Er, what I meant by wrong is that even if the values are stored in the registry (which freakin nearly everything is anyway), the only way to change it is to modify the registry, i.e. load a.REG file or similar, i.e. a patch.
"Normal" users aren't even supposed to know what Regedit.exe is, which is why Microsoft hasn't had a shortcut to it since Windows 3.1 or something.
Wrong. If you check the box, Windows will automatically set your clock ahead one hour or back one hour based on the current pattern of first Sunday in April and last Sunday in October. It won't know to do it the last week in March and the last week in November unless the code is patched.
I don't know the stats for, I'd imagine a large percentage computers out there are probably running 95, 98, ME or 2000...all of which Microsoft end-of-life'd and will no longer support.
I stopped using the auto-adjust thing back when dual-booting systems were the norm and each OS wanted to keep knocking another hour of my system clock when I rebooted into it.
I predict a big rise in popularity of those Internet Time programs, and would not be surprised if Microsoft threw something like that into Vista.
-JoeShmoe
Re:This is old news within the hospitality industr
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Hacking Hotels 101
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If you mean TS telesync, that's defined as "camera pointed at a movie screen but with an audio feed". TS typically look distorted unless the guy with the camera is dead center and can have heads and other things visible (or stupidly just hidden behind huge "letterbox" bars...who are they kidding).
IF you mean TC telecine, that's defines as a recording from the film, either using a telecine (some kind of rear-projection thing that you can put a camcorder in front of to get a consistant image) or using the video output on a projector if it has one. Usually excellent quality, I've seen some rivaling DVD quality. But overall one of the rarest forms of release.
A screener is defined as a VHS copy of the film, usually with warnings, that is captured with an analog capture card. This is the closest match to what I'm describing. The advantage to capturing from hotels is no warning messages. A DVDScreener is of course a DVD and therefore ripped for maximum quality, usually with non-removable warnings.
I don't know what year you are from, but given the industry crackdown on screeners, I think it's virtually unheard of for groups to be getting movies BEFORE it gets to theaters. It's like extremely big news to hear someone get a movie even a day before it comes out.
In fact, the supply of screeners (combined with people actually getting busted for supplying them) is so sparse, that people basically limp along with TS release for four or five months until a DVDRip finally (and consistantly) comes out a month before the commercial DVD is released.
Not to mention, screeners are tracked and coded and probably have all sorts of hidden marks that for responsible groups means they need to get access to a second copy so they can make sure their source doesn't get burned because it was missing a key two seconds from someone else's copy. For VOD, every hotel has their own copy, so it would be extremely unlikely that someone could pin down which guest copied it (especially since with someone else actually ordering the movie, you are just grabbing the signal).
- JoeShmoe
Re:This is old news within the hospitality industr
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Hacking Hotels 101
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· Score: 1
LodgeNet made a real stupid deal with both Philips and Nintendo (at the time I don't remember somehow the two companies were connected) to offer games using their technology. Philips made the hardware, Nintendo licensed their N64 technology. That deal has locked LodgeNet into N64 for the last decade or so. OnCommand made a similar "me too!" mistake locking them into PS1.
I think the N64 deal finally expires this year, and I fully expect LodgeNet to make the same mistake and sign up for GameCube for the next ten years. Then again, Microsoft might figure out that the hospitality market would be a great place to push it's "media center" technology and maybe one of the two companies will get XBox360 (not XBox, since Microsoft seems historically opposed to letting customers get by with old technology... no doubt the contract will require hotels to upgrade to XBox3 in a few years).
It basically works the same way the terminal sessions do. There's an N64 device on a rack in the back connected to a modulator. The controller signals go through the RF box on the back of the set to the server that sends them to the N64 and the video output comes back on a particular channel the server tells your TV to receive. I've never heard of multiplayer between rooms but in theory the server would just have to send the signal to the controller port 1 for room A and port 2 for room B. But I've never seen that.
- JoeShmoe
This is old news within the hospitality industry
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Hacking Hotels 101
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· Score: 5, Informative
My first day of work in a hotel, I see a guest come in with a VCR tucked in under his arm. I ask him if he's planning on watching some movies. He says no, he's planning on recording some. He tells me all he has to do is plug in his VCR, tune around until he finds someone watching a movie, then hit record.
Over the years, I've learned a lot more. Basically, the world of hotel entertainment is run by two companies, LodgeNet and OnCommand. Both use almost identical technology. The way it basically works if hotels buy commercial television sets that have a port on the back to control the tuner. An RF interface plugs into this port and allows signals to be sent over the coaxial cable to a server and receive signals from the server.
Let me explain how it works. The hotel puts all the regular television (called free-to-guest in the lingo) on a certain range of channels. The commercial set is then programmed to only allow tuning from the remote in that range. If the guest tried to go higher than say 30, it wraps back to say 2. Entering number from the remote higher than the range won't work either.
Now the remote has some special buttons. Let's say a guest hits the main menu button. The IR receiver on the commercial TV passes the signal to the RF unit, which sends it over the coax to the server. The server starts up up a video stream and outputs it through a video card to a modulator. The server tells the commercial TV "tune to channel 43". Since the guest can't normally tune to this channel, they only way he sees it is when the server tells his TV to tune there. The guest can now interact with the server and only he sees what he is doing because he's the only one the server lets turn to channel 43.
For hotel info, movies, this is how the guest gets the content. If it's a web browser session, it's the same thing only using essentially a terminal server session.
Now, the problem is there's only about a handful of commercial TV sets made. It's not terribly difficult to obtain or borrow a master remote from someone. You can copy the button commands into your PDA or universal remote, then next time you are at a hotel with that brand of television, just tune around until you find something interesting to watch. Or, bring your own tuner like the guy with the VCR or the article talks about.
Some ways hotels are dealing with this is locking off the connection so you can't just plug in a tuner. You can cut the cable, but I wouldn't recommend it if you don't want to be charged for the repair. But the master remotes are still out there and still universally known.
Smaller or older hotels that have regular televisions use a little IR dongle to control the television instead of card that plugs in the back, but it's the same principle.
I've always wondered why warez groups don't pick up on this as a way to get first-run movies. The hospitality window is about two months after a movie hits theaters (just after home pay-per-view but before DVD). The source is either DVD or digitial files downloaded directly to the server, so the quality should be excellent. Just bring an firewire capture card with your laptop and you can release "screener" quality with virtually no risk.
Not that I would ever do something like that of course...just saying...
Starting with Windows 2003, Microsoft now licenses Terminal Services separately. You get 0 license credit for having XP, even XP Pro. Previously, under Windows 2000 Terminal Services any 2000 Pro client gets granted a license from a free unlimited pool.
Also, starting with Windows 2003, you have to decide between per-user or per-device pricing and you can't switch later. This means either having five computers with as many people logging in and out as can share them or having five users who can connect from any particular machine. Of course, this is all separate from the required client access license for Windows 2003 itself.
A Terminal Service license will run the average business about $84; that's the cost under Microsoft's Open License program. Huge companies under the Select program will no doubt save some money, and I think you can save more by signing up for software assurance.
So the bottom line is that since you are already paying for a license, why do you want to pay extra for a full XP license that is doing nothing more than passing keyboard and mouse signals to the server? It makes no sense. Odds are thay any computer you have came with a license for SOME kind of Windows, and since they can all run the client, that seems the obvious choice.
Regarding remote management, I haven't found anything in XP that isn't cheaper and better from third-party products. The only thing I would actually want Microsoft to do is freakin make an XP product that can run from a USB key or a bootable CD. That would be a valid competitor to the various thin-client projects.
So, I don't plan on getting any of these new XP versions unless they are so ridiculously cheap that I would do it just to not have to remember if a particular computer is running 98, 98SE, ME or XP Home.
As Voyager, the first aircraft to circle the globe in a single continuous non-stop flight. I don't really see the record-breaking advance in flight that results from having one person in the cockpit instead of two.
I mean, the point of Voyager having two people was they could take shifts at the wheel to get rest on the extremely long flight. But this is essentially what Steve Fossett had as well, since mission control was watching his instruments while he took naps.
If anything, this seems like an advancement in communications and remote monitoring more than flight.
Still, the Rutan brothers are clearly channeling Orville and Wilbur Wright so, bravo and kudos all around. But I'm just not that "jazzed up" about these terrestrial "records". Wake me from my power nap when the next space record is up for grabs.
I'm starting a group to raise money to fight against all these idiots who want to waste millions of dollars saving the worst Trek franchise ever. Talk about some people needing to learn to pick their battles.
Why isn't anyone saying let's start a new series that doesn't suck? Or how about a Battlestar Galatica style "reimaging" of the original series? It's not like we would suddenly face a huge outpouring of purists demanding we stay true to the original...every single Trek series has been more than happy to rewrite Trek dogma where it damn well suits them.
California, population approx 30 million, or 1/10 of the US population.
So, the number of stolen identies is probably closer to 300,000 to 350,000. Only California has a law that forces companies to disclose these kinds of risks to personal data, but I think it's a fairly safe assumption that the theives didn't target just California records (in fact, if they wanted to use them for identity theft, it would make more sense to excluse California records because those indidivuals would be on alert).
So, potentially one in every one hundred people in the US now has their electronic profile available for identify theft. That's a scary (although I'll admit unlikely) idea.
Closing question...what exactly is the f'ing differences between a "legitamate" company accessing this ChoicePoint database an an "illegimate" company? Wouldn't theft of database access be just as much a risk? If Sam's Wholesale Cookies can browse through the database, concievable so can any employee of Sam's Wholesale Cookies or anyone who breaks into a Same's Wholesale Cookies computer. Is there not a single person in all of government who sees the folly of having all the eggs in one basket? Not even a secure basket...the free sample basket by the front door of the mall.
"First of all"...in the days before 200GB hard drives, when this took place, the logical geometry pretty much was the physical geometry.
"Second", would you mind explaining to me what would happen if the firmware reports 16 heads to the BIOS when the drive itself has only 15 heads? I tend to think it would be the same as if someone had manually entered the wrong drive parameters in the BIOS, namely, the drive is not going to work properly.
You are definitely right that under no circumstances should you ever be able to give a drive an order that resulted in death of the drive. Yet, that is exactly what happened with these hard drive, and it was repeatable. Whatever black magic Ghost used for its operations was just plain incompatible with this buggy firmware. Odds are it was a bug, pure and simple, one that had never come to light before we tried using Ghost on them.
Actually, I can give you a very concrete example of the difference between buying "home" and "business" lines of computer.
When I was contracting for a major corporation, they wanted to rollout new software to 4000+ PCs. Since there were only two or three different models of machines I recommended using a little known utility by Binary Research called Ghost.
One model used in one division was Compaq Presario. The wise ass IT manager of that division decided to save a little money by getting the cheaper home units instead of the Deskpro 2000 units everyone else had.
Well, come time for rollout and about 75% of the hard drives in the Presario units died after being ghosted (obviously, not the one unit we had tested on). After a couple weeks of panicked calling with 3rd level engineers at Compaq, the bottom line was that they couldn't help us with the problem. They had a room full of engineering documents on the Deskpro line and could literally follow the path of electrons if that was what was needed to fix the problem. If we wanted that kind of help with the Presario line, we would have to go find the random Taiwanese board maker who had slapped together the motherboard and see if they could figure it out.
Well, smart ass IT manager decided to secretly have a few of the now-broken hard drives put in Deskpro units then send them in to engineering. Compaq took one look at the barcodes and realized they had been swapped. Ironically, having the bad drive in the Deskpro they were able to discover there was a bug in Matrox's firmware that caused the drive to report it as having 16 heads when it only had 15 heads. Compaq theorized that the Ghost program was operating at a low enough level that the Maxtor drive was trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole and breaking itself.
Anyway, bottom line is...if the computers work out of the box, it doesn't matter what's in them. But if you ever plan to use computers to something other than what they current doing, then you need to know that the vendor will actually stand behind them and not tell you that you are SOL. Companies may pay more of a premium for that kind of guarantee, but if you looked at the cost involved in swapping out a few thousand machines because you can't get a problem conclusively solved, that premium might not be so bad after all.
Yes, I remember that. I believe they even make reference to "needing to develope some kind of code to prevent interference with other cultures"...the Prime Directive. But this was back when the intent of Enterprise was to be a true prequel and not reinvent the Trek universe.
Berman has good ideas, no question. I'm totally happy with how TNG turned out and many of the changes he introduced (c'mon really, on a starship where practically ever plotline involves crawling through some tube or up some ladder...skirts just don't make sense). But I'm not at all happy with virtually anything Braga's written, especially Voyager. I mean...he wrote the series finale and I wish every day I could unwatch that piece of garbage.
The best episode of the second season of Enterprise is still one of the worst Trek episodes ever.
I don't remember which episode the Jazdia lesbian kiss was on but...the last episode of DS9:
7-26 576 02-Jun-1999 What You Leave Behind (2)
So I'm going to stick to my original statement that I believe this was the first lesbian kiss on television. If it wasn't, I'm pretty sure it was on the show Ellen, which aired around the same time and with Ellen Degeneres coming out brought the issue to attention.
Wow. How ignorant are you of history and civil rights. You think "OMFG! Can't they see they're the same!" was somthing you ever would have heard in the Deep South in the 60s? Or when a black girl showed up at the schoolhouse steps?
The point of that episode was that treating people differently based on skin color is absurd. How absurd? As absurd as a half-white half-black being prejudiced towards a half-black half-white. And it's a point that is sadly still missed by people. People can see the episode is absurd and side with Kirk and crew in pointing out how it's absurd. Yet, put two white halves together compared to two black halves and suddenly they have problems.
Regarding gender identity, nobody enforces it, but many religious groups embrace it. I could have said Orthodox Jews or Muslims too, but I didn't because I was only giving an example, not an exhaustive list. These group want women to dress a certain way, act a certain way, wear their hair a certain way, etc and vice-versa for men. Sexual identity is very important to them.
People like this can identify with what it would be like to be asked to give that up, to be unisex. Few of these same people can identify with what it would be like to break the law or do something forbidden. This is why I say that the unisex sci-fi angle is smart and the "it's a crime but let's do it anyway cause we are made like that" is stupid if your goal is to influence people and leave a lasting message.
The problem with Enterprise is that they aren't presenting a more interesting or detailed view of Vulcan...but are rewriting history whereever they damn well please rather than have to come up with clever ways to reconcile the prequel with the later series.
Spock, remember, was half-human and even HE was more of a Vulcan that anyone depicted on Enterprise. The Enterprise era Vulcans (being only a couple hundred years before TOS) are petty, getting high on emotions, involved in mysticism, warfaring...they are more like Romulans, the anti-Vulcans.
Oh yeah, and don't forget, the kinky Vulcan sex only happens once every seven years. Yet T'Pol decides to mount Tucker as some kind of scientific experiment to understand human mating rituals. And during sweeps. How logical.
So let me get this straight...it's your contention that the black/white episode of Star Trek was not a clever attempt to have an episode discuss the controversial subject of racism...but only "an accident"?
The fact that these two warring races were essentially identical and that it was pointed out (by dialog in the episode) how silly it was to fight over something as trivial as skin color...that's not commentary on racism? That was an accident?
Well, sorry to break it to you, but guess what: it wasn't an accident. Read any interview with the writers and producers. They wanted to do an episode that dealt with black/white racism, as Trek was really quite revolutionary for its time having Asian, Russian, and black women on the cast. They wanted to do an episode about it, but we afraid that if they made an episode about black versus white, it would never make it on the air. The half-and-half concept was a brilliant way to have the exact same episode and fly under the controversy radar.
Oh and by the way: If the mind-meld episode had nothing to do with gay rights, as you content, why did they end the episode with a message from a gay tolerance group and a phone number to call for assistance?
for the plotline comparing Vulcans to homosexuals.
You know...how the "bad intolerant Vulcans" wanted to oppress a minor group of Vulcans who couldn't help the fact that they could mind meld...they were just born that way!
The analogy was as clever as a knock knock joke as as obvious as a Mack truck sitting in your living room. It blew hundreds of episodes of Vulcan lore and mythology for a poor imitation of the Trek of years past.
Let's take a look at how the real Trek series handled controversial issues. TOS has the half-black/half-whites fighting the half-white/half-blacks. Still a classic and balls out the most in-your-face episode about racism I think I've seen in sci-fi. You could put the most inbred confederate-flag-waving Klan member down in front of that episode and he'd be the one who laughs and says what a ridiculous notion is was.
TNG was I think the first to tackle the issue of homosexuality where Riker visits that unisex planet and discovers that sometimes people are born with a sex, and have to hide it. The unisex angle was reallly smart because even a conserative Christian could understand what it would be like if they were stripped of their sexual identify (especially since they are very big on enforcing sexual identity, girls dress/act one way, boy's another). Even at a time where gay rights issues were barely on the map, that episode raised a very valid what-if that applied to any viewer.
DS9, while making it an obvious pandering to ratings by scheduling the episode during sweeps, also I think did good work with the Jax/lesbian episode. The issue was touched on earlier when Beverly Crusher fell in love with the first Trill/symbiote on a TNG episode, but at the end when the symbiote was put in a female host, it was a sad end to the relationship. DS9 took the other direction, where Jax still felt love despite the change and had a relationship with a woman. I don't know if this was the first lesbian kiss on television or not...but it wsa definitely something that riled people up. Still a little pandering tho...I mean, the symbiote could have just as easily been in an older less attractive female host...
Back to Enterprise. All Berman/Braga did was take the most generic tale of gay oppression and replace all instances of the word "people" with "Vulcan" and "sex" with "mind meld".
Somehow, I don't see this episode as becoming the theme song for the gay rights movement. What it did too was take all of the nobility and enlightenment of the previous four seasons worth of Vulcans and flush it down the toilet. The Vulcans who showed up on Earth back in First Contact were supposed to be these enlighted souls who had unified their planet after decades of war, who had turned away from emotion that let to nothing but conflict and embraced pure logic, who had conquered space and really owned the galaxy as far as it had been explorered.
Now, thanks to Berman/Braga, the Vulcan's are no better than humans, there's civil war, people getting high on emotions, racism/meldism, leaders using terrorism as a pretext for wiping out followers of another religion (cough cough, gee I wonder what analogy that is)
It's enough to make Sarak role in his future grave and make any Trek fan vomit in disgust. If there's anything that Trek fans would consider sacriledge, I have to believe it's turning the Vulcans into the squabbling mess that Enterprise depicts.
I'd rather watch a series that followed the life and times of the Voyager Borg kids than watch a single episode of Enterprise.
Installation had nothing to do with "hi, yeah my server is doing XYZ can you come fix it" and I walk in and find a lonely box sitting on the floor under a desk somewhere with no signs of a keyboard, monitor (or even a spare power plug as the poster pointed out).
If all I was doing was deploying boxes, great, but since I too get a lot of calls on existing system, I sympathize with the lack of a way to remotely flip remote administration on.
And by "remotely admin" I don't mean tweak a service that's available from any MMC on the network, I'm talking about things like mucking around in the System control panel or removable hardware, and stuff like that.
Not to mention...try running SFC from Remote Desktop sometime. You'll get a nice polite message saying it can only be run from the console...namely the actualy keyboard/monitor of the server itself. Now we are back to KVM solutions. Thanks Microsoft!
Kindly show me a version of a Windows server that by default installs Terminal Services in Remote Administration mode, because last time I checked, neither 2000 server nor 2003 server did.
I don't think I've EVER been able to remotely admin a Windows server unless it just happened to be a Terminal Server anyway. I'm actually about ten times more likely to find they have a copy of pcAnywhere running than Microsoft's own remote administration tools.
metrosexual (2003) -- although it made a funny South Park plot chad (2001) -- the little piece of paper that chose our President paradigm (1994) -- sadly, still used in 99% of business presentations:(
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Er, what I meant by wrong is that even if the values are stored in the registry (which freakin nearly everything is anyway), the only way to change it is to modify the registry, i.e. load a .REG file or similar, i.e. a patch.
"Normal" users aren't even supposed to know what Regedit.exe is, which is why Microsoft hasn't had a shortcut to it since Windows 3.1 or something.
-JoeShmoe
Wrong. If you check the box, Windows will automatically set your clock ahead one hour or back one hour based on the current pattern of first Sunday in April and last Sunday in October. It won't know to do it the last week in March and the last week in November unless the code is patched.
I don't know the stats for, I'd imagine a large percentage computers out there are probably running 95, 98, ME or 2000...all of which Microsoft end-of-life'd and will no longer support.
I stopped using the auto-adjust thing back when dual-booting systems were the norm and each OS wanted to keep knocking another hour of my system clock when I rebooted into it.
I predict a big rise in popularity of those Internet Time programs, and would not be surprised if Microsoft threw something like that into Vista.
-JoeShmoe
If you mean TS telesync, that's defined as "camera pointed at a movie screen but with an audio feed". TS typically look distorted unless the guy with the camera is dead center and can have heads and other things visible (or stupidly just hidden behind huge "letterbox" bars...who are they kidding).
IF you mean TC telecine, that's defines as a recording from the film, either using a telecine (some kind of rear-projection thing that you can put a camcorder in front of to get a consistant image) or using the video output on a projector if it has one. Usually excellent quality, I've seen some rivaling DVD quality. But overall one of the rarest forms of release.
A screener is defined as a VHS copy of the film, usually with warnings, that is captured with an analog capture card. This is the closest match to what I'm describing. The advantage to capturing from hotels is no warning messages. A DVDScreener is of course a DVD and therefore ripped for maximum quality, usually with non-removable warnings.
I don't know what year you are from, but given the industry crackdown on screeners, I think it's virtually unheard of for groups to be getting movies BEFORE it gets to theaters. It's like extremely big news to hear someone get a movie even a day before it comes out.
In fact, the supply of screeners (combined with people actually getting busted for supplying them) is so sparse, that people basically limp along with TS release for four or five months until a DVDRip finally (and consistantly) comes out a month before the commercial DVD is released.
Not to mention, screeners are tracked and coded and probably have all sorts of hidden marks that for responsible groups means they need to get access to a second copy so they can make sure their source doesn't get burned because it was missing a key two seconds from someone else's copy. For VOD, every hotel has their own copy, so it would be extremely unlikely that someone could pin down which guest copied it (especially since with someone else actually ordering the movie, you are just grabbing the signal).
- JoeShmoe
LodgeNet made a real stupid deal with both Philips and Nintendo (at the time I don't remember somehow the two companies were connected) to offer games using their technology. Philips made the hardware, Nintendo licensed their N64 technology. That deal has locked LodgeNet into N64 for the last decade or so. OnCommand made a similar "me too!" mistake locking them into PS1.
I think the N64 deal finally expires this year, and I fully expect LodgeNet to make the same mistake and sign up for GameCube for the next ten years. Then again, Microsoft might figure out that the hospitality market would be a great place to push it's "media center" technology and maybe one of the two companies will get XBox360 (not XBox, since Microsoft seems historically opposed to letting customers get by with old technology... no doubt the contract will require hotels to upgrade to XBox3 in a few years).
It basically works the same way the terminal sessions do. There's an N64 device on a rack in the back connected to a modulator. The controller signals go through the RF box on the back of the set to the server that sends them to the N64 and the video output comes back on a particular channel the server tells your TV to receive. I've never heard of multiplayer between rooms but in theory the server would just have to send the signal to the controller port 1 for room A and port 2 for room B. But I've never seen that.
- JoeShmoe
My first day of work in a hotel, I see a guest come in with a VCR tucked in under his arm. I ask him if he's planning on watching some movies. He says no, he's planning on recording some. He tells me all he has to do is plug in his VCR, tune around until he finds someone watching a movie, then hit record.
Over the years, I've learned a lot more. Basically, the world of hotel entertainment is run by two companies, LodgeNet and OnCommand. Both use almost identical technology. The way it basically works if hotels buy commercial television sets that have a port on the back to control the tuner. An RF interface plugs into this port and allows signals to be sent over the coaxial cable to a server and receive signals from the server.
Let me explain how it works. The hotel puts all the regular television (called free-to-guest in the lingo) on a certain range of channels. The commercial set is then programmed to only allow tuning from the remote in that range. If the guest tried to go higher than say 30, it wraps back to say 2. Entering number from the remote higher than the range won't work either.
Now the remote has some special buttons. Let's say a guest hits the main menu button. The IR receiver on the commercial TV passes the signal to the RF unit, which sends it over the coax to the server. The server starts up up a video stream and outputs it through a video card to a modulator. The server tells the commercial TV "tune to channel 43". Since the guest can't normally tune to this channel, they only way he sees it is when the server tells his TV to tune there. The guest can now interact with the server and only he sees what he is doing because he's the only one the server lets turn to channel 43.
For hotel info, movies, this is how the guest gets the content. If it's a web browser session, it's the same thing only using essentially a terminal server session.
Now, the problem is there's only about a handful of commercial TV sets made. It's not terribly difficult to obtain or borrow a master remote from someone. You can copy the button commands into your PDA or universal remote, then next time you are at a hotel with that brand of television, just tune around until you find something interesting to watch. Or, bring your own tuner like the guy with the VCR or the article talks about.
Some ways hotels are dealing with this is locking off the connection so you can't just plug in a tuner. You can cut the cable, but I wouldn't recommend it if you don't want to be charged for the repair. But the master remotes are still out there and still universally known.
Smaller or older hotels that have regular televisions use a little IR dongle to control the television instead of card that plugs in the back, but it's the same principle.
I've always wondered why warez groups don't pick up on this as a way to get first-run movies. The hospitality window is about two months after a movie hits theaters (just after home pay-per-view but before DVD). The source is either DVD or digitial files downloaded directly to the server, so the quality should be excellent. Just bring an firewire capture card with your laptop and you can release "screener" quality with virtually no risk.
Not that I would ever do something like that of course...just saying...
- JoeShmoe
Starting with Windows 2003, Microsoft now licenses Terminal Services separately. You get 0 license credit for having XP, even XP Pro. Previously, under Windows 2000 Terminal Services any 2000 Pro client gets granted a license from a free unlimited pool.
Also, starting with Windows 2003, you have to decide between per-user or per-device pricing and you can't switch later. This means either having five computers with as many people logging in and out as can share them or having five users who can connect from any particular machine. Of course, this is all separate from the required client access license for Windows 2003 itself.
A Terminal Service license will run the average business about $84; that's the cost under Microsoft's Open License program. Huge companies under the Select program will no doubt save some money, and I think you can save more by signing up for software assurance.
So the bottom line is that since you are already paying for a license, why do you want to pay extra for a full XP license that is doing nothing more than passing keyboard and mouse signals to the server? It makes no sense. Odds are thay any computer you have came with a license for SOME kind of Windows, and since they can all run the client, that seems the obvious choice.
Regarding remote management, I haven't found anything in XP that isn't cheaper and better from third-party products. The only thing I would actually want Microsoft to do is freakin make an XP product that can run from a USB key or a bootable CD. That would be a valid competitor to the various thin-client projects.
So, I don't plan on getting any of these new XP versions unless they are so ridiculously cheap that I would do it just to not have to remember if a particular computer is running 98, 98SE, ME or XP Home
-JoeShmoe
.
As Voyager, the first aircraft to circle the globe in a single continuous non-stop flight. I don't really see the record-breaking advance in flight that results from having one person in the cockpit instead of two.
I mean, the point of Voyager having two people was they could take shifts at the wheel to get rest on the extremely long flight. But this is essentially what Steve Fossett had as well, since mission control was watching his instruments while he took naps.
If anything, this seems like an advancement in communications and remote monitoring more than flight.
Still, the Rutan brothers are clearly channeling Orville and Wilbur Wright so, bravo and kudos all around. But I'm just not that "jazzed up" about these terrestrial "records". Wake me from my power nap when the next space record is up for grabs.
-JoeShmoe
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I'm starting a group to raise money to fight against all these idiots who want to waste millions of dollars saving the worst Trek franchise ever. Talk about some people needing to learn to pick their battles.
Why isn't anyone saying let's start a new series that doesn't suck? Or how about a Battlestar Galatica style "reimaging" of the original series? It's not like we would suddenly face a huge outpouring of purists demanding we stay true to the original...every single Trek series has been more than happy to rewrite Trek dogma where it damn well suits them.
- JoeShmoe
Australian Police: "Dammit, why do people keep sending us links to Google Images?"
- JoeShmoe
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California, population approx 30 million, or 1/10 of the US population.
So, the number of stolen identies is probably closer to 300,000 to 350,000. Only California has a law that forces companies to disclose these kinds of risks to personal data, but I think it's a fairly safe assumption that the theives didn't target just California records (in fact, if they wanted to use them for identity theft, it would make more sense to excluse California records because those indidivuals would be on alert).
So, potentially one in every one hundred people in the US now has their electronic profile available for identify theft. That's a scary (although I'll admit unlikely) idea.
Closing question...what exactly is the f'ing differences between a "legitamate" company accessing this ChoicePoint database an an "illegimate" company? Wouldn't theft of database access be just as much a risk? If Sam's Wholesale Cookies can browse through the database, concievable so can any employee of Sam's Wholesale Cookies or anyone who breaks into a Same's Wholesale Cookies computer. Is there not a single person in all of government who sees the folly of having all the eggs in one basket? Not even a secure basket...the free sample basket by the front door of the mall.
- JoeShmoe
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"First of all" ...in the days before 200GB hard drives, when this took place, the logical geometry pretty much was the physical geometry.
"Second", would you mind explaining to me what would happen if the firmware reports 16 heads to the BIOS when the drive itself has only 15 heads? I tend to think it would be the same as if someone had manually entered the wrong drive parameters in the BIOS, namely, the drive is not going to work properly.
You are definitely right that under no circumstances should you ever be able to give a drive an order that resulted in death of the drive. Yet, that is exactly what happened with these hard drive, and it was repeatable. Whatever black magic Ghost used for its operations was just plain incompatible with this buggy firmware. Odds are it was a bug, pure and simple, one that had never come to light before we tried using Ghost on them.
- JoeShmoe
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Actually, I can give you a very concrete example of the difference between buying "home" and "business" lines of computer.
When I was contracting for a major corporation, they wanted to rollout new software to 4000+ PCs. Since there were only two or three different models of machines I recommended using a little known utility by Binary Research called Ghost.
One model used in one division was Compaq Presario. The wise ass IT manager of that division decided to save a little money by getting the cheaper home units instead of the Deskpro 2000 units everyone else had.
Well, come time for rollout and about 75% of the hard drives in the Presario units died after being ghosted (obviously, not the one unit we had tested on). After a couple weeks of panicked calling with 3rd level engineers at Compaq, the bottom line was that they couldn't help us with the problem. They had a room full of engineering documents on the Deskpro line and could literally follow the path of electrons if that was what was needed to fix the problem. If we wanted that kind of help with the Presario line, we would have to go find the random Taiwanese board maker who had slapped together the motherboard and see if they could figure it out.
Well, smart ass IT manager decided to secretly have a few of the now-broken hard drives put in Deskpro units then send them in to engineering. Compaq took one look at the barcodes and realized they had been swapped. Ironically, having the bad drive in the Deskpro they were able to discover there was a bug in Matrox's firmware that caused the drive to report it as having 16 heads when it only had 15 heads. Compaq theorized that the Ghost program was operating at a low enough level that the Maxtor drive was trying to squeeze a square peg into a round hole and breaking itself.
Anyway, bottom line is...if the computers work out of the box, it doesn't matter what's in them. But if you ever plan to use computers to something other than what they current doing, then you need to know that the vendor will actually stand behind them and not tell you that you are SOL. Companies may pay more of a premium for that kind of guarantee, but if you looked at the cost involved in swapping out a few thousand machines because you can't get a problem conclusively solved, that premium might not be so bad after all.
- JoeShmoe
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Yes, I remember that. I believe they even make reference to "needing to develope some kind of code to prevent interference with other cultures"...the Prime Directive. But this was back when the intent of Enterprise was to be a true prequel and not reinvent the Trek universe.
Berman has good ideas, no question. I'm totally happy with how TNG turned out and many of the changes he introduced (c'mon really, on a starship where practically ever plotline involves crawling through some tube or up some ladder...skirts just don't make sense). But I'm not at all happy with virtually anything Braga's written, especially Voyager. I mean...he wrote the series finale and I wish every day I could unwatch that piece of garbage.
The best episode of the second season of Enterprise is still one of the worst Trek episodes ever.
-JoeShmoe
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Umm, no.
5-16 5ABB16 27-Feb-2001 The Body
I don't remember which episode the Jazdia lesbian kiss was on but...the last episode of DS9:
7-26 576 02-Jun-1999 What You Leave Behind (2)
So I'm going to stick to my original statement that I believe this was the first lesbian kiss on television. If it wasn't, I'm pretty sure it was on the show Ellen, which aired around the same time and with Ellen Degeneres coming out brought the issue to attention.
-JoeShmoe
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Wow. How ignorant are you of history and civil rights. You think "OMFG! Can't they see they're the same!" was somthing you ever would have heard in the Deep South in the 60s? Or when a black girl showed up at the schoolhouse steps?
The point of that episode was that treating people differently based on skin color is absurd. How absurd? As absurd as a half-white half-black being prejudiced towards a half-black half-white. And it's a point that is sadly still missed by people. People can see the episode is absurd and side with Kirk and crew in pointing out how it's absurd. Yet, put two white halves together compared to two black halves and suddenly they have problems.
Regarding gender identity, nobody enforces it, but many religious groups embrace it. I could have said Orthodox Jews or Muslims too, but I didn't because I was only giving an example, not an exhaustive list. These group want women to dress a certain way, act a certain way, wear their hair a certain way, etc and vice-versa for men. Sexual identity is very important to them.
People like this can identify with what it would be like to be asked to give that up, to be unisex. Few of these same people can identify with what it would be like to break the law or do something forbidden. This is why I say that the unisex sci-fi angle is smart and the "it's a crime but let's do it anyway cause we are made like that" is stupid if your goal is to influence people and leave a lasting message.
-JoeShmoe
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The problem with Enterprise is that they aren't presenting a more interesting or detailed view of Vulcan...but are rewriting history whereever they damn well please rather than have to come up with clever ways to reconcile the prequel with the later series.
Spock, remember, was half-human and even HE was more of a Vulcan that anyone depicted on Enterprise. The Enterprise era Vulcans (being only a couple hundred years before TOS) are petty, getting high on emotions, involved in mysticism, warfaring...they are more like Romulans, the anti-Vulcans.
Oh yeah, and don't forget, the kinky Vulcan sex only happens once every seven years. Yet T'Pol decides to mount Tucker as some kind of scientific experiment to understand human mating rituals. And during sweeps. How logical.
-JoeShmoe
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Oh yea...I had totally forgotten about "Benar's Syndrome" or whatever it was that was transmissible by the action of mind melding.
-JoeShmoe
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Whoops. My mind said "Jazdia Dax" and my fingers somehow abbreviated that to "Jax".
-JoeShmoe
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So let me get this straight...it's your contention that the black/white episode of Star Trek was not a clever attempt to have an episode discuss the controversial subject of racism...but only "an accident"?
The fact that these two warring races were essentially identical and that it was pointed out (by dialog in the episode) how silly it was to fight over something as trivial as skin color...that's not commentary on racism? That was an accident?
Well, sorry to break it to you, but guess what: it wasn't an accident. Read any interview with the writers and producers. They wanted to do an episode that dealt with black/white racism, as Trek was really quite revolutionary for its time having Asian, Russian, and black women on the cast. They wanted to do an episode about it, but we afraid that if they made an episode about black versus white, it would never make it on the air. The half-and-half concept was a brilliant way to have the exact same episode and fly under the controversy radar.
Oh and by the way: If the mind-meld episode had nothing to do with gay rights, as you content, why did they end the episode with a message from a gay tolerance group and a phone number to call for assistance?
-JoeShmoe
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for the plotline comparing Vulcans to homosexuals.
You know...how the "bad intolerant Vulcans" wanted to oppress a minor group of Vulcans who couldn't help the fact that they could mind meld...they were just born that way!
The analogy was as clever as a knock knock joke as as obvious as a Mack truck sitting in your living room. It blew hundreds of episodes of Vulcan lore and mythology for a poor imitation of the Trek of years past.
Let's take a look at how the real Trek series handled controversial issues. TOS has the half-black/half-whites fighting the half-white/half-blacks. Still a classic and balls out the most in-your-face episode about racism I think I've seen in sci-fi. You could put the most inbred confederate-flag-waving Klan member down in front of that episode and he'd be the one who laughs and says what a ridiculous notion is was.
TNG was I think the first to tackle the issue of homosexuality where Riker visits that unisex planet and discovers that sometimes people are born with a sex, and have to hide it. The unisex angle was reallly smart because even a conserative Christian could understand what it would be like if they were stripped of their sexual identify (especially since they are very big on enforcing sexual identity, girls dress/act one way, boy's another). Even at a time where gay rights issues were barely on the map, that episode raised a very valid what-if that applied to any viewer.
DS9, while making it an obvious pandering to ratings by scheduling the episode during sweeps, also I think did good work with the Jax/lesbian episode. The issue was touched on earlier when Beverly Crusher fell in love with the first Trill/symbiote on a TNG episode, but at the end when the symbiote was put in a female host, it was a sad end to the relationship. DS9 took the other direction, where Jax still felt love despite the change and had a relationship with a woman. I don't know if this was the first lesbian kiss on television or not...but it wsa definitely something that riled people up. Still a little pandering tho...I mean, the symbiote could have just as easily been in an older less attractive female host...
Back to Enterprise. All Berman/Braga did was take the most generic tale of gay oppression and replace all instances of the word "people" with "Vulcan" and "sex" with "mind meld".
Somehow, I don't see this episode as becoming the theme song for the gay rights movement. What it did too was take all of the nobility and enlightenment of the previous four seasons worth of Vulcans and flush it down the toilet. The Vulcans who showed up on Earth back in First Contact were supposed to be these enlighted souls who had unified their planet after decades of war, who had turned away from emotion that let to nothing but conflict and embraced pure logic, who had conquered space and really owned the galaxy as far as it had been explorered.
Now, thanks to Berman/Braga, the Vulcan's are no better than humans, there's civil war, people getting high on emotions, racism/meldism, leaders using terrorism as a pretext for wiping out followers of another religion (cough cough, gee I wonder what analogy that is)
It's enough to make Sarak role in his future grave and make any Trek fan vomit in disgust. If there's anything that Trek fans would consider sacriledge, I have to believe it's turning the Vulcans into the squabbling mess that Enterprise depicts.
I'd rather watch a series that followed the life and times of the Voyager Borg kids than watch a single episode of Enterprise.
-JoeShmoe
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Installation had nothing to do with "hi, yeah my server is doing XYZ can you come fix it" and I walk in and find a lonely box sitting on the floor under a desk somewhere with no signs of a keyboard, monitor (or even a spare power plug as the poster pointed out).
If all I was doing was deploying boxes, great, but since I too get a lot of calls on existing system, I sympathize with the lack of a way to remotely flip remote administration on.
- JoeShmoe
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And by "remotely admin" I don't mean tweak a service that's available from any MMC on the network, I'm talking about things like mucking around in the System control panel or removable hardware, and stuff like that.
Not to mention...try running SFC from Remote Desktop sometime. You'll get a nice polite message saying it can only be run from the console...namely the actualy keyboard/monitor of the server itself. Now we are back to KVM solutions. Thanks Microsoft!
- JoeShmoe
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Kindly show me a version of a Windows server that by default installs Terminal Services in Remote Administration mode, because last time I checked, neither 2000 server nor 2003 server did.
I don't think I've EVER been able to remotely admin a Windows server unless it just happened to be a Terminal Server anyway. I'm actually about ten times more likely to find they have a copy of pcAnywhere running than Microsoft's own remote administration tools.
- JoeShmoe
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How about "web log"?
Not every word needs an abbreviation.
Although "abbreviation" could sure use one.
-JoeShmoe
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A group of linguists declared "blog" to be a word they want stricken from the English language and I couldn't agree more.
:(
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6773907/
Other previous hated words:
metrosexual (2003) -- although it made a funny South Park plot
chad (2001) -- the little piece of paper that chose our President
paradigm (1994) -- sadly, still used in 99% of business presentations
- JoeShmoe
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