I'm a student in Pittsburgh. I go to Pitt. Payin 7k a year for my wonderful education.

We aren't paying our 'fair share' AT ALL compared to non-students, especially because some of the universities fall into the non-profit category too.

And calling our Mayor a shithead is insightful? Really? Slashdot, get classy.

I live in a Pittsburgh suburb (Moon, near the airport) and work 2 jobs in the city, as well as go to school.

Pittsburgh is a city that is probably HALF non-profits and universities. We have more non-profits located here than some states, and if you took away Pitt/UPMC/Carnegie Mellon/Carlow/Duquesne you would lose a gigantic chunk of the city.

We value all of this. We love it. Our work environment, lifestyles, cheap housing, cost of living, and most of all our small-town feel.

Firstly, let me discuss the reason why the Mayor is doing this: City council previously intended to tax the non-profits of our city. That's a HUGE no-no related to public power. The Mayor vetoed it. This is his counter-proposal. A 1% tax is absolutely nothing to students. We already get all of that in free benefits that most other college students can only dream of.

Slashdot comments can sit there and bash our Mayor all fucking day long, but what he's doing is necessary for the continued health of our city. We watch out asses early and keep ourselves afloat. We don't want to be the next big money-maker Manhattan, but we sure as hell want to keep our identity: a green, small-town port of opportunity for ANY business type. We thrive in the medical, green, and tech fields. We're the fucking definition of sustainability in a US city. And if Ohio would only be blown off the map, our air quality would be amazing.

For /. armchair hippies, we should SURELY revolt!!!! RAWR!!! Um...no. We're quite happy, and if the city needs to tax half of its 'residents' by upping tuition prices a little, so be it...We're happy to help the city.

As a Pittsburgher, I can definitely say that we don't want the next Manhattan. Our suburbs already have vast areas for companies to expand into, a reformed PAT transit system hitting us in March, LOADS of theatres/stadiums/east carson entertainment, and anything else you'd want. We're happy with our current situation.

As a student at Pitt, I can definitely say that Pitt students and other Pittsburgh college students already get shitloads of free perks, and a $400 raise in tuition is nothing. We could care less. $400 covers all the free bus fare I've done for the year easy, and the new RFID ID cards. $400 could cover all of the free events I've gotten into.

Our business selection in Pittsburgh and high number of non-profits is an indication of the types of groups that we want.

Regardless, the taxation of the students is the mayor's answer to City Council trying to tax all non-profits, which he vetoed.

7zip is indeed nice, but to automatically create file associations can sometimes be a bitch, depending on how you're installing it. Or associating icons with those file associations. There are scripts out there for it, but it sucks nonetheless.

I forced my non-profit to order legit versions of Office 2003, Outlook 2007 (for those that COULDN'T use Google Apps), and Adobe Reader from TechSoup a few years back. Its been nice having VLK support for rapid network installation after reformatting a system.

As far as an antivirus goes, I found that 70% of the junk that ends up on work computers that have restricted installation is from flash drives, so what I did was used Rising Antivirus. Yes I know....its horrible junk. But it does effectively block almost anything that tries to run from a flash drive.

My advice? Go to them with a risk analysis. "Not paying for a good corporate antivirus makes us X% more vulnerable, and it costs X amount as a one-time payment"...."getting busted for using the same cdkey on every computer will cost us X amount"....and so on. But when you spend money on software, show them something else that the company can save money on. We just saved a SHITLOAD when I determined that switching over to a direct copier contract with Canon would be most cost-efficient. Rent projectors instead of buying them. Find a cheaper, better paper for your copier. Use all free software on lab computers.

I just type in whatever i want into the address bar and it searches google...

Or if I type "wiki Denny Crane" it goes straight to his page.

Some people enjoy using Outlook even if webmail is king.

However, until Lightning and Thunderbird get a better overhaul, Seamonkey will never catch on. The calendar and mail interface is mediocre at best compared to Outlook 2007.

Its sad that we use Open Office at the nonprofit I work at, but still use Outlook.

I completely agree, but the main problem is with connections like FIOS, you are required to put a good 3-4 hours into getting this right, because the 'free' router still needs to give TV data to the TVs for programming and OnDemand purposes. There are ways to bypass this, but NONE that a novice should ever attempt doing.

My connection is currently set up so that it looks like my FIOS cable boxes are downloading torrents of TV shows :P

Find any test where they compare XP to Vista to W7 on a single core processor with 1GB memory, and you'll find the test you're looking for.

Hell, I could do a test with that system that would show substantial differences between the two. Memory and gpu management has become loads better between all of those OS.

Naturally, the SOS Brigade totally supports that policy.

Apple Evolved! Their new product is.....

fDoors.

Cause doors can fuck off. We use Windows.

As far as any Half-Life 1 based games are concerned, input that registers server side would change drastically based on the client FPS.

http://www.fortress-forever.com/fpsreport/ for a detailed analysis of the situation of forcing fps_max in settings. Scroll down to the very bottom for the tl;dr graph.

I used to force mine on 101 (like every noob recommends) before I read this, and there is a noticable increase in speed when I lowered it to 50. So much, that it's become impossible to shoot the autoshotty (its spread did absolutely no damage firing faster). However, with weapons like the MP5, it might allow you to get a shot or two off more than the other person shooting at you, giving you an advantage over an entire game....2 less deaths, 2 more kills. In a tournament that could easily be the difference between winning and losing.

I wonder if this is true for other similar engines?

I say shut down the internet for a week.

If we can't get shit fixed in a week, then thats when we call in everyone from /.

And if they can't get it fixed, then hell, we don't need it.

I agree. It got +4 Insightful from sheer hatred.

A slimmed down version of Vista with aero disabled and alot of clutter removed can run on pretty much any old system with enough hard drive space.

We actually use thermite and sledgehammers at my work place to destroy old hard drives.

A stack of 3 of them, a line across the platter area, and a large 20lb sledge to hit them afterwards.

We've had issues in the past with hard drive processing places actually sending them overseas for disposal, but they end up getting recycled and reused.