Razor512

depending on your location you will get good or bad service with comcast when I work on customers computers, in areas where a few other isps are available that offer high speed, comcast will offer good speeds, in areas where theres less competition, comcast will offer poor connections that loose 95% of their speed during peek hours (11AM to around 11PM)

most school networks are not very secure, doing anything to it means nothing but a 1 way ticket to getting arrested build a cantenna and use another access point also schools are quick to give harsh punishments (doing as little as accessing something that students should not access but the schools own carelessness left it unsecured will land you in jail depending on your age, thats why it is not even recommended to alert the school to any network problems because you will get blamed for the problem regardless of the problem and the cause of it ) a cantenna will give you ample range to find a better access point (if your lucky and have another school near by, you can probably connect to their network

get a wireless card or a laptop, and connect to another wireless network thats not being shared with 200 people

get a custom sticker with a cute fox picture on it like this

the best way to deal with it is to find the brown note (like in south park) then play it over xbox live voice and make the attacker crap their pants :) jk blocking the ips doesn't really stop the attack because your still receiving the data I have experienced a few DOS attacks but some of them weren't well done, the user was mainly using a simple app to flood, but the user was using the internet connection at a school or some public location to get a really good amount of bandwidth, depending on the schools network, you can use their connection to do a DOS it may be a dumb college student or someone who has a friend who is in a location with a good connection who can do the DOS (PS a dsl connection can DOS a dialup connection, I tried it when kmart used to offer that blue light internet service like 10 hours for free each month)

current netbooks are too expensive, if they can make netbooks with larger screens but with a lower price, (they can make a 15 inch netbook for under $200 if they wanted to ) for current netbooks, there prices are too close to full on laptops with better specs so it is hard to see why people are buying them at these high prices the reason behind me wanting a larger screen is because lcd screens are cheap, adding a 15 inch screen may cause the price to go up by at most $20 or market them as low profile pcs and sell docking stations that allow users to connect it to a large monitor, mouse and keyboard and use it like a desktop pc. (it will still work for users who only use their systems for basic things (and keep in mind that a few years ago, the average desktop computer was slower than the current netbook (they had more storage but they were slower ) and on many of the systems I work on for customers, many of them are still using 1-1.5GHz systems

in my opinion, the mac mini failed because it offered next to nothing for a steep price, it was also harder to service and apple didn't support it as well as their other systems I have used a few netbooks and there fast enough to handle things like firefox, ms office and many other basic programs you just cant game on them and you cant use apps like photoshop with out having a ton of lag, and you cant get anything done with a program like 3ds max or maya and you cant run crysis on them :) netbooks are good for basic usage, the screens are just too small, they should make one with a 15 inch screen (a 15 inch screen on ebay cost about $40, and i know that these companies can get their hardware cheaper, it wont add too much to the cost of the netbook, if they do this then you will finally see people making the switch to using a netbook as a primary pc as there many users who only use their computers to chat with friends and surf the web

you could use http://driveragent.com/ to check for which ones are outdated then use google to find them (the scan is free but they charge to download from them so just use them to find which ones are outdated then do the google work your self to find the downloads but keep in mind that most drivers don't need to be updated the main ones to keep up to date are videocard drivers as games constantly change for for the rest, they rarely need updates

yep there many changes but it doesn't mean much if it makes things run slower on the same hardware (when both OS support the same hardware properly) there many changes that cant easily be applied to windows xp, I get that but the average user wont care, what they will notice is this at the end of the day, the user just wants to run their applications as fast as possible. it doesn't matter how much eye candy there is, it still comes down to the user wanting something that can run their programs fast. one of the most common tech support complaint is a user complaining that their system is really slow and in many cases where users say that they got vista and it is running faster than windows xp (i have seen many cases of it where a user would get a new computer that came with vista and will claim that vista is faster, with out thinking, her your new vista system also has twice as much memory and a cpu thats 5 times as fast, of course it will run faster, and there users who will dual boot vista and xp and will say vista runs faster on their pc. but if you ask the user to post a hjt log from both OS, you will see that their xp install is in pretty bad shape, like like 120 unneeded running processes including crap from real player, wild tangent and other resource intensive apps. it doesn't matter if a company rewrites 100% of the OS, it it runs slower on the same hardware compared to a older OS, users wont find it to be as good If canon came out with a new firmware for their EOS 1d that added a dancing puppy on the top part of the screen but it causes it's bootup time to go from 0.1 seconds, to 5 seconds and the shooting speed to go from 10FPS, to 1.5FPS but it turns out they the new firmware also is completely rewritten with many under the hood (all of which does nothing to improve your performance) would you install it to your camera? (I bet not because it reduces the performance of your main task, taking pictures )

microsoft is a company that has gotten too big for it's own good when they get too much of a monopoly, as you can see the prices of the OS have gone up, and the quality has gone down and small change they make calls for a new OS release because they find it much more profitable to charge people for a OS rather than give away a service pack I am not saying that they made no improvements, I am saying that for what little they improved on, it isn't enough to be a reason for them to release it in a new OS other than to milk money from the consumers many people are seeing this as the prices (though nothing really official yet, many people are speculating higher prices ) * Windows 7 Starter: $199 * Windows 7 Home Premium: $259 * Windows 7 Professional: $299 * Windows 7 Ultimate: $319 paying more for less. compared to vista windows 7 is only slightly different compared to windows xp, it is only a little different while i am well aware of many of the core changed of the OS, what the average user will notice when they buy a computer with vista or windows 7 is , it uses more memory, it has a new UI and it has direct x 10 (i know there other changes but these are pretty much the noticeable ones ) while other companies like apple who are known to rip people off cant bring them self to rip people off as much as microsoft can for a OS there many articles on microsoft planning on increasing prices. some are saying that they will increase the price of the OS, others are saying that they will increase the price of the OS and move to additional fees to keep the OS activated

http://www.buy.com/prod/xeon-e5462-qc-lga7.../210441727.html $858 (there many other shops selling it for $821 but i don't fully trust those stores ) these cpu's overclock really well, how would you keep from pulling your hair out thinking, It could be so much faster is i could just overclock it and if your overclock is fully stable then you just got free performance thats why i find the motherboard better, (you can install 16GB memory, 4x4GB ddr2 memory 4GB memory sticks are just so insanely expensive that your better off just buying a new car or something ) it can still come out cheaper than the mac pro with the changes you listed and money can be saved on the videocard by going with the slower 3650 (still faster than the 2600xt and still more expensive, but the 2600 is just too hard to find) windows keeps getting more and more expensive for no reason, the OS gets slower but the price goes up http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814102726 windows also gets more and more DRM filled with each new version and the user could always go with linux if they wanted to, nothing says they have to use windows (and you really cant compare the mac os with windows in terms of features because the 2 os do entirely different things to accomplish the same goal)

Start building your Mac Pro with our suggested configuration: Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors 2GB memory (800MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC) ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics with 256MB memory 320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive1 16x double-layer SuperDrive Ships: Within 24hrs Free Shipping $2,799.00 Better specs $2423.91 (you also get 2 free games, a better motherboard that allows you to overclock, it supports SLI and crossfire if you like wasting money by spending twice the cost for 2 videocards only to get a 20% performance boost) ($375.09 cheaper for better specs) the 9600gt is much better than a radeon 2600xt (i couldn't find a pce version of the 2600xt but the 2600xt is about half the price of a geforce 9600gt) better specs for less money (you can use your current OS install cd or buy a copy of windows (which happens to be more expensive than the mac os and it will still be cheaper ) PS many of the parts listed in the shopping cart would have been cheaper if I picked parts from newegg and amazon ) while you cant build a mac pro for half the price, you can build a imac for almost half the price and keep in mind companies like apple get their hardware much cheaper than any normal user, they get volume savings and have deals with many companies, your building a system for less money, using parts that are much more expensive than what apple would spend on them also unlike companies like dell and hp, apple doesn't need a license or to buy a large volume of OS for their computers since apple makes the OS and have nothing to gain from charging them self for their own product also building your own system will allow you to upgrade it more easily, overclock, install any OS including the mac os, and many other things that you cant do with locked down DRM filled mac pro

(wddm is more suited to adding a extra layer of DRM to content and does nothing to improve performance) I understand but it doesn't matter much if the OS is lower, and less stable and waste screen space xp may be out dated but it works well and does everything I need, faster and more reliably Windows xp has never randomly crashed on me, the only times where it has crashed was when I installed beta drivers that didn't like a game, or when I tried to use files from nvidias drivers on my ati card in hopes of fixing a opengl problem :) I dual boot windows xp, windows vista, and ubuntu. the only system that has random crashes once in a while for no reason is vista. Ubuntu just runs completely stably (while it has a few driver problems with some of my hardware like my sound card (audugy 2 zs) it has never crashed or giving me any random unexplained problems I have also used the mac os, I found it to be slower than windows and none of the apps I wanted were available for it (while you can dual boot it with windows, why spend twice as much forslower hardware just to run windows when you can build a faster system for like half the price

Windows xp here. Did a lot of work on it, it boots in 15-17 seconds and the loading is completely done While I use ubuntu also, I spend most of my time on windows xp since it boots faster, uses less memory and runs the apps I need and is easier to use things that can be done in 1 click often take lots of commands in ubuntu. I see the OS as something to run the applications you want so it needs to be as lightweight as possible the only thing I use ubuntu for is for a few networking apps, packet sniffers and wireless tools that are not available on windows. (the main message i got from that is ubuntu is annoying when it comes to doing something as simple as to install a program (please don't say the package manager or the add/remove because it doesn't have any of the apps I use, and there only available in the annoying tar.gz ) the main design for windows was simplifying everything into a easy to use GUI in which most users will never even need to touch the command line for any reason (and for the 0.000000001% of tasks that need command line, you can easily write a patch file to do the work instead of telling the user how to do it. after windows xp microsoft went down hill. vista is more resource intensive (and windows 7 isn't any better in comparison to windows xp) it benchmarks lower in everest, 3dmark and every other app the Os uses 12 times as much memory at startup even when you do all needed tweaks and disable as many services and startup items as possible, (the extra memory usage causes the OS to be sluggish when you open a large app and close the large app because instead of the os using 60-70MB of memory, vista will use 500-1GB and when you open a large game and play for a while it moves all of that to page file and when you close the game it closes slower as it moves things back to memory and since it doesn't move everything, the os becomes even more sluggish for a while. a new UI and dx10 shouldn't make a new OS that can easily be included in a service pack and the new UI sucks, they removed almost all of the tabbed windows from xp and spread each tab to it's own window and put them in their own category so it takes a lot more work to find them since there no longer in 1 place, and to make things worst, they add random graphics and other eye candy to the windows so they take longer to load and in windows 7 they almost doubled the size of the tack bar while adding no new content that needs that space so the user gets less usable space to actually do work (while they can change it in the options it is a extra step that shouldn't be there to begin with (it should auto detect the user screen and use the standard task bar if they don't have a touch screen and use the windows 7 oversized crap if it detects a touch screen ) the windows vista themes eye candy can be applied t o the windows classic tack bar with out increasing the size but to show off more glass effects and make the eye candy more visible they make task bars and title bars larger it doesn't matter what someone thinks about the eye candy, it's wow effect will only last probably 10 minutes then the on;y focus of the user is getting work done quickly and efficiently and wasting screenspace will only hinder them and adding fade effects and slide effects which add a .5-1 second delay in order to fully play the animation only slows the user down and makes things feel sluggish because something that could happen instantly is delayed by a 1 second animation

go with what ever has the best gas mileage

well new laptops are becoming more lap friendly,

In my area, I have been able to crack the wep as well as the WPA keys of the networks. The neighbors I am friends with, I alerted them to this and got them to change their passwords to something more secure. if people are forced to enable security, they will pick a easy password that can be cracked (PS for those out there who use simple passwords, hamburger is not a secure password )

most people refer to it as that but i'm not sure who would want to use it on their lap, unless your sitting on a low chair, you will be in a very uncomfortable position to keep the laptop there, and in almost location there tables to use most companies are working on the overheating problem os people putting them on their lap by using heat pipes and moving the vents to the side of the laptop so it pulls in air from 1 side and shoots it out another side instead of pulling it in through the bottom but theres still not much of a solution for the heat your body will apply to the battery, the hotter the battery runs, the more ware and tare it gets and the shorter it will last

geek squad knows how to rip people off and exploit stupidity, their solutions are simple ones, (if they cant fix the problem within the first 5 minuted, they reinstall the OS, and if they cant do that, they will make the user buy another computer while charging them like $400 for the work the prices that geek squad charges, the user could easily use that same money to buy a cheap dell laptop or a eeepc or 2 or a gtx 280 videocard or a used car with 200,000 miles on the engine :) or adoption fees for 50 dogs and cats I remember a news report on digg a while back where they investigated these places

well for user verification over the phone nothing beats an actual human who has been trained to understand social engineering just remember, phone traffic is not really encrypted, (no SSL :) ) and sadly what makes us who we are, is just a few numbers and anyone with those numbers can become you, and take out a loan to buy a personal space station :) most companies that to verification over the phone will often ask for account holders name, phone number and mailing address and often nothing else. and it is often little or no security because when I did a verizon speed upgrade for someone (a while back verizon used to give 768k down and 128k up, even though verizon now offers 3mbit if you had a 768k account they would not increase your speed to the new standard unless you can and request it and they do it free of charge. well when I was doing it for a friend (she didn't like dealing with these companies and wanted me to do it for her) so i called, and gave the phone number and address, then when they asked for the account name I gave her name and guess what, even though I am a male and have a male voice, they called me by her name and said things like mam and miss as far as the outsourced workers could tell, I was her phone security is often very weak and since your dealing with another human who often doesn't understand security, you are not allowed to give out certain pieces of personal info because the workers are not at a level where you can trust them with it unless you want to verify by credit card number in which case if a malicious user gets that info, things cant get much worst, they already have your money.

if companies can use captchas like this, it will stop random people from making accounts for no reason, or if possible if you can get someone to make a captcha system to show random pictures and ask a question like "Is the cat in this picture, cute?" it will help and it will also cause new technology to be developed because spam companies and hackers will have to develop a cute cat detecting program (then it can be reverse engineered and added to google image search ) that way no matter which search you make, you can be sure to always find the cute cat pictures available in any search you make there many tutorials on adding basic captchas to your site http://webcheatsheet.com/php/create_captcha_protection.php but it is never really enough info available and no way of telling if the captcha system has been compromised until you test it out and find a million spam bots advertising weight loss pills if your running a business, don't skimp on it, get someone who is a professional to do a login system thats secure for your site,

the pirate bay is not doing anything illegal, they are just a search engine. what they do is even more legal than what google does google has been known to contain search results linking to child porn and they have also been known to cache that content, why don't they shut down google? google has been known to cache content from websites that were selling the content and other copyrighted material on google if you search for a song using the proper tags, you can find direct links to download free music, does that mean google is stealing music, there simply just a search engine. if someone crashes their car into a crowded mall, do you sue the dealership that sold the person the car for facilitating in the murder? tpb doesn't host the content, they just index it so people can search for it if theres a house that sells drugs and other illegal substances and someone uses their GPS to get to that house, should tomtom be sued for facilitating because they indexed a illegal house or anything illegal? many companies offer traffic service with their GPS if a gps reports a overturned tractor trailer on the highway and someone using that info drives over there to loot the tractor trailer, should the GPS company be sued? nope because there not giving illegal info there just reporting info,

just use good security and recommend users make a strong password then put a captcha to complete the login (the captcha will be visible for right and wrong passwords ) if you make things too complicated for users, they will move somewhere else for services, just put ample warning on making a strong password, that removes liability if they make a weak one

custom is always better when you get a pre built system the bulk of the money put into the system are not on the parts that really matter most $1000 gaming pcs don't even allow you to select a decent videocard unless you go their their $1500-2000 model that just has a nicer case and a slightly faster CPU then they let you pick a good video card the system i posted a while back in one of your other threads would have required you to spend almost $2000 just to have access to those parts if you were going prebuilt custom built systems allow you buy the parts that matter to your performance and not waste it on other crap when you buy a prebuilt gaming pc, generally $500+ of the price goes to workmanship of putting the system together, your just wasting a lot of money. head to a gaming pc website, pick a expensive system from then then using parts from newegg, put together a system with the same specs, you will see that it is generally $500-800 cheaper

the main reason why I called it free money is because while it is our money to begin with, we wouldn't have gotten the stimulus money otherwise, (that money would have gone to someone in government looking to embezzle some cash and the reason why i said that all linked companies need to be controlled because that way you wouldn't have to pay more for bread because the farmer wouldn't have to spend more on his stuff and they will still stay in business, the only reason for price increases is more profits. if you are selling tv's at $500 and a lot of people buy it, then you increase the price to $600 and a lot of people still buy it then you made profits. and greed will cause you to increase the price to 700 and higher, as a way ot testing the limits of peoples wallets and think about this statement when reading this next part Only two things are infinite—the universe and human stupidity when I was in high school, they would charge students for just about everything except water, probably because they couldn't attach a water meter to each water fountain a bag of chips would have the sujested retail price on it of 25 cents in the lunch room, they would cost 80cents- $1.50 depending on the brand, cheetos were popular and even though the bag said 25 cents, the school charged $1.50 and guess what happened, lots of students bought it at that price. many people in this country are stupid and see prices like this, "hey that 25 cent bag of chips cost $1.50, i have $1.50 in my pocket right now, i will go buy it" it is like people cant see the value of money and this money didn't go to the school, some company owned space there since the school didn't use it. now in college, we have a subway and a starbucks in the building, they charge almost twice as much as the subway down the block from the college. and the starbucks 2 blocks away and people buy it a lot. this sends a message to the greedy companies "hey it's ok to rip us off, we wont eve notice it until the band and debt collectors come after us"