****ing idiot prankster at our school...

[Kibbles-N-Bits]

Yeah regarding floppies, 99% of all new motherboards have support for booting from a CD or DVD drive. I haven't booted from a floppy in years with my machines. If you absolutely must have a small re-writeable device, you get a USB keydrive. I picked up a 128MB one for $20 bucks.

 

[Hadmar]

I guess I should burn a bootlable CD everytime I need to add a new network driver to the disk imaging prog I use at work instead of adding it to a floppy...
Dunno how to solve the issue with keyfiles for banking software though, AFAIK the software we use only accepts floppy drives but I admit I never realy cared about that so there might be a setting for other sources. Floppys still have their uses. Same with ISA slots. Some ISA cards used in sciencs labs are friggin expensive, don't exist in a PCI version or are even self made.

 

[jaymian]

See, there you go. I was wondering if it was a highschool or a college. You guys will be fine. With the cameras and so on, you'll find out who it is. Then it will be a matter of what to do to him. I have a feeling your school won't do much. If they get him, tell us what they do to him. You may have to form your own lynch mob to deal with him. And I'm sure you'll get new PCs as well. You probably already have new ones on the way now. I bet apple donated them. They seem to have convinced you. Will you now buy an apple?

 

[SaraP]

Rabid anti-Mac ranting aside, Macs are quite useful. Low-end Macs like the iMac and eMac are ideal for computer newbies, while their high-end machines are generally superior to PCs for graphics and CGI work. PCs, on the other hand, are the only choice for gamers, power users, and other computer-savvy types.

 

[unixman]

Rabid anti-Mac ranting aside, Macs are quite useful. Low-end Macs like the iMac and eMac are ideal for computer newbies, while their high-end machines are generally superior to PCs for graphics and CGI work. PCs, on the other hand, are the only choice for gamers, power users, and other computer-savvy types.

Really? Damn, I should throw away my mac and my sun boxes.

The x86 architecture really is quite bad. The only reason it has survived is because it is cheap.

PowerPC, Power4, SPARC, and Alpha are all superior architectures. <sarcasm> But I mean, if it doesn't run Windows it must not be good. <sarcasm>

Having said that, I do primarily run x86 machines for one reason. That reason is because it's cheap. Not because I think it's wonderful or elite or whatever non-sense.

 

[Cold Killer]

Well let's see...

17 Mac G5's at ~$9,000 each = $153,000
6 P4's at maybe $2300 each = $13,800
2 Servers at around $3000 each = $6,000
Network Hardware (estimate) = $10,000

So he/she did a grand total of over $180,000 in damage. Now, this is assuming everything has to be replaced, which may or may not be the case.

Oh ****! G5s?! R.I.P., you wonderful, beautiful machines

Hmmm. All the labs at my college had security of some sort. Sounds like you may need that as well. And if you are willing to pay god damn $9000 for a stupid goddamn mac, then you are damn near asking for large losses. And somebody needs to learn how to use capital letters in emails. It sucks that it happened, but if you seriously have 17 pos $9000 macs, maybe you need to keep a better eye on them. And most schools I know of usually get computers for free, or damn near free. See, if you learn on a mac, and think, "wow, macs are cool", the idea is that one day you will be stupid enough to shell out $9000 for one. So I doubt it will cost you school $180,000 for replacement. But if it does, it was a costly lesson for security. And did you think about insurance covering it? If I had $180,000 in equipment, the least I would do is have it insured, much less have an armed guard standing by at all times.

And who the hell pays $9000 for a computer? Does is do oral sex on you while you use it?

Well, for one thing, I assume that at his school, like most, they like to do productive things on their machines, not play CS at 500fps
Macs are superior in Video and Sound editing, are reputedly much more stable than Windows and basically do an awesome job in their fields of expertise. I have no idea what the **** you have against Macs, but seriously man, see a shrink and get it worked out or something, because your attitude is seriously not healthy. You're acting like one of them raped your mom to death or something.

 

[DEFkon]

Wow, what's with all the anti-mac people?

I used to use Macs all the time in school. They were great machines. I won't buy one for myself though cause i just use my PC for gaming. But i mean for serious non-gaming work in the Video/Sound/advertising they are sweet.

I tend to think of Macs as being anlogous to construction equipment. If you went to a car dealer and compared a sports car to a CAT or steamroller ect ect, and only judged them on the race track then you'd have a hugely skewed opinion. Course vise versa if your tried to pave a street using a sports car, you'd be saying the sports car was an absolute waste of money.

 

[jaymian]

I don't hate macs, I hate the people who use them Actually, I hate the mac fanboys. I'm a gamer, and I need a PC to game. A computer is a tool, so I bought the best tool for the job. I know macs are useful for other things, I just don't know what. I also like the cheaper price for a PC. I guess I just had sticker shock when I heard how much a mac could cost. I figured in order for one to cost $9000, it would have to do some really crazy stuff. Like if it could cook, clean, and predict the future I might consider buying one.

 

[Cold Killer]

So you hate movie makers, video game magazine creators, and newspaper writers?(to name a few)

 

[BobTheFearlessFish]

macs are expensive. though not as much as some people seem to make out. please remember that a $9000 mac is likely to have some serious power. upwards of 4 gig of ram. and dual processors. in a video lab it is also likely it would have some specialist video capture cards atc. and a dvd writer.

so here we are talking about a very powerful specialised machine. not a 'omg it doesnt play games so must be ****' computer.

 

[Dr_Strangelove]

macs are expensive. though not as much as some people seem to make out. please remember that a $9000 mac is likely to have some serious power. upwards of 4 gig of ram. and dual processors. in a video lab it is also likely it would have some specialist video capture cards atc. and a dvd writer.

$9000 would get a school a dual 2ghz w/ 8gb of ram and a 23" cinema display.

 

[Cold Killer]

And it DOES play games. UT2003, MOH:AA, and America's Army, to name a few.

 

[BobTheFearlessFish]

wow. mac users are out in force.

it does seem a little strange to me that macs are bashed so much. yet you never hear anyone saying 'omg why would you buy a unix machine. they are expensive and dont play games'. its a pretty similar idea. they just fill a differen niche in the market. any game sthey do play is a bonus.

 

[spm1138]

I'm not a Mac user anymore.

It's just whinging about their only being one mouse button still irks me. It's such a ridiculous way to judge a system. Are RISC OS and SPARC machines better than Windows because they have three?

Macs definitely have their own niche which I can only see broadening now they have an OS with a good GUI and decent gubbins.

I will gleefully pour scorn on anyone that suggest a Mac is superior for the sort of computing I use my machine for but to say they are "bad" machines is just ignorant.

So... er.. "Moof!"

 

[SaraP]

I only complain about the one-button mouse because it's annoying as heck.

 

[-Snakebite-]

I'm the same, its as if they assume the users are special needs kids.

 

[erehwoN]

If the one button mouse irks you so much, spend the $30 or whatever on a 5 button Intellimouse. Works fine with any Apple OS.

As for the topic Kibs, best of luck in finding who did this.

 

[SaraP]

If the one button mouse irks you so much, spend the $30 or whatever on a 5 button Intellimouse. Works fine with any Apple OS.

Yep, that's exactly what I did.

 

[Cold Killer]

Same^

 

[Kuroshio Apocal]

I use my computer for gaming, research, and porning. Wintel does those just fine.