WAY OT:Cannot delete virus

Glad to have helped ;)

Yes, Ultra 2s rule (from another Ultra 2 user). I reckon they're one of the best workstations ever made. Except I run Solaris on mine :-).

Chris

I'm still running an IPX with Solaris 2.6. It works all the time. Mind you I also have an Ultra-1 and an Ultra-10 for when I want a bit more performance, but the IPX runs a small database quite nicely and reliably.

PDW

Sorry. But then again, with OpenBSD, you would not *expect* them to make it easy to determine remotely what your hardware is. Just another layer of security (albeit "by obscurity". :-)

Agreed.

Of the Ross dual CPUs?

:-)

Yep. I seem to remember them at first selling high-end framebuffers for the Suns -- advertising as "The best graphics under the Sun". :-)

O.K. It is nice to be in a position where the security quality of an OS doesn't matter -- because you don't have to run it. :-)

IIRC, the only time a remote breakin occurred where I was, it was a SGI box where the fellow in charge of the group running it

*insisted* that he had to have root privileges on his machines to configure them the way *he* needed them. Well ... after that, he lost his argument -- and had to really seriously justify each change to the configuration. :-)

I don't really like the idea of doing taxes via a web browser, and leaving my figures on someone else's machine. I *know* what is in the way to gain access to my machines. I have no faith that anybody else will be as security conscious about the machines where the tax data lives -- especially if they need to allow access so people who *don't* care about security can run the programs.

The only nuisance about this is that even with the latest updates to the tax forms database, it still wants me to go get an update again -- because it can't even check with its vendor to be sure that what I have installed *is* the latest version. I download the updates, burn a CD-ROM, and sneakernet it to the Windows box. This also means that I have the precise update on CD-ROM to rebuild a crashed system along with the distribution CD-ROMs.

Good luck with clearing things up from that TurboTax screwup. Does the web-based run leave you with a printed copy of what you supposedly submitted?

Of course. I've got a plugin for the Nikon D70 RAW format (and a lot of others) for the GIMP (dcraw), which *almost* works for the NC2000e/c (The Kodak/Nikon hybrid from about 1996). The Image is recognizable -- but the colors are totally weird -- leaves come out dark magenta.

I need to make a couple of sample RAW image files and supply them to the fellow who wrote dcraw to give him a chance. His program recognizes my camera as a NC2000*f* instead of *e*, and doesn't claim to support the NC2000e.

For that camera, you *must* have some form of plugin, because the camera has *only* its private RAW format -- 1.3 MP worth of 8-bit data at one color per pixel, all wrapped in a B&W TIFF format file, complete with a thumbnail also in the same TIFF format. Attempting to view it with a TIFF viewer shows up as too dark and a B&W image which does not make much sense.

That -- or remove the CPU. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Yep -- I'm running Solaris 10 on a pair of Ultra-2 machines now. OpenBSD on an Ultra-1/140.

I've been playing with an Ultra-5 and a Blade-100, and consider both to be inferior to the Ultra-2 in build quality. (But it is easer to get a DVD-ROM burner onto those two, because they are IDE. I've got an IDE DVD-ROM burner on one of the Ultra-2 machines, but it is using an ACard bridge card to convert an IDE DVD-ROM burner to SCSI.

Enjoy, DoN.

Well, the wife doesn't "do computers", the 6 year old (going on

17) isn't aware of NFS and it's an automounted directory readable only by my userID, and the baby is working on cutting teeth right now so I have some time there as well.

Well, sometimes that means they get two systems on their desk, one for email and the usual crap, the the other for their kernel development or whatever they're doing. Comparing the cost of fixing the inevitable problems vs. the cost of an extra machine was basic math & came out in favor of the extra machine.

I've got a friend with a new Nikon digital SLR, forget the numbers but it's _stunningly_ good. He's stopped using the Haselblad for weddings and has gone straight digital.

Of course, the wedding that he discovered his Haselblad had a focal plane problem might have something to do with that.

Never bothered. I hung out in ASR back in the day when I was a bitter, jaded, cynical sysadmin. Now that I don't have much if any daily contact with the end users, I'd just be one of those smug bastards who has "been there, done that, got better", and I can't see that going anywhere positive. Fun times and all that, but the last thing they need is someone like me saying "Hey now, users aren't all that bad", because I get to play projects 80% of the time.

That, and my newsserver of choice won't let me ... wave the magic chicken... required to post in ASR.

O.K. No kids, and my wife does know computers, and is quite pleased with the Solaris machine on her desk.

O.K. I was working for an Army lab, and the procurement cycles made such solutions not as practical as I would have liked.

At least the brass didn't even want unix on their desk, let alone wanting root. :-)

Unfortunately, from what I hear, they have forced everyone to now have a Windows box for e-mail, and the unix boxen are relegated to doing the tasks that the lab actually *needs*. :-(

The D70 is quite nice, but the latest out is the D2x, which is now 12 MP (and, unfortunately, about $3.5K :-)

That could do it. At least with digital, you can keep an eye on that by "chimping" (looking at the display of the latest image, and saying "ook ook" while pointing at it. :-)

O.K. That is why I didn't bother pursuing the BOFH feed once I was retired.

:-)

Hmm ... what is weird about it? I remember that alt.hackers used to require you to be able to forge the "Approved: " header to be able to post.

Enjoy, DoN.

Yes, well, the magic chicken incantation isn't discussed. But yes.