guidemaker - Slashdot User

Comment My personal etymology (Score 1) 876

by guidemaker on Monday May 18, 2009 @11:23AM (#27997251) Attached to: The Hard Drive Is Inside the Computer

I've always assumed that this naming convention started with the Classic Mac. With that, the computer *was* the screen, and if you were lucky enough to have a hard drive, that was the little box attached to the screen. In previous jobs, it would usually be the longtime Mac users would would use Hard Drive for the computer itself, and I suspect it's just one of those memes that gets spread around.

Comment Re:In other words (Score 1) 499

by guidemaker on Friday February 02, 2007 @08:28AM (#17857294) Attached to: Vista Indicates A Shift in Microsoft's Priorities

I want to BUILD my media center PC but unfortunately Microsoft only sells the media center edition with pre-built PC's

You've been able to buy OEM Media Center 2005 for quite some time now (which, although they don't tell you this, was more like XP Professional than XP Home). I built my own MCE PC over a year ago. If you're building your own machine, an OEM version is perfectly legitimate.

Handicapping the 6th Generation iPod 250

Posted by Zonk on Saturday September 09, 2006 @04:21AM from the gotta-love-ipoddery dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It's that time of the year again, when Apple rumors bloom with the fall foliage and the press is inundated with hype and wishful thinking. MP3 Newswire has a reasonably sober article addressing 17 of those rumors, even giving odds on the validity of each. From the article: 'It is the peripheral manufacturers that now have a heavy sway on what features the iPod will add to its 6th generation. The peripheral market has done more to cement Apple's proprietary technology as a standard than Apple itself, adding to the iPod's dominance. Mr. Jobs will not upset that balance without good reason and Apple's recent deal with Creative to make iPod peripherals shows he wants to feed it further. But the iPod needs something new to keep it fresh and ahead of the competition.'"

End of Win 98 Support May Boost Desktop Linux 581

Posted by timothy on Tuesday July 11, 2006 @07:42AM from the not-sure-about-the-demographic-overlap dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft kills off support for Windows 98 and Windows ME today, and ZDNet is reporting that the move will boost demand for Linux on the desktop. Unlike two years ago — when support for Win98 was extended because Linux was seen as a serious competitor — this time it seems there is no turning back."

SCEA President Hypes PS3 Shelf Life Over 360 139

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday June 07, 2006 @05:16PM from the hype-from-sony-never dept.

kukyfrope writes "Sony Computer Entertainment America President Kaz Hirai recently talked to San Jose Mercury News about their upcoming console. His argument is that, by waiting to deliver Blu-Ray and performance hardware, even at a high price, the PS3 will be in greater standing than the Xbox 360 in the long run. Hirai also takes a cop-out on the amount of hype surrounding the PS3 hardware performance saying, 'It's all about the games. We all know that [...] This is a console that is here for the long haul and is not on a five-year cycle. Microsoft is coming out with an HD-DVD accessory for HD movies as an add-on only a year after they launched: that is exactly the kind of thing we don't want to do.'"

Soldiers Bond with Bomb-Defusing Robots 250

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @02:43PM from the friendly-neighborhood-sacrificial-robot dept.

hdtv writes "Reuters is running a story that talks about the emotional bonds that US soldiers develop with the robots in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The company, most famous on the US market for its Roomba vacuum cleaner, provided '300 PackBot Tactical Mobile Robots deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan to open doors in urban combat, lay fiber-optic cable, defuse bombs and perform other hazardous duties previously done by humans alone.'"

U.S. Considers Anti-Satellite Laser 511

Posted by Zonk on Thursday May 04, 2006 @09:51AM from the governmental-boondoggle-you-say dept.

SpaceAdmiral writes "The U.S. government wants to develop a ground-based weapon to shoot down enemy satellites in orbit. The laser will be much more powerful and sophisticated than a similar endeavor a decade ago. From the article: '... some Congressional Democrats and other experts fault the research as potential fuel for an antisatellite arms race that could ultimately hurt this nation more than others because the United States relies so heavily on military satellites, which aid navigation, reconnaissance and attack warning.'"

DARPA Funded Startup to 'Bird-Dog' Rootkits 124

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday April 24, 2006 @09:38PM from the tails-of-woe dept.

Ski_Bird writes "DARPA is funding a startup the supposedly has a unique approach to detect rootkits. The startup, Komoku, is ready to 'emerge from stealth mode with hardware and software-based technologies to fight the rapid spread of malicious rootkits.' They have a PCI card that doesn't necessarily determine that a rootkit is installed, only that the O/S has changed dramatically enough to warrant investigation. Microsoft, however, demonstrated a rootkit running in a virtual machine outside of the user's O/S workspace that made detection impossible."

Dell Protests 'Not Wintel's Lapdog' 449

Posted by Zonk on Monday April 10, 2006 @06:26PM from the doth-protest-too-much dept.

An anonymous reader writes "C|Net is reporting on a protestation by Dell's CTO, Kevin Kettler, who says quite loudly that they are not Microsoft and Intel's puppet." From the article: "Essentially, Kettler argued, Dell was responsible for selecting, if not necessarily developing, many of the technologies in today's desktop computers and servers. Among standards for which he said Dell deserves credit are 802.11 wireless networking, PCI Express communications technology and 64-bit extensions to Intel's x86 line of processors."

SCOTUS To Hear Patentable Thought Case 394

Posted by Zonk on Sunday March 19, 2006 @02:45PM from the get-out-of-my-head dept.

skayell writes "The Supreme Court of the United States will hear a landmark patent case involving whether or not thoughts and relationships are patentable. Michael Crichton's essay in the New York Times attempts a thoughtful summary of Metabolite's primary assertion: they not only own the connection between homocysteine levels in the blood and vitamin B12 deficiency, but also any thought connecting the two."

Info on Intel's Viiv DRM 125

Posted by Zonk on Thursday March 16, 2006 @07:39PM from the viiv-is-the-oddest-word dept.

An anonymous reader writes "CNET went to Intel's Viiv launch in Australia and scored some interesting info about Viiv's DRM scheme. From the article: '[Don] MacDonald also told CNET.com.au that Viiv won't be testing to see if the content being played is pirated from networks such as BitTorrent. He believes that it's not Intel's job to be policing downloads and that it's wrong to assume that all consumers are criminals. As such, Viiv won't test for watermarks or other red flags that reveal pirated content, allowing any type of media to be played.' Another choice quote from the article: 'MacDonald is confident that piracy won't be a significant issue for Viiv, as Intel promises to make content easier to buy than it is to pirate.'"

DDoS Attacks Via DNS Recursion 192

Posted by Zonk on Thursday March 16, 2006 @02:37PM from the to-understand-recursion-you-must-understand-recursion dept.

JehCt writes "Associated Press is running a story about how the recursion feature of open DNS servers can be used to launch massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks: 'First detected late last year, the new attacks direct such massive amounts of spurious data against victim computers that even flagship technology companies could not cope.' A thread at WebmasterWorld explains, 'To make a long story short, having a DNS server that allows recursion for the Internet is like running an open SMTP relay.'"

Evil Bit Added to TCP/IP Packets 319

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday April 01, 2003 @11:30AM from the well-thats-a-good-idea dept.

Absolut Ralts notes that " RFC 3514 is now available. It provides for an additional so called 'Evil Bit' that can be used to determine the nature of the TCP/IP packet. This should vastly simplify networking and internet security, and prevent the beepers of tired sysadmins from going off and interfering with Warcraft III!"

Slashdot Top Deals