I got a vaio desktop with a 2.8g p4 dual core

How bad are compaq/HPs? I think I want a desktop for christmas, but I don't know if I'll use it enough to justify an expensive one.

Thanks to playtests I no longer have to pirate copies of Windows, In fact, i've got more licenses than machines.

Hi Paul,



This is a reminder that we have you scheduled to attend a playtest in our lab on

Saturday (10/29/2005). Check in time for this study is 9:45 a.m. It is important to arrive at or prior to this time. It is a good idea to allow extra time for traffic. Please note that late arrivals may not be able to participate, as we have a firm start time for our playtest studies. Do not forget to bring in valid picture ID: for security reasons proof of identity is required for playtesting. If you are driving, you will also need to have a license plate number with you, to register your vehicle.


I guess i should have gone to bed at a normal time, it's just plain stupid that i'm awake at 5:44am.

update: exchanged for a new motherboard and everything is okay so far.


Here's how windows XP instalation greets me:

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage
do your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen,
restart your computer . If this screen appears again, follow
these stops:

Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed
hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive
to make sure it is properly configured and terminated.
Run CHKDSK /F to check for hrd drive corruption, and then
restart your computer.

Technical Information:

*** STOP: 0X0000007B (OXF7934524, 0XC0000034, 0X00000000, 0X00000000)

I have a dated Athlon XP 1800+ with 512MB RAM. I just got a new motherboard(VIA KM400 + 8237 chipset), after the old one died about a year ago. I have removed everything that is not required, disabled all integrated components except for IDE, disabled SATA (which i thought was the original problem) and have taken out my 120gig SATA drive for an old IDE 40gig WD caviar, I've tried more things than I can think of. I get the same error no matter what. I get the same error if I don't have anything but the CD-ROM attached, I've tried different cables, I've tried different combinations of which drive (out of the CDROM and HD) were slave master or IDE 0 or 1.

If anyone knows anything about this i would be extremely greatful.

removing the numeric karma score and replacing it with a word was supposed to take care of people viewing karma as a game, but did it really change anything? And can anyone deny how much the average user on /. avoids saying anything disagreeable that may cause their karma to go down?
Another almost unrelated part is the first real posts (ignoring the first posts that're overtly to be first posts, for trolling, or just to say something really off-topic) There are certain obvious posts that everyone thinks of, involves no thought, but still gets modded.
I don't know. this rant has no steam, i keep getting distracted, and it's not like I'm not guilty, I didn't get my "excellent" karma from impressing mods. I got it by subscribing and having enough time to think of something before most people could even see the story. Go ahead and look at all my pre-subscriber posts and compare.

i'm sure you've heard the phrase "karma to burn"

i got first post. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/27/0630252&tid=191&tid=14

that was some quick mod point recycle time, 6-12 hours after i used my last point i got a new set

i'm totally expecting to get modded troll within the hour.

I counld't care any less about astronauts who die in the process of being astronauts.
If that is your job and you are not prepared for the idea of dying from it than you're a fucking fool.

Who don't have any interest aside from marking everyone down who's not talking about what they want. Am I mistaken in my idea of what a fucking troll is? because, i don't think this is trolling, maybe i'm just crazy: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=156777&cid=13147066 It's not like it's a total surprise, but I think it kinda shows how the mod system is fucked. No that's not true. The moderators are fucked.
I'll see you fuckers while meta-moderating.

I don't get people who browse at high numbers. Like their time is so insanely short that they must be able to skim through and only see the the creme de la creme. Does GNAA offend you or hurt your feelings?
It reminds me of back in the days of Yahoo/AOL chat, those people who would put anyone who swore or bothered them at all on ignore instantly.
Of course this is super minor, it doesn't affect me or anything. however. I think that when you have mod points you should not be able to view at anything but -1

My opinion of this netfinity is going down by the hour. It will not run xp, i got it to start formatting a drive, that's as far as i've gotten, then it's BSOD-ville for me PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA involving ntfs.sys. Mandrake installed fine, but it's not supporting the video card very well there's graphics corrution like mad, kinda reminds me of back in the days of NES (to it's credit, it's a really weird old card, it's name fails me for the moment) the netfinity series is heavily documented online, but for some reason i can't find any answered questions to my problem.

I went and picked up an old Netfinity 5000 dual 450mhz Pentium, and it's pretty cool, but it doesn't seem to acknowledge IDE hard drives, it's got a SCSI RAID controller with some hot swappable drive bays, but i only have IDE and SATA drives. SATA is an obvious impossibility without a controller card, but it does have IDE, only intended for it's cheap CDROM i believe, but the BIOS doesn't detect it, only the CDROM. I tried installing Winxp on it, and it sees my HD, but as soon as it starts to check it i get a BSOD reporting "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA" and mentioning ntfs.sys

I was meta-moderating, and i found this this post.. But checking the "cached article" it turns out to be fucking fecal porn. motherfucker. But no one noticed this. it's too late for me to mod it down because it's archived.