Call Dell, the hardware beep means something. You might want to update the BIOS first and see if it goes away. Support.dell.com.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 1:06 PM on August 26, 2006

I doubt your neighbors are peeing on your unit. (oh how I thought Id live my whole life without ever typing that).

You're probably smelling burning freon which smells like ammonia, which smells like human pee. FWIW, burning refrigerant produces very toxic gases. I'd be very careful if I was you. Either your AC unit is dying or it might be a standing water/fungus issue.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 9:45 AM on August 23, 2006

>concept of a divine being

Humans have been animists much longer than they have been theists. Animism has no theistic characters really.

Many buddhists are categorized as non-theists.

There are currently over a billion people who refer to themselves as non-religious.

>Are there any arguments for the existence of a god that incorporate this preponderance of religion?... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 5:56 PM on August 22, 2006

Its falsifiable alright. Step in front of a moving car, head first, and then tell me reality is a illusion created by consensus.

Arguably, its interesting because of the scientific reality it kinda hints at. How much of your life and the idea of self is a social construct? Or your ethics? Or base primate emotions running in your head? What exactly is the real world? If its out there how can you detect it objectively? etc.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 2:50 PM on July 24, 2006

I'd be very surprised if there was an enforced policy in place. I sometimes see rushlimbaugh.com, slashdot, K5, and other non-news sites up. They might just be erring on the side of caution and letting anyone in for x amount of turns then swapping people back out.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 2:19 PM on July 24, 2006

I second that this is too selective. You can add Newtonian Physics to Newtons list. Also there's the problem of credit. Can we credit Einstein with the nuclear bomb? I don't see why not.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 9:30 AM on July 24, 2006

Maybe the owner of the AP saw your earlier attempts to use his network and has blocked your MAC addresses. He may have simply missed the fujitsu. Do you have access to the AP?
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 9:33 AM on July 21, 2006

In short if it uses windows installer then the service will give you a permissions error. Sounds like you can run simple .exe files just fine, but most programs like to put things in the /system folder and other places you don't have access.

As far as ABBYY goes, its probably failing in internal consistancy check or it thinks youre a pirating the software.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 1:14 PM on July 19, 2006

A couple ideas:

1. You dont seem to know the basics of wireless networking. A determined attacker will be able to outsmart you 100% of the time. Thats the reality you probably dont want to hear. Considering you dont even seem to have an IT department, I say call in a professional consultant if you truly think something horrible is going on.

2. Ad hocs happen accidentally all the time. If I leave my card in ad-hoc mode then I'll be broadcasting... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 3:08 PM on July 17, 2006

For a step by step, scroll down to the 5th answer here. The process will be different on xp and 98 machines because they dont use the windows wireless manager.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 3:11 PM on July 17, 2006 marked best answer

err, different on 2000 and 98 machines.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 3:11 PM on July 17, 2006

Guess what, youre liable for damages. Its your water going on their car on public property.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 6:19 PM on July 12, 2006

Related askmefi thread.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 1:02 PM on July 12, 2006

The covert vs classified debate is right-wing hair splitting. Her involvement with the CIA was classified. Releasing classified is illegal. Whether or not this also runs afoul of the Intelligence Identity act is a different issue.

FWIW, Libby was prosecuted for obstuction and perjury, not for violating any intelligence speicifc laws.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 11:45 AM on July 12, 2006

The opposite, like it would cancel it out if they met?

Anti-aircraft missile.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 11:30 AM on July 12, 2006

Are you sure the question wasnt "Which one of these is least like an airplane?"
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 11:34 AM on July 12, 2006

I doubt he's more insane than most people but he is very religious. Most highly religious people i've met give off the same vibe. They don't act very normal with the opposite sex, seem disinterested in blatant hedonism, may come off as sensitive or effeminate, etc.

If the above guy was a pious Christian type no one would care. Make the above guy a famous actor and the busybodies will beging to 'dish.'
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 8:15 AM on July 12, 2006

>We'll give you $X million to say it's Tom's

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Why a multimillionare needs a few more million is beyond me, especially in the peak of her career. Oh, that conspiracy also relies on another conspiracy with Nicole Kidman for a decade.

This thread, despite itself, does show you how rumors start are maintained and believed.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 11:00 AM on July 12, 2006

Lets see Batman Begins made well over 200 millions dollars the summer it was out. I dont think she's hurting for cash.

Its funny how people take celebrities and apply everyday explanations to behavior they dont understand. Like "shes in it for the money." "He's secretly gay" etc. Its very eye-opening on how meda culture consumers think.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 11:24 AM on July 12, 2006

It could be a hardware issue. Assuming you're on the newest drivers for everything including mobo/chipset, slowly begin taking the machine apart. First remove the sound card. Does this solve your problem? If not, then remove another item. Once you find the faulty hardware then try putting that item in a different PC and see if you can replicate the problem.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 8:37 AM on July 12, 2006

WinXP has this screensaver built in. Its called 'My Pictures Slideshow.' To make it lock you simply click on the "On resume, password protect' box 2cm below the box you select the screesaver.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 7:51 AM on July 12, 2006

I dont think the above is true. Where are the studies? Opensecrets claims that most congressional donors are wealthy conservatives.

Table 2. Ideology and Partisanship of Congressional Donors
Conservative Republicans 33%
Other Conservatives/Republicans 16
Moderate Independents 20
Other Liberals/Democrats 10
Liberal Democrats 21

posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 11:50 AM on July 11, 2006

Get a book on LLCs, trusts, and S-corps. Study it then see a recommended lawyer. You can start at the wikipedia.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 2:09 PM on July 10, 2006

I doubt cables make any difference. High-end audio systems use clean and well grounded power supplies like these. Maybe youre confusing the cables for the power supply.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 9:22 AM on July 10, 2006

If this machine is so virus ridden then don't bother with anything less than sending the computer/drive in the mail. Whose to say it can even sustain a transfer for such a large file to any external IO?

Some options:

Have him take it to a local computer store to transfer the data. Might be easier than doing it yourself and paying/waiting for shipping.

Have him or someone else clean off those viruses first ( google for... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 3:06 PM on July 9, 2006

Also, CoreFTP has auto-resume and auto-reconnect and should run on that machine. Goto view>options>connections. Good luck.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 3:15 PM on July 9, 2006

It could still be the cable. The dvd's interface (composite?) could be isolated from the noise youre dumping into your tv.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 1:03 PM on July 7, 2006

I just saw the video, thus I've experienced it. It a friggin highway! Or are you looking for the ramblings of some stoned Michigan teenagers like in the video?
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 12:48 PM on July 5, 2006

I have it on a semi-good authority that these are the younger brothers (or sometimes kids) of older gang members. They're too young to deal or "muscle" so they're sent out on these scams. They get some kind of cut and are showing loyalty for the organization (the gang, and family) which will take care of them for the rest of their lives. Well, until prison where they become a liability. This is illegal and unethical child labor and exploitation.

A... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 5:49 PM on July 1, 2006

You want to look into load balancing/NIC teaming. Previous related question here.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 9:22 AM on June 29, 2006

Under linux its called channel bonding. Never tried it so I don't know how well it works, but you might get lucky if you're looking for a free solution.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 9:27 AM on June 29, 2006

quantity of books advocating one side or the other of an issue doesn't determine what's true.

There's tons of economic pressure to produce a book to silence people's fears over global warming by someone who isn't in the pocket of Bush administration or big energy. The market is begging for a book like this to be put next to Ann Coulter's latest. Yet, where are they?

Also I question the idea of "both sides of the subject.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 8:00 AM on June 28, 2006

Also where are all the books and articles for the "other side" of universal gravitation?
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 8:03 AM on June 28, 2006

My answer from a related thread you should check out.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 7:16 PM on June 27, 2006

At 6000 dollars at 24 months:

5.5% 6349.68

4.9% 6311.04

You're saving 38 dollars.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 5:07 PM on June 27, 2006

Bah beaten by 10 minutes while i was doing the math.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 5:08 PM on June 27, 2006

bondaldi, If its done through windows messenger then both parties can be behind a firewall. The pre-existing connection to MSN is used.

upnp might be an option on OSX, not sure.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 2:18 PM on June 26, 2006

What happens when you do this:

Start> Run > type in "cmd"

Type in "ping newyork.craigslist.com" hit enter.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 12:58 PM on June 26, 2006

after that do "tracert newyork.craigslist.com"

post the results.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 12:59 PM on June 26, 2006

Its probably muscle inflamation in your back. Sometimes one group of muscles (or a muscle) gets hurt somehow and the other muscles in your back take the load. This causes inflamation in these other muscles which feels like a general ache here and there and other weirdness.

You can use OTC anti-inflammation medicine for a week like 400-800mg 3xdaily ibuprofen while doing back exercises. The ibuprofen will help with the pain and inflamation while you build up those... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 7:56 PM on June 24, 2006

RD uses encryption by default now (RC4 128 bit), so depending on how sophisticated your attacker is you're probably good as is. Enable file transfer in remote desktop and just drag the files from the local computer to the remote computer.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 7:31 PM on June 24, 2006 marked best answer

The success rate is actually very, very low . The test results people are quoting are from rigged missiles. The program so far has been using mostly rigged missiles with GPS or some other tracking mechanism to test the interceptor missile. N Korea will not do the US the favor of mounting a GPS device on its missiles.

I think this is just politics. The support for this porky defense shield died after 9/11. Why would you need a 100-200 billion dollar anti0missile system... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 12:49 PM on June 23, 2006

>I've heard this statement many times

That's a lot of speculation there. Whether or not the defense shield can actively track and take down real missiles is unknown and probably classified. The fact that testing is done with tracking devices shows us that the tech is very immature at best and not something to brag about to foreign nations or tell people would actually protect them - as has been the case in at least two public statements from officials so far.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 4:17 PM on June 23, 2006

A very simple solution is to uninstall your network card (in hardware manager not physically) , reboot, and then reinstall the drivers. Whatever hooks or corruption thats going on with that card will be removed.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 8:28 AM on June 23, 2006

What probalby happened is the antispyware software removed the spyware, but it took down your ip stack with it. Follow my instructions and you should be ok.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 2:29 PM on June 23, 2006

>little is being done about it.

Err, the media in Chicago are all about gun violence. The city has outlawed all handguns for quite some time now. There's state and federal laws which add time to crimes commited with guns. Do we need to raid people homes for porn drugs guns now?

This is a very subjective question and the asker is just going to greenlight "answers" about class injustice. This isn't about aids, this about ideologies.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 11:37 AM on June 22, 2006

>Now if 40 year old, BMW driving, suburb dwelling, white bankers started turning up HIV+ you'd definitely hear about it...

How many of these types of people has bird flu killed, yet we hear about that too. How the media works, what it presents, what sticks in your mind, what media you digest, what market youre in, etc is much larger then your stereotypical "We can land a white man on the moon but not solve -insert token cause here-"
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 11:49 AM on June 22, 2006

Second sticking with the DVD. If you are unable to provide 24/7 high-bandwidth facilities for your students the "convenience" of doing this over the internet is going to be a serious hassle.

Arguably, you can make this work with tons of compression. Shrink those videos down to blurry postage stamp sized with any number of apps.

If you must, figure out how to get your school to put up a local LAN file server to upload to at LAN not WAN speeds.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 7:46 AM on June 22, 2006

Yes, you need a lawyer. Yes, you will lose. Yes, you will not get "compensated." Yes, leaving a wap open makes you liable.
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 7:02 AM on June 22, 2006

Generally, the issue here is the idea of a silent deadly trap. That's universally acknowledged as something you simply cannot have, and for good measure; ignoring the criminal it can very well kill your family, your postal carrier, etc etc. Dogs, alarms, and the rest don't get homeowners in trouble because they are not silent or at least give people a fair warning. Even so a dog can be used as a weapon. To purposely send a dog onto a fleeing or incapciated person is pretty much assault. The... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by skallas at 12:17 PM on June 20, 2006