Search results

Comdisco? Or Comcapital? Comdisco is all the way over in Schaumberg. Don't feel bad about the car thing. My car is making a noise that I don't want to deal with, either. Right now I'm pretending I don't hear it (it makes a clatter sound at idle, if anyone knows what that is) but evenutally I'll...

The honest-to-goodness best buy in monitors is any source for Dell lease-returned displays. Ebay will work in a pinch for those, but better yet is to find a warehousing company (like Comdisco up here in Illinois) that has them. Little computer stores often have 'em, too, albeit not always at...

I didn't live through much of the cold war, of course. In my analysis, the US seems to have won only by exponential escalation of threat to the USSR. Kilotons begat megatons begat star wars. They just couldn't compete economically. In head-to-head contests, well, here, it seems they bested us...

Hell, *I* remember the Bhopal/Union Carbide thing and I was under 10 years old when it happened. It was HUGE. Front page news, 10 minutes of the 30-minute national news broadcasts for about a week (that was huge - plane crashes would get maybe five minutes), TWO stories on the then-top-rated...

I'm a PC tech, not an HVAC guy! Last thing I really want to do is start measuring the calories/joules or BTUs I need to build a semi-efficient generator. That's WAY too much work.

Ars technica had an article up over the weekend (I think. Going days without being online is messing up my sense of time) about moving to carbon, rather than silicon, for processor manufacture. I've heard talk of using germanium also. Both of these have vastly different thermal properties...

Wow. Not only am I a maladjusted, socially-retarded hacker, now I have engieering to aspire to! Slashdot.org had a great discussion about whether that "hacker" page was a joke or not. I think the bit about AOL is particularly amusing, because I talk to people every day that actually feel that way.

Jump on that thing, Tannin. You can always stick it in a wood crate with some cut-outs for the power cables, or toss it in a closet. Heck, one of those old dot-matrix printer-silencing enclosures would even be good enough. James is offering you a bargain, even if you have to buy the consumables.

From the "My back is STILL sore" dept. One major point against both UPSes and 21" monitors: They really suck when it's time to move.

It is unbelievably difficult to lose a loved one. There really isn't much that I could add there except to say that for someone so young to lose so long a struggle is truly heartbreaking. Your sister should have had so much more time.

I'm glad I don't have a TV. I don't even want to think what coverage of the anniversary is like. One thing that does piss me off to no end is that suddenly our president is eloquent and bold (http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/08/ar911.changed.presidency/index.html) where before he was...

So how much would an Ultra5 cost to ship from Oz?

Wow. XPSP1 won't even officially be out for another three days and there's already clearly-written articles describing the crack for it.

That is not good news. Maxtor drives have been my mainstay for several years now. Although I can't complain about Maxtor reliability to date, I don't think I can, in good faith, continue to offer Maxtor drives in new builds. A one year warranty on what is often one of the most expensive...

If you're stuck with it, add the site that the adware uses to your HOSTS file. Then, no ads. w00t!

Traditionally video cards don't matter much in servers, but just to contradict time, I'd like to point out that a thicker case is going to be a slightly better EMI shield than a thinner one. Since servers tend to be put in places with lots of EMI (with all the HVAC and power requirements...

Just quibbling with James..

My other (linux-based) suggestion would be the wonderful little gem pavuk, which is basically a site-downloader on steroids, that attacks downloads with a tenacity that I can't recall seeing anywhere else. I downloaded MS's trial version of SQL Server 7 with pavuk. It sustained a .01k/sec...

wget on a linux box can resume downloads. IIRC, the downloading doohickey that comes with Mozilla does, too.

First thing: Outlook viruses can be spread whether the preview Window is present/in use or not. Some of the bugs out there have figured out how to execute themselves upon receipt. Second thing: At least some of the Apple products are impacted by poor MS products. The other side of things is...

The three times I've done XP on machines with modems, I can say I had problems only once - a generic Cirrus Logic based dual modem just wouldn't work with XP. I replaced it with a couple of Genica Lucent-based modems and everything worked. The Supra Connexant-based modems I use in builds work...

Incidently, I'm given to understand that current minor pop star Nora Jones (jazz/pop vocalist. I haven't heard of her either) is Ravi Shankar's daughter.

Crap. Bill and I are in agreement about something fundamentally related to politics. ... and in Hell, Satan just had to put on a pair of earmuffs.

Living where I do, the reparations thing is a really, really big deal, even with otherwise intelligent/respectable people. There are bumper stickers and community rallies and guest-editorials in newspapers. The thing is, I can't for the life me imagine how a roughly $10,000 after-tax payout to...

Thanks. There are a couple of XP machines where I'm working right now, so I might as well give it a shot.

I can top you all. Textronix Phaser 850DP (duplex option + 100Mbit, and folks, this is solid ink, not crummy color laser), US$450.

... all that work to save maybe 45 seconds vs. making a disc at plain ol' 16x. :)

Microsoft makes all its updates available for download elsewhere through its site. You don't HAVE to use Windows Update. If you use warezed XP, and you do, you're a moron (no reason for YOUR keygen'd key to get put in their "bad" database). There will be a crack for whatever the hell they do to...

I've found there is precious little that can't be done in Word (or WordPerfect), Excel and Powerpoint (let alone Access!), given a slight attention to detail. I work with a bunch of MOUS Masters (ie MS Office gurus). Unreal what they can make those things do.

Probably. I just moved four 20-gallon tubs full of spare 'puter parts. I'm sure I have some in there somewhere.

Well, suddenly moving doesn't seem like such a trial... Don't *DO* that Mark. I have access to an organ-donation GW P5 133XL (been keeping it for the case) if you'd like. I'll even throw in shipping.

I have a couple of Ravi Shankar CDs. It's challenging music - and remember that it's classical Indian music, not nearly the same thing as the Beatles or Rolling Stones or whatever (Indian and in fact middle-eastern pop music is a very different thing, something I find more listenable than the...

I'd not seen your avatar before, Bill. It's oddly hypnotic. As for the others, well, I think most of the Aussies here would say that's actually a New Zealander (or a Texan), but it's pretty damn funny either way.

Both the changer and the receiver rolled down a bunch of concrete steps. I'm about to hook it up to see if it'll work, but I have a feeling I don't really want to know. Given how bad the faceplate on the receiver looks, I'm pretty sure it won't be warrantied. I have around 3,300 CDs at the...

Laptop + modem + cellphone = sorta back online. I can actually get a 33.6 connection off my cellphone, so it's actually faster than what I usually use. :) Bought furniture today. I just had to sign my name twice and promise to pay for it in two years and they were willing to give me $12,000 in...

Taking my router down in ten minutes. Bye all.

I see from newegg.com that Intel has a P4-based Celeron on the market now. Anyone care to explain the limitations/differences between the older celerons and the new ones, and the P4 v. the new celeron?

... if that's the case, PW, you need to get a copy of ghost and a place to restore image files, and a basic working knowledge of my good friend, the .ZAP file. Software problems of any sort take exactly as long to fix as restoring a generic image for an OS/system chipset combo and running a...

A few off the top of my head: Coke General Electric (since they make or supply EVERYTHING) Microsoft Archer Daniels Midland/Cargill (they supply seed for much of the farming in the world, making pretty much the whole world secondary/tertiary customers)

I have the genuinely cheap DVP-NC650V, which is a DVD/SACD player that doesn't play DVDs very well. Are there modification instructions for that one as well?

I installed lots and lots of V3s and yes, they all had roughly 1" by 2" silver heat sinks on them. They work just fine under every version of Windows including 2000 and XP. If that one doesn't, I'd say get a heatsink on it posthaste. I believe XP's 3dfx-related complaint has something to do...

Would you be interested in repeating those modifications on another unit? I've got one of Sony's low-end 5-disc SACD changers (the $150 one) sitting around. If it makes you feel better, my non-audiophile brother says that his three year old DVD player (back when they were kind of expensive)...

Lest anyone think Oz and Florida are the only places with water problems... Lake Michigan, the largest inland body of water in the USA, is down something like four feet from its normal crest. And several states in the US were on draught water provisioning throughout the winter (ie, the time in...

I believe Tom is in fact a medical doctor. When I first started reading his site in '95 or '96, he used to mention that fact in his articles. ... as if being trained to treat the ailments of the human body makes one qualified to discuss the ramifications of PC performance.

Yes, good luck to your grandma. Mine is in as well, right now. They thought she had a stroke, because she was behaving so oddly, and treated her for that for two weeks before someone realized that she had actually broken her back and maybe needed a little pain medication... Hospitals frighten me.

My inventory right now: 1. The Loft. Six feet of oak and pine. There is twin-size bed above, a desk with room for two 19" monitors (or a 21" and a 15"), an entire component stereo and all the speakers to go with it, plus two printer carts (for more computer stuff, obviously), below. It is...

No. I'm not moving very fair away, and in the same apartment complex. I just can't find anyplace else to live that's as affordable. I'm stuck on a modem anyway. The county I live in has some bizarre laws that make broadband internet installation highly unappealing to landlords, so there's no...

I'm finally moving over next weekend. It's a holiday next week - labor day - so I won't be able to have my phone lines activated until at least September 3rd. Needless to say, there probably won't be much posting here until I get something that resembles order in my new place. But... since I'm...

I dunno. This guy at least has a purpose for his facial tatoos and other bizarre body modifications. There's some kind of weird tribal symbolism there, and I can respect that. When I was in college there was a girl who came into the computer labs I worked in who had, among other things, tatoos...

I don't see anything wrong with the Mozilla mail client, except that from time to time on Windows machines it overlaps the start bar like it's not supposed to. OTOH, I'm not exactly a demanding mail user, as long as it'll load my 200MB mail spool without difficulty. I don't bother with an...