4/28    Win 3.1 was more widely adopted than Win 3.0.  Win XP (5.1) was more
        widely adopted than Win 2k (5.0).  Now it looks like Win 7 (6.1) is
        going to be more widely adopted than Vista (6.0).  Is this a trend on
        Microsoft x.0 versions being bad?
        \_ duh.
        \_ "more widely adopted" ... well... what are you basing these numbers
	...

6/27    "No extension: Windows XP D-Day arrives Monday, June 30"
        http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/96295
        Among all Windows versions, is XP one of the most sucessful ones?  The
        other one I can think of might be 3.1.
        \_ 2000 was pretty damn good too.
        \_ Win95? It ran the most games. XP seems better than Win2k to me, but
	...

10/5    http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6449_7-6647505-1.html?tag=nl.e501
        Don't get overhyped on PS3 and Wii.  CNET reporter says that in his
        informal poll, 3 out of 6 people he knew who got an early Xbox 360
        had their hardware eventually fail.  The warranty is only 90 days,
        although after enough bad press MS is paying for all repairs for
        machines built before 2006.
	...

9/12    I haven't used MS windows since the win95 days. Can someone please
        explain to me what in the world a "domain" is? I'm familiar with
        IP addresses like 128.32.112.233 or domains like http://csua.berkeley.edu
        but what are things like "\\My Workgroup" or "\\MYCOMPANY"?
        Is Microsoft inventing new linguo?
	...

7/25    Running Linux: any technical reasons to reboot on a regular basis?
        \_ No.  -tom
        \_ Like with any other OS, it can help if your apps have memory leaks.
           If every program running on the machine is written perfectly
           and never fails in any strange or unexpected manner then you're
           fine without rebooting. I've had machines up for almost 1000
	...

8/25    Is it possible to make a bootable DOS floppy in Win2K?
        \_ http://bootdisk.com
           \_ Thanks. -op
        \_Yes.  Right-click on the drive and follow the instructions.
           \_ I don't think that makes a bootable floppy -op
              \_ agreed
	...

5/15    Is a Pentium 133 Mhz Processor fast enough to decode mp3's in
        real-time?
        \_ Almost certainly yes, depending on load.  I used to play mp3s
           on a 166 win95 machine, but I couldn't use netscape at the same
           time.  And I think that might have even gotten better later on
           when winamp improved their decoder.
	...

10/16   What's the difference between the way win98 does threads vs.
        NT/2k/XP?
        Win98 doesn't seem to have a real threading system or something.  Test
        code on Win98 runs "jerky" but the same on the more advanced versions
        runs smoothly and handles threads as I'd expect.
        \_ I thought Win98 has preemptive threading for Windows apps while
	...

9/19    I dutifully installed cygwin on win95.  However, some program, like
        tex and tcsh, dumps core or stack.  What is the problem?
        \_ I read somewhere that cygwin on windows 95 doesn't
           work so well
            \_ I wrote somewhere that win95 doesn't work so well, so what
                you read is pretty certainly true.  Umm, I'm not one of
	...

8/26    After I save a file in win95, I need to process it from DOS prompt
        (to use with sftp for putty for example). I find the file name to be
        "currupted" - it's shorter and contains strange characters like "~".
        I know this must be a feature from MS but how to get around it and
        access the file from DOS using the real file name?
        \_ try using cygwin
	...

8/14    Some applications don't have the "print to file" option.  Is there
        a way to install a printer type that will generate a PS file when
        printed to it?  This is w2k.  I've been dicking around with this
        all morning and still can't find a way to print.  This is for an
        efax viewer and something called elynx viewer.  There's no "print
        to file" option and printing to "PDFwriter" won't work either.
	...

8/2     When I use X from window (Exceed) and mac (DarwinX) and try to
        move or resize window, the window frame does not appear, so I
        don't have a visual feel where I am moving or resizing to.  Any
        cure?
        \_ Your background might be the same color as the resize lines;
           try 'xsetroot -solid darkgreen' (for example) and see if that
	...

Linux soda 2.6.18-6-686 #1 SMP Sun Feb 10 22:11:31 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux
Welcome to Macintosh^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HSoda Mark VII,
a dual Xeon 2.8GHz with many hozers.
	...

Linux soda 2.6.16.5-soda0 #1 SMP Wed Apr 12 18:06:46 PDT 2006 i686 GNU/Linux
Welcome to Macintosh^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HSoda Mark VII,
a dual Xeon 2.8GHz with many hozers.
	...

8/31    original macintosh user manual:
        http://www.peterme.com/?p=583
        \_ "...... every photo shows a preppy white male using the
           computer. ...  (The dude in Chapter 4 even has a *sweater* around
           his shoulders!!!)"
           Was a sweater a White thing in the '80s?
	...

WindowsXP soda sp2-2800.4.0 #1 SMP Wed Nov 17 11:23:46 PDT 2006 i686 Cygwin
Welcome to Macintosh^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HSoda XP SP2,
a dual Xeon 2.8GHz with many hozers.
The uncensored messages below this line may not reflect opinions of the CSUA.
	...

10/6    I love Macintosh, I've had a G4 and other Apple related products
        but I've returned my MacBook Pro v.1 for the following reasons:
        - 7 pounds!!!
        - When idling on single proc, it is very hot
        - When idling on single proc, it only runs 1.5 hour. Slightly more
          when the LCD is turned off for the entire 1.6 hour
	...

6/22    http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32566
        Intel hosts LAN party on Arizona campus.
        60% bring AMD computers, 37% bring Intel.
        \_ Semi-related factoid: The Windows Startup sound was created on an
           Apple Macintosh.
	...

FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE (MKVII) #0: Fri Dec 17 17:40:05 UTC 2004
Welcome to Macintosh^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HSoda Mark VII,
a dual Xeon 2.8GHz with many hozers.
	...

2/13    What are your favorite old school computer games?
        \_ Recently rediscovered Pathways into Darkness http://pid.bungie.org
           \_ The skill levels for weapons was a cool innovation for a fps.
        \_ BEYOND CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN
        \_ Jumpman Jr.
        \_ The Pawn (C64 - 1985?), Conan (various 1986?)
	...

11/9    What do you do when the OSX disk utility (booted from CD) fails
        to repair your primary startup disk and gives you the error:
        "Invalid B-tree node size"? This is an iMac G5 and it cannot boot
        from the Macintosh HD. Any recommendations for data recovery?
        \_ DiskWarrior
           \_ Thanks.
	...

5/20    Reading tech support stories.  This page is by far the funniest
        I've seen yet.
        http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_smoke.shtml
        \_ Heh.
          * Customer: "Hi. I have a Macintosh. I had a disk that I wanted to
            put in the computer, but it wouldn't go, so I pushed harder, and
	...

11/10   Now that FF 1.0 is out, has anybody gone back and compared, say,
        startup times to older versions (maybe even Phoenix)?  Is FF still
        a great deal faster than mozilla?  I remember using phoenix and
        thinking that it was maybe 2x faster for startup, as compared to
        mozilla.
        \_ I don't know about Mozilla, but startup time for FF 1.0 on OSX
	...

8/4     Two hotbutton topics for the price of one!
        Picture of John Kerry using a macintosh:
        http://i.timeinc.net/time/covers/1101040719/teamup/images/03.jpg
        \_ http://www.theapplecollection.com/various/Celebrity/GBush.html
        \_ Mamby pamby liburls and they're macintushes!
	...

1/4     I want to test how my servers behave during a disk failure and
        a RAID reconstruction so I want to simulate a hardware failure.
        How can I do this in Linux without having to physically pull
        a drive? These disks are behind a RAID card and run Linux. -ausman
        \_ According to the Linux RAID wiki, you might be able to use mdadm
           to do this with something like the following:
	...

9/13    Thanks to Jordan, our disk server is no longer virtualized. Our long
        nightmare of poor IO performance should hopefully be over. Prepare for
        another long nightmare of poor hardware reliability!
        ...
        Just kidding! (I hope)
        In any case, this means that cooler was taken out back and shot, and
	...

2/18    Why does the system seem so sluggish lately?
        \_ Slow NFS is basically always the answer. --toulouse
        \_ Any truth to the rumor that soda will be decommissioned this summer?
           \_ Absolutely none. Soda might go down temporarily while disks are
              reorganized and stuff so soda doesn't suffer from such shitty
              performance nearly as much, but no, we've gotta maintain NFS and
	...

7/28    Does it make sense to defragment disks on VMWare? My 80GB disk
        on VMWare isn't really using 80GB, it just uses what it needs.
        Will defragment do anything to it?
        \_ If you want to speed up disk operation in your VM, it's best to
           defragment the disks in your VM, then defragment the disk on your
           host machine where the VM files are.
	...

5/10  I have large spare disks on several machines, all on same net.
      How can I combine them into one big visible network file system?
      \_ you want either a clustered file system (eww expensive) or look into
         smoething like a distributed file system (afs, global fs).
      \_ The startup I work for makes a distributed NAS product that's free
         for the first four terabytes if you'd like to try it.
	...

5/2     I have a 1Gbps switch. It is connected to a SANS RAID-1 with
        two WD Green 1T that takes 1Gbps connection, as well as a laptop
        that is also 1Gbps. Online benchmarks show *sustained* transfer
        rate of about 1/2 of 1Gbps with the WD Green... cool!!! But
        in practice, I'm only getting 68Mbps (read SANS->PC file transfer),
        far below what I expected. The switch says both devices are using
	...

12/9    Another idea for the CSUA that lets you spend money and maybe get some
    cool toys. Instead of buying a beefy server (like say, a massive server
    with 20 386DX processors), buy a few cheap machines (like the ones
    mentioned below) that have good disks and work on failover / load
    balancing. A netscaler or other piece of hardware is complete overkill,
    but maybe hacking an OpenBSD box could do the trick. The idea is that
	...

12/3    Are any of you CSUA alums working at Intel?  Is it possible that we
        might be able to hit Intel up for donated/partially donated (reduced
        price) Core i7 Xeons when they come out?  Who would be a good person
        to contact about something like that?  We're of course willing to put
        out for them - perhaps we'll tattoo an Intel logo on toulouse if that's
        what they want :-p  -- steven
	...

11/29   I'm experimenting with virtualization, and as a poor college student
        I'm wondering what the best alternatives for virtualization are, and
        how best to cut my teeth on messing with non-linux platforms (or I
        guess interesting stuff on Linux would work too). Right now I've got
        FreeBSD7 running on KVM on my home computer (on a Core 2 Quad), and am
        somewhat at a loss as to how to use it. (More details: bridged
	...

11/11   I want a home nas so my laptops aren't always running out of space,
        what's a good buy?
        \_ I did a bunch of research and ended up with Dlink DNS-321. It
           is newer than DNS-323 with less problems. It doesn't have as
           much buffer as DNS-323, but if you're transfer files bigger
           than 32 megs, the sustained rate for both are equivalent. I
	...