Just one like, or similar to, XP that works reliably. I have had to debug Windows Update issues on two separate PCs in the last 24 hours. That should never happen. That is pure MS stuff and should fix itself if broken. There are at least a few thousand other similar examples... Ed

I really don't mean to compare them, as they are clearly different. However one might have expected that buying and selling blind goods to blind customers would have had a poorer success rate than the buying/selling of professional services. 40% is a big number. Finding ways to drive that down is a very good thing to consider. Ed

I am very familiar with the site, having been there many times over a number of weeks. I have read the project summary of dozens of efforts since posting the first Lounge message earlier today. I think the concept is very good, but the result today a bit lacking. There needs to be more structure to separate the wheat/chaff aspect. Consider Ebay, which allows folks to buy and sell stuff. While clearly different from a service based site, their success rate is quite high. I have bought and sold dozens and dozens of things there. Generally anything I put there sells for a fair price and most anything I buy ends up being OK and worth it. In my case, less than 1% have ever been a problem transaction. Somehow RAC needs to find ways to up the success rate. 40% is many times too high. Ed

My guess is that some percentage of RAC jobs are not real because the bidder is looking for free estimates. By doing that, they have some idea of what local developer might charge them, which is all they perhaps intended to do in the first place. Others think they have a $50 job, and then find out it’s a $500 job. Lack of $ results in a no acceptance. I’m not sure that 8% of jobs on a coder site being shown as homework is a good thing. Putting aside the ethics of doing homework, it raises a whole bunch of concerns. Knowing there is a 40% cancellation rate is also not encouraging. That should be red flag for both RAC and anyone looking at that buyer. It would seem to me that such firms should have a much harder time putting the next job on RAC. Ed

My interest in RAC is from a coders viewpoint. Having spent a few days poking around in RAC, it seems like a few things are basically true: 1. Many jobs are not real. Buyers post for different reasons other than actually buying coder service. 2. Most jobs are targeted towards very low bids, that do not encourage quality. 3. Many jobs are very small and really do amount to homework for actually buyers. 4. Competition with non-US folks makes it hard for experienced US folks to really profit from RAC results. 5. Many buyers post jobs having no clue as to whether they are hard or even possible. It’s clear there is real work on RAC, but separating the wheat from the chaff seems to be a tricky task. Ed

Any have experiences with www.rentacoder.com either positive or negative? Ed

I'm not sure how far this one is going to get. Some years ago another firm came out with a similar claim on a lock for PC multipedia (basically anything that does sound on a PC). They did not get very far in the courts. Another firm claimed the rights to the word "Windows" (I believe they were called Windows Labs). They wanted to license any firm with a product that used their word. They also died on the vine. Notice that the letters JPEG do not appear anywhere in the referenced patent text. JPEG has been the equivalent of public domain for a decade or two. Once the cat is out of the bag, the legal system may be reluctant to suck it back in the bag. The following URL has some info on JPEG. http://www.jpeg.org/public/jpeghomepage.htm Who knows where this one will go, but my guess is that it will disappear. Ed

There is effectively no boot manager. BootItNG just lets the normal MS boot approach work on more partitions. Each one is standard MS stuff. www.terabyteunlimited.com is the site for this software, which is cheap at about $30. Ed

Another option is to use multiple boot partitions. I have 11 different partitions on this PC to boot into every version of Windows. Each one has separate files and data, which works perfectly for most testing needs. Ed

Servers of one sort or another is one other common use, which seems somewhat well suited to Linux machines. My guess is that a fair percentage of these machines effectively have no monitor or keyboard, and just sit in the corner and perform their server actions. Ed

Yes, and a new computer with no parts (monitor, memory, hard drive, etc) would be much cheaper and just as useful to most people. Most folks buy PCs to run apps. Unless their apps run on the system they purchase, they have limited value. For varous reasons most software apps sold today will not run on Linux. Ed

Already have it set that way on both PCs. however one does and one does not. Ed

If you allocate a space 1.5 feet square and 6 feet tall, all could be placed in single cube about 1 mile wide and 1 mile tall. Basically a few city blocks sized cube. Ed

Linux was a very hot topic a year or so ago. Some PC vendors actually offers new systems with Linux installed vs Windows. I think today there may be fewer of these. I'm not a Linux person, so I have no first hand knowledge. Where do you folks that know/use Linux think it's heading? Ed

One issue here is standards. Past AOL actions have quite often been along the lines of propritary systems. Both their web system and email are examples, where is it hard to do anything from other third party programs. MS, like them or hate them, has usually taken the open API approach. Somehow I don't see novice users (who probably make us the majority of AOL users) downloading a 1GB install set for Linux, much less getting it to work. What AOL might do is to produce some Windows app, based on RedHat code, that somehow expands their options and features. Ed

On the same topic, how do you turn these things on? I have two PC's, both Win2K, that I sometimes to use to buy things on the web from an online site. The site requires you to log on with name (E-Mail address) and password first. The first PC, which I rarely use, always auto logs on to this screen with both field values. The second PC, which I almost always use, does not. Have tried any number of settings, but have not found the right one. Ed

What two lines? Initial search of MS help files did not turn anything up that would help. sometimes finding info in MS help is a needle in a hay stack thing... Ed

For many the issue is not the size of the dish, but encryption gear. In the early years all signals were clear broadcast. If you had the dish, you could watch. Today for most sources, that changed. You generally need some special gear to turn the received signal into something viewable. What receiver do you use with your large dish? Ed

I currently use a 2 monitor system on Win2K. One runs off the AGP graphics card and the second off a PCI video card that also support live TV display. The problem is when I boot Win2K, the primary display (AGP card) has some black bands over the display. This is most likely due to some sort of driver/address issue and has failed to be resolved with driver updates, etc. The good news is that this can be corrected by going to the display tab in Control Panel and changing the current resolution for the ACP card. By changing from say High Color 16 bit to High Color 32 bit corrects the display. It then stays perfect on both until the next boot, when the cycle repeats. My question is whether there is some simple EXE based tool that can be used to auto change this resolution. If so, it could be set to auto run at start and then hopefully correct the display issue without manual action. Ed

This URL has some comments on the ending: http://www.movieprop.com/tvandmovie/PlanetoftheApes/2001ending.htm Ed