IDE drives have another obstacle to overcome now, one entirely self created: Trust. The trust you put in SCSI drives is well earned, with IDE on the other hand the mistrust is also well earned!
A good server setup using something like RAID 1 or RAID 5, would use disks from different manufaturers to avoid the potential of a bad batch bringing the whole lot down. Therefore minimising your primary concern!
On the other hand with IDE even that wont help you today. I had a client recently (12 months ago) who opted for IDE RAID over SCSI to save some money, they setup two servers each with three IDE RAID 1 mirror sets (6 x 40gig drives each, 12 drives in total), note that was against my recommendation of 3 SCSI drives in RAID 5 in each server (at double the cost!). Anyway 12 months down the track they have had I kid you not 14 DRIVES FAIL! That's 115% failure rate!
That kind of reputation will mean IDE drives stay out of my servers for a LONG time!
This 'evidence' does not disprove the Big Band, in fact it just attempts to answer what is going to eventually finnish off this universe, there by completing the theory. It doesnt attempt to answer anything more about the Big Bang itself, but just proposes a solution to a question that is usually asked when talking about the Big Band, that is; "If the universe started in a Bang where will it end?"
Much of your question is not relevant in this discussion, as the Big Bang theory attempts to explain what happens in our universe, not before it!:) If you want to read about theories explaing what happened before the beginning of time (as we know it) a nice place to start is reading about M-Theory and the Multiverse (As opposed to universe).
I really dont think a non-smoker could understand so easily (i asume that of the last poster).. I've just quit after 6 years of smoking, it's not easy to do. But you talked about smoking for the buzz? Well the last "buzz" I got from smoking was in high school (6 years ago)! When you're addicted to smoking just like being dependant on alcohol (for eg) smoking simply gives you a "normal" feeling, if you still consider that a buzz your kidding yourself!
If I hadn't been successful quitting with patches this would have been a great option for me, and honestly I would even be tempted now if offered one of these things, socially at least (at the pub). The nicotine addiction is terrible, especially for those (ex)smokers like me who were addicted to it more than the actual habbit. For me loosing the habbit was nothing, overcoming the chemical withdrawals was a nightmare!:(
So why isn't anybody bitching when Sony does it? *cough*Square*cough*
The key here is MS is a proven monopoly in it's industry (and that the Computer and Game industry are very closely related), if you don't see the problem with MS doing this then maybe think about if the US Government bought up every game company out there, maybe because some (slightly more) crazy Repulicans wanted to: "get rid of those nasty violent games" or something! What would happen then? As soon as the industry is controlled by one body then competition stops, innovation stops and prices go up! It's clear what that means to us gamers!
This is a well known economic concept, and it is very much the same if it is a monopolistic company or a controlling government. Many would argue that the former is far worse!
Is that what you want? Because incase you didnt see it that is why so many people are against this kind of behaviour unchecked by Microsoft. Yes sure Sony could one day be doing quite the same thing, maybe they already have. But they don't hold a monopoly and they don't abuse one.
On a final note, if the XBOX had anything at all to do with MS's monopoly, don't you think it'd do a little more than just play games?
"Again it relates to Microsoft using money obtained from one monopoly and using it to crush competition in another which is illegal under the sherman anti trust act."
This is a very poor interpretation of the law - it's a waste of time to even comment further.
Sony is a megacorporation that has Billions to invest in it's gaming division too. It's a very fair playing field.
The fact is though, Microsoft has been proven in court to be a Monopoly, and more importantly to have abused that position! It may be a simple interpretation of the Sherman Act but essentially the act is designed to stop monopolies from growing and spreading, especially into other markets!
Why doesn't Outlook Express show the BCC field, though? Have to turn on 'Rich headers' to get it...
Doesn't the meaning of BCC being Blind Carbon Copy explain why Outlook doesnt display the field? Odd that you can see it at all, I thought it was hidden automatically by the server?
Let's firstly ignore the fact that the whole idea behind this "concept" is that you can after purchasing this car go out and stick on that "Authentic 1972 Mustang" skin, including annoying noise generator for the complete package.
But when it comes to "what normal people want" as you claim to know, I disagree that all of those people outside my window (city office Sydney / Aust) driving the tiny Honda's, Kia's, Holden's and whatever were so how forced into making those purchases. The fact is for a significant proportion of the population here in Australia and no doubt over there in the US, a small compact car is the only smart choice!
Now I believe Australia has a very similar obsession to you American's with big cars and gas guzzlers, probably not so extreme though, but this concept is by far the best new idea i have read about when it comes to fuel cell cars, I can see that if this does take off it would please just about everyone! And well anyone left over in 10 years in their Original '72 Mustang, well they can happily go on paying $15.69 / litre for their fuel. That wont bother me..
Ignoring the 'ugly' remark (that's entirely subjective, not that I dont agree with you) this design looks like every other new Honda / Renault / Hyuandai (See Renault Scenic for eg) that hit's the road today! I don't see anything new here except for the fact that it makes optimal use of the lack of engine compartment. It is a concept car after all, so it needs to make obvious the new concepts..
Of course the fact that the whole car is essentially "skinnable" says a lot.
Just on the sauna thing, as a happy Australian Finn, I find it disgusting how cold you people up North have your sauna's! It should be illegal to have 70deg sauna's! *shudder*!
Last time i went back, it was such a shock considering we here in Sydney wont go in our sauna till it hit's 110! (Yes that's Degrees Celsius you wimps!)
heh.. Unfortunatly the beer gets pretty hot quickly at those temps!:)
A group of friends and I just did this very same thing, (before coming across this site that is) we dusted off the old GUS and original Pentium, and captured to odiv'x 40+ old PC demos! From Panic and Crystal Dreams to the whole Robot saga from Orange!:) The one thing i have to say about what mind candy did, is that they left out far far too many..:( Well limited time space and all that, i just dont see the point in the "new school" disk they have?? (Why when they mostly will run under winxp do you need them on a dvd?)
Anyway i would love to put together all the demos we did either on a web site or dvd for download, but at an average of 30MB per avi file I dont have the space for that..:(
Anyway I highly recommend doing it yourself (dig up that old 486!) I tell you i havn't felt such nostalgia ever in my life than what i felt to finnally see Second Reality roll up one last time on the pc.:)
The rest of the world. Yes that means everyone but you North American's (and some lucky Europeans) who currently have all the options in the world for PVR / DVR's might not get the best spin off from this release. But people like me in poor old Australia who currently has no option what so ever for a PVR.:( Even all the opensource options are made in the Northern Hemisphere, so poor people like me would have to somewhere find (steal) their programming info..:(
For this reason thank god MS has come to the party, finally a big player that will push a "Good Thing(TM)" world-wide. Once they have set the stage all us Open Source freaks can pilfer their work into our free alternatives.:)
Of course only if Microsoft is planning on introducing this in Australia, hello?? Ohh, come on.. I really need to get out of this 3rd world country.:(
I really don't understand how you see a fault, especially when you say a problem is the constant revision of the theory. By definition of "theory" it is not fact, so by definition it is open to revision and reworking. If you believe that it must be false as a result of nothing more than the fact that it is in constant debate and therefore revision, then I would say you are excluding not just the theory but they whole scientific process. Now that unfortunatly would be called ignorance. (absolutly no flame bait intended)
The accuracy of this "finding" though is laughable to me to, basically what they have said is: "we find with 95% certainty that everyone else could be right!" heh. But regardless, the method of refining one important aspect of the whole big bang theory, that being the age of the universe, will continue for a long time. It is unlikely that we will be able to define such things without probably a lot more hard evidence, something that we dont have yet, and hey we may never have it until someone goes out there and plants a flag at "The end of the Universe".:)
My personal belief goes well beyond us being able to easily 'define' these things, at least for now, something along the lines of current M-Theory and the Multiverse concept sounds almost strange enough for me.
Although I agree with just about all of what you said, I most definatly agree that comparisons to mathematical models are certainly valid, I suggest a more appropriate example to better compare with Microsoft than your choice of Bell is IBM. Like MS they too jumped through all the hoops of the Sherman Act, and like MS they essentially came out un-touched. The thing that got them in the end was the market place, and unfortunatly that is likely to be the only thing that has a chance of taking MS down. It may be hard to imagine, MS being surpassed by rivals, but i'm sure 25 years ago the same was thought of IBM.
I said unfortunatly because unlike a quick breakup of Microsoft by the government a slow gradual erosion of power and position by market forces, is firstly in no way assured, but secondly likely to be drawn out much longer. Meaning that when it comes to competition and fairness for consumers in the market, it is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better!
Err, even if we assume as you did that the pace of technology will stand still over the next 7 years, you seem to have missed the fact that when it comes to the "[something]x" speed measurements on DVD's, a 1x DVD-R drive is equivalent to I think 20xCD-R. So your figures are a little off..
Considering also the standard CD-R now is 52x with DVD's not far behind, well enough said..
That's kinda the idea.. You see at the rate we're going by 2010 hard drives 1TB in size will likely be tiny, that presents many of us here a serious problem, serious as opposed to; "wow, see how much hdtv porn i can store now". That is of course:
Backups.
Offline storage has to keep up HD storage for this reason most of all, and with the current exponential price increase with each incremental tape storage size increase, optical technologies like multilayered DVD's look like one of the best possibilities.
It wasn't designed to display dvd's played from your dvd set-top on your pc, but to play music / video files FROM your pc on your DVD/TV. Now if you store multiple mpeg2 streams at greater than 11Mb/s on your HD then well i guess you will have to deal with the CAT5 connection instead of the wifi (option).
I couldn't agree more about the decent pay / benifits, but:
" Give them a month's pay, one week at a time, with the understanding that professional behavior is expected and they are to answer whatever questions might arise during this one month period."
This is the hard part, since I would venture more often than not it is the COMPANY who is the "dishonest" party. Typical examples are snooty-HR types who 'deem' that a particular person does not "fit in", then slowly but surely their working conditions deteriorate. Worst of all it is generally much cheaper for a company to fire someone for miss conduct (with appropriate warnings), or push that person into a corner (shitty work conditions) where they will themselves leave. This is far far cheaper than a dismissal followed by full payout.
This is the kind of problem that really creates these "dishonest" ex-employees, and frankly the fault here lies completly with the company!
There is one option that far too many companies almost refuse to consider. That is; Treat employee's nice. Yes it's a hard one, and for most companies (and many people) it's easier to rebuild the entire network after every sysadmin change!
Sad but true all too often.
I had a friend who after being with a company for three years was the victim of a whole lot of drummed up charges, it was clear that the real motive was cut backs, I guess HR and many others didnt like the fact that he earned more than all of the rest of the administrators combined. So one day he was escorted out of the building, after which they literally unplugged the network, the whole Australian network (3000+ users) was offline for three days while the rest of the admins rebuilt every server!
Did it do any good? No, of course not. A typical simple minded HR view, after spending probably many thousands of dollars in time (and consultants) rebuilding the network not only was he still able to gain access, but he won a big unfair dismissal payout!
Not that im very keen to stand and defend Windows but you mention "A secure UNIX system" like it's an every day thing. But the fact is local-root exploits even effect OS's like OpenBSD! Sure *ideally* well administered and upto-date systems will be safe from 99.99% of people, but if you think that *any* system can be completly protected from a user with local access then I think that is what is laughable!
The fact that you can lock down exe's in Windows from my experience was only useful (and necessary) in Windows 9x as since NT4 any good administrator could secure the box for all but that 0.01%.
I enjoy dealing with users with your attitude. As someone else pointed out since the use of Company/School resources is strictly controlled (and always should be), the first thing I do when a user complains about not being able to change the desktop walpaper is add that GPO (Group Policy Object) to the now heavily restricted user!
Typical school thinking, ie spend the smallest amount possible. I'm guess you used Win9x?
I setup a bunch of locked down libary pc's at a private school here, first they chose the cheap path of Windows98, I locked them down as best as I could, of course that's only so much, after recieving frequent calls i proposed Windows2000. Since installing and locking that down six months ago NOT ONE CALL. The best a kid could hope for would be to either crash or corrupt the install, that's why the Libarian has the Ghost image cd that autoboots and images back to square one. Apparently she hasn't needed to even use that yet!
Only on slashdot where a topic starts talking about removing ports that are unnecessary on a purpose built compact pc would someone be modded up for saying that these "compact purpose built pc's" would now be unusable as SERVERS, or for scientific equipment!?
I agree completely, sure there are still uses for serial ports and printer ports, but on a small foot print M/B such as these where they have even cut it down to just one pci slot, look how much space do those ports take up on the back panel.
I would guess with just a little more modification to the mATX standard back panel you could fit one or two more pci(/agp) slots instead of those 20 year old printer and com ports!
I know over two years ago I disabled all my printer and serial ports on my home PC to free some IRQ's, I only recently noticed that they were still disabled, shows exactly how much I use them!:)
Re:Problems probably mostly isolated to America
on
Don't Stymie Nanotech
·
· Score: 2
I believe you just answered your own question there. Well with a "Maybe" at least, we not talking about Nigeria revolutionizing nanotechnology here are we now??
Slashdot Mirror
ROTFL!!!
/. in a long while! hahah! :)
Has to be the funniest comment I have seen on
IDE drives have another obstacle to overcome now, one entirely self created: Trust. The trust you put in SCSI drives is well earned, with IDE on the other hand the mistrust is also well earned!
A good server setup using something like RAID 1 or RAID 5, would use disks from different manufaturers to avoid the potential of a bad batch bringing the whole lot down. Therefore minimising your primary concern!
On the other hand with IDE even that wont help you today. I had a client recently (12 months ago) who opted for IDE RAID over SCSI to save some money, they setup two servers each with three IDE RAID 1 mirror sets (6 x 40gig drives each, 12 drives in total), note that was against my recommendation of 3 SCSI drives in RAID 5 in each server (at double the cost!). Anyway 12 months down the track they have had I kid you not 14 DRIVES FAIL! That's 115% failure rate!
That kind of reputation will mean IDE drives stay out of my servers for a LONG time!
This 'evidence' does not disprove the Big Band, in fact it just attempts to answer what is going to eventually finnish off this universe, there by completing the theory. It doesnt attempt to answer anything more about the Big Bang itself, but just proposes a solution to a question that is usually asked when talking about the Big Band, that is; "If the universe started in a Bang where will it end?"
:) If you want to read about theories explaing what happened before the beginning of time (as we know it) a nice place to start is reading about M-Theory and the Multiverse (As opposed to universe).
Much of your question is not relevant in this discussion, as the Big Bang theory attempts to explain what happens in our universe, not before it!
I really dont think a non-smoker could understand so easily (i asume that of the last poster).. I've just quit after 6 years of smoking, it's not easy to do. But you talked about smoking for the buzz? Well the last "buzz" I got from smoking was in high school (6 years ago)! When you're addicted to smoking just like being dependant on alcohol (for eg) smoking simply gives you a "normal" feeling, if you still consider that a buzz your kidding yourself!
:(
If I hadn't been successful quitting with patches this would have been a great option for me, and honestly I would even be tempted now if offered one of these things, socially at least (at the pub). The nicotine addiction is terrible, especially for those (ex)smokers like me who were addicted to it more than the actual habbit. For me loosing the habbit was nothing, overcoming the chemical withdrawals was a nightmare!
So why isn't anybody bitching when Sony does it? *cough*Square*cough*
The key here is MS is a proven monopoly in it's industry (and that the Computer and Game industry are very closely related), if you don't see the problem with MS doing this then maybe think about if the US Government bought up every game company out there, maybe because some (slightly more) crazy Repulicans wanted to: "get rid of those nasty violent games" or something! What would happen then? As soon as the industry is controlled by one body then competition stops, innovation stops and prices go up! It's clear what that means to us gamers!
This is a well known economic concept, and it is very much the same if it is a monopolistic company or a controlling government. Many would argue that the former is far worse!
Is that what you want? Because incase you didnt see it that is why so many people are against this kind of behaviour unchecked by Microsoft. Yes sure Sony could one day be doing quite the same thing, maybe they already have. But they don't hold a monopoly and they don't abuse one.
On a final note, if the XBOX had anything at all to do with MS's monopoly, don't you think it'd do a little more than just play games?
Err see XBOX2..
"Again it relates to Microsoft using money obtained from one monopoly and using it to crush competition in another which is illegal under the sherman anti trust act."
This is a very poor interpretation of the law - it's a waste of time to even comment further. Sony is a megacorporation that has Billions to invest in it's gaming division too. It's a very fair playing field.
The fact is though, Microsoft has been proven in court to be a Monopoly, and more importantly to have abused that position! It may be a simple interpretation of the Sherman Act but essentially the act is designed to stop monopolies from growing and spreading, especially into other markets!
Why doesn't Outlook Express show the BCC field, though? Have to turn on 'Rich headers' to get it...
Doesn't the meaning of BCC being Blind Carbon Copy explain why Outlook doesnt display the field? Odd that you can see it at all, I thought it was hidden automatically by the server?
Let's firstly ignore the fact that the whole idea behind this "concept" is that you can after purchasing this car go out and stick on that "Authentic 1972 Mustang" skin, including annoying noise generator for the complete package.
But when it comes to "what normal people want" as you claim to know, I disagree that all of those people outside my window (city office Sydney / Aust) driving the tiny Honda's, Kia's, Holden's and whatever were so how forced into making those purchases. The fact is for a significant proportion of the population here in Australia and no doubt over there in the US, a small compact car is the only smart choice!
Now I believe Australia has a very similar obsession to you American's with big cars and gas guzzlers, probably not so extreme though, but this concept is by far the best new idea i have read about when it comes to fuel cell cars, I can see that if this does take off it would please just about everyone! And well anyone left over in 10 years in their Original '72 Mustang, well they can happily go on paying $15.69 / litre for their fuel. That wont bother me..
Ignoring the 'ugly' remark (that's entirely subjective, not that I dont agree with you) this design looks like every other new Honda / Renault / Hyuandai (See Renault Scenic for eg) that hit's the road today! I don't see anything new here except for the fact that it makes optimal use of the lack of engine compartment. It is a concept car after all, so it needs to make obvious the new concepts..
Of course the fact that the whole car is essentially "skinnable" says a lot.
Just on the sauna thing, as a happy Australian Finn, I find it disgusting how cold you people up North have your sauna's! It should be illegal to have 70deg sauna's! *shudder*!
:)
Last time i went back, it was such a shock considering we here in Sydney wont go in our sauna till it hit's 110! (Yes that's Degrees Celsius you wimps!)
heh.. Unfortunatly the beer gets pretty hot quickly at those temps!
A group of friends and I just did this very same thing, (before coming across this site that is) we dusted off the old GUS and original Pentium, and captured to odiv'x 40+ old PC demos! From Panic and Crystal Dreams to the whole Robot saga from Orange! :) The one thing i have to say about what mind candy did, is that they left out far far too many.. :( Well limited time space and all that, i just dont see the point in the "new school" disk they have?? (Why when they mostly will run under winxp do you need them on a dvd?)
:(
:)
Anyway i would love to put together all the demos we did either on a web site or dvd for download, but at an average of 30MB per avi file I dont have the space for that..
Anyway I highly recommend doing it yourself (dig up that old 486!) I tell you i havn't felt such nostalgia ever in my life than what i felt to finnally see Second Reality roll up one last time on the pc.
The rest of the world. Yes that means everyone but you North American's (and some lucky Europeans) who currently have all the options in the world for PVR / DVR's might not get the best spin off from this release. But people like me in poor old Australia who currently has no option what so ever for a PVR. :( Even all the opensource options are made in the Northern Hemisphere, so poor people like me would have to somewhere find (steal) their programming info.. :(
:)
:(
For this reason thank god MS has come to the party, finally a big player that will push a "Good Thing(TM)" world-wide. Once they have set the stage all us Open Source freaks can pilfer their work into our free alternatives.
Of course only if Microsoft is planning on introducing this in Australia, hello?? Ohh, come on.. I really need to get out of this 3rd world country.
I really don't understand how you see a fault, especially when you say a problem is the constant revision of the theory. By definition of "theory" it is not fact, so by definition it is open to revision and reworking. If you believe that it must be false as a result of nothing more than the fact that it is in constant debate and therefore revision, then I would say you are excluding not just the theory but they whole scientific process. Now that unfortunatly would be called ignorance. (absolutly no flame bait intended)
:)
The accuracy of this "finding" though is laughable to me to, basically what they have said is: "we find with 95% certainty that everyone else could be right!" heh. But regardless, the method of refining one important aspect of the whole big bang theory, that being the age of the universe, will continue for a long time. It is unlikely that we will be able to define such things without probably a lot more hard evidence, something that we dont have yet, and hey we may never have it until someone goes out there and plants a flag at "The end of the Universe".
My personal belief goes well beyond us being able to easily 'define' these things, at least for now, something along the lines of current M-Theory and the Multiverse concept sounds almost strange enough for me.
Although I agree with just about all of what you said, I most definatly agree that comparisons to mathematical models are certainly valid, I suggest a more appropriate example to better compare with Microsoft than your choice of Bell is IBM. Like MS they too jumped through all the hoops of the Sherman Act, and like MS they essentially came out un-touched. The thing that got them in the end was the market place, and unfortunatly that is likely to be the only thing that has a chance of taking MS down. It may be hard to imagine, MS being surpassed by rivals, but i'm sure 25 years ago the same was thought of IBM.
I said unfortunatly because unlike a quick breakup of Microsoft by the government a slow gradual erosion of power and position by market forces, is firstly in no way assured, but secondly likely to be drawn out much longer. Meaning that when it comes to competition and fairness for consumers in the market, it is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better!
Err, even if we assume as you did that the pace of technology will stand still over the next 7 years, you seem to have missed the fact that when it comes to the "[something]x" speed measurements on DVD's, a 1x DVD-R drive is equivalent to I think 20xCD-R. So your figures are a little off..
Considering also the standard CD-R now is 52x with DVD's not far behind, well enough said..
That's kinda the idea.. You see at the rate we're going by 2010 hard drives 1TB in size will likely be tiny, that presents many of us here a serious problem, serious as opposed to; "wow, see how much hdtv porn i can store now". That is of course:
Backups.
Offline storage has to keep up HD storage for this reason most of all, and with the current exponential price increase with each incremental tape storage size increase, optical technologies like multilayered DVD's look like one of the best possibilities.
Did you read the article?
It wasn't designed to display dvd's played from your dvd set-top on your pc, but to play music / video files FROM your pc on your DVD/TV. Now if you store multiple mpeg2 streams at greater than 11Mb/s on your HD then well i guess you will have to deal with the CAT5 connection instead of the wifi (option).
I couldn't agree more about the decent pay / benifits, but:
" Give them a month's pay, one week at a time, with the understanding that professional behavior is expected and they are to answer whatever questions might arise during this one month period."
This is the hard part, since I would venture more often than not it is the COMPANY who is the "dishonest" party. Typical examples are snooty-HR types who 'deem' that a particular person does not "fit in", then slowly but surely their working conditions deteriorate. Worst of all it is generally much cheaper for a company to fire someone for miss conduct (with appropriate warnings), or push that person into a corner (shitty work conditions) where they will themselves leave. This is far far cheaper than a dismissal followed by full payout.
This is the kind of problem that really creates these "dishonest" ex-employees, and frankly the fault here lies completly with the company!
There is one option that far too many companies almost refuse to consider. That is; Treat employee's nice. Yes it's a hard one, and for most companies (and many people) it's easier to rebuild the entire network after every sysadmin change!
Sad but true all too often.
I had a friend who after being with a company for three years was the victim of a whole lot of drummed up charges, it was clear that the real motive was cut backs, I guess HR and many others didnt like the fact that he earned more than all of the rest of the administrators combined. So one day he was escorted out of the building, after which they literally unplugged the network, the whole Australian network (3000+ users) was offline for three days while the rest of the admins rebuilt every server!
Did it do any good? No, of course not. A typical simple minded HR view, after spending probably many thousands of dollars in time (and consultants) rebuilding the network not only was he still able to gain access, but he won a big unfair dismissal payout!
Not that im very keen to stand and defend Windows but you mention "A secure UNIX system" like it's an every day thing. But the fact is local-root exploits even effect OS's like OpenBSD! Sure *ideally* well administered and upto-date systems will be safe from 99.99% of people, but if you think that *any* system can be completly protected from a user with local access then I think that is what is laughable!
The fact that you can lock down exe's in Windows from my experience was only useful (and necessary) in Windows 9x as since NT4 any good administrator could secure the box for all but that 0.01%.
I enjoy dealing with users with your attitude. As someone else pointed out since the use of Company/School resources is strictly controlled (and always should be), the first thing I do when a user complains about not being able to change the desktop walpaper is add that GPO (Group Policy Object) to the now heavily restricted user!
hehe
Typical school thinking, ie spend the smallest amount possible. I'm guess you used Win9x?
I setup a bunch of locked down libary pc's at a private school here, first they chose the cheap path of Windows98, I locked them down as best as I could, of course that's only so much, after recieving frequent calls i proposed Windows2000. Since installing and locking that down six months ago NOT ONE CALL. The best a kid could hope for would be to either crash or corrupt the install, that's why the Libarian has the Ghost image cd that autoboots and images back to square one. Apparently she hasn't needed to even use that yet!
Only on slashdot where a topic starts talking about removing ports that are unnecessary on a purpose built compact pc would someone be modded up for saying that these "compact purpose built pc's" would now be unusable as SERVERS, or for scientific equipment!?
I agree completely, sure there are still uses for serial ports and printer ports, but on a small foot print M/B such as these where they have even cut it down to just one pci slot, look how much space do those ports take up on the back panel.
:)
I would guess with just a little more modification to the mATX standard back panel you could fit one or two more pci(/agp) slots instead of those 20 year old printer and com ports!
I know over two years ago I disabled all my printer and serial ports on my home PC to free some IRQ's, I only recently noticed that they were still disabled, shows exactly how much I use them!
I believe you just answered your own question there. Well with a "Maybe" at least, we not talking about Nigeria revolutionizing nanotechnology here are we now??