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Ignorant critics, maybe. I've been teaching Vista certification classes, which means I've been using Vista a lot more than I really want to. I'm well aware of the feature set as well as Microsoft's take on reality. I'm still not impressed or happy with it.

My understanding is that cable providers are required by law to provide the TV signals that would normally be provided on an antenna, in the VHF range. Which amounts to channels 1 - 20. They can't keep those channels off your TV. Everything else, at least in Chicago, requires a digital tuner. I...

My way of doing things, with the multiple "small" arrays, is starting to make more sense now, isn't it? ;)

With DSL you only have guaranteed bandwidth to where ever your phone company has its lines going. You still have shared bandwidth from that point on (of course, it's a phone company, so capacity probably isn't a huge issue for them). Cable service can vary widely. One cable segment can be...

With DSL you only have guaranteed bandwidth to where ever your phone company has its lines going. You still have shared bandwidth from that point on (of course, it's a phone company, so capacity probably isn't a huge issue for them). Cable service can vary widely. One cable segment can be...

Still 25% left, too. :D

Mmmm $85 750GB hard drives. Too bad I already bought a Dyson Vacuum today.

My biggest issues are software incompatibilities, driver issues and odd Explorer crashes. I miss my "Up" button on Explorer Windows, and I don't particularly care for the "Breadcrumbs" now used to navigate the Explorer address bar. The differences in the control panel, particularly "Programs...

There's an amazing wind farm going up about 70 miles south of Chicago, near Kentland, Illinois. I took some pictures of what they're doing (even caught them hoisting the blades on one), but supposedly they'll have 400 or so 100m tall windmills by the end of the year. From what I read about that...

... if the electrical grid can handle it.

The cost as configured on them is higher than the Thinkpads I would've bought, and the manufacturer service isn't anywhere near as good. They aren't as rugged, either. A couple years ago, I would've at least had the bright spot that they all shipped with 3-year service plans by default but now...

I just got done with an interesting call from a Dell CSR. I ordered 10 Latitude 630s about 10 days ago for a customer (sob, the result of an argument I did not win). Normally Dell ships and products arrive about four days after I place the order. This batch didn't, and I didn't even get a...

Generally speaking if there's no known fix for a malware program but something completely untrusted/unknown, I'll take a chance on it. The machine is already infected, after all.

I've seen boards from Gigabyte and Asus that include a plate that has a couple standard SATA ports and a place to plug in a Y-shaped molex connector. I call those things Ghetto eSATA, and I have found them useful a time or two.

Thanks for the tip. I did not even know where to start looking.

This is a shot in the dark, but does anyone have any advice for how I'd go about finding replacement power bricks for various devices? I've got a 15" KDS LCD here that I don't have the brick for. It's a perfectly good monitor, but the person who gave it to me didn't have the power connector...

If that storage was under Linux, you could properly unmount those disk drives and know it's safe to turn them off. The problem with doing this in a VM is that his storage effectively becomes nonlocal, which is the whole point of his configuration anyway.

Abby Winters is particularly interesting for the use of non-professional models with real "girl next door" qualities and cute but imperfect bodies (i.e. real human beings; a little tummy, a girl who wears glasses through a whole scene or maybe someone who didn't shave 15 minutes before filming)...

Circuit City has a 1080p 50" Samsung DLP set for $1000 this week. My 720p 60" Samsung DLP was $4000 five years ago.

So I've been told. The theory is that those home routers run so close to the ragged edge of what their components supposedly need that even very minor power fluctuations can have a deleterious consequence for their operation.

I'd think about it, but honestly the only application for which I might need an SSD is to decrease level load times in City of Heroes, and that's probably not worth $600 to me.

I've been told that keeping home routers on conditioned power (i.e. a UPS) vastly increases their reliability, too.

Although I am no longer a Hairy Aussie, I feel I have a certain level of affinity for this job posting. The link is completely safe for work, but I don't think you can say the same thing about the company that made the posting. :D

I swear I only hit Post once. >:(

Apple's stock position is based on its status as a lifestyle brand, rather than the value of its goods and services. Apple fans have an astonishing level of loyalty to its products, as evinced by uda's evangelism. The interesting factor of Apple's market position is that it's been in that...

Sony has a long history of introducing failed media formats. I've yet to see anything compelling about BluRay; there aren't even any movies released thusfar that make me want to go out and repurchase them (there were for HD-DVD). Some people suggest that BluRay will eventually have a library of...

Packaged OEM copies of XP will be available until the next version of Windows is released. XP is no longer available to major OEMs. Major OEMs get around that by reselling Vista Business and exercising the downgrade rights for you, but they're only doing that for products in their business...

If you're dealing with a wireless network connection, it could be periodic interference from another device nearby. A lot of 2.4GHz devices like cordless phones do a certain amount of frequency hopping as a security measure. The fix is to move your router to a different channel (in order of...

You don't really need QoS unless you do more with your internet connection than light E-mail and web browsing. I've done Skype over a 100kbit upstream connection, and it worked as well as Skype ever does. It's the people who like to play games, use P2P software or run some kind of server off...

It doesn't work that way. There's more to network transfers than bandwidth.

That's what I do as well. I can get Chicago's HD stations, and keeping up with downloads isn't terribly difficult.

Actually, after reading some posts about VoIP installations on Slashdot and some comments from knowledgeable parties, it turns out that pretty much nobody implements QoS on incoming connections; certainly not $50 home routers, even the ones that have dd-WRT or Tomato on them. Comments on...

I've seen 5 hours from a Thinkpad X61 with the extended battery. Size and weight are similar.

I live above the rental office for my apartment complex. I have neighbors in my building, but they're both older couples who don't have children, and neither of them live on my floor. I had a lot more noise when I had my townhouse. In fact, I can't say I've ever heard my neighbors at all. The...

Also, there's a whole bunch of stuff about dealing with Comcast on Consumerist.com.

Tell them you want to cancel your order. You've found a better deal with Verizon or RCN or even a Wireless ISP. They'll probably put you over to retentions. Retentions has the power to make deals. Usually they'll start by bribing you with 6 month of a free premium channel or a year of Antivirus...

I flatly despise anime and manga, Fushigi. What I see, as a fan of Western comics, is the Japanese products replacing those things we've made here. Go into a bookstore that used to have an expansive collection of graphic novels and where those novels once stood are no aisles of backwards...

I'm a big fan of the portable AC unit. The airflow in my apartment is so dreadful I basically wound up with a dozen fans, trying to direct air around just on one floor. The noise was intolerable and my efforts amounted to about 1.5 degrees F in actual cooling. A couple $300 portable ACs (I got...

I have access to multiples of both. I assure you that both provide new keys annually.

There are certainly issues with using FAT32. From a performance standpoint, FAT32 fragments easily and needs regular maintenance to keep from being a drag on the rest of your OS. Furthermore, FAT32 imposes file size limits that are highly restrictive; most files are limited to 2GB, which can be...

There are certainly issues with using FAT32. From a performance standpoint, FAT32 fragments easily and needs regular maintenance to keep from being a drag on the rest of your OS. Furthermore, FAT32 imposes file size limits that are highly restrictive; most files are limited to 2GB, which can be...

The fact of the matter is that when you renew, you're issued new product keys, every year. This is true for both MSDN and Action Pack subs. If you're strictly worried about legality, in theory you should be switching to new installs with new keys. No thanks. Also in reality, if you've printed...

Microsoft had "Student Edition" Action Packs for $100 a couple months back. I bought four and was in the process of buying a fifth when the offer was rescinded. :D Yes, Server 2008 has to be activated. There are two different activation schemes, depending on the licenses you're using. One is a...

Some day, I am going to implement a content filtering system that defaults to only displaying porn.

I have to say that I like having Server 2008 on my SSD-equipped notebook a lot better than Vista. It still feels sluggish to me compared to Server 2003, but there's a lot less weird pauses and Explorer crashes, and unlike Vista, all the power management features work on my notebook the way...

Joss Whedon, famously the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly, has a new web-only serial running, Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. It stars Neal Patrick Harris and Nathan "Mal Reynolds" Fillion. I know there are several other Whedon fans here, but the wrinkle on all this is...

Vista SP1 took about 30 minutes to install on each of my Core2Duo lab machines, and those boxes aren't exactly slow... and that was using a local copy of the update installer.

Actually, looking at the files on his server I'm guessing that it's a lot of Visual Basic? There's some .MDB files there and all the pages on the site are .ASPXs that consist entirely of This is a marker file generated by the precompilation tool, and should not be deleted! There's a \bin...

The trailer for the movie version of The Watchmen is up and boy does it look spiffy.

I just received my first post-XP-death date Thinkpad. I didn't ask for it, but not only did I get XP on the T61p I ordered, they also threw in both an XP restore DVD and what appears to be a standard Windows XP install CD. There's a Vista Business license sticker on the bottom of the unit.