We were required to have a "Cisco Clean Access Agent" installed on our machines. There were two options available for me, and I ended up going with the second.

1) The clean access agent only actually requires that you "authenticate" as clean to the network about once every two weeks. I installed a copy of Windows on a small partition at the end of my drive, put the clean access agent on it and authenticated myself. Whenever I was "cut off" from the network, I would reboot into the other (isolated) Windows partition (make sure your actual in-use partitions aren't mounted), do a scan to regain access and then reboot again. Worked reasonably well.

2) Because our network was so slow, I eventually decided that it wasn't worth the trouble. In the residence I was in the phones were provided by the local phone company and the cable was provided by the local cable company. It was a bit of a grey area regarding the policies in place in the residence, but I was able to have cable internet installed directly into my room. Perhaps you can do the same?

So far as I can tell, asus.co.uk is not Asus' UK website. If you go to asus.com and select the United Kingdom, you are sent to uk.asus.com.

The page you linked shows "asus.co.uk" in the address bar, yet if you go to "asus.co.uk" directly, you get redirected (as in "please wait while we redirect you") to uk.asus.com. I was unable to find this page on uk.asus.com. Furthermore, uk.asus.com is 66.238.93.162 while the page you linked (asus.co.uk) is hosted at 87.106.102.168.

A lookup on asus.co.uk shows that it is registered to Asustek, but it was updated very recently (May 22, 2009) and the nameservers are now at 1and1.co.uk (never heard of them).

Is it possible that someone has intercepted the domain in order to provide "proof" that the site in the summary is legitimate?

As someone who spends well above your $220 mark on any video card he buys, I agree with your scale. In reality, I could play through all the games I own (there are many, ranging from very low (Defcon) to very high (Crysis Warhead) demands) on a card costing far less than the one I currently own.

I do contest that I don't have any sense though, buying high end cards. (For the record, my current card is a Radeon 4870x2. I bought it used, if it helps.) Really, it's an issue of priorities. A person doesn't need 250hp in their card, or a 60" LCD to watch movies, or a 3000+ square foot house for a couple, or whatever. You can drive, watch movies and sleep at night with far more modest versions of those things. I take the bus, I have a small "home theater" (sort of) and I live in a relatively modest one-bedroom apartment with my girlfriend. I like playing games though - it's escapism. It isn't even just escapism - I'm awed by how powerful these system have become. I like tweaking my system for maximum performance. I like running games maxed out at 60fps, and then modifying them to push the visual quality up even higher.

I'm not saying that everyone should do what I do. I'm not saying what I do makes sense for most people. Almost everyone has a guilty pleasure though, into which they dump their disposable income. Mine is my computer. My girlfriend's is books and movies. I have friends that blow their extra cash on bars, or on clothes or on their car. Those are valid too. It's just a choice.

I'm not calling you out here, I don't think you meant to insult me or anyone else. I'm just... giving you the perspective of someone who likes high-end gaming hardware.

Actually, I don't. I'd love some PC-106000 RAM.

It's interesting that they say this actually. I'm a terrible chess player not because I don't 'get' the game, but because I'm not very patient. So I tend to do fairly well playing speed chess, but doing very, very poorly in a normal game. I tend to just get tired of evaluating the possible moves after a while and just make whatever one was the most promising out of the few that I did think about.

Isn't that sort of the same thing as limiting the number of calculations? In this case limiting the calculations would replicate the stupid moves that I (as a human/meat popsicle) would make, assuming that the order in which the computer evaluated possible moves was decided using more or less the same set or priorities that I would use (which are also probably stupid).

So the trick to coming up with a "realistic" AI opponent for chess might be more about figuring out how a human surveys the board and in what order they evaluate the moves. You can replicate the behaviour of dumb humans (like me) just by cutting off the evaluation at some very early point and scale up the difficulty by extending it.

When I was younger I remember watching new episodes Star Trek The Next Generation at 10pm on Friday nights on CityTV. I don't think anyone can argue that TNG did poorly.

Unless that was just a CityTV thing, or it was an encore presentation for new episodes or something.

I'm just wondering where you read about Starter Edition being meant for netbooks. It doesn't seem like an unreasonable claim, but I was under the impression that Starter Edition was for emerging markets and wouldn't be sold in developed countries. Did Microsoft and/or a netbook manufacturer announce that they intend to supply the machines with Starter Edition pre-installed?

"Their arguement is like someone discovering how to copy a Rolls Royce for free. Suddenly all the millions of Rolls Royces on the road being driven by people of modest means represent lost sales?"

I think a potential real world example of this happening is with synthetic (i.e. lab-made) diamonds. Companies like De Beers are scared shitless because they can no longer create a situation of artificial scarcity and charge massive prices for their diamonds, since they're relatively easy to make in a lab now via CVD.

I was at a conference recently that had a trade show going on and there was a company there selling relatively small lab-made diamonds for cheap (a couple hundred bucks). Now these lab-made diamonds are supposedly very high quality (I've heard that an expert can spot synthetic diamonds specifically because they're flawless, in a way that no natural diamond would ever be). Just for the sake of comparison I wrote down the specs for a small, high-grade diamond they had at the show for something like $300 and asked in a diamond store how much a stone with those characteristics would generally go for, and the answer was in the $3000 ballpark.

I can afford a $300 diamond, but I can't afford a $3000 diamond (at the moment). So in my case buying a $300 synthetic diamond would not be a lost sale for De Beers. I'm sure they'd feel differently though.

No, I'm embarrassed that it's shiny and black.

Seriously though, no, I'm not hugely concerned. That said, the iPhone is, at least in my area, associated with a particularly type of person (i.e. the type who works it into conversation for no reason other than to brag). I'd rather not be thought of that way. Excuse me.

And, yeah, 'teh iPhone'. Millions of emo Starbucks drinking retards posting their unboxing vids on youtube and looking for every single possible way they can somehow work their phone into their conversations to try to make it clear just how 'special' they are.

Fuck. This is totally why I hide my iPhone from view when I'm on the bus or in public in general. It was the best, cheapest option (seriously) for me to get an effective browsing/email client on the road (BBs are crazily expensive and the iPhone 3G was having a launch sale) but I'm deeply embarassed to be seen with it.

It's a great device. It does what I need it to do. I'm happy I own it. I just wish nobody else knew that I own it.

I use a nitrogen box (O2 and H2O less than 0.1 ppm) in my lab to test transistors. I test several hundred transistors at a time, and need to connect probes to electrodes on each one manually, so my hands are always in the glove box. In order to start my analysis program and enter a filename, I wired a USB port to an electrical feedthrough and put a USB hub inside. Originally the hub was just for a keyboard and mouse, but it has since proved useful for other devices (cameras, etc) as well.

Can you do something similar here, assuming a keyboard and mouse can be sufficiently sterilized?