NaveWeiss's Journal: The 2 lab computers are no longer black!

Remember the 2 computers I disabled? Well, I visited today the lab and the 2 computers were in the exact state I left them (one was black, and the other was in 640x480x16 mode after I've choosen "vga mode" from the boot menu).

So I rebooted them. The first one strangely managed to display 1024x768 (not so good though), so I'll keep it that way. The second one returned to black, so I took the first VB program that changes the resolution that I found on google, compiled it in another computer, saved it on the network drive, went to the black computer, performed a blind login and ran the program (using the WinKey+R shortcut). And now it's displaying again!

Nice of me, isn't it?

Good

[jawtheshark]

At least you won't get the admins pissed now ;-)

And let it be a lesson for you: don't mess with computers where you don't know exactly what config they support.

Re:Good

[NaveWeiss]

And let it be a lesson for you: don't mess with computers where you don't know exactly what config they support.

Do you really think it help? Not at all. I love destroying equipment. It's so fun!
I bet if I looked it up, I could have seen those monitors DO support 1024x768. Probably it's just a faulty batch of monitors which was sold cheaply to the university or something like that.

Admins can be cheap

[salimma]

... word is that the reason my alma mater would not use a journaled file system on the Linux PCs in the CS department is because they buy cheap hard drives on sales and it's dangerous to run them without fscks once in a while.

Probably an urban legend, but supported by the fact that they managed to do their annual upgrade to the 2.4.16 kernel - not long after the VM change. Quite possibly without doing much stress testing beforehand too.

Glad to know you're in the clear though. Scarily, this could be a reas

Re:Admins can be cheap

[NaveWeiss]

Is this [everything2.com] the right definition for "alma mater"? It's a bit cruel sending me to glossary sites like that, you know. ;)

What was the VM change? I'm not too updated with kernel news and stuff.

Glad to know you're in the clear though. Scarily, this could be a reason to argue for introducing Trusted Computing - if those PCs only run signed binaries, after all, you would not have been able to do what you did.

I'm not sure... it's MS' fault, or the admins fault. It shouldn't have been allowed to save the resoluti

Re:Admins can be cheap

[salimma]

I would have used dictionary.com to look it up, but yes :) Interesting reading too; seems academia is prone to 'embrace and extend', if not outright replace, the meaning of words: might want to look up the word campus [wikipedia.org].

As for the kernel, kernel 2.4.0 shipped with an unsatisfactory virtual memory manager, which was replaced a few months later. Replacing such a vital component during the lifecycle of the stable kernel inevitably led to problems that should only be seen during development, like this [iu.edu]. An analog