In message , Jim Thompson
writes
I just got a notice that my ThinkPad has finally shipped.

I promised my old Sony Vaio to a granddaughter.

What is recommended to scrub it of client files and PSpice?

I wouldn't want proprietary information to fall into the wrong hands
if she lost it.

...Jim Thompson
Killdisk (freeware version unless you're *really* paranoid) and then
rebuild it with the restore disks if you have them. That way she doesn't
end up with a laptop that's got a ton of useless (to her!) stuff on the
disk, in the registry, the windows directory and all over the disk
generally and anyone who steals it is unlikely to try to recover stuff
unless they targeted the machine specifically for that purpose, at which
point, if your stuff is that valuable, then you really shouldn't be
putting your granddaughter at risk by giving it to her.
--
Clint Sharp

On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:34:41 -0700, Spurious Response
wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:35:41 -0700, "Paul Hovnanian P.E."
wrote:

The beast from Redmond is spawning a generation of people who don't know
and don't care how stuff actually works.


Bull****. Every employee of microsoft is college degreed in the field.

---
Even if that were true, so what?

The mere possession of a degree doesn't mean they know, or care, how
stuff actually works, all it means is that they've successfully
completed an academic curriculum which proves they're capable of
learning.
---

Hell, even their maintenance personnel are.

---
"Sanitary engineers" too?


--
JF

On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 19:28:35 -0500, John Fields
wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:34:41 -0700, Spurious Response
wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:35:41 -0700, "Paul Hovnanian P.E."
wrote:

The beast from Redmond is spawning a generation of people who don't know
and don't care how stuff actually works.


Bull****. Every employee of microsoft is college degreed in the field.

---
Even if that were true, so what?

The mere possession of a degree doesn't mean they know, or care, how
stuff actually works, all it means is that they've successfully
completed an academic curriculum which proves they're capable of
learning.
---

Hell, even their maintenance personnel are.

---
"Sanitary engineers" too?

I don't even think it "proves they're capable of learning".

I have to say that I'm quite disappointed in even the recent crop of
MIT graduates... they exhibit less creativity than robots :-(

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

Jim Thompson wrote:

I have to say that I'm quite disappointed in even the recent crop of
MIT graduates... they exhibit less creativity than robots :-(


I guess they all took the 'Spurious Response' electives?


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

On 2007-07-27, Jim Thompson wrote:
I just got a notice that my ThinkPad has finally shipped.

I promised my old Sony Vaio to a granddaughter.

What is recommended to scrub it of client files and PSpice?

I wouldn't want proprietary information to fall into the wrong hands
if she lost it.

boot knoppix (or other live linux) and do

cat /dev/urandom /dev/hda

that'll trash the hard disk contents, requiring a full reinstall of
the OS.

for a less robust solution erase the files you want to be rid of,
empty the trash, and make a text file called eraseme.bat as follows,
and run it.

copy /b eraseme.bat+eraseme.bat eraseme.too
copy /b eraseme.too+eraseme.too eraseme.bat

This will fill the space once used by the deleted data with mindless
drivel and leave you with a full hard drive and two files that need
deleting.

Bye.
Jasen

"Spurious Response" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:35:41 -0700, "Paul Hovnanian P.E."
wrote:
The beast from Redmond is spawning a generation of people who don't know
and don't care how stuff actually works.
Bull****. Every employee of microsoft is college degreed in the field.

What makes you think being college educated and not knowing how things work
are mutually exclusive?

College standards have definitely dropped in the past handful of decades.

I really think part of this is due to the fact that some "esteemed" companies
such as Microsoft and HP require college degrees even for their junior
salesguys, even though realistically they don't need a lot of what that
traditional degree attempts to teach. I guarantee you that I could create a
year-long "technical sales" program that would make perspective technical
salespeople a lot more useful to ME, the customer, than a generic four-year
engineering degree does. (Relatively few electrical engineering
undergraduates spend more than 10 minutes during those four years with a
network analyzer, for instance!)

Joel Kolstad posted to
alt.binaries.schematics.electronic:

"Spurious Response" wrote in
message ...
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 13:35:41 -0700, "Paul Hovnanian P.E."
wrote:
The beast from Redmond is spawning a generation of people who
don't know and don't care how stuff actually works.
Bull****. Every employee of microsoft is college degreed in the
field.

What makes you think being college educated and not knowing how
things work are mutually exclusive?

College standards have definitely dropped in the past handful of
decades.

I really think part of this is due to the fact that some
"esteemed" companies such as Microsoft and HP require college
degrees even for their junior salesguys, even though realistically
they don't need a lot of what that
traditional degree attempts to teach. I guarantee you that I
could create a year-long "technical sales" program that would make
perspective technical salespeople a lot more useful to ME, the
customer, than a generic four-year
engineering degree does. (Relatively few electrical engineering
undergraduates spend more than 10 minutes during those four years
with a network analyzer, for instance!)

They would be lucky indeed to even see one in either CSU or UC
undergraduate programs.

One last question....

How do I delete myself as Administrator and get rid of my password?

Everything else has been cleansed.

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

Jim Thompson posted
to sci.electronics.design:

One last question....

How do I delete myself as Administrator and get rid of my
password?

Everything else has been cleansed.

...Jim Thompson

The only thing possible in WinXP is to login, hand the laptop to the
recipient and tell them to change the password to their own.
The "Administrator" account is permanent, non-removable, and
special (it has more rights than any other administrator account).

In message , Jim Thompson
writes
One last question....

How do I delete myself as Administrator and get rid of my password?

Everything else has been cleansed.

...Jim Thompson
Create another account with administrator privileges, log in using that
account and delete your account. I assume you don't actually mean the
Administrator account but another account with administrator privileges.
--
Clint Sharp

On Thu, 2 Aug 2007 16:58:07 +0100, Clint Sharp
wrote:

In message , Jim Thompson
writes
One last question....

How do I delete myself as Administrator and get rid of my password?

Everything else has been cleansed.

...Jim Thompson
Create another account with administrator privileges, log in using that
account and delete your account. I assume you don't actually mean the
Administrator account but another account with administrator privileges.

Yep. I figured it out ;-)

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

In message , Jim Thompson
writes
Create another account with administrator privileges, log in using that
account and delete your account. I assume you don't actually mean the
Administrator account but another account with administrator privileges.

Yep. I figured it out ;-)

...Jim Thompson
Hey, Jim does software too...
--
Clint Sharp

On Fri, 3 Aug 2007 16:49:34 +0100, Clint Sharp
wrote:

In message , Jim Thompson
writes
Create another account with administrator privileges, log in using that
account and delete your account. I assume you don't actually mean the
Administrator account but another account with administrator privileges.

Yep. I figured it out ;-)

...Jim Thompson
Hey, Jim does software too...

With difficulty. My oldest son usually sets up my PC's.

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

Vladimir Vassilevsky wrote:


joseph2k wrote:
me wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote in
:

What is recommended to scrub it of client files and PSpice?
I wouldn't want proprietary information to fall into the wrong hands

fdisk , format c:


I'll tell you what, you do that to a disk (not too large, say, not
over 100
GB) send it to me and i will recover it and sent it back to you along
with
a backup on DVD's.

Agreed. Actually, I am a bit surprised of a complete computer illiteracy
demonstrated by so many otherwise seemingly good engineers here.

VLV
So a civil engineer should know about electronics?

Paul Hovnanian P.E. wrote:
qrk wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jul 2007 07:39:40 -0400, Chuck Harris
wrote:

JosephKK wrote:
Vladimir Vassilevsky posted to
Agreed. Actually, I am a bit surprised of a complete computer
illiteracy demonstrated by so many otherwise seemingly good
engineers here.

VLV
Disgustedly, i find i have to agree with your amplification.
Perhaps, but you should be heartened by the high number of computer
fluent engineers that are on this group too. And the high number
of computer fluent non engineers.

In my experience, fluency is often an age thing. If you were born
before the mid 1950's, you are likely to be uncomfortable with
computers because they weren't easily available when your mind was
young and agile.

-Chuck
I've come a few "Windows" programmers who couldn't write a simple
command line batch file. They never had the joy of mucking with DOS.
Of course, they find it novel that one would use an .ini file instead
of the registry.

And I've seen Windows programmers (written up in magazines like Dr
Dobbs, no less), 'explain' some complex data structure or algorithm by
doing nothing more than writing a GUI on top of Microsoft's API
implementing it.

The beast from Redmond is spawning a generation of people who don't know
and don't care how stuff actually works.

Actually many years ago professionals stopped using .ini files for a
myriad of reasons. And BTW, writing a GUI on top of an existing API is
pretty much how ALL software is written! Microsoft Explorer, Copy Files,
etc is a pretty GUI using the basic I/O system API's.

PinkFloyd43 wrote:

So a civil engineer should know about electronics?


I've known LOTS of engineers, and none of them were 'Civil'.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida