Joelc

I'd stick to PC's. Mac's hardware is good, but overpriced for what they are. They are pretty stylish, and OS X is a great operating system, but they charge a lot for what you get. If your after something stylish, quite a lot of the home orientated manufacturers like Asus, Acer, Packard Bell etc have some good reasonable priced machines that look pretty good, but as with everything, you pay a price for the extra style. Plus, if you start using it for your business, you'll probably end up with things like accounting packages, and windows only software that you need to be running, so its probably a safer bet. Even though you can run windows on a Mac, you still need to pay for a windows licence. Joel

Has it got a PERC/CERC controller? Usually there is a loader after POST that allows you to setup the array, set it up, and then just boot from CD into $OS. Joel

I'm guessing the 1228 Is a typo. http://www.crucial.com/uk have a memory identifier that will allow you to choose the right memory for your laptop. As for the HDD depending on the interface, you should just be able to buy a 2.5 inch drive from somewhere on-line to replace it. Joel

As much as I'd love to sit in my car at night and play pop shots with Johnny Tea-leaf, I need to get a decent car alarm. I've plumped for a Toad AI606. Its costly, so I'd rather get it installed properly. Anyone know of a Toad dealer anywhere around the Sheffield area. Don't fancy paying someone from Bristol to come and do it. Joel

JUst underlines the importance of account management, unused accounts should be remove, or at least have their shell set to /bin/nologin or /dev/null, or one of the other null shells. Its time consuming on a busy box, but it does have its merits. Joel

Thats what they said about XP. I've got a couple of virtual PC's connected the a virtual DC, and a lot of the Group Policy settings from 2k3 AD don't apply properly to Vista. We have Vista Ultimate and Enterprise licenses, due to our software assurance agreement with Microsoft. But with 700 PC's in our domain, and another 900+ to go, we need to be rock solid sure before we deploy it. Office 2007 is schedules for March deployment, followed by Exchange 2007. Joel

Its not surprising really. Computers are sold to novices who with all respect to them, don't have the first clue about computer security. Its not their fault really, its amazing the number of PC's that are sold with little or no protection on board. For the sake of 5 mins to install AVG or the likes on a new computer in the store, it could prevent a lot of these. Although, it does make you wonder how the figures are reached, and how much of it is scare tactics. Not that there is anythings wrong with that, scare tactics are good in this case. Joel

On a corporate level, we wont roll out Vista until at least Q3 2007, there is too much in Vista that we cant lock down with AD, and we are not risking having the security holes that XP offered us. Joel

Just because the files don't look to be altered, its quite possible that they hacker could have just cleared out any of his activity. I don't suppose you have an IP of the last login to that account do you? Sounds much like your server was probably turned into a node for a botnet. I've seen IRC channels on ERFnet filled with bots. Its quite remarkable the number of bots that people accumulate. One channel consisted of at LEAST 200 zombied machines connecting into a single channel, and the perpetrator issuing commands to them, and then them going off and performing DDOS and god know what other sorts of attacks. It sounds like you were the victim of a script kiddie rather than a full fledged hacker. So chances are, he's got no further than he did. Script kiddies generally use other peoples programs to launch attacks, hackers usually write their own. A very similar tool set was used on another box I've seen. Although that time, the password was brute forced, and there wasn't that much of the box left that was recoverable after the intruder found an exploit in BIND which someone was running as root (tut) which gave them root access, and suffice to say the run of the box. Joel

xinetd is a replacement for inetd, which is a "super server" that a lot of UNIX servers used to, and still do use. It basically listens on all available ports, and passes incoming connection to the relevant program, I.E passes HTTP requests to Apache. Many people don't use this method any more and set-up the server programs to directly listen on the ports. This method reduces high overheads on busy servers. Its usually distribution specific as to what method its set-up to use, although most can do both. Joel

First job, take the thing offline, stop all services its possible to stop without loosing ssh access. Then use a rootkit detector like chkrootkit and check for local exploits. Give me a shout on MSN later if you need help still. Joel

I used to have a lot more: http://www.linuxmod.co.uk/misc/images/picKLE-cache/Room/dscn1066_640.jpg Had that little lot running as a cluster for a while, but sold most of them off after I finished what I was doing. Computers are generally expensive as a hobby, from all angles. I know people who have a lot more kit in their houses. I moved a lot of my stuff into Telehouse and Redbus on more powerful kit, so I needed less at home. Plus I don't take on as much extra work as I used to, I just don't have the time with my new job. Joel

One big file server, dual opteron processor with 8 disks, real power hungry. Two Sun Ultra 80's and an an Alpha 433au. The firewall is pretty low power, A Soekris embedded routerboard, if that makes up for anything . My house mate has two servers also. I cant really turn mine off overnight as they run some critical jobs, plus one does all the fileserving for home directories for my desktop machines. I'm eventually looking to get rid of the Sun's, once I've ported the apps to FreeBSD from solaris. Also one of my desktop PC's is going this month, now I have my d420 laptop , I no longer need it so its being retired, the only justification I had for it was it was the only machine I run for Windows, but thats on my work laptop. I'm trying to get the setup down to 2 servers, one desktop and a laptop. My housemate is doing the same. Joel

They are probably the same, Electro probably import them themselves to save costs, but give them a ring and ask. I've used Electro for years and they have always been helpful and reliable. Joel

There should be a warning akin to the "May contain nuts" warning on a bag of peanuts. "Warning, excessive dosage may result in drowning" Joel

Most of the PC's in our house are left on all night, and the servers don't get turned off unless we have a power cut and the UPS runs out. Joel

You can download bleeding edge Solaris from http://opensolaris.org. Solaris has been available for download for some time from the Sun site. Sugarcube, nice geek code, not seen geek code strings in ages. Joel

The original Xbox used a variant of the GeForce 3 chip, the new one is ATI based. Even in you managed to remove the chip, you'd have to build the rest of your AGP/PCI-E card from scratch. Joel

I'd vote for the Sennheiser gear too. The radio mics they make are incredibly good, both in sound quality, and in build quality. I used to engineer for a large swing band, and we use complete Sennheiser wireless pickups, the quality is really good, not to mention built to last, which, in the world of clumsy musicians, is a bonus. Shame they don't make them anymore. We used SM58's for vocals I'd spend money on a decent mic, the SM58 is one of the best, if not THE best cable mic around, that and a good set of quality cables. I'd go somewhere like ElectroMusic in Doncaster and ask if they will let you have a demo, they usually will. If your nice enough to them they might even let you loan one for a weekend so you can test them out. They are really good like that. Joel Joel

Phillips make one, as do Plextor, but they ain't cheap. http://shop.mediacomputers.co.uk/acatalog/Full_Height_Drives.html http://linitx.com/product_info.php?products_id=1182 The Phillips one is laptop sized, but you can buy adapter bays that will allow you to use it in a standard computer Joel

Its not the first incident of this kind. A UK station ran a similar competition, which required competitors to sit on blocks of dry ice. Many of the contestants were submitted to hospital with severe burns, some even had to have skin grafts. How long is it before people realise the stupidity of running competitions first without doing proper risk assessment. I have to do a risk assessment form for what I consider menial things in my job. It also begs the question how desperate are some people for the latest fads, why not just wait a few months and pick one up via the normal way. Or even better, tell the kids to stop whining and go out and play football like I did as a kid. Ok I may be being a fuddy duddy here, but if I shouted and screamed for something as a kid, I got a clip round the ear. Ok, she may have been doing it as a surprise, or some other motive, but still, its partially her own fault, and partially the stations fault for not ensuring contestants were properly cared for during and after the event. Doing anything out of the ordinary to your body poses health risks. Joel

You could setup a jabber server, it works like MSN, if you want that kind of messaging. Most firewalls will block net send messages, due to the bug in Windows XP that allows messages from untrusted sources to be displayed on your computer. Joel

I'd be very wary of Toms Hardware, whilst once upon a time it was unbiased information, over the past couple of years there has been an increase in the bias natures of some of their articles. My advice, never use just one site when looking for reviews, same as when your buying hardware. Shop / look around and make sure you see a couple of reviews of what your buying, and make sure they tally. A couple of others that are useful for checking out: http://www.anandtech.com http://www.bit-tech.net http://www.hexus.net That latter two are both useful if your interested in the performance aspect of PC's My advice, get the Core 2 Duo, its worth the extra money. Joel

Captain Knee Jerk. The fire was caused by an electrical fault. Fireworks bring pleasure to many people, and apart from genuine accidents, most people are killed or injured by their own stupidity. Like hairdryers with "do not use in the shower" tags, if your stupid enough to stick a rocket up your arse you deserve injury. My respect to the firefighters, at the end of the day, it was a tragic accident, and they are only the 11th firefighters to be killed since 1990 or there abouts, which shows the tremendous skill and training these guys have. It was a tragic accident, if it had been another oil depot, or a gas storage facility, it would have been the same, unless there was criminal negligence, which will be proved true/false in due course. Joel

Microsoft MapPoint, its not free tho, £200 a pop. Joel