3/29    A friend wants a PC (no mac). She doesn't want Dell. Is there a
        good place that can custom build for you (SSD, large RAM, cheap video
        card--no game)?
        \_ As a side note: back in my Cal days more than two decades ago when
           having a 387SX made me the only person with floating-point hardware,
           most machines were custom built.
	...

4/19    My Firefox 3.6.28 pops up a Software Update box that reads "Your
        version of Firefox will soon be vulnerable to online attacks."  Are
        they planning to turn off some security feature in my version of
        Firefox?
        \_ Not as such, no, but they're no longer developing this version,
           so if a 3.6.x-targeted hack shows up, you're not going to get
	...

8/5     Why is Mac OS 10.6 $29 and 10.5.6 $129? Is it a typo?
        \_ $29 for existing users.
           \_ it doens't even support ppc does it.
              \_ who cares about ppc anymore? Everything is Intel based
                 \_ I have a PPC mini at home that I use.
                 \_ I have a quad core G5 ppc.
	...

5/31    History of winners and losers by *popularity*:
        VHS > Beta Max
        USB2 > Firewire
        x86 > PowerPC > Everything Else > DEC Alpha > Itanium
        BlueRay > HDDvd
        \_ It's too early to tell RE: "Blue"Ray. They may both turn out to be
	...

5/26    Engineering is HOT man! Super hot co-inventor of USB at Intel:
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqLPHrCQr2I
	...

2/13    Question about memory relocation:
        These days most h/w has a relocation register. Could the relocation
        address be stored on disk or in kernel memory vs. in a register? Yes,
        that would be slow but is it possible? Do you *need* a relocation
        register or does it exist purely for performance reasons? I was
        reading some paper written by IBM in the 1960s that seemed to
	...

1/16    AMD to layoff 9%, suspend 401(k) match, cut engineer salaries 10%
        \_ Awwww, too bad                                       -Intel
           \_ My heart bleeds for you. --transmeta.
              \_ Wait, another sodan worked there? --ex-transmeta
                 \_ Hello transmeta-coward, meet another transmeta-coward.
  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/16/amd_q1_2009_job_cuts_wage_reductions
	...

12/4    A question to you old crufy alumni: So lately we've suggested
        VMs, and been asked why it's necessary. We've suggested top-of-the-line
        hardware and been told we don't need that much power. So I'd like to
        ask -- what exactly do you think the CSUA is supposed to _be_?
        \_ Noone said VMs weren't needed.  They suggested you use the
        \_ No one said VMs weren't needed.  They suggested you use the
	...

11/12   how do i make a fail safe magical backup for my debian box
        that i can quickly boot from if the box explodes?
        \_ keep a linux live boot cd around for just such an emergency
           \_ And learn about 'dd'
        \_ I was hoping there was something as slick as CCC, for unix.
           \_ You can first duplicate the disk offline with dd, then just
	...

12/29   A friend's primary Windows 2000 hard disk got nuked, and her
        backup drive is missing data. I'm looking for any
        recommendations for data recovery software for FAT/NTFS
        (restoring deleted files or corrupted filesystems) or
        recommendations for data recovery services in SF?
        \_ Get an external USB drive enclosure.  You want something
	...

12/27   I'm trying to help out with my mother in law's computer problems. She
        has two Windows XP computers (one desktop, one tablet pc) that she was
        using for her job before she retired. The computers themselves are old
        and her workplace doesn't want them back but they are installed with
        all this corporate Novell stuff that I don't know anything about and
        her account on the computer has very restricted permissions (she can't
	...

6/22    When I burn an iso image using the "Disk Utility" in OS X (Tiger)
        and I then use readcd on a linux box to verify the md5sum of the
        burned cd, the md5sum of the CD doesn't match the md5sum of the
        origional iso file. Is OS X modifying the iso image before it
        burns it or something? Seems strange.
        \_ Does this match on any of your other burned-CDs vs. ISO files?
	...

5/17    My second data backup question. I am looking for a backup media I can
        take off-site. I'll repeat that we've found the failure rate backing up
        to CD unacceptable. She wants to go with an Iomega product but I was
        wondering if people have had good/bad experience with these,
        reliability-wise and if they have better suggestions. I have about
        $400 for this.
	...

4/1     I'd like to play my favorite EA game on the laptop. However, I
        don't have a CD player for my laptop and I'm wondering if it
        is possible to mount the CD on my desktop and access it via
        wireless. I know that EA has really weird CD protection
        schemes, that's why I'm wondering if anyone has successfully
        done this. -ok thx
	...

3/19    Given the choice between a firewire and USB2.0 connection
        (between an external hard drive and my computer), which one is
        better and why? Thanks.
        \_ Firewire is faster and more robust for that application.  USB
           is more widely available if you'd ever want to move the disk to
           another machine.  -tom
	...

2/23    Hi, my girlfriend's mom is in Taiwan.  Her computer stopped booting;
        it shows BIOS, but it won't show the WinXP screen.  So, it sounds like
        a virus (less likely, partial drive failure / OS corruption, but let's
        assume it's a virus).
        She is concerned about recovering her files.
        Normally if I were on-site I'd just pull out the drive, put it in an
	...

2/3     So, I'm really confused about this notion of computer science
        metrics where everything's kind of 2^n, but sometimes not. For
        example, if I have a 4 GIG hard drive, does that mean I have
        exactly 2^32 bytes of space? Does that translate to 4000000000
        bytes, or some number that's close to it? How about megahertz?
        Say I have a 2.5GHz computer, does it run at exactly 2500000
	...

1/18    A bunch of CD-ROMS I have are corrupted. They're in a nice
        CaseLogic case, closed, stored in a temperate (70-85F), dry
        location. I have no idea why they're corrupted, but I know
        one thing-- they've been sitting close my Sharper Image Ionizer
        [plus UV mode turned on], for maybe 6 months. I'm suspecting
        that either the ions or the UV killed them, but is it actually
	...

1/11    Using SATA (serial ATA) as the one and only primary HD, any
        problem with boot up? How about with motherboards built in say,
        2002? Any problem with that? Pros/cons with SATA? Comments?
        \_ You expecting to install Windoze on SATA and have it boot?
        \_ I had to get a special driver floppy to install Win XP on a recent
           box w/ onboard SATA.  It wasn't too hard, though.  YMMV.  --dbushong
	...

11/12   Dual boot question:  I had a hard drive set up with dual boot.
        XP and Linux.  I had problems with the Windows partition.
        I got a new hard drive.  I connected the new hard drive and set it
        as the slave drive.  I went into setup and set it to boot from the
        slave drive (the new one).  I then reinstalled XP on the new drive.
        Oops.  My boot loader on the original drive got overwritten.  The
	...