Applied Indifference

Dell’s outsourcing their manufacturing.  What else is new.  But if this comment on /. is correct, they’re totally fucked:

You make a point, but you’ve missed the larger picture. I am a Dell employee and I can tell you the future of the company is not manufacturing PCs or notebooks, but rather offering services-after-the sale for the machines built by contract manufacturers.

Well, if you’re planning to offer “services after the sale”, what do you have to offer that’s going to get me to open my wallet?  I bought my last laptop 4 years ago.  Do you know how much contact I’ve had with the manufacturer since I got it?  None.  No services.  No upgrades.  I didn’t buy the extended warranty.  I haven’t sent the unit in for service.  Granted, I can replace my own keyboard when it wears out, but I didn’t even buy THAT from them, I got it from an overstock place on the internet.

If Dell thinks that they are going to make money the way that car dealerships do, they’re mad.  Of course, they aren’t.  The real reason they’re outsourcing the manufacturing is money.  They can have machines built in China for half of what it costs to build them in Round Rock.  And you can bet your last dollar that they won’t be dropping their prices.

Tags: Computers, Technology by Brian Corbino
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I set up a gallery to post pictures from the cell phone. I’m still working out some details, but for now it works pretty well.

Look here to see what I see.

Tags: Computers, Cool Stuff, Photography by Brian Corbino
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w00t!

Somehow, I managed to hose the database.  I don’t know quite how, but I hosed it real good like.  Since I had so little in the gallery, I just blanked it and created a fresh db in MySQL5 and reimported my pictures.  What little commentary I may have added I’ll hunt down and put back in the fullness of time.

I’m also going to start uploading more stuff.  And with the new camera, I’ll have more stuff already digital.

The gallery is here.

Tags: Computers, Photography, Randomness by Brian Corbino
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In the process of upgrading to Gallery 2.2, I nuked my installation.  How?  Stupidity.  I figured “hey, why not take this opportunity to migrate the database to MySQL 5″.  Bad move.  Something got horked in the database move, and most of the pretty went with it.  And it was down hill from there.  It was only about 50 pictures, so no harm, no foul -I’ll just re-import them and everything will be fine.

Long story short: I wiped it out, and started with a clean slate.  I know it was the database move because doing the same thing to my mother’s gallery without changing the database yielded a perfect upgrade.  Of course, since I haven’t shown her how to use it yet, she has no pictures in it.

Lesson - upgrade one thing at a time, kids.

Tags: Computers, Randomness, Technology by Brian Corbino
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Man, laptops have you over a barrel.  Every part is specific to a given model line, model line production lifespans are often only one or two years.  So parts are expensive.

But does IBM REALLY have to charge $87.12 for a replacement keyboard for my X31?

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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The Democrats, being the vote-whores that they are, want to restrict the Internet again. For The Children.

I have two questions:

1 - What part of “Congress Shall make no Law” do you morons not understand??

2 - How do they intend to enforce this on all the nations that AREN’T the United States?

Want to keep your kids “safe” from porn? KEEP THEM OFF THE FUCKING INTERNET!

Tags: Computers, Politics, Society, Technology by Brian Corbino
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Have it play music at me.

Seriously.   If I click on a link to your website, and it auto-plays music or sound at me, I close it.   Since I use Firefox, it opens in a background tab.   Which means that I close it without even LOOKING at it.   So you’ve missed whatever opportunity you had to impress your views upon me.   In fact, you’ve probably turned me   against whatever it is you were hawking.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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The shit I gottta go through to get a connection. For whatever reason, the VPN client for my customer won’t work on the wireless connection at the hotel. BUT, the connection to my house does.

And the connection from home to customer works.

So, I’m sitting in a hotel lobby with my laptop, connected to my workstation at home, running a Virtual PC session to connect to a system at customer.

Eh, it’s a living.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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OK, I understand all the dumbass tricks that scumbag spammers use to get their shit in my face.

But whoever came up with this is the dumbest motherfucker on the planet.

This is the entire message that I received - it’s pure HTML, for starters.
There are no image tags in it, no images at all.

<html><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN”
<head></head>
<body bgcolor=#ffffff>
Hello. <br>
<font color=#fcfcfc>tents lambs enemy adage</font><br>
We have found your resume on Job web site, and would like to offer you
vacancy in our company. <br>
If you interests, more detailed information you can receive on ours web <br>
site: http://www.****.us/ ( please send us email for more information ) <br>
vacancymillermorgans@Alum.com <br>
<font color=#fcfcfc>groove season sandy juice</font><br>
We look forward to your reply. <br>
<font color=#fcfcfc>nerve urine 3333 kraut</font><br>
Thank you. <br>
Best regards, <br>
Miller & Morgans inc.<br>
<font color=#fcfcfc>glean tans micro janis</font><br>
</body>
</html>

Which, when rendered looks like this:

Hello.
tents lambs enemy adage
We have found your resume on Job web site, and would like to offer you
vacancy in our company.
If you interests, more detailed information you can receive on ours web
site: http://www.****.us/ ( please send us email for more information )
vacancymillermorgans@Alum.com
groove season sandy juice
We look forward to your reply.
nerve urine 3333 kraut
Thank you.
Best regards,
Miller & Morgans inc.
glean tans micro janis

That web address is exactly as it appears, no names have been changed to protect the ignorant.

I’ve gotten 5 of these already, and each one has a different “from” address, a different “name”, and a different email address in the body to send for “more information”.

I mean, who the hell would be dumb enough to fall for this? Especially when 4 of them arrive at the same instant, and all have these little inconsistencies.

Not to mention the horrid English, and from names like “Sify”. Yeah, I’m really gonna reply to a job offer from someone named “Sify” with an address like “dumbass@noplace.com”.

Note the stream of random words rendered in an invisible color (at least on the white background that the message was intended to be on, not the stylish black background you see here) - this is to fool the bayesian filters, I guess.

That’s my rant for tonight. It’s stupid shit like this that makes me wanna send a GBU-32 to the house of a spam king.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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These new video cards are fantastic. We’re playing games at resolutions completely unheard of only a few years ago. But there is a major by-product of all that performance. Heat. And with heat, comes heat removal. And that means fans. Usually loud ones.

I have the BFG 6800OC. Overclocked right out of the box. Dual fan, lighted copper heatsink. However, dual, high-speed, teeny-tiny-move-the-air-around-the-box fans. Which means loud. Granted, it’s a major improvement over the Abit Siluro OTES 4200 it replaced. That beast had an externally-exhausting 7200RPM blower on it that sounds like a JT9D.

But I digress. So, we’ve got high-pitched fans on the 6800. High-pitched noises are far more annoying to the ear than low-pitched ones. So, bigger is better for fans. Less turbulence and lower speeds for same or better ariflow means less noise. Enter the NV Silencer 5.

It took all of 20 minutes to install, and it’s not hard to do. Mine had one of those rubbery TIM pads on it for the GPU, which I promptly scraped off and replaced with real thermal compound.

I’ve not beaten this and tested it like the boys at [H]ard|OCP do. I don’t push the clock on everything here to the limit. I just want a stable, quiet box that can work and play without driving me mad. However, a few tests were done to make sure nothing was going to melt.

Case temperature is about the same (give or take a degree), but the box is under my desk, and is mostly breathing in it’s own air. GPU and CPU idle temps are relatively unchanged. However, the GPU temp won’t hit 60° C now, where it would easily hit 70° under load before.

And, it’s quiet. You can’t hear the thing over the other fans. Just a little hum now, no more squeal.

NOTE: This is neither a solicited nor paid review for any of the products mentioned. Nor do I want any money for mentioning them. However, the NV Silencer met a specific need I had, and I wanted to share. Your mileage may vary.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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