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  1. Mercutio

    PC Gaming = World of Suck

    The biggest problem I had with MWO was the community. I understand that it's a game with a PVP focus but I couldn't find anybody that was familiar with or interested in the backstory of what was happening in the game. You HAVE to group and you HAVE to use to voice comms to play and if you don't...
  2. Mercutio

    What have you found to be the best way to organize all of our company files and folde

    Some things that would be helpful to know are how large your organization is, what desktop and server platforms might be present (do you have Windows Domains? A single sign-on system? Are there Apple or Unix machines? Do VIPs expect to use iPads instead of things that are actually useful?) and...
  3. Mercutio

    Long-distance GPU shopping

    The Geforce 750 can be found as a low-profile card that doesn't need PCIe power. It's in about the same performance niche the 4770 occupied during its day. It pains me to recommend one but they're the easy choice for modest gaming needs.
  4. Mercutio

    Any of you guys still building your own?

    Using an i7 in an ITX rig seems like a brave choice. How are you keeping it cool? Windows 10 is just fine. The hassles and bugs are fairly minimal even if some of the UI components probably still aren't in the best state.
  5. Mercutio

    Intel Haswell-E (X-99 chipset) processors reviews.

    Nope. They're the right length but don't align to the attachment points the HSF would otherwise use. I wonder if I just got the wrong set.
  6. Mercutio

    Intel Haswell-E (X-99 chipset) processors reviews.

    Not quite three weeks later, I finally get the mounting kit for the NH-D9L and it doesn't have any instructions and I don't see any way to make the brackets they sent me securely fasten to the motherboard that I actually have. There's $5300 worth of computer in pieces around my office for want...
  7. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    Since Windows 7, there has been an application called Problem Steps Recorder that makes a JPG every time time there's a user-generated change to a window on-screen. It's amazingly useful for writing documentation, but I'm sure bad guys could also use THAT to spy on users. Creating a stupidly...
  8. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    IIRC, XP Mode is a VHD that's packaged in a ~700MB .MSU file or something. If you can find the .VMX and .VHD, you can copy them to another machine and either re-import them to Hyper-V or migrate them in to Virtualbox if you'd rather.
  9. Mercutio

    Best movie you've seen

    Ant-Man is very much in the same vein as Guardians of the Galaxy. It's consistently funny, albeit in a different way from GotG. It's self-aware of how ridiculous its premise is but it runs with it anyway. Ant-Man is fun. It's funny and works in part because of the physical comedy and in part...
  10. Mercutio

    Up to date Malware Removal

    OK. It turns out that the very difficult to diagnose occasional instant-spikes-to-100% usage-of-all-cores hard locks on my SQL Server development machine were being caused by a deeply terrible interaction between it and Forticlient. No more Forticlient on things that are kind of important.
  11. Mercutio

    Goodbye Flash?

    Porn sites are EXTREMELY forward looking and tend to have good techs working for them. There's a strong impetus for moving porn to HTML5 anyway since it's marginally harder to block HTML5-based ads. Unfortunately, HTML5 is still a bit of a mess since AFAIK no two major browsers will handle all...
  12. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    Also, it's pretty hard but not impossible to get a legal, single desktop Windows Enterprise Edition product key. Anybody who has Technet/MSDN probably has some for older Windows editions. They're also frequently sold in campus bookstores. Since older editions of Windows Enterprise aren't...
  13. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    Here's the deal with updates: Updates for non-Enterprise customers are not optional. If you have Windows 10 Enterprise Edition, you (or someone with admin rights on Active Directory) can choose when to update. Consumers and unmanaged Windows Pro systems are effectively managed by Microsoft. You...
  14. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Considering the number of actual, legal adults I know who can't manage to keep $20 to their name, you're doing fine, sed.
  15. Mercutio

    Samsung’s working on an 11K screen for smartphones

    I'm not going to complain. Tiny dots suck. Tinier dots suck less. If they're building these things and they're practical, it's only going to filter down to the tech we are actually interested in. We can buy a 50" 4k screen right now at a Walmart for $600. Three years ago that would've been...
  16. Mercutio

    Any of you guys still building your own?

    On the other hand, I'd hate to have to support a one-off $4k desktop that isn't my personal machine.
  17. Mercutio

    Infiniband and 10Gb networking

    Turns out the 10m cables I have are about 24" too short to use without putting holes in more walls.
  18. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    Knowing Samsung, probably soon. It's definitely not a company I associate with paper launches. Affordable 1TB SSDs would make the collection of servers I manage vastly better.
  19. Mercutio

    Merc's Useful Tools of the day

    PRTG is genuinely pretty sweet if you want more or less real time monitoring and notifications on a server. It looks at SNMP and WMI info and it will collect data from pretty much everything that comes to my mind when I think of server stuff. I really like how it ties in to a mobile app as...
  20. Mercutio

    Transparant aluminum

    I'm more worried about the orbiting death lasers.
  21. Mercutio

    SSDs - State of the Product?

    Sell them to me.
  22. Mercutio

    I want to buy a new car

    Hey this is a thread I've never posted in. A hilarious thing happened to me today. My car's key recognition system failed. Meaning that, even though I have the correct ignition key and there was nothing else mechanically or electronically wrong, my key would no longer start the car. This...
  23. Mercutio

    Transparant aluminum

    Transparent Aluminum was invented by Dr. Nichols of Plexicorp of San Francisco in 1986, with assistance from a mysterious "Professor Scott" from Edinburgh.
  24. Mercutio

    Smartwatches

    Waze has a social or peer to peer aspect where data is shared with other Waze users. Areas that have a lot of Waze users (like Chicago's western suburbs or probably the Bay area) get ridiculously good traffic data in essentially real time. I don't think Google Maps has that component. If...
  25. Mercutio

    This is the thread for the discussion of interesting apps.

    I don't like the Gmail app. It makes incorrect assumptions about how I want my mail presented. I replace it with K9, which also runs on my Amazon tablet. I don't like Hangounts. Hangouts behaves poorly since I don't have a G+-enabled account. I replace it with IM+ Pro, which can also sign in to...
  26. Mercutio

    This is the thread for the discussion of interesting apps.

    All of Sprint's, all of Samsung's, most of Google's.
  27. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Look, if a half million dollar car does not have EZ Clean upholstery, somebody didn't spring for the full option package.
  28. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    Samsung supplies a tool for unlocking their phones. The tool is called Odin. You run Odin, then you flash an alternative boot loader on to your phone, boot while doing gymnastics on the power and volume buttons and run SuperSU or something to get your root access. It takes about two minutes if...
  29. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    Both Android, so yes. Although that can be complicated and misleading, since carriers and OEMs frequently replace stock apps for versions of their own. So for example you might find that the Contacts or Calendar apps you're used to are nothing like the ones you had on your last device. Because...
  30. Mercutio

    Smartwatches

    Here's some instructions for adding tidal information to Google Calendar. Traffic is trickier but I believe Waze integrates real time data pretty well.
  31. Mercutio

    Something Random

    I worked into the wee small hours last night and did maintenance call earlier today. Holidays are good for that kind of thing.
  32. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    Microsoft has its own app store service for Windows Mobile, yes.
  33. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Happy Freedommas everybody! I'm mostly celebrating by having bronchitis, but tonight I'm gonna Ron Swanson myself a $92-at-retail 29 oz. Porterhouse and some green beans with every kind of pork I could find thrown in for flavoring because Freedom.
  34. Mercutio

    Headphones

    The Bluebuds Sport X headphones I bought a couple years ago pretty much never come off from around my neck if I'm awake. I have noticed that Bluetooth earbuds are no longer super-exotic (I bought five pairs of cheapies for $12 off Ebay a couple weeks ago), but the Bluebuds do still sound a lot...
  35. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    Windows phones definitely aren't awful. They're just not Android. The biggest problem is that they don't have enough developers building apps for them because their market share is tiny. This means that well known internet services might not have official apps on that platform, or perhaps that...
  36. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    My Hamachi VPN software doesn't work in Windows 10 either. In fact, Hamachi is the only application I use regularly that isn't yet supported on 10. I usually just RDP in to a client that does have it when I need to do something.
  37. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    Verizon has the most towers. It also has LTE service in more places, but in places where it hasn't upgraded its towers, it also has the worst voice quality. Verizon also charges more than any other service. Verizon's coverage advantage is especially huge in those states west of the Mississippi...
  38. Mercutio

    Something Random

    The just plain not-Pro Surface 3 is perfectly respectable all on its own. I haven't really done anything with my Surface Pro where I've really thought "Hey, I sure am glad this thing has an i5" but I've done lots of things where I've thought "I sure am glad this thing runs real Windows software...
  39. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    Battery life on my G4 is wildly inconsistent. An hour streaming a podcast over LTE to bluetooth headphones inside a metal building? Use 1% my battery during the whole time. Ten minutes of short Instant Messaging while on a strong 802.11 signal? 10 percent of the battery.
  40. Mercutio

    Windows 10

    The VPN connections, like firewall profile settings, seem to migrate in every new version of Windows. I think they're visible if you double click the regular network connection icon in the taskbar but you're right that it's lame to not have the icon you're used to seeing.
  41. Mercutio

    Something Random

    Intel CPU nomenclature is kind of god-awful. Modern Atoms aren't necessarily terrible and Atom cores are being stuck in things that are branded Xeon. It's definitely a slug by desktop standards, but that it's not like anyone should be trying to do desktop computing on something in the form...
  42. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    Removable battery and support for microSD up to 200GB (for some reason, there's a 200GB card now). The G4 is on every major US carrier. I have no idea about regional and pay as you go carriers like Virgin or Cricket or US Cellular.
  43. Mercutio

    Lenovo G50 G70, any good?

    All Thinkpads are Lenovos but not all Lenovos are Thinkpads. As a general guideline, I would avoid any product line that doesn't at least offer a 1080p option for the screen. If someone put a gun to my head and made me buy a consumer notebook, I'd go out of my way to get an Asus if anything...
  44. Mercutio

    Web Weirdness

    I can't make it happen, but I tend to work from odd combinations of browser, platform and addon installation. My thinking is that there's a server-side script that interacts with certain combinations of identified user agents and referrers. When I look at the DuroFlexworld Page, I can't really...
  45. Mercutio

    Android phones: Tips, tricks?

    Ask a spouse who thinks a partner is cheating or somebody in the middle of a break-up that question.
  46. Mercutio

    HP Pavilion DV6-2157US Laptop Issues

    Is it still sluggish? The drive itself is what I'd expect it to be.
  47. Mercutio

    RouterBoard (MikroTik) or Ubiquiti EdgeRouter - any good?

    I've also had a hell of a time getting UAP devices to factory reset from the physical button, which is something that doesn't seem like it should actually be a problem.
  48. Mercutio

    This is the thread for the discussion of interesting apps.

    Actually, once I dug into the APK, it's about 35MB of .ogg files plus a tiny little binary for previewing and setting them as the system alarm/ringtone/notification. When I just copied the .ogg files and stuck them in /storage/sdcard0/media/audio/notifications on another device they show up like...
  49. Mercutio

    4K TVs

    Because companies that make TVs learned a new trick and they want to show it off and who cares about viewing angles anyway?
  50. Mercutio

    Web Weirdness

    I suspect the running script is reacting to the link referrer or something and it might be embedded in an ad or CDN embedded image that's being filtered when I look. I can't really say 'cause I can't see the behavior but their web person needs to look at it.
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