need something that does work - not a 20$ router). Big enough desk (place for drink and snacks, some paperwork, phone, etc) anf of proper height, a decent chair, good phone (5.8GHz wireless works well even if you got WiFi), some storage (shelving perhaps), and a bunch of odds and ends like coffee cup warmer plate and coffee machine (or water dispenser),... anything you normally use.
Anyways, that setup works quite nicely for me (and it'll get even more use now that I'm going back to university).
If someone is using.Net then there is something FAR better already (it's not new either): the EMAB [Exception Management Application Block], which is part of the Microsoft Enterprise Library. You get the full source code, and it has been tested extensively. They're very well documented (lots of articles on the web too) and come with samples and everything you need to get started. It's easier to setup and use (imho). Publishing exceptions take only 1 line of code (in your catch blocks), and it's far more flexible than this - it can publish your exceptions in different ways (to a database, email, etc). You can change the configuration to publish it in other ways anytime you please. It's a good, consistent and easy way of handling exceptions.
As a bonus, you get 6 extra application blocks if you want to use them: caching, configuration, cryptography, data access, logging and instrumentation, security. They're quite useful and can speedup development.
You get to log as many errors as you please, no privacy issues or any of that stuff.
No, they don't have to mess up application options at all! The way windows ships - with default settings - "eats" a LOT more than 10% of your drive, which is one thing I've been extremely annoyed with for a long time, and it's only getting worse:
-10% IE cache; there goes 50GB -10% recycle bin; another 50GB -12% system restore; another 60GB -Swapfile + hibernate files; often close to 5GB
Not counting temporary files that get left behind, which I've seen so man times hit a few 10's of gigs...
Not counting the Client Side Cache (CSC), which takes up another 10% by default if you ask your PC to sync files (and I've seen it get turned on for no apparent reason); yet another 50GB
Not counting that 500GB isn't 500 REAL GB's - it's 500 HD-maker-marketing-speak GBs, or closer to 475GB to start with (~25GB less).
So that 475GB drive by now already has over 200GB taken up. You haven't really put anything on it, and it's half full! You really don't have too much space left anymore.
What's left is beyond too easy to fill with digital photos (my camera makes 12MB files - it fills 2GB cards very fast!), video footage, digital music (mp3 or otherwise). Not to mention torrents/NG/P2P downloads or pr0n either...
Not counting that several apps not only take up a lot of place to install themselves, but take up a lot of space for their data (other web browser caches, acdsee database which grows quite fast as you view pics, GDS index files - several gigs easily... the list is like endless again).
It's quite easy to fill a terabyte really. You don't even have to try, it just happens.
I'm another of those does-it-all guys. I'm actually an electronics tech (fixing radars, radios and stuff) working in the IT field. I code a lot of stuff (asp.net [v2 now] web apps mostly, some winforms too), I am the DBA, I do all kind of odd scripting and whatever jobs, maintain tons of odd things (including a "WMI-poll" of 2000-some PCs for things like lifecycle management and such), give a hand to the helpdesk guys, I do some basic networking stuff, installations and what not. (I don't think there is anything I don't touch)
And I make ~57000$ CDN/year on 30h weeks, or about 48000$ USD or so. (It's not that much money when you're single parent)
Funny thing (for me - not for him) is, our "real" webmaster makes about half of that, with 40h weeks instead. He's more of a "content creation" type than a coder mind you.
Although I will be without a job soon due to health problems:( I'm looking into going back to university for a couple years now.
And I did buy a nvidia powered laptop (a toshiba satellite 2410 - geforce2go iirc), and that was enough to make me swear I'll never buy nvidia's junk again. *NONE* of the drivers from nvidia's site (or 3rd party like Omega's), WHQL certified or not (and with the "works with laptops" mention or not), neither the ones off windows update. Except the only old and very outdated version off toshiba's website. Every single other driver doesn't work, I get a 2 inch black border on the right side of the screen.
Perhaps ATI doesn't have the best drivers for linux, but this thing sucks big time. When there's basically no working drivers for windows (who the hell uses windows anyways, right?).
Next laptop might not have an ATI video card, but it sure WON'T be nvidia powered (I've had similar experiences with a agp geforce4ti too...). Intel is also an option...
but on XP (where stuff is supposed to work out of the box) I have to reinstall?
Nope, no need to reinstall, but I'll admit I always found that to be a bit problematic. You gotta login first before it detects/installs your new devices - which you happen to need to login in the first place.
Enabling DOS USB support may help (if the BIOS has the option - it's common nowadays), but I wish we wouldn't have to do that (then reboot and go disable it again). It has been a common enough occurence for me to always connect using ps/2 ports instead (using the green adapters) as that always works.
I doubt Vista will adress that either. There's so many small issues like that i wish they'd take care of instead of adding more eye candy, but with every new version of windows I'm disappointed.
How about having the option of inverting the mouse buttons PER DEVICE? Right now you can swap the mouse buttons, but only for all devices. That's quite annoying when left & right handers share the same PC. Instead I had to resort to physically swapping the buttons (hardwired backwards). Even the 3rd party drivers are no help (logitech and others). Again, I doubt we'll ever see a fix for that - although I'm sure lots more eyecandy is coming down the road...
The day they fix all these small issues - even if they don't introduce all kinds of new technologies and pretty things - then they'll finally have a OS that "just works" and that I actually WANT to buy.
I don't think there is an appropriate use of it indeed. I can't make a sentence with it at least. But lots of co-workers write that instead of "should have"... No need to apologize, that's just a minor misunderstanding.
As you say, it's not checked nearly enough. Especially nowadays where most people don't have their own secretary to look after things like typing, spelling and grammar. So we end up receiving documents from managers that are sometimes hard to read. It reflects upon us all - not just the individual who wrote it. I've never seen things like that in a job interview, but it wouldn't be a bad idea.
Don't get me wrong - I don't expect everyone to type super fast, have no accent, or be perfect in any way, but some of the stuff out there is just hard to parse. Not in a sentence structure way (I can be blamed for that one), but people using anything that sounds close enough to how they pronounce it.
I didn't say it would specifically catch those, but rather that they don't know that such things exist (or don't think about using them at least). The examples and the checker were unrelated (they were in different paragraphs, too).
I'm sure most people understood my point, no need to nitpick.
You'd be surprised to see how many very well paid guys I work with that would fail basic grammar tests. English isn't my mother tongue but it doesn't prevent them from turning to me for help spelling simple words...
The common they're/their/there, its/it's, should have/should of spring to mind...
Yet it doesn't prevent them from having a job that pays nicely. I find it looks highly unprofessional, most of them don't seem to know about spell checkers either.
Plus, I've people that weren't rich that had expensive things like this. They just overspend then eat a lot of kraft dinner... Sad but it happens.
2 competing and non compatible formats (unlike DVD + and - R which work in *most* stuff regardless). Perhaps some studios will release exclusively on one format, which means less titles to watch overall, no matter which you buy.
Heavy DRM (since CSS has been broken on DVDs they've became extremely popular, well, that and cheap burners). That won't exactly lure people into buying either systems either. Even if it's not for pirating, the DRM will ensure you have basically no way of making use of your "fair use" rights (can't make backups or anything).
New connections. Everybody who bought previous generations of HDTVs (pioneers in a way) get to buy a new one to watch contents. They can't exactly be happy about it. Some won't bother. Hopefully the same doesn't happen again if DisplayPort becomes mainstream (replacing HDMI).
Plus, unless you live in the USA and get OTA feeds, there is very little to watch. Every city I lived at on the canada-usa border had no OTA feeds available (blocked by mountains or what not). This makes HDTV a even less attractive proposal for other countries. There's very little for us to watch (a handful of channels over cable or satellite - lots of it is just upscaled too). Not exactly a motivation to fork over $$$ for a HDTV. The only hopes we had to have something to watch were these new formats, and this format war will slow slow down adoption even further...
None of the channels we watch at home are even planned to broadcast HD anytime soon. Just because some channels are in HD won't make them more interesting. I've had a lot of interest into HDTV (and HTPCs) for a number of years, but the closer we get there, the less appealing it gets. I'm slowly starting not to care anymore, I'm not even sure I want a HDTV anymore. I can walk into a store, look at them and feel mostly indifferent whereas I used to be somewhat excited about it... That can't be good.
Plus, if it's like the old casettes -> AudioCD and VHS -> DVD, HDTV movies will cost even more (I think it's safe to assume they will), even if they cost less to produce somehow. As if 30$+ DVDs aren't expensive enough. At those prices, I'm renting online (ala netflix) and nearly buying no movies. They must expect to sell re-releases of previous movies in the new formats too. Even tough you bought the VHS version, and the DVD version - both at full price - you'll still pay full retail price for the new format (even though you've technically speaking paid to watch it - just that the new copy has slightly higher quality). I wish the **AA models weren't based on selling us the same stuff over and over again like that.
That's something we don't often hear about when people talk about computer PSUs, but here we do get a lot of them.
I keep hearing people recommending those nice and expensive power supplies - just as I have been using for a few years, but when it comes to an area with a lot of brownouts... It doesn't matter what one buys anymore - they all fail miserably when it hits. Everytime it happens we loose a few at work. Every ~6 months I get to replace one at home no matter what brand it was. I'm getting the same lifespan off the cheap ones. UPS'es aren't really helping either (not the cheap "standby" kind at least).
Power outages never seem to cause much problems, but brownouts... I hate 'em.
Also, everytime it happens, I have to unplug all the cables on my KVM switch at work or none of the PCs plugged on it will boot (I only get a blinking power light).
These ads are not meant to make a "healthy" person buy their products. They're meant to let people know they exist (for those who need it), try to "educate" the masses as an effort to get rid of the stigmas associated with those kind of things (make it seem normal/common).
There's people out there with erectile dysfunction, incontinence and such problems that think they're the only ones with it and too ashamed to seek help from their docs. With these ads (and the increasing public awareness) people tend to be more open to discuss it with their doctors. These problems affect millions of people's lifes and nobody really wants to talk openly about the problems, sometimes leading to other problems - marital problems, isolation, depression... Most people don't realize how common these conditions are and how hard it can be.
I don't recall seeing viagra ads saying it'll make a normal sex life better or anything like it. The fact they use mass-marketing/advertizing methods doesn't make it suggest that either, it's more like half a public sensitization/awareness raising campaign and half a product ad. Combining both works best: people will finally seek help from their doctors, and most likely end up using the advertized products they know. Indeed, it increases their sales, but it does increase quality of life of the users.
I'd rather see those ads more often, and less annoying pepto bismol ads or women sanitary products ads (and both seem to play during mealtimes).
This is a blantantly uninformted opinion..NET is anything BUT going away. Heck, the new.Net framework 2.0 is out November 7th, VS.Net 2005 (and it's "express" counterparts), VWD 2005, SQL Server 2005 in the same time frame (some the same day).
This brings us ASP.Net 2.0, which is so much of an improvement over the old ASP.Net, it's just amazing. Honestly I didn't care much for ASP.Net until I tried v2.0. It amazed me FAR more than everything else I've seen (like RoR, Zope, Plone, etc). Its good enough that I don't even wanna use anything else anymore (asp/php/whatever? no thanks!)
It's anything but deprecated/on it's way out or being replaced by something better (much the inverse - other platforms are adopting it - ever heard of Mono? I guess not.). It's currently THE best platform to develop for (web wise) and that has the best tools (VS.Net 2005 rocks).
Clearly, you have no idea at all about all this. No wonder you posted as AC.
Re:Give me RAID 5
on
Basics of RAID
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· Score: 2, Interesting
In the last while we've seen just about everything get incorporated on motherboards: USB2, Firewire, multichannel digital audio, GB Ethernet and everything else. I'm hoping RAID5 will be part of the next features to be added to most boards too. There's really not much else I'd want besides that.
There's always software RAID5 too. It would sound like it's slower, but I'm not 100% sure about that (less cpu load for hw raid is pretty much a given though). The other consideration is what happens in a controler failure situation. It might actually be easier to get the software RAID5 to work in a different computer (hw raid will need a new and identical controller to get to the data, which may take a while to get-if it's still available).
Actually, I've spent about $350CDN on keyboards (just for my home PCs) in the last couple of years. Turns out most of the "nice" features most have are mostly useless.
The latest one is a Microsoft Wireless Comfort Keyboard - it's not split, but it has that slight "bend" in the rows of keys (hard to explain). That feels quite nice. Again, lots of keys I don't care for, and some annoying shortcomings that (F-Lock can't be enabled by default and keeps turning off; no insert key,...) that none of them seem to fix. It came with some mouse that scrolls both ways.
What I still dislike the most about it? The feel of the keys. I'm still wishing it was a buckling spring keyboard, and I'm very hesitant of swapping the brand new keyboard for an old Dell AT101W instead (gotta justify the expense somehow). Those buckling sprig keyboards (that Dell one at least) is just a bit oversized too, and I've never found a keyboard that felt so nice (and where you can type as fast and error/typo-free).
I've been looking at the maltron keyboards seriously, but the price is quite high (I've spent almost as much, but it was by increments of ~100$ so it didn't seem as bad). 550$ CDN for a keyboard, plus shipping and customs clearance... Ouch! At that price you're not buying 1 per computer either. And I'm wondering how their switches (Cherry MX) feel like, compared to the ones I'm used to.
If you want a cheap and pretty good buckling spring keyboard, those Dell AT101W aren't hard to find and go for ~20$, yet will still work for a long time. Beats every single expensive Microsoft/Logitech keyboard I've had/used/bought in the past 5 years.
As for keyboards not becoming obsolete, well, some PCs are starting to ship w/o ps/2 ports (and KVM switches are starting to make the transition as well).
As for people not putting a lot of money on keyboards, I suppose that's because they either don't type much (some people only seem to ever touch their mouse), or never tried a good one. Or perhaps it's just me - I don't mind using an older system (especially video card) with better input devices and such, as I'm no gamer at all. It feels like most people care more about an extra 2fps in whatever game over a lot of things...
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. I only wish! Even us in Canada don't have it anywhere near that good. I have one of the fastest ISPs here with 10mbit, but it costs 50$ USD a month, another 30$ for VoIP, and TV is another 25$ for ~30 channels.
:p
Half the speed, and 3x the price overall... And I thought i was lucky
Most of the spam comes from the USA. It's a known fact (they send 42% of it IIRC, something like 4x more than the next country on the list).
If you were to be cutoff the rest of the internet, you'd most likely have more spam than ever.
... and almost on all points.
.dwg files natively, autocad addons and everything). There's a bunch of others really (SmartSketch, Graphite, LinuxCAD, VariCAD, Cycas, ...) including a lot of other well known/established ones (Solidworks, etc) and other specialized ones. Even QCad (for 2D stuff) surprised me. Lots of people nowadays are finding products that work better for them than CAD software too (like SmartDraw or Visio). There's never been so many cad programs out there, and (imho) there's less of a reason to stick to AutoCAD than ever. The only thing that keeps me using AutoCAD is because I already know it...
Microsoft in the 80/90's didn't really clone small utilities and bindle things quite like they are now. Only in it's recent versions you see things like built-in zip file support, a picture viewer (the "preview" - not paint), a fax client, a media player and all that stuff. They're getting into EVERYTHING lately, often making poor clones/copies/versions of it. They make software in just about every field: digital imaging, finances, encyclopedias, server stuff, office suites, programming, AV encoding/streaming/etc. Not to mention the hardware side: gaming consoles, PDAs and cell phones, rebranded hardware of all kinds. (And other stuff like search engines/portals/webmail...) 10 years ago there was dos, windows, office, visual studio and very little more. They've never been into so many fields at once, trying to take everybody's business, it's getting a bit scary...
AutoCAD, no alternatives? There's more alternatives to it than EVER. Intellicad is a well known one (uses
That's one thing that kinda worries me. One could make a simple USB device pretending to be a fingerprint reader using a microcontroller, using the same Device_ID/Product_ID as a real USB fingerprint reader (preferably a common one that's widely supported), that would send pre-recorded biometric data from a flash ram. It sounds pretty simple to do. I don't know in what format that data is stored (similar to some image file or very long hash I imagine), and once someone has a copy of it (if it's like an image file then it would be possible to fabricate one from fingerprints you leave everywhere), then they'd basically have a copy of what's meant to be proof of your identity... It sounds quite simple to intercept or copy the biometric data (stored inside some DB - risk of SQL injection and other threats). It doesn't sound exactly secure to me.
Too many passwords? Definately, especially if you work in IT, I have dozens of them to remember... Even for home stuff I got dozens: different forums (web related, IT related, AV related, etc), news sites like /., dozens of online stores, email, etc... It's just too much for my memory, so instead of using the same password everywhere or writing them down or such, I resorted to use a decent password manager. I've picked KeyPass (worth every penny they ask IMHO), but there's lots of others - including some F/OSS ones like KeePass or Oubliette, you can even find a bunch on sourceforge, and they're usually quite simple programs to "tweak or enhance" if they're not exactly like you wish they were (add new cryptos, GUI changes, new features, etc). I've looked at the code of a couple and it was nicely done, good quality code, pretty secure stuff. It would be quite simple to make a basic one from scratch too (using some of the high level languages with very complete libraries and frameworks like we have nowadays), the DPAPI could be useful too.
Ideally it should run without being installed (and without too many dependancies), off a memory stick or PDA for portability. Some browsers have password managers, but it's a partial solution (only good for websites, and only work in this specific browser on this very PC), and I have problems trusting some of them (IE) to keep passwords secure at all.
Not sure what's out there for linux though...
Thankfully for neurosurgeons they don't work in IT, or they'd be underqualified for most jobs. The requirements for a short contract job to write a "hello world" program at close to minimum wage (and without extras like appreciation or respect) is often along the lines of:
35 years of experience in C, C++ (as well as D E and F!), Java, DotNet, senior DBA skills, exact desired skillset including a half dozen weird apps no one's ever heard of before, and at least a BSc. You'll get to work 80h/week or more (not OT pay), with people that hardly know their left from their right, the old workplace politics, and management will change their requirements every 3 days, and still expect you to finish in time. Having all of these 53 certs is a bonus.
It would be funny if it wasn't so close to reality.
I bought a readily asembled PC at bestbuy (yeah i know!) 2 weeks ago for this much. It's much smaller than any of my normal towers (in every dimension), quite acceptable. Looks better than every PC I've had built with 150$ cases, better build than all these "nice" systems I've built (with expensive cases, asus boards and all)... Came with a P4 3.06GHz, 512MB of DDR2, a 200GB SATA HD, DVD+-RW DL with lightscribe and all, pretty kick-ass video (for onboard video at least-the new intel 915), 7.1 ch digital audio, usb2/fw and all. media readers at the front, everything one could ask for. (I threw in an extra 200GB and 1GB of ram and it makes a GREAT development PC). That even included a legit winblows license, keyboard, mouse and even shipping!
I had been looking at making something similarly spec'ed using an Athlon64 (assembled myself) but couldn't even remotely match the price... The Athlon 64 3000+ with venice core, dfi lanparty board, decent brand ram, case, video card and all always ended up costing 1000$ (CDN) at least - using the cheapest parts on the web across the country. Yes, it would have been cheaper using an ECS board and no name everything but quality wise... I'd rather save the troubles of having a PC to fix every second day.
I don't mind paying a bit more to have something smaller, but this thing is a mere 1GHz... Even if it's more efficient (in instr/clock cycles), it's still slow and under spec'ed (no HD???)
So either you opt for:
1) slightly bigger case
or
2) slow CPU, no HD, no DVD burner, slow video (haven't checked if sound is decent), plus keyboard/mouse and shipping on all parts (separately?), time to put it together (hopefully nothing DOA, then you gotta deal with that...)
Anyways. Sounds like buying parts at full retail price nowadays just isn't worth it anymore. After this I doubt I'll bother assembling a PC anytime soon. Sad thought really.
As if DRM'ed AAC is an open format. You have to use the APPLE iPod (no thanks!) or the APPLE iTunes (not in a lifetime!). How about my car mp3 player? nope. How about on my linux box (as is)? nope. How about my iRiver (and nice grado headphones)? nope. How about in winamp/foobar/etc? nope. How about streaming it over my LAN or the internet with whatever app? nope. How about editing it with any software? nope. Using it as background music in homemade movies? nope. Playing with the music player built in some of my PC's biose's? nope. How about on my cell phone? still no...
It's very open - as long as you buy either apple stuff, other apple stuff, or perhaps apple stuff. I don't want anything to do with iTunes (worst player EVER) and don't want to buy an iPod.
The burn to CD and re-rip or analog hole are poor options that will degrade quality of the already lossy file. And the un-DRM tools are not exactly a perfect solution either (against EULA? illegal? even if not, it's not exactly a great solution).
So I'll stick to covnerting my music in TRUE open non-DRM'ed format (and at the bitrate I decide) that will play with EVERY company's player, software or hardware.
Or perhaps because this is apple, DRM is non-evil and non-restrictive? It's "Digital Rights Restriction" no matter what, and it DOES get in the way, enough to make these files useless/worthless to me. Not that I'm against alternative transmission methods (far from it). I can't wait for a better way to buy music than buying CDs, but iTMS isn't the solution (DRM will most likely always be in the way unfortunately).
I wonder who's drowning in kool-aid without even noticing... How ironic!
(Bashing apple on slashdot? wow, this'll get modded -500 Troll)
Yes, nice monitors are a starting point but there's lots more to consider. KVM (USB or PS/2 - choose carefully) or VNC or TS to switch between of course.
... anything you normally use.
As for several PCs, I find 3 is sufficient for me (although more isn't necessarily a bad thing):
1) main development PC: the one you do most of your work at. The fastest of all 3, enough RAM for using VMWare and heavier apps at the same time (DBs, IDEs, office suite, etc).
2) server (will never have enough HD space): to backup your code, documents and everything like that. Also as a CVS server (or prefered versionning system). Also used as FTP/web server to the "outside world" (for showing projects and neat things to clients, friends, etc). Everything else (remoting in) goes over a VPN (SSH/IPSec or whatever). DB server. Network shares. (mine also does NAT/FW/VPN duties)
3) "junk" PC: play music. Surf web (webmail, articles, code snippets, slashdot, etc). Burn CDs/DVDs. IM. Download odd stuff (drivers, updates, anything really). That's the one PC that gets loaded with all the extra "junk" and does all the miscellaneous tasks (non-development). No important data is kept on it, ready to be reghosted when it's too much of a mess. The whole purpose of it is keeping that mess away from your production PCs.
A good keyboard (I like buckling spring ones, maltrons seem nice) and mouse (or trackball or both) is always a worthwhile investment, especially since it will be shared across all PCs. RSI sucks.
And all the other stuff: dependable network switch (I don't need GbE, but I need something that does work - not a 20$ router). Big enough desk (place for drink and snacks, some paperwork, phone, etc) anf of proper height, a decent chair, good phone (5.8GHz wireless works well even if you got WiFi), some storage (shelving perhaps), and a bunch of odds and ends like coffee cup warmer plate and coffee machine (or water dispenser),
Anyways, that setup works quite nicely for me (and it'll get even more use now that I'm going back to university).
If someone is using .Net then there is something FAR better already (it's not new either): the EMAB [Exception Management Application Block], which is part of the Microsoft Enterprise Library. You get the full source code, and it has been tested extensively. They're very well documented (lots of articles on the web too) and come with samples and everything you need to get started. It's easier to setup and use (imho). Publishing exceptions take only 1 line of code (in your catch blocks), and it's far more flexible than this - it can publish your exceptions in different ways (to a database, email, etc). You can change the configuration to publish it in other ways anytime you please. It's a good, consistent and easy way of handling exceptions.
As a bonus, you get 6 extra application blocks if you want to use them: caching, configuration, cryptography, data access, logging and instrumentation, security. They're quite useful and can speedup development.
You get to log as many errors as you please, no privacy issues or any of that stuff.
You only wish that flash memory in that USB2 memory sticks were anywhere NEAR that speed. USB memory sticks are quite slow really.
No, they don't have to mess up application options at all! The way windows ships - with default settings - "eats" a LOT more than 10% of your drive, which is one thing I've been extremely annoyed with for a long time, and it's only getting worse:
-10% IE cache; there goes 50GB
-10% recycle bin; another 50GB
-12% system restore; another 60GB
-Swapfile + hibernate files; often close to 5GB
Not counting temporary files that get left behind, which I've seen so man times hit a few 10's of gigs...
Not counting the Client Side Cache (CSC), which takes up another 10% by default if you ask your PC to sync files (and I've seen it get turned on for no apparent reason); yet another 50GB
Not counting that 500GB isn't 500 REAL GB's - it's 500 HD-maker-marketing-speak GBs, or closer to 475GB to start with (~25GB less).
So that 475GB drive by now already has over 200GB taken up. You haven't really put anything on it, and it's half full! You really don't have too much space left anymore.
What's left is beyond too easy to fill with digital photos (my camera makes 12MB files - it fills 2GB cards very fast!), video footage, digital music (mp3 or otherwise). Not to mention torrents/NG/P2P downloads or pr0n either...
Not counting that several apps not only take up a lot of place to install themselves, but take up a lot of space for their data (other web browser caches, acdsee database which grows quite fast as you view pics, GDS index files - several gigs easily... the list is like endless again).
It's quite easy to fill a terabyte really. You don't even have to try, it just happens.
13$/hr? Ouch...
:( I'm looking into going back to university for a couple years now.
I'm another of those does-it-all guys. I'm actually an electronics tech (fixing radars, radios and stuff) working in the IT field. I code a lot of stuff (asp.net [v2 now] web apps mostly, some winforms too), I am the DBA, I do all kind of odd scripting and whatever jobs, maintain tons of odd things (including a "WMI-poll" of 2000-some PCs for things like lifecycle management and such), give a hand to the helpdesk guys, I do some basic networking stuff, installations and what not. (I don't think there is anything I don't touch)
And I make ~57000$ CDN/year on 30h weeks, or about 48000$ USD or so. (It's not that much money when you're single parent)
Funny thing (for me - not for him) is, our "real" webmaster makes about half of that, with 40h weeks instead. He's more of a "content creation" type than a coder mind you.
Although I will be without a job soon due to health problems
And I did buy a nvidia powered laptop (a toshiba satellite 2410 - geforce2go iirc), and that was enough to make me swear I'll never buy nvidia's junk again. *NONE* of the drivers from nvidia's site (or 3rd party like Omega's), WHQL certified or not (and with the "works with laptops" mention or not), neither the ones off windows update. Except the only old and very outdated version off toshiba's website. Every single other driver doesn't work, I get a 2 inch black border on the right side of the screen.
Perhaps ATI doesn't have the best drivers for linux, but this thing sucks big time. When there's basically no working drivers for windows (who the hell uses windows anyways, right?).
Next laptop might not have an ATI video card, but it sure WON'T be nvidia powered (I've had similar experiences with a agp geforce4ti too...). Intel is also an option...
but on XP (where stuff is supposed to work out of the box) I have to reinstall?
Nope, no need to reinstall, but I'll admit I always found that to be a bit problematic. You gotta login first before it detects/installs your new devices - which you happen to need to login in the first place.
Enabling DOS USB support may help (if the BIOS has the option - it's common nowadays), but I wish we wouldn't have to do that (then reboot and go disable it again). It has been a common enough occurence for me to always connect using ps/2 ports instead (using the green adapters) as that always works.
I doubt Vista will adress that either. There's so many small issues like that i wish they'd take care of instead of adding more eye candy, but with every new version of windows I'm disappointed.
How about having the option of inverting the mouse buttons PER DEVICE? Right now you can swap the mouse buttons, but only for all devices. That's quite annoying when left & right handers share the same PC. Instead I had to resort to physically swapping the buttons (hardwired backwards). Even the 3rd party drivers are no help (logitech and others). Again, I doubt we'll ever see a fix for that - although I'm sure lots more eyecandy is coming down the road...
The day they fix all these small issues - even if they don't introduce all kinds of new technologies and pretty things - then they'll finally have a OS that "just works" and that I actually WANT to buy.
It almost sounded like the drive can write 1TB to DVD-like media. Nope, it's just some Tivo-like box with two 500GB HDs and a normal burner.
Nothing to see here...
I don't think there is an appropriate use of it indeed. I can't make a sentence with it at least. But lots of co-workers write that instead of "should have"... No need to apologize, that's just a minor misunderstanding.
As you say, it's not checked nearly enough. Especially nowadays where most people don't have their own secretary to look after things like typing, spelling and grammar. So we end up receiving documents from managers that are sometimes hard to read. It reflects upon us all - not just the individual who wrote it. I've never seen things like that in a job interview, but it wouldn't be a bad idea.
Don't get me wrong - I don't expect everyone to type super fast, have no accent, or be perfect in any way, but some of the stuff out there is just hard to parse. Not in a sentence structure way (I can be blamed for that one), but people using anything that sounds close enough to how they pronounce it.
I didn't say it would specifically catch those, but rather that they don't know that such things exist (or don't think about using them at least). The examples and the checker were unrelated (they were in different paragraphs, too).
I'm sure most people understood my point, no need to nitpick.
You'd be surprised to see how many very well paid guys I work with that would fail basic grammar tests. English isn't my mother tongue but it doesn't prevent them from turning to me for help spelling simple words...
The common they're/their/there, its/it's, should have/should of spring to mind...
Yet it doesn't prevent them from having a job that pays nicely. I find it looks highly unprofessional, most of them don't seem to know about spell checkers either.
Plus, I've people that weren't rich that had expensive things like this. They just overspend then eat a lot of kraft dinner... Sad but it happens.
Bad for us overall.
2 competing and non compatible formats (unlike DVD + and - R which work in *most* stuff regardless). Perhaps some studios will release exclusively on one format, which means less titles to watch overall, no matter which you buy.
Heavy DRM (since CSS has been broken on DVDs they've became extremely popular, well, that and cheap burners). That won't exactly lure people into buying either systems either. Even if it's not for pirating, the DRM will ensure you have basically no way of making use of your "fair use" rights (can't make backups or anything).
New connections. Everybody who bought previous generations of HDTVs (pioneers in a way) get to buy a new one to watch contents. They can't exactly be happy about it. Some won't bother. Hopefully the same doesn't happen again if DisplayPort becomes mainstream (replacing HDMI).
Plus, unless you live in the USA and get OTA feeds, there is very little to watch. Every city I lived at on the canada-usa border had no OTA feeds available (blocked by mountains or what not). This makes HDTV a even less attractive proposal for other countries. There's very little for us to watch (a handful of channels over cable or satellite - lots of it is just upscaled too). Not exactly a motivation to fork over $$$ for a HDTV. The only hopes we had to have something to watch were these new formats, and this format war will slow slow down adoption even further...
None of the channels we watch at home are even planned to broadcast HD anytime soon. Just because some channels are in HD won't make them more interesting. I've had a lot of interest into HDTV (and HTPCs) for a number of years, but the closer we get there, the less appealing it gets. I'm slowly starting not to care anymore, I'm not even sure I want a HDTV anymore. I can walk into a store, look at them and feel mostly indifferent whereas I used to be somewhat excited about it... That can't be good.
Plus, if it's like the old casettes -> AudioCD and VHS -> DVD, HDTV movies will cost even more (I think it's safe to assume they will), even if they cost less to produce somehow. As if 30$+ DVDs aren't expensive enough. At those prices, I'm renting online (ala netflix) and nearly buying no movies. They must expect to sell re-releases of previous movies in the new formats too. Even tough you bought the VHS version, and the DVD version - both at full price - you'll still pay full retail price for the new format (even though you've technically speaking paid to watch it - just that the new copy has slightly higher quality). I wish the **AA models weren't based on selling us the same stuff over and over again like that.
That's something we don't often hear about when people talk about computer PSUs, but here we do get a lot of them.
I keep hearing people recommending those nice and expensive power supplies - just as I have been using for a few years, but when it comes to an area with a lot of brownouts... It doesn't matter what one buys anymore - they all fail miserably when it hits. Everytime it happens we loose a few at work. Every ~6 months I get to replace one at home no matter what brand it was. I'm getting the same lifespan off the cheap ones. UPS'es aren't really helping either (not the cheap "standby" kind at least).
Power outages never seem to cause much problems, but brownouts... I hate 'em.
Also, everytime it happens, I have to unplug all the cables on my KVM switch at work or none of the PCs plugged on it will boot (I only get a blinking power light).
These ads are not meant to make a "healthy" person buy their products. They're meant to let people know they exist (for those who need it), try to "educate" the masses as an effort to get rid of the stigmas associated with those kind of things (make it seem normal/common).
There's people out there with erectile dysfunction, incontinence and such problems that think they're the only ones with it and too ashamed to seek help from their docs. With these ads (and the increasing public awareness) people tend to be more open to discuss it with their doctors. These problems affect millions of people's lifes and nobody really wants to talk openly about the problems, sometimes leading to other problems - marital problems, isolation, depression... Most people don't realize how common these conditions are and how hard it can be.
I don't recall seeing viagra ads saying it'll make a normal sex life better or anything like it. The fact they use mass-marketing/advertizing methods doesn't make it suggest that either, it's more like half a public sensitization/awareness raising campaign and half a product ad. Combining both works best: people will finally seek help from their doctors, and most likely end up using the advertized products they know. Indeed, it increases their sales, but it does increase quality of life of the users.
I'd rather see those ads more often, and less annoying pepto bismol ads or women sanitary products ads (and both seem to play during mealtimes).
This is a blantantly uninformted opinion. .NET is anything BUT going away. Heck, the new .Net framework 2.0 is out November 7th, VS.Net 2005 (and it's "express" counterparts), VWD 2005, SQL Server 2005 in the same time frame (some the same day).
This brings us ASP.Net 2.0, which is so much of an improvement over the old ASP.Net, it's just amazing. Honestly I didn't care much for ASP.Net until I tried v2.0. It amazed me FAR more than everything else I've seen (like RoR, Zope, Plone, etc). Its good enough that I don't even wanna use anything else anymore (asp/php/whatever? no thanks!)
It's anything but deprecated/on it's way out or being replaced by something better (much the inverse - other platforms are adopting it - ever heard of Mono? I guess not.). It's currently THE best platform to develop for (web wise) and that has the best tools (VS.Net 2005 rocks).
See for yourself!
Clearly, you have no idea at all about all this. No wonder you posted as AC.
In the last while we've seen just about everything get incorporated on motherboards: USB2, Firewire, multichannel digital audio, GB Ethernet and everything else. I'm hoping RAID5 will be part of the next features to be added to most boards too. There's really not much else I'd want besides that.
There's always software RAID5 too. It would sound like it's slower, but I'm not 100% sure about that (less cpu load for hw raid is pretty much a given though). The other consideration is what happens in a controler failure situation. It might actually be easier to get the software RAID5 to work in a different computer (hw raid will need a new and identical controller to get to the data, which may take a while to get-if it's still available).
Actually, I've spent about $350CDN on keyboards (just for my home PCs) in the last couple of years. Turns out most of the "nice" features most have are mostly useless.
...) that none of them seem to fix. It came with some mouse that scrolls both ways.
The latest one is a Microsoft Wireless Comfort Keyboard - it's not split, but it has that slight "bend" in the rows of keys (hard to explain). That feels quite nice. Again, lots of keys I don't care for, and some annoying shortcomings that (F-Lock can't be enabled by default and keeps turning off; no insert key,
What I still dislike the most about it? The feel of the keys. I'm still wishing it was a buckling spring keyboard, and I'm very hesitant of swapping the brand new keyboard for an old Dell AT101W instead (gotta justify the expense somehow). Those buckling sprig keyboards (that Dell one at least) is just a bit oversized too, and I've never found a keyboard that felt so nice (and where you can type as fast and error/typo-free).
I've been looking at the maltron keyboards seriously, but the price is quite high (I've spent almost as much, but it was by increments of ~100$ so it didn't seem as bad). 550$ CDN for a keyboard, plus shipping and customs clearance... Ouch! At that price you're not buying 1 per computer either. And I'm wondering how their switches (Cherry MX) feel like, compared to the ones I'm used to.
If you want a cheap and pretty good buckling spring keyboard, those Dell AT101W aren't hard to find and go for ~20$, yet will still work for a long time. Beats every single expensive Microsoft/Logitech keyboard I've had/used/bought in the past 5 years.
As for keyboards not becoming obsolete, well, some PCs are starting to ship w/o ps/2 ports (and KVM switches are starting to make the transition as well).
As for people not putting a lot of money on keyboards, I suppose that's because they either don't type much (some people only seem to ever touch their mouse), or never tried a good one. Or perhaps it's just me - I don't mind using an older system (especially video card) with better input devices and such, as I'm no gamer at all. It feels like most people care more about an extra 2fps in whatever game over a lot of things...