Don’t Cheap Out on Me

Author: FourMajor
Date: 2006-04-04

There are certain things that you should never cheap out on when buying computer hardware. Here is a list…hopefully it can save someone some of the pain I have gone through in my years of geekdom:

  • Power supply. Go with Antec, or if you don’t mind reading for a bit, head over to Tom’s Hardware and read one of their PSU reviews.
  • RAM. Skimp on other things and get lots of RAM (hopefully 2GB nowadays). You will need it. Also, go with a name brand: Crucial, Corsair (my fav), Kingston, Mushkin, or OCZ.
  • hard drive. Worry about brand before you worry about size. Definitely do get Western Digital (I don’t buy anything else), and definitely don’t get Hitachi. There aren’t many things worse than a dead hard drive.
  • KVM switch. Go with a Belkin, and don’t get one of their shabby ones. Bad KVM switches will annoy the hell out of you.

On side note, my arms feel removed from my body. It is a very weird sensation. And for some reason I can still type correctly.

Someone Needs to Learn About Subnet Masks

Author: FourMajor
Date: 2006-02-16

At work, our internal network uses a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0. That allows for 65,534 host addresses. Talk about not knowing how to plan a network.

And here I can’t pass the CCNA…

Artificial Products

Author: FourMajor
Date: 2006-02-10

Do you ever get the feeling that you’re paying for nothing?

Software and data in general is an artificial product created by our laws. We can sit here and argue about whether these laws benefit or harm society. But I’m not going to do that.

What is a valid product is the service of creating data. You can surely pay someone to create data that does or says what you want it to. But why is it that it is against the law to transmit this data to some unauthorized party? Something just seems inherently unnatural about this. Support is also a valid product. You create software for someone and then charge them to support it.

I think this is partly the basis for the free software movement.

Hell, I don’t even know if I agree with all of this myself. I have recently shelled out $189 for VMWare, when I could have easily just pirated it. I guess it is because I feel like they deserve my money. It is a good product. But at the same time, I see this as a donation in the sense that it doesn’t make sense that it should cost money once it is already written. I mean, other than the negligible cost of their bandwidth, it cost them nothing extra to “allow” me to download their software. In other words, I wouldn’t have felt particularly bad if I had pirated the software. I only would have felt as bad as, say, listening to free Internet radio without donating any money.

Of course, the software and entertainment industry wants us to believe that each time you illegally download software, music, movies, or some other sort of data, they are somehow losing money. Sure, some of the people that did it illegally would have otherwise paid for what they downloaded. But they would have you believe that a college student, had they not been able to download $250 Photoshop and $10,000 worth of music, would have paid for it.

Give me a break. More on free software to come (free as in speech, and free as in beer).

More crap that I want

Author: FourMajor
Date: 2006-02-06

Hello, my name is Stu and I am a computer addict.

I keep a wish list on my personal wiki. I started this because I found myself always buying little things and never being able to save up for the big-ticket items that I really wanted. I figured if I wrote down what I really wanted, I would be able to save up for it. It is working, at least a little bit.

Anyway, so my wish list is kind of crazy. On it, I have the following:

  • $400 sound card
  • $400 laptop
  • $350 printer
  • $90 network switch
  • $60 network switch
  • $160 RAM
  • $340 video card
  • $200 hard drive
  • $75 scanner

I am kind of glad that I am not rich. Because if I was, I would spend a lot of damn money.

Macworld pics

Author: FourMajor
Date: 2006-01-12

So I went to Macworld yesterday with the EFF. Overall, I wasn’t very impressed, but I did get some neato pictures. See below.

     

Click here for the full album.

No cheap iBooks

Author: FourMajor
Date: 2006-01-10

Blast!

(Image removed because it was being used way too often on other sites)

No cheap iBooks. I guess I won’t be using a Mac then…ever.

CNN Pipeline

Author: FourMajor
Date: 2005-12-12

CNN.com has launched a new service called CNN Pipeline. I have waited a long time for something like this. What a beautiful concept. On-demand, low-cost, commercial-free, online news. Four simultaneous video streams, three of which are unedited. It is $25 for a whole year. I will be signing up for this when I get home, especially since it has a free trial.

I have always thought that our high-speed Internet connections weren’t really being utilized. But now we’re getting there. I think we’re really seeing the beginning of something big here. If I could get this kind of service for other shows, I would be all over it.

Reviews here (news.com) and here (PC Magazine).