Comment Oblig. Star Wars Quote (Score 1) 313
I sense a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly driven back to piracy.
Comment Re:Put a Beta Tag on Slashdot (Score 1) 180
So its not just me?
Does anyone have a solution to this?
-Chubbz
Alienware Refusing Customers As Thieves 665
ChrisPaget writes "Thinking about buying Alienware (now owned by Dell)? Think again. After buying an almost-new Alienware laptop on eBay, I've spent the last week trying to get hold of a Smart Bay caddy to connect a second hard drive (about $150 for $5 of bent metal). Four different Alienware teams have refused to even give me a price on this accessory, instead accusing me of stealing the machine since I didn't buy it directly from their eBay store. They want me to persuade the eBay seller I did buy it from to add me as an authorized user of his Alienware account — they have no concept of 'ownership transfer' and instead assume that if you're not in their system, you must be a thief."
Comment Re:A perfect place for slashdot. (Score 1) 201
Hell, feed me enough and I'll show you an "excrement that tests extremes."
Submission + - Obama, Huckabee win Iowa caucuses
An anonymous reader writes: Democratic Illinois Senator Barack Obama and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a Republican, have been declared the winners of their presidential caucuses in Iowa, the first test in the race for the White House.
Obama, who had been in a tough three-way battle against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and former senator John Edwards, won convincingly. Vying to become the first black president, Obama had 37 per cent support among Democrats. Edwards appeared headed for second place with Clinton finishing a close third.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/01/03/iowa-caucus.html?ref=rss
The Crafting of Half-Life 2 - Episode Two 39
Now that they have some time to stop and think, the folks behind Half-Life 2: Episode Two are making the interview rounds. Halflife2.net has up a discussion with HL2 scribe Marc Laidlaw. They discuss some of the world-shaking events in this latest chapter of the game, with plenty of spoilers. (So be forewarned.) RPS, meanwhile, has an interview with project lead David Speyrer. The developer talks John Walker through the process of playtesting at Valve, what it's like to work at such a creative company, and the decisions they made regarding DX9 vs. DX10 tradeoffs during the dev process. "RPS: You chose to not use DX10 for the new games. Why was that? DS: For this set of products we decided to use some DX10 features, but not through the API itself. It's because we didn't want to be Vista only. We didn't feel there was an enough of an install base for the Orange Box launch. I'm sure we will use it - it's pretty much inevitable. But this time, things like the hardware face morphing is implemented via a back-door API. RPS: DX9 can do what DX10 offers then? DS: Yeah, but through driver-back doors. And I'm sure we'll rethink it at some point. For this roll out it was fine to do it as we did."
Submission + - Toads Mate across the Species Barrier
Hugh Pickens writes: "Although mating with another species (hybridization) is often maladaptive and females typically avoid other species as mates, Nature magazine is reporting the first example of harsh environmental conditions driving an animal across the species barrier. When drought threatens, one species of spadefoot toad will mate with more drought resistant toads of another species so that their offspring will have the best chance of survival even if it means that those offspring will have a lower chance of reproducing successfully. One possibility is that the toads need their offspring to develop more quickly when water is in short supply and field tests confirmed that hybrid tadpoles were more likely to survive through metamorphosis in rapidly drying pools. "Females are probably assessing a lot more out there than just how long the male's tail is," says Maurice Sabelis, Professor of Population Biology at the University of Amsterdam. "They are probably more sensitive to their own condition and environment when choosing a male.""
Submission + - The effects of Open Source on Software Development (blogspot.com)
phomer writes: "We live an an era where software was become open and freely available. The Open Source revolution has brought huge changes to programming, but underneath all of the noise and hype, what are the real effects of having access to a glut of software? Is this helping to enhance Computer Science, or are the effects actually hurting it? This series of two essays looks at the impact of Open Source on Computer Science (shrink-wrapped software) and on Consulting."
Submission + - NBC direct launched, download shows for free (blorge.com)
thefickler writes: It's here, and it's no joke. NBC has launched NBC Direct where most shows can be watched online and some shows are available for full episode downloads. This comes after NBC decided to pull out of iTunes.
Submission + - Trojan spoofing eBay, Carfax robs user of $8600 (theregister.com)
kurmudgeon writes: "A sophisticated Trojan is targeting users of eBay Motors by installing a scaled-down webserver on their machines that masquerades as web pages frequently used to sniff out fraudulent offerings, The Register is reporting. eBay has long counseled its users to only trust a trust a transaction if it appears in the My eBay section of the site, but the malware creates authentic-looking counterfeits of those pages, as well as pages for sites such as Carfax.com and Autocheck.com. The Trojan has already contributed to the loss of $8,650 by one user. eBay is refusing to make good on a promise to protect the user up to $20,000 because the company says the transaction didn't actually take place on eBay."
Submission + - The sixty-five dollar click (nytimes.com) 2
PessimisticLitigator writes: Adam Liptak wrote a great article, in the New York Times, on how competition in the legal field is driving the cost per click of Google ad to remarkable levels Phrases such as "Oakland personal injury lawyer," "Asbestos attorney," and "mesothelioma attorney Texas" are bringing in between $58 and $66 per click. Is this an example of commonsense left at the door, or is it a brilliant use of technology? It seems like the prior to me.
There is an interesting side note where the article calls Google a middle aged technology, and it cites the historically slow adaptation of technology by attorneys as evidence.
There is an interesting side note where the article calls Google a middle aged technology, and it cites the historically slow adaptation of technology by attorneys as evidence.
Journal Journal: Human Residue
What at first may seem like any other feature length zombie film to the average web scavenger, the movie Human Residue is not. This movie not only has some very well done zombies, and it will be in HD, but it also aims "to be one of the first truly free feature films made available in the digital age." You heard that right, th
Submission + - Why go HD DVD when ATSC is just as good?
An anonymous reader writes: With all this talk of HD DVD vs Blu-ray, it seems like no one's focused on the high-def experience with regular over-the-air digital. In the same style as FiringSquad's Transformers HD DVD vs DVD article, FS has compared the Heroes HD DVD to the original NBC broadcast with full 1080p screenshots. The winner is HD DVD, but just by a hair.
Submission + - Al Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize (yahoo.com)
neochubbz writes: Former Vice President Al Gore and the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Friday for their efforts to spread awareness of man-made climate change and lay the foundations for counteracting it. "I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize," Gore said. "We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."
Submission + - Windows Vista from an IT manager's perspective
inverse137 writes: "OK, it's September 18, 2007. Windows Vista has been out for almost a year now and the IT manager security blanket known as the first service pack is about to be released. Today is the day that I start prodding the guts of this new and "improved" version of Windows to see how I will begin implementation of this beast on the 200 or so computers I am responsible for.
Of course I already have a couple of pain-in-the-ass users who have Vista running on their computers because they would rather be cutting edge than stable, so I have seen this OS and worked on it minimally. But now, now I must figure out how I will remotely manage this thing.
Step one: I personally run a MacBook Pro and use Bootcamp to dual boot between OS X and XP Pro. That 5400rpm hard drive seems a bit sluggish so what better time to switch my own system to Vista than when I upgrade the hard drive to a 160GB Seagate SATA 7200rpm hard drive. So far, so good. Open up the Mac, pull the hard drive, install the new drive, clone the OS X partition to the new drive and voila! OS X is up and running. Now, download the latest BootCamp and let the fun begin.
Vista seems to install without any difficulty. In fact, one of the smoother clean installs of Windows yet. Run the BootCamp driver CD and this laptop is back up and running with minimal problems (Vista reports it doesn't like the built in iSight camera.)
Now, let's join this baby to the domain. Uhh, how do you join Vista to a domain? Damn, Windows 2000 all over again. Have to actually "think" about these things again instead of it being second nature. No worries, let's just Google it. Ahh, there ya go...Control Panel, switch to classic view, system and change settings. Hmm this looks familiar.
So, joining to a domain wasn't that painful, now let's reboot and logon under the domain. Wow, this thing boots pretty damn fast...what do you mean I don't have a licensed copy of Vista ?! More Googling...ok, there is a patch that I can install from the "Limited Access" logon option. Reboot again...hey, still boots fast and now I can logon! Well that kinda sucked but at least the fix was relatively painless.
Step 2: Play. This is the part I like before the next part where I spend hours tweaking, hacking and testing. Hmm, my Vista experience is a 4.5. My wife's laptop has a Vista Experience of 1.0. Yay, Mac!
Step 3: Test the systems as the IT director that I am. Let's install Timbuktu and see how things go. Uh oh, only Timbuktu Pro v8.6.0 will work on Vista and with "issues." Oh well, how bad could those issues be? Huh, go figure, the "issues" are pretty significant. I can't run my remote control software as a service. OK, let's just run it as a user and see how it looks. Damn, where'd did I put those antacid tablets? Timbuktu only gives me a black screen on the viewing system. No problem, we're coming up on almost a year after release so Netopia must have something on Vista. Ahh, here we go, adjust these settings, reboot and....same black screen. OK, let's test the other computers we have running Vista. Bummer, same thing on all of them. Alrighty, so a program I have used for 10 years is now useless. Let's just see what Vista has done to improve remote management. Well looky there. They haven't done anything over XP. Oh sure, there's some encryption settings now on Remote Assistance, but I still can't use remote assistance to connect to a workstation without being invited. What do you mean invited? These are my damn computers! OK, OK, just relax there, sparky, you've been meaning to switch to VNC anyway to reduce cost. OK, let's find us a version of VNC. Oh, TightVNC looks like it has a small footprint and can be tweaked to what I need. Wait, how about this UltraVNC! Yeah, that's the one. Has everything you're looking for! Download, install, reboot, damn! No password configured? WTF? I entered a password...ok, let's Google (those guys at Google are worth every penny of the billions they have!) Huh, can't run VNC server as a service.
Ok, so let's have a diet coke and re-cap. You make a good chunk of change every year because you are able to handle over 200 computers by yourself by implementing various automated processes AND reducing expenses that would be incurred by having to travel to the various locations to help a user that cant' find the "Display Folder List" button in Outlook. Management loves you for what you've done to reduce the support cost. The users love you because they pick up the phone, hit your extension and you are looking at there desktop before they have finished describing the problem. How bad can it be?
Umm, it's that bad. So up until 8 hours ago I had superhuman like powers. I was all knowing and all controlling. Now I have tasted Kryptonite. I can bleed. I am realizing that I am back to 1985 sneaker-net (don't remember what a sneaker-net is? Damn kids!) How the hell am I going to support 200 computers if I have to run around all day? Ok, I could always hire more people to carry the over-flow work. I am too experienced to be telling someone where the "undo last action" button is in Office 2007. Ok, so where are we going to put these people? Ok, I'll set them up in the space outside my office. Oh yeah, need to run phone lines and order them computers.
OK, so maybe I'm overreacting a bit. Vista has been out "only" 10 months. I'm sure someone can figure out how to run a service with the isolation of the session0.
No, wait, I'm not overreating. Unix has had multiple run levels for decades and everything plays nice together. So why am I in a cold sweat right now wondering how I am going to tell the owners of this company that I cannot support the current number of computers by myself after having done so for 5 years?
Why am I going to have to spend my weekends driving around from office to office to work on desktops because, by my own security practices, users are not to leave their computers un-locked when they are away from them? Should I cancel my auto-reboot of workstations on Friday night to clear all file locks so I have a good backup so I can tell people to leave their computers turned on and locked and also send me their passwords so I can unlock them when I need to access VNC running as a user program instead of a service? My beautiful and secure network is suddenly morphing in to an unsecure mess to accomodate the security enhancements of Vista! Sure, you can lock down the kernel but a lot of good that does when some IT manager has a list of user passwords on his desk!
OK, next call is to my marketing rep at Dell to see how much longer I can order XP Pro systems!"
