Or just buy a long HDMI cable.. or HDMI-over-Cat5 adapter.. or (if you have the luxury during construction or like to retrofit) install HDMI in your walls. This is just .. too obvious. It's probably less effort and more effective than trying to soundproof a PC, cheaper than liquid cooling+SSD drives, and is stil noise-free for anyone in the room not using headphones.

I had one of my mythtv frontends (which also happened to be the server - lots of fans/drives, quite noisy) in the utility room behind the wall my TV is mounted on. HDMI and USB cable coming in was all I needed, and I had a remote (and keyboard/mouse - when needed), and sound/video. And it was totally silent. (I've since switched to another system with a no-moving-parts frontend, so now it sits in the same room).

The 20 seconds spent by a slow typist is likely more than double the time spent by a decent typist. That is (lets say) 13 seconds more time spent thinking about typing that could have been used to think about programming.

I also think that spending so much extra time thinking about typing makes the poor typist more likely to (partially) forget what the next line was going to be, and thus spend more time thinking about it.

Personally, I think more in 'sections' than lines, and when I think up a way to write a particular bit of code - which may involve a loop iterating through an array, for example - I can just pound out that section very quickly. This lets me get thinking about the next block sooner, since I spend almost no energy thinking about typing.

There's definitely also times where my typing is too slow for my thought process - for example I decide to solve some particular problem, I need to write a class to represent my data and a collection class to hold it - and so my brain is waiting for my fingers to catch up so I can actually start writing the real logic. I don't know if that's really a good explanation; I just get into spurts where tens of lines of code just stream out very quickly, and then I sit back for a few seconds to think, before streaming out another chunk of code.

Using ISP email accounts is stupid regardless of the way you access it.

I switched to using gmail after hosting my own email for many years.
  1. I was using Thunderbird, which was okay, but did consume some resources and make things slow.
  2. I was running webmail using Horde, which was fairly clumsy although usable.
  3. I hated that I had to have Thunderbird open (at least somewhere) in order for my filters to work. This was particularly annoying whenever I was away from my own computers, and accessing via crappy (compared to Thunderbird) webmail client.
  4. I was running my email through a commercial spam appliance, plus had RBL lists on my server, plus had Bayesian rules trained in Thunderbird, and yet still got a few spam's a week in my inbox.
  5. I had switched PC a few times over the years I was running mail. The first time or two I manually re-created my rules. Then I found an import/export add-on that could move filtering rules. Then I got a laptop, and used both my laptop and desktop an equal amount - keeping filtering rules in sync was a pain.

Finally, after I got my current laptop, I got sick of the whole mess (and the spam), and changed my account to forward to gmail. I've been doing that for at least a year now, and I could count on one hand the number of spam's I've got. My only complaint is that the rules aren't as complex as what I could make in Thunderbird, but the searching is sufficiently accurate and fast that having as many folders as I used to have is simply not that important anymore.

Gmail is set to send 'from' my domain (not my gmail address), so to anyone else, it's transparent.

I thought the way they made the Avatar characters was pretty neat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2_vB7zx_SQ

Cameron also had a monitor rig that he could hold on set - it was motion-tracked as well, and basically gave a real-time view into the rendered scene, so he could move it around like a virtual camera. I'm not entirely sure but it seemed (from a longer making-of video) like they actually used that as a "camera" at points, so even the camera tracking had a human-hand-held feel at times.

Some other great pics:

  * http://krebsonsecurity.com/2010/01/would-you-have-spotted-the-fraud/
  * http://krebsonsecurity.com/2010/02/atm-skimmers-part-ii/
  * http://krebsonsecurity.com/2010/05/fun-with-atm-skimmers-part-iii/

Required viewing: Enhance megamix.. of course, the Super Troopers expertly makes fun of the whole concept.

I do use VoIP, and I "spoof" in two specific situations:

Since I got a cell phone through my work, I had my old cell phone number (which I'd had for like 7 years, and it spells my name) ported to VoIP (I keep both numbers and have separate personal/work numbers, and only carry one device). Now when you call it, it simultaneously rings the phone in my home office, and my cell. When it calls my cell, it "spoofs" the outbound call to appear as though it's coming from whoever ACTUALLY called my number, so on my cell phone the caller id shows the true caller, and not as if someone at my house is calling.

The other time I use it is as a secondary VoIP service. I only have one inbound number (DID) for my "house" number, which is tied to a specific provider. I have another provider that is setup as a secondary service, in the case I try to make a call and the first is unreachable, or rejects my call for any reason. I don't have a DID with that provider, only outgoing service. So when I place calls from that line, I "spoof" my house DID number, so it doesn't show up as blocked or some random CLID.

Unfortunately, I don't see how they can distinguish these two uses from actual malicious spoofing, but I'm not in Mississippi (or the US for that matter) so this doesn't apply to me now.

I'm the same way. I don't have an uncontrollable urge to click and buy things from every ad I see -- do all these adblock users have that? I understand for the annoying ads (punch the monkey, etc), but really, I'll just stop going to the site. Likewise with NoScript. What is people's obsession with not running scripts? Many apps and sites make huge use of scripts, and that's what's enabling us to get to the point where so many apps are online, running in a browser. Nothing to install, update, etc, and the apps are getting very powerful and functional. Do you want to go back to the old days of platform-specific native apps? It's like people have gotten to that age where new technology is scary.. no doubt this same conversation happened when going from 3270 terminals to PC, and from text-mode to graphical UI, etc.

I was in the same boat, just found smooth gestures - it works quite well, though I also had to install smooth gestures new tab because otherwise it doesn't work on the "new" tab that shows thumbnails etc.

I've started using Chrome on my laptop now, mostly because Firefox inexplicably started taking up many hundreds of megs of RAM and becoming very slow after a day or two, to the point I had to restart. I have some extensions installed (firebug, firecookie, web developer, gestures) but nothing that I don't have installed on other systems.

Anyways, it's noticeably faster than FF, and so far I like it. No real complaints for my laptop surfing so far (which is reading news, email, and random research/documentation/surfing).

Interesting experiment:

Find a site that exploits IE6 to install something highly irritating but otherwise mostly harmless (eg.. randomly flips the monitor upside down, or keeps showing a message "Rebooting in 30 seconds, click here to cancel.." or randomly open websites every few minutes). Preferably you have nothing to do with the creation, hosting, or anything else of this site -- you just found it somewhere.

Find a large-ish company, mandated to use IE6.. preferably one where the IT department says it's because it's "more secure" than other browsers (and yes, I know places like that - it's mind boggling).

Put an ad up on a billboard nearby (that many of their offices/breakroom overlook, or employees drive by, etc) that says "Hey (company name), do NOT go to www.badsite.com!"

Technically, you were doing a public service, warning them not to go there. All I'm saying.. it would be interesting to watch the fallout (knowing an insider in the company would make this more interesting).

By long drill bit, what you want is a flexible, self-feeding "installer bit" (eg: http://www.bamanufacturing.com/fg_series.html). I wired my house with a 54" x 3/8" (or maybe 1/2"? I can't remember now) bit: http://gregmaclellan.com/blog/running-network-cables/ (has some pictures). In my case I added at least 2x Cat5e and 1x RG-6 to every room (though really, I don't use the coax at all, I run Mythtv and everything is networked).

Basically, you can put a hole in the wall where you want the jack, stick this bit in, and drill into the floor above/below. You need to of course be careful and check for wires/plumbing/etc (turn off power if you're at all unsure). If it's not next to an unfinished space, it will require more creative pathways and probably some extra holes in drywall that will have to get patched up later.

I ran into this problem before with Kingston RAM, where different chips were used, but it was otherwise the same part number.

I had a bunch of identical systems, all using "identical" ram. However, a couple were having issues, and totally failed memtest. So I sent them back, and got new ones - and these too failed. I took them back again, and they checked them in the store, where they worked fine. Upon further inspection, all the ones that failed had one brand of chip, while the working ones had a different chip. It was just this specific chip in combination with the motherboard. It's obvious in retrospect, but before looking at the manufacturer on the chips (or even thinking of that), it was a very difficult problem to solve. The whole thing did remind me again why I hate hardware and generally stick to software. Needless to say, we used a different brand entirely, and problem solved.

I was avoiding Kingston RAM for a while, but I may have used it accidentally since (this was 2-3 years ago) because I forgot about this story.

Careful - it sounds like you're suggesting a user is considered disabled because they are running IE6..

I bet we'll get an issue that all the jQuery is too slow in IE6. And I fear the fix is not going to be to use a faster browser instead.

That's like getting an issue saying ANY app is too slow, reported by a user running a Pentium III 900mHz with 128MB of RAM. They'll probably argue that their computer was fast when they bought it back in 2001, and they still had the equivalent of your app, and it was fast. Why is it slow now?

Ah yes. Because software always works perfectly, you can rest well at night knowing that your mission-critical servers will always survive a hard reboot. Testing is for wussies