stingwray

Get any netbook which runs well with backtrack and something like a 500w usb wireless if your doing wireless pentesting. A large battery also certainly helps. UMPCs are generally too expensive for the limited gains you can make, where the netbook is small enough to be used and very cheap. Also offers far more power and flexability. If you really have your heart set on doing things slowly but in a small form factor, then the nokia n810 is probably your best bet, its runs linux which makes it easier to set up to go.

I've seen smaller and better. There's a thin client available which is a wall-socket, plug your monitor, keyboard and mouse into the wall and your away.

So your quite happy to run all your HTTP traffic through a server that you have very little control over, which your asking to be free with no strings attached. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

Whats the reasoning behind bypassing saving to cvs? Its that or having something convert the xls files into cvs at some point before loading, which adds another step and tool in the chain.

Out of that list, VB.NET is the only one of dubious use. C++ is obviously still used extensively, Java and C# probably just as much, I've often seen them used together in systems as well. To extend your abilities, you might want to learn a more scripting language, maybe something from the 3 P's (Perl, PHP, Python). To go even further, there's then functional programming languages such as Haskell and F#, moving in further forward you then have logic languages like Prolog. Learning a language from each of the 4 paradigms definitely helps improve programming abilities.

I was building software to be used with this up until recently.

Specification looks ok, but you can make some improvements. Firstly decide whether you'll user a embedded style hypervisor or whether you want to run an operating system running the hypervisor. You'll get better performance from the former, but hardware support is more limited. On the actually hardware specification. I wouldn't bother with the PC8500 RAM, servers aren't for overclocking, you want it stable and dependable, especially if you are running multiple services from it. Also RAID 5 isn't the best solution as you'll receive pretty poor performance from it, especially with running lots of servers on it. Look at RAID 10, its better for redundancy and performance, so you'll want either 4 or 6 hard drives with that. If you go with hardware raid (which you should only consider) then you'll have no problems with Linux and RAID, its all in the hardware, if you didn't guess already. Finally, consider AMD, the Phenom II is a really good processor and very cheap compared to the Intel offerings, it also does well with these types of applications.

Thanks for the feedback. I've tried my friends Shures which are In-ear Noise Isolating and they are pretty good. I know that if you want the best then you have to go for outer-ear headphones, but they are just not my style and don't like wearing them for long periods of time.

So my standard iPod headphones have seen better days, people have been telling me to upgrade for as long as I've had them and I'm finally getting sick of the amount of noise they let in on the daily commute, making me have my volume up at 95% and so killing my already slightly worse hearing. I'm looking for a pair of In-ear Noise Isolating Headphones and ideally I don't want to be spending more than £50 on them although if someone can suggest something radically better for a bit more money then I'll consider them, but lets not get silly here. The short list at the moment consists of: Philips SHE9800 Shure SE102 JAYS s-JAYS Apple In-Ear Headphones I can get any of them for under £50 and most reviews seem to be giving them all >7/10 but obviously I want the best. The Shures seem to come out best from some review houses and the rest of the time the Philips do, with the JAYS coming consistently third and the Apple fourth. I really only included the Apple for completeness, I don't need the microphone (its an iPod Clasic 80GB I'm using) and I don't think I can even make use of the volume clicker. So does anybody have any experience, ideas, suggestions on how to choose, what to choose or what to even consider? In short, I'm looking for good noise isolation (so I can get run over crossing the road), good sound reproduction and comfort given that I'll probably be wearing them for ~2 hours most days. Ta.

I haven't tried it for a little bit, because I've been doing other things than setting up server. But when was last playing with it, it seemed like they had renamed all the standard commands and function that are generally common across unix based system. Meaning that to progress I had to look up everything all the time.

To further on from this, when using OpenBSD, you require a large, heavy and strong object which can be placed by your workstation. This is for hitting your head against repeatedly while trying to interact with that system. Its well worth doing as an exercise though, the implementing the system that is, not hitting your head repeatedly against something. Just expect yourself to take an age to get up to speed with it.

Nothing wrong with the price of the Mac Mini, the current problem with it is that it hasn't been updated for too long. Its no harder to service than a laptop and its as upgradable as laptop so you can't complain their and I don't know what you mean by Apple not supporting it as well, its got just as much support from Apple for everything. The problem with it was that it wasn't desirable, it was that different and they marketed it wrong. If in the new version apple gave it the video connectivity of the aTV and a TV tuner then they would fly, but I can't see that happening. A 15" defies the point of it being a netbook, if you read my post and looked online, you would know that you can pick up a 15" laptop for near enough the same money as a netbook. If anything netbooks have done more for Linux's market share than windows, and microsoft are having to keep XP around even longer than they had wanted because they can't run Vista well enough. So I'd say that Microsoft is not liking it more than anyone else at the moment, they still have all the markets wrapped up that they don't have to worry about anything yet.

I don't think they are killing anyones market share in standard laptops. I've yet to see anyone buy a netbook as their main computer and thats the way its going to stay as they are unusable for extended periods of time (the main reason because of this is the 1024x600 resolution is two small to be generally productive on it). Its up to apple whether they want to compete it that area which is very volatile at the moment and netbooks shouldn't really be seen as part of the laptop market in my opinion, like desktops are different and MIDs are different. Apple tried to cater for the lower cost user with the Mac Mini and unfortunately it didn't work as well as they would have liked, so I don't think they are going to rush into this area until they feel they can bring something substantially different from what is currently available, which is basically a set of clones. Given that you can get a 15" laptop for less than £400 which has a decent spec and Apple is still doing well with its market share, I would say Apple is fairing pretty well. Its because of these prices that we are now seeing more laptops shipping than desktops for the first time.

No good. Any half decent DoS attack will spoof their source address of the attack traffic. At best it is random addresses, at worst they could be claiming to be coming from high-profile targets, which would then limit your use of those legitimate services if you started blocking them. You also have a bloody difficult job of decided what is attack traffic and what is legitimate traffic.

Warmer? UK? So we'll be waiting another couple of years for global warming to settle in then? I thought being in the summer was going to be a given. Think I might have to buy a house in dundee and start up a homebrew data center! If we are going to suggest slightly difficult places to get to, we could just jump of the end and ask if Sealand would put us up. Wouldn't have any problems with the rozzers then.

Try again, you have the wrong CPUs, 1600MHz FSB you need, the E5462, I don't know many US component shops but cheapest I found it was $878.04. Also your motherboard is worse than the Mac Pros, it can only support 8GB of memory across 4 DIMM slots, so no thanks. You should check your license on your copy of Windows, most of the license's are not portable. This adds an extra $100 for the Microsoft Tax in the form of Vista Home Premium, god help you if you want all the features of the OS, you have to pay $180 for that. Finally if you are lucky enough to get student discount you can get 15% of the Mac Pro straight way. Making it a bargin, can't do that from dell or a scratch build. It might be easier in the US to build something nearly equivalent to the Mac Pro for the same money, but your not there. I'd like you to find an all in one screen and computer you can build for less than the iMac, the iMac fits a very nice market, one of not having a bulky computer box and lots of cables to deal with. You can upgrade anything you want in the Mac Pro, Processors, RAM, HDDs, GFX cards etc. You don't overclock workstations, you want something stable and dependable which will give you the correct result. You can install any OS on the Mac Pro, you can run OS X legally on it without the need to break the law. Also OS X really doesn't have any DRM in it, not like Windows, I don't have to activate my OS, I don't have to install crap from the vendor like WGA to get all the features of the OS. I don't have to worry about a serial number or how many times I reinstall the OS. Not even to get into the horrible mess of windows and media with DRM.

Definitely interested in this as I missed previous years gone by. My vote would be for London, but then I'm biased on that, as its my current location. Although that probably wouldn't work so well with camping. Camping sounds good!

Does that actually work? Whenever I've played with that in XP and Vista it's just been completely useless.

Look for equivalent OS X applications and you'll find plenty, they also run very fast. You firstly don't spend twice as much for the hardware. Secondly its certainly not slower hardware, slowest MacBook available is 2.0GHz dual core. Majority of PC laptops use slower processors which is why they cost less. Also look at my post earlier about the Mac Pro, you can't build a system faster for less than the Mac Pro, let alone half the price. If you want to try please do and post your results.

If we are going to talk about the Mac Pro then let's provide some figures. It's the best value Mac around and for a reason, Apple can negotiate prices with manufacturers. Now the base Mac Pro (which is what will consider, upgrading RAM, HDDs etc. can be at the users own cost afterward) is £1,712.00 here in the UK. That gets you 2x 2.8GHz Xeons with 1600Mhz FSB, 2GB of DDRII 800Mhz ECC FB-DIMMs, 320GB SATA HDD and an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB. Not to mention the motherboard which uses Intels 5400 Chipset, case, PSU and DVD-RW. Going for a scratch built machine, first start with the CPUs, they are going to set me back £673.31 each, £68.99 for the 2GB of RAM, £326.16 for an equivalent motherboard with i5400 chipset and another DIMM slots to match or be greater than the Mac Pro and £41.60 for a good 320GB hard drive. Thats totalling £1783.37 already, and I haven't bought a good PSU, CASE, Graphics Card or optical drive. So the Mac Pro is looking pretty tasty at the moment. So I think, perhaps Dell might be able to beat Apple, given that they go direct to the manufacturer of parts. The Precision T5400 looks the part, starting at £976.35 and has options for dual processors. So lets spec it up to that of a base Mac Pro. Well the first problem is they don't offer the 1600MHz FSB processors, so and I'll even select processors slower than that in the Mac, the 2.66GHz Xeons, before changing anything else, the machine is already now costing me £1921.65. So I can't find the Apple Tax on the Mac Pro, I'm interested if anyone else can find a base machine the same as the Mac Pro cheaper because I'm looking for something in that area. People aren't going to want 100% control over the hardware in the Apple computer, Apple already use good, quality and well performing parts, there's not much more to ask for. Apple are regularly trimming the "fat" of their machines, like the lack of Firewire on the new MacBook, I don't see it stopping people buying it, more people are buying it because Apple did it at the right time with a major update, that people wanted. Everything is about timing. OS X is a lot more than a custom made GUI on top of BSD, it is very different, but shares its parents with UNIX, like Linux does. In fact OS X is fully posix compliant, where as the likes of FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD aren't.

But that is also a benefit, Mac's are made from quality parts and are generally superior from PC equivalents in my opinion. My MacBook Pro is by far better than any PC laptop that I have seen, yes I had to pay a bit more money for it, but I think that is generally worth it. Also the fact that OS X supports limited amounts of hardware allows Apple the ensure that it runs brilliantly on their hardware, which is my concern over using Linux for a workstation, in know my Mac will always be there and always be working. BTO from Apple is always overpriced and it helps if your willing to upgrade your system to get the stuff you want, but putting memory in a computer is pretty trivial. Apple are seeing at least there is a market for smaller cheaper computers, they are keeping the white macbook which if I'm not mistaken is the cheapest laptop they have ever produced and hopefully the mac mini will be getting its much needed update soon. The Mac Pro is incredibly good value for money if you want that type of computer and I think generally its a good thing with Apple trying to differentiate themselves, even if it is without popular opinion to begin with.

Apple Games

I don't think 99%, yes the majority, but nearly all Mac users that dual boot will be dual booting Windows with Boot Camp. I would argue that OS X is far simpler than Windows, there is very little system maintenance that you have to do, and many operation are far simpler. For instance the majority of small application you want to run, you simply drag and drop into your applications folder to keep them, once your done, just delete and that's it. Nearly all windows applications require being installed and add crap to the system which can't be removed without a fresh install. Another example would be UAC on windows is horrible, its slow, its annoying and just generally get in the way, where on Linux and OS X is done right and generally doesn't cause problems. To say that Windows is a better for the gaming factor is just wrong as well, Mac OS X and Linux run just as many games, with a lot of popular titles being released for those platforms, them you also have projects like CrossOver helping out. The problem with OS X dedicated ports is that they cost a lot of money and they never seem to drop in price. Have a look at the games section on the Apple store, you'll see what I mean.

Cool

sweet