felix

If Canada should apologise for anything it should be: Bryan Adams Celine Dion Mayonaise on hamburgers.

Tonight on ABC Australia. 10:30pm - King Kong (1933, B&W, PG, Rpt) Starts Fay Wray. At least there are no ads. From the TVGuide: "The original monster movie.......... .........The special effects still look good" We'll just have to see. Currently listening to "Big Bad Voodoo Daddy - King of Swing"

It's the same in Australia. Australian Personal Computer magazine generally has 2 or 3 CDs loaded with Patches, Demos, Free software for Windows, Linux, Palm & occasionally even OS/2. Also Virus definitions & updates and heaps of programming tools, scripts etc. The magazine costs about $AU7.50 (haven't bought in a while - swipe work copy) but it could have gone up. PC User magazine also gives a good slice of digital data.

Sunday 16th Woke at 8:30am and put a load of washing on. Went into town to get the paper, came home and read the paper with a cup of Irish tea and some crumpets. Put another load of washing on, washed the car and cleaned the house. Read some more of the paper and had some lunch. Another load of washing then walked a couple of miles, followed by 30mins in the pool. Did the ironing whilst watching/listening to Elton John - Live from Madison Sq Garden DVD (DTS) then started to prepare dinner (my cousin and her fiancee came over). Tried to boot my computer to listen to mp3s - recurring BSOD (Unknown hardware error) - was fine 2 hours before. Had dinner (BBQ & Salad) and watched a DVD. Got the DOS bootdisk and booted computer, discovered that the 30gb partition of my 40gb drive now has 6.6mb of bad sectors. Temps - 27 degrees C all day, about 20 degrees C all night.

I think the best part is the names in use. Carol.....Brady Cindy.....Brady Peter.....Brady As for the rest of it, if it was a little less obvious and a wee bit more accurate in some of the technology, it would be a marvellous piece of satire.

I've decided to post an OS preference thread for this week. The Abacus: http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/abacus/ I find the simplified UI and native accessability options to be far easier to manipulate than cogs and wheels. Whilst the functions are limited to the basic arithmetic, the speed of calculation and global support for this OS help determine its large acceptance. Also, the ability to display a multiple language interface provides a viable Open-Source Alternative to the propietry difference engine. Babbage's Difference Engine: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/collections/exhiblets/babbage/diffeng.asp This OS provides a larger choice of functions and comes in a shiny box with knobs, dials and levers. Again, a multi-language UI provides universal acceptance. However the knowledge required to work this contraption comes at a price: it will turn you into a cantankerous old git. Following on from the Difference Engine 1.01 was Difference Engine 2.10 http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/collections/exhiblets/babbage/diffeng2.asp and a server version called Analytical Engine 1.5 http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/collections/exhiblets/babbage/analytical.asp. However, overall winner is the Abacus with the main points of "ease of use" and Open-Source architecture. Here endith the joke.

Good thing this bloke was so vigilant. Shame we can't organise the Rev. Lea D Pipe to provide this person "Karen" and any partners with a little at home counselling for a severe emotional problem. Forget the chickens as gas-detectors in Iraq, use these bastards, and if they don't die, shoot em, twice. Oops, sorry about that. I don't like people who take criminal advantage of technical ignorance. It's one thing to baffle your boss with acronyms so he won't ask dumb questions, it's another to defraud Mum & Dad users who are just trying to pay the electric bill or buy a cheap television for their bedroom.

Does anyone have opinions on Mark Minasi's Win2k books. Amazon and Amazon users give them a good rating and I was thinking of buying them. The ones I am looking at getting are: Mastering Windows 2000 Server Mastering Windows 2000 Professional Mastering Active Directory They come in a set with a CD containing all the text also. Combined they are $AU262.42 Thus I would like to know what ppl think and if there are better books out there. Thanks, F

Well I'm not too sure about the "John" as I've bought them for work, and a couple of others have to read them too. However I do agree the it is one of the best places to read and absorb information and I reckon it's because there are limited distractions, unless of course you have the Sports Illustrated calendar on the back of the toilet door.

Aye, I've ordered them. I must admit that I prefer books to websites or e-books as I can read them out under the trees or in a comfy sofa. After paying $AU10k for this server I don't want to bollocks it up. Not sure if I'm looking forward to reading 4000+ pages.

I'm a happy camper now. My PowerEdge finally arrived today and it's one heavy sumbitch too. On another note: Does anyone have opinions on Mark Minasi's Win2k books. Amazon and Amazon users give them a good rating and I was thinking of buying them. The ones I am looking at getting are: Mastering Windows 2000 Server Mastering Windows 2000 Professional Combined they are $AU285. Thus I would like to know what ppl think and if there are better books out there. Thanks, F

Just as a sidenote: In the past 2 days, my Yahoo! account has been sent 34 seperate spam messages and with Yahoo! Spam Filter active, only 1 of them got through to my inbox, the rest sit quietly in "Bulk-Mail". My Hotmail account may get 1 or 2 each day. My real email address through a commercial ISP has server side spam filters and I never get spam on that address.

Well I bought the Gamesurround Fortissimo 7.1 and let me say that the sound quality is excellent, and a marked improvement on the AWE64. Now I'm waiting on the Optical cable to connect to my h/theater system. Just thought you should know.....

$AU125 incl P/H Not too bad but I was only able to get it from one store online.

Of the games that I have played.... Alien vs Predator is the most scary when playing as a marine.

I have Seagate and WD in my home machine. My work Dell has WD so I figure given that Dell give a next-day warranty they must be pretty confident in WD. On the other hand, for the cynical amongst us, perhaps they give a next-day warranty if they're not confident in the hardware

Quote: I'm a big unreal fan. I must agree Mr Frank. I still believe that Unreal is one of the best games I have ever played and would rate it up there with Deus.Ex and Max Payne and even over Half-Life. The bots you could use in Mutiplayer instead of ppl could only be described as criminally insane and reminded me of the Quake:1 Reaper Bots in their cunning and savagery. As a contrast, the bots of Unreal:Tourney were disappointing, even when boosted up to "Hannibal Lechter" level. I hope the AI in Unreal:II lives up to my hopes. I will need an upgrade before I could even look at Unreal:II, though I might buy a GeForce4 Nutbags to go into Arrakis and give it some "benchmark" testing.

Well I'm very happy for you as it looks like a really nice car, however I have no idea what it's like as the only American cars I know are either from the 70's or a Lincoln or a Jeep. I'm currently torn as I have the opportunity to buy a Ford Fairlane Ghia 5.0L Supercharged V8, (which for those who don't know I guess would be something like our equivalent of a Lincoln Town Car) with all the bells etc like Climate Control, Power Windows, Power/Heated Seats, Self-levelling suspension, cruise control, factory cd-stacker and speakers inc sub-woofer, wood grain highlights, all grey leather cow interior, whale skin hubcaps and big brown baby seal eyes for headlights, white, one owner since new and only 70,000kms for $AU20,500. My Father tells me I'm stupid cause of the fuel and insurance bills (especially since I'm only 23 and 25 is the insurance price drop year) but damn it, it's a SUPERCHARGED V8 and I've been driving a 4cyl Nissan since I was 16 (but we have brand new Ford and GM cars at work so I get my kicks there). Thus I seek opinions? I also seek to detract from AlecStaar's glory as he now has a nice car and I don't and I'm jealous.

Removed.

I wouldn't go that far. I also stuck the boot into jdulmage during "that" incident, but later felt bad about it and apologised. As for my opinion, after a long talk with a friend of mine in NY (her brother is also a Naval Aviator and she's a Politics/History grad) I have realised that some parts of my argument/belief are too idealistic and perhaps too passive to be feasable. I guess if we (and I say we becuase it is a world issue) were dealing with a stable, predictable authority figure, continued diplomacy would be an option. After my little chat, where I learnt some facts I didn't know about previous engagements, I must change my stance away from "No War" to something different, though I'm not sure quite what.

Fine. As for the C@C, I'm still on a 56k and don't generally have time after work. Maybe when I move into my new place. However I might consider Age of Empires II: Conquerors.

Had some issues on the install & config and had to delete the .ini file a couple of times. However after getting the settings right, I have been able to play fine. Haven't got to play for a long time to test yet. My main problem was a dirty CD.

After not going to Windows Update for many moons, I decided to give it a look. Now I have WinXP SP1 installed but was alarmed to see about 30 updates still available on the site. I am still a pitiful modem dweller at home and can't be bothered d'loading the specific updates at work, burning them etc. Obviously the next question has to be - how long until SP2 and why, if there are so many "critical" or "req'd" updates available is my computer not calling itself "Apple IIc" and spitting pacman characters from every output device. 8)

HERCULES Fortissimo III Gamesurround Anyone had experience with this card? Especially in terms of hooking up to H/T decoder via optical out. From the manual it appears that the Optical out only works in the following circumstances: a) Data transfer to Mini-disc etc Audio signal transfer from PowerDVD EX software c) Pass the internal S/PDIF through without processing Thus can I assume that the Optical out does not work for games, mp3s other stuff? All I want it a sound card that uses optical out ALL the time for ALL sounds and doesn't cost $AU4xx.xx+. What is it going to take to get this?

I got an email from Hercules Support and they said that it will render any sounds made by the computer. Thus I'm going to print that email and keep it with the receipt. It's going to come preloaded with Win2k Server w/10 lic. Like I said, it's been 3 years since I did any major domain work so this could be fun. Win2k Server Unleashed will be bought and read.