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Q. What is the fear of the rear end of spiders called? A. Survey says : "No."

That's very cool. Here's a minutely longer report : http://www.abc.net.au/news/2002/07/item20020730140728_1.htm

This thread may hold the record for the longest on-topic discussion at either SR or SF.

Actually that makes it sound more grandiose than it is. But I do have a FreeBSD box, a Sun Ultra 5, a network-attached 6 disk CDROM changer and a 3000VA UPS in there. :mrgrn:

Time, do you read the SMH on Saturdays? They have an occasional series on the worst opening sentence in a novel, highly entertaining. I laughed out loud at those sentences you posted, truly dire writing. You can see what she's trying to say, but boy oh boy she really doesn't know how to sell it.

I should have a nice shiny new Canon Powershot A40 on Monday, so once things are a little tidier on my desk I'll post a photo or two. Do you want pictures of the "server room" too? :mrgrn:

Up until last year our central customer database was run on a PDP-11. It was so key to the business that it was a real problem to migrate to anything else.

4K RAM? Luxury. My first home computer was a Sinclair ZX-81 in 1980, with the princely total of 1K of RAM. Try programming in that.

Of course, I could get this result with no sound card installed at all.

Slot 5, which is the first of the 32bit slots on my Tyan 2460. Slot 6 is empty. I'm trying to keep the card out of the first 4 (ie. 64bit) slots 'cos I have a gigE card in there (thanks Clocker!). The sound card is no happier in a 64bit slot anyway. Still no sound as I said, but at least no...

Ctrl-PrtSc and Alt-PrtSc are useful for emergency screen captures. I do use Ctrl-Esc (and then the arrow keys) a reasonable amount, and of course Win-E is really truly useful. Do you guys use the Powertoy enhancement for Alt-Tab in WinXP?

I no longer even visit SR's forums. Am I missing much?

So as a result of my problems with the C-Media 8738 which are documented elsewhere, I went out and bought a Creative Vibra 128 (I think you guys in North America call 'em Soundblaster 128s). And guess what Merc, I get exactly the same problem as you. After about 30 minutes, the machine...

... you don't really want me to answer that, do you? :eekers:

If you know your target platform has multiple CPUs, you'll write your app to take advantage of them (or at least be multiple-CPU friendly). If you're unsure, you'll tend to write for the lowest common denominator. And with mainframes, if you're a contractor, you'll write whatever is the most...

Ah, the delightful BAS. My girlfriend is toiling through hers (errr, supposed to be toiling through hers) right now. She seems actually to be emailing people instead. Hm.

I'm not Cas, but that's my reading of it. BeOS was designed from the ground up as a multi-CPU OS, NT was not - or, at least, it has to be backwards compatible with a lot of applications that are not. Bill, SETI won't bog down your computer because the task is set as a low priority. Almost...

The problem is I think that you guys don't realise that XP doesn't (reliably)farm out CPUs to applications based on which is the least busy. (At least, I can't get it to do that unless I set processor affinity individually for applications beforehand based on the order I'm going to launch them.)...

I think this is one of the few topics where we are poles apart, Tony. There is no "sense of miguided fair-play" - if anything, the system as it stands may be illegal from an international law standpoint. I disagree vehemently with Australia saying that it should be free of UN "meddling" in its...

But at least the speed indicators had a function - you knew when you hadn't pressed your "turbo" switch. :mrgrn:

Tony, It's interesting the interpretation you put on my advice ;) - I was recommending not using Smoothwall on the basis that a router/firewall/switch unit probably has a real cost that is less than even the boxes you're talking about, a lower management overhead, less power consumption, less...

One other thought. Looking at your present system, if your .sig doesn't lie, you would get about a 10% preformance "feel" increase moving to a system with DDR RAM, and about 10% improvement in feel moving to an 800MHz box, then 10% more moving to 1200MHz, and then about 15-20% more going to...

I say that Acrobat distilling is not dual processor aware (I just gave it a try) and is CPU bound. Ditto Javascript. You'd be better off buying either a faster CPU or two faster computers and networking them than a dual CPU machine. Windows 2000/XP may be multiprocessor aware in the OS, but it...

Sure, but at least you can stripe a file across drives. How do you do that with tape? It's not like you can retrieve multiple parts of the file off multiple tapes simultaneously. Errr, that is to say I haven't come across a system that does that yet, anyway.

Oh, it's stable and all that - not like IDE RAID0 - but I was alluding more to all those SR newbies putting in RAID and expecting their day to day performance to go through the roof, and it doesn't. It's the same with dual CPUs IMO. If you have a specific use that is helped by 'em, by all means...

Nope, they're the amateurs. Fear AOpen's CheChe board.

I see I managed to misspell both company names from memory, glad you could extract my meaning despite this. :) Admittedly my last experience with Travan was several years ago, ditto with QIC. However, you're right - my statement should have been qualified properly : if you are a home user, used...

True, but I'd have a hard time justifying that kind of expenditure in most cases. My backup requirements are such that I have some recovery SLA to meet (usually 4 hours) and a pile of data to restore (some hundreds of GB or several TB, whatever). Under those circumstances tape simply isn't fast...

I use an 802.11b network and just open server-based movie files with Windows Media Player from the remote client. The sound is just stereo because (a) the clients are for the most part not tremendously powerful CPU-wise. The movies are destined to be watched on a fairly small screen, not...

1. Firewall If this is specifically a learning experience, then by all means set up a Linux box with Smoothwall. The minus side of this is the fact that there isn't actually much learning involved - Smoothwall is pretty much plug and play and there's a reasonable amount of assistance online to...

An AUP is an Acceptable Usage Policy. Make sure you read yours carefully!

Congratulations, Coug!

I'm afraid I sort of see dual CPUs as being the IDE RAID0 of extra day to day performance, if you get my drift.

I'm pretty sure there's a topic in the Computers section which includes my thoughts on the subject... ah yes, here it is.

No tape solution is particularly fast. If you've ever used Tarvan or QiK tape drives, the Onstream stuff seems lightning fast in comparison.

Yes, you put them on the ground and wear a sturdy pair of shoes.

Thanks. Considering the hostility shown here and at SR towards some of the later Hitachi monitors, it's interesting to see the "good" ones and the "bad" ones are all based on exactly the same tube.

Actually, it's not quite as fabulous as you might think.

Is there a site somewhere that lists the tubes and the brand names/models that sell them? Often it seems like you could pay less and get a less famous brand name, yet get exactly the same actual monitor tube.

Good to see you, e_dawg! Can we look forward to your continued presence?

I've heard good things about them, and the one I had for a couple of years was solid. I mean, it's not a Quantum DLT, but it's a crapload cheaper too.

I think this is one of the points I was making.

I don't think anyone disagrees that many audiophiles say that analogue is better. The issue here is whether it is actually any better. "Better in what way?" is the real question. I see enormous arguments in audiophile forums about for example which $250 (or more) / meter speaker cable is...

The AVS Forum, particularly the Home Theatre Computers topic, is where you need to do some searching. This subject is thrashed through at least twice a week there and there are some very bright people who participate. You may notice some ex-SR people around too, I see Deflier around quite often...

:roll: Okay, here's my original post in its entirety : ... ie. if most people prefered vinyl, you'd be able to buy them in the shops. Simple supply and demand. You're the one bringing in professional DJs etc. who are still not "most" people as I pointed out in my last post. Here's a hint for...

Area 51 is actually one of the bookmarks shipped with the program.

That's two different questions. I hate nightclubs and don't visit them. But do professional DJs use vinyl because they have better sound? I don't think so, it's largely because the tools for the DJ job are more evolved around vinyl than CDs and the medium is more flexible at the moment (of...

That's a valid point of view nowadays Mark, I don't think you'll get many people here to disagree. But overclocking was useful back when (a) CPUs were much more expensive and (b) a 50% CPU performance increase made a noticeable difference - ie. things were somewhat CPU bound. Now they are for...

It's like Terraserver in that it uses much the same sorts of satellite photos, but it's way cooler in that it has higher resolution pictures for many areas (eg. you can see individual cars in Tokyo), and the interface is jaw dropping - you start off with the globe, then you zoom in "seamlessly"...

I would have thought a "slaker" was something to do with "slake" as in "to slake one's thirst." Slacker is the correct spelling, surely, Merc?! I'm very happy with my ECS K7S5A too, but I bought mine in Tokyo. Perhaps there was a bad batch sold in Australia?