CataclysmCow

Where've I been? Smart ass training classes apparently Me and mine are gettin' married (the officialish/ceremonialish kind) this Sunday. Good to hear you're still droppin' by around here. What's new with you?

Your post strains credibility actually.

$500, is way too much, IMO. A system for browsing, email, word and simple games should cost you about $125. Look for a local computer enthusiast magazine in your area - you'll find ads for wholesalers in your area who will sell 5yr old machines for $100 or less. $500 for a purely utility machine is nuts.

No, leaving your case on the carpet won't do a thing. There's no mechanism there to build up a charge and even if there was it would be conducted through the case. You could use your computer case as a carpet skate if your wanted to as long as the PSU was connected to an outlet that was properly grounded. An actual arc would produce RF noise which isn't something you'd want to invite, but it's not something that'll damage components. That's speaking on the edge of extremes though. Leave it on the carpet - it's fine.

There are only two types of ATA cable 40-wire/40-pin and 80-wire/40-pin (dismissing the CS hoopla and proprietary versions). The 80-wire/40-pin is optional for anything that uses DMA modes <= 2. It is required for DMA modes > 2. If it's ATA-66 or better you'll need 80-wire/40-pin. There's no "next step up" in cables after you move to ATA-100 or ATA-133. They all use the same cable.

Yes, your subnet definitions are correct, but you typically don't have 8 or 16 bit masks on Class C assignments (Class C would use /24 or higher). Classfull addressing isn't used anymore so you can pretty much just ditch the term altogether.

T1 (I don't get the bill though ) 3M/768k cable from Adelphia 802.11 wireless link covering about 2 miles to my old university.

You need to change your masks and it wouldn't be a bad idea to fill out the netID (some apps handle it, some don't). So your 5.18.0/255.255.255.0 should be 5.18.0.0/255.255.0.0 In CIDR notation that would be 5.18.0.0/16 (or just 5.18/16) Your 5.0/255.255.255.0 should be 5.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 In CIDR it would be 5.0.0.0/8 (or just 5/8)

The IANA isn't pinging you. It's hard to tell from your post, but it sounds like your machine is responding to a machine pinging you on your network. IANA is assigned the CIDR block 192.0.0.0/17. What is the address that's pinging you? It's much more likely that you are dealing with a private block address. If you do a whois on one of these addresses it'll come up as registered to IANA. The private blocks are 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12 and 192.168.0.0/16. Could you provide logs of the traffic?

XP Home edition can not join a domain so you can't take advantage of acitve directory or anything that relies on it (which is just about everything). From a workgroup though you can still access shares on from a domain. This may have changed in 2003 (it was true of 2000) - 2003 got a lot tighter on restrictions. Windows 2003 Server's non-domain related services like the web server, FTP server, CA, etc. will still be available to you. Unless you are comfortable working with domains, active directory and NT in general you might want to consider not using it. There's a pretty steep learning

Turn off simple file sharing. From a folder view -- tools-> folder options -> view tab -> uncheck simple file sharing (it's at the very bottom). Now r.click a shared folder, select sharing and then the permissions button. This will only work on the profession versions of Windows OS (Win 2000 Pro, WinXP Pro, Win 2000 Server, Win 2003 Server) and on a NTFS volume. Win XP Home is forced to use simple file sharing so it will not work on XP Home.

Unless he's going from a non-ACPI to an ACPI or a 1-way to a 2-way, etc. he'll be using the same HAL.

It sounds like your ISP's DNS server probably just burped. It's pretty common. Next time it happens type nslookup www.tomcoyote.org (at the command line) to see if your ISPs DNS server has had a momentary lapse of reason.

No it won't.

Ethereal