...even though my procmail system had defanged the filename so he had to rename it. What're ya gonna do?
I have procmail set up to delete certain attachments, although forcing it to run along with SpamAssassin on my web host is proving to turn more than a few hairs gray... but when I do, I swear, I will be an ubergeek, I swear! Qmail, procmail, et al are great tools to defang spam for family consumption, as well as reduce download times for myself. Even over cable, I spent way too long downloading "Microsoft fixes" from "Hotmail addresses."
Get mom an iMac. Install OS X if it doesn't have it already. You can pick up a decent iMac on eBay for around $300, but make sure it's at least 300Mhz. Enable auto-updates. Install Mozilla or Firefox, ensure popup blocking is turned on. Done. You will instantly become the favorite child.
No thanks necessary, it's what I do.:)
(and yes, I know he said PC. I consider this a PC solution.)
What about a technophobe 62 year old mother? I want to email her but the most advanced electronics she has is her cordless telephone. That took my brother going over to her house and saying "you WILL use this, because I am throwing out your old phone."
I dearly want my mother to use a computer, even just for email and Google, but she refuses. How can I bring my 62 year old technophobe halfway into the information age? I do not know enough about Macs to set one up, and of course a Linux box would work, but what about internet access? Dialup is too complex for her, and she does not have cable (TV or anything).
Ideas? Slashdot, I beseach you, I need geek advice, and I am trolled out for today!
Microsoft wants a fixed revenue-stream for the minimum of possible work.
No, I understood that. That's why I got in hot water with my boss for laughing at the IT Director when he told me they signed up for SA.
Try sitting in one of the meetings where my bosses have to justify spending millions of dollars per year on a Unisys mainframe... I do not have to go to those but I hear it is like trying to argue that castration is a painless, pleasant experience...
Re:ok time to start out with first post trolling
on
Is Windows Worth $45?
·
· Score: 1
I mean the final version, the current one is just a RC. And my other gripe is that subscriptions are yearly -- I cannot afford a whole year right this minute. One month, yes, but twelve, no.
Anyway, I think the money is worth it assuming I had it at the moment. Linux software is full of innovation and worth paying for, despite being free.
I understand your point and realize that the monopolistic policies here limit peoples' choices, but the choices do exist - and the opportunity for consumers to educate themselves does as well.
A monopolist does not need 100% market share, and there can be viable alternatives. All a monopolist needs is enough market share that he can completely fux0r the market if need be, and destroy middlemen by denying them its product. Remember the UPS strike a few years ago? At the time UPS had about a 70% market share, and the strike decimated the package delivery industry while it was going on. Even with popular alternatives like the USPS and FedEx, they had massive market power.
I think that Linux in the news is a good thing. It gives us free exposure and the day may soon come when educated consumers demand PCs from retail outlets without the Microsoft tax. And I do not mean you or me doing it as a joke, but my grandma or brother.
Hi, my name is John Gaughan and you may remember me from such Linux Groups as MALU:-)
I was not able to make it to the Alabama Lugfest, unfortunately, but I hear it went well for the second year in a row. I second DesScorp's suggestion about trying to link together LUGs around the country. The Internet and the FS/OSS movements are all about democratizing software and communication -- and remember, democracy cannot work without involvement from the people. Make a difference -- join a LUG, get active, be noticed.
If consumers don't like paying for Windows they can buy a Mac, use Linux, or pirate it.
There are choices for consumers and if they refuse to vote with their wallets, I have little pity on them,.
Easy for you to say, but most people only know what is on display at CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City, WalMart, etc. As soon as the big OEMs with retail distribution stop giving in to Microsoft exclusion deals (I forget the economics term, when a monopolist refuses to sell its product to a middleman if he sells competitors' products too). Dell employees came out of the closet and told the world about these deals, we know it goes on. Do you really think any OEM will stand up to Microsoft and risk losing Windows? Only WalMart has been able to do this, one juggernaut battling another...
Re:ok time to start out with first post trolling
on
Is Windows Worth $45?
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
Windows may not be worth $45, but Linux is certainly not even worth $0.00.
Linux is worth $0? Tell that to Linus, a millionaire. Anyway, I think GNU/Linux (damn you RMS!) and its associated software is well worth a price similar to what Microsoft charges for Windows. In fact when Mandrake 10.0 comes out I plan on purchasing it, after being a freeloader for the last six years. Right now I can justify being a freeloader because I am broke, but I am about to get a promotion and finish my truck loan, so I cannot justify freeloading with an extra $550 a month;-)
Fortunately even Microsoft is heading towards the single-directory install ideal with.NET. Application configuration info is once again recommended to be stored in the application directory rather than the registry. There's still the global assembly cache for shared and strongly named assemblies, but if it needs to be shared, it needs to be shared. It'd still be nice to have semi-strongly named assemblies located in the app directory that are still checked against the hash, but it's definitely a move in the right direction.
I read about this too, and while I distrust Microsoft, it looks like a decent idea. I still wonder how it will fare in a multi-user roaming environment, though.
I think this is actually a bad idea. I like the fact in linux or freebsd all the config files for all programs are in/etc or/usr/local/etc. This allows me to check the/etc into cvs and be able to revert my system into a known good state.
I agree. It is not one big file, like the Windows registry, but not in pieces all over the place, like MacOS. Every instance has its advantages and disadvantages.
Re:What do...
on
Real's Reality
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Sir, I object to your characterisation of the/etc directory. It is there for a reason. What you describe is fine and dandy for games and assorted disposable desktop crapola but not so fine for most (serious) applications. Having a centralized (but easilly maintained and repaired) repository of configuration data, makes it easy to backup this critical part of the system and also allows for better control of access to it.
I agree -- etc is a good idea, but so is having a self-contained application directory. Each has its own merits.
You know, that vintage Penny-Arcade comic demonstrates why the other artists don't have nearly the traffic of PA. They haven't evolved as artists.
You are correct. If that comic appeared on Penny Arcade tomorrow it would have the new look, although I think the message would be the same. They are just as caustic and blunt as always. Penny Arcade and PVP are my favorite online comics, and in fact the only comics I read -- at all. If you do not read the artists' blog page you should -- they usually go in depth behind the comic and explain in no uncertain terms why the scapegoat of the week is a dumb fuck: for example, recently they went on a rant about Infinium Labs and the vaporware Phantom. Great reading!
Re:What do...
on
Real's Reality
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Eep. Stop right there, you're standing on a landmine. INI files on a modern system should be put in the per-user "Application Data" folder. You can retrieve its path using SHGetSpecialFolderPath (95/IE 4.0 or 98+) or SHGetFolderPath (98/IE 5.0 or 98SE+) using the CSIDL_APPDATA constant. If you've fail to do this, your app is currently giving ulcers to some innocent admin of WinNT-family boxes who now has to manually add extra NTFS permissions for the Everyone group to your app's install folder. Your app also doesn't work correctly with multiple users (all users share the same settings), under roaming profiles (settings are per-machine, not per-user), or running off a network drive (Ha! Like *your* app deserves chmod a+w on the Samba server!). As an added bonus, your app may stop working under XP SP2 (or after some Critical Update in the unspecified future) and almost certainly will be b0rked by the time Longhorn comes out (if MS isn't a completely lost cause, they'll have stopped making users Admin by default by that timeframe).
You make excellent points, and I do agree with you. However, the apps I write (game editing utilities) are not used on "real" networks, and 90% of the time, not used except on my own computer.
This is halfway on topic, talking about crappy software. I hate it when software is not multi-user aware: it installs itself in my user's start menu, instead of for all users. It stores data in a way that does not work on a per-user basis. Stuff I write for myself works one way, but before I release software I will make sure it works the correct way. Right now I am working on one major program and I have not even started on the Windows GUI yet (backend cross-platform stuff is working, Linux GUI is almost there, but the Win32 GUI is basically a gray window and a menu), but when I do, trust me, it will work in a multi-user possibly roaming atmosphere. And in the case were configuration settings are not present, it will still work. Try deleting MS Word's registry settings and see what happens... my applications will not follow that example;-)
Re:What do...
on
Real's Reality
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
This is really done in some company where they think data security and theft really matters. Burning old scratched tapes or crushing broken HD to pieces was mandatory in a firm worked in.
I used to work in a classified facility. We had hard drive shredders. Yep, you heard me right -- insert a hard drive in the top, metal powder came out the bottom. Even then we could not throw it away, it had to be degaussed first. "Paranoid" does not begin to describe it. We also had a tape shredder, same deal, but with plastic powder instead of metal powder:-)
In both cases, we had to drive bags of said powder, a team effort (just in case al Qaeda hijacked the truck and tried to glue the hard drive atoms back together, they would have two throats to slit instead of one), to a special government incinerator that got super hot (about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit) and the burning had to be witnessed by about five people with special gas masks to protect against the fumes.
We had sledge hammers located strategically throughout the building. In case of terrorist or Russian attack, we were supposed to smash our computers to bits on the way to the bomb shelter since we did not have time for proper disposal.
And just think, all of these security measures are ruined if a single numbnuts downloads spyware...
Re:What do...
on
Real's Reality
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Did fdisk/mbr work?
I do not know... this was a while ago, and my friend is, sadly, dead. Turns out he had diabetes but never saw an MD about the symptoms until it was too late, collapsed on the emergency room floor. They found this out during the autopsy. Anyway, back on subject, I do not know. He did say that uninstalling it the "proper way" worked, it undid the changes to the boot sector. But it also made changes to the original 720k floppy (yep, back in the day) so it would not install on a different computer until uninstalled from the first one. It would remove the data from the boot sector and change a flag on the original floppy. The developers put a lot of effort into the copy protection system, my friend was unable to crack it and he was really good as far as hackers back then went. But he did not put all of his time and effort into it, after all, his company bought enough licenses for their (token ring) network;-)
Stallman's software wasn't a 'myth' back in the BBS days. I have a printed GNU Emacs manual written by Stallman that was publised in 1986. The difference is, back in 'those days' the UNIX people lived apart from us 'mere home computer' folks from their expensive UNIX workstations. Stallman's culture just comes at the modern computing world from a different starting point than the BBS'n folks. It was around then.
I am not arguing that Stallman's free software and GNU in general did not exist, just that people did not know about it as a whole. Maybe a few home users had heard rumors, but that's it. My original point was that back in the day, most people did not know about GNU.
I wonder if the FSF is ever going to add a GNU media format to their toolset... They blunder forward with Hurd, they may as well add another shocking embarassment to the mix.
Re:What do...
on
Real's Reality
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Not if you're using a Mac OS X, all you gotta do is delete the folder the player is installed in. This works for the free version anyways...It also (amazingly) works to copy a folder from one computer to another and it still functions.
This is one thing the Mac does right -- a program's binaries and configuration data are all self-contained. No registry, no/etc. This has advantages. Of course it makes it easier to pirate software. I read here on Slashdot a year or so ago about a guy in Texas who witnessed a man walking into a CompUSA, hooking up his iPod, and downloading Mac Office over Firewire. Because everything is self-contained, all he had to do was drag and drop the "Office" folder and he was done.
When I write software for Linux or for Windows, I try to do the same thing. My Windows software uses the "deprecated" INI files in the executable directory instead of the super-bloated registry, and I try to set up sensible defaults and make programs load from ~/etc if possible in Linux.
Re:What do...
on
Real's Reality
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Wow, vintage Penny-Arcade:-)
I had a friend whose company contracted for some proprietary software (this was in the BBS days, Stallman's free software was still only a myth, if that even). This thing installed data in unused portions of the boot sector. Even formatting and repartitioning the hard disk would not remove its data, which was primitive copy-protection/license data.
So maybe the only way to uninstall this software was to burn the hard drive... who knows...
Although I found it weird in the movie that Gollum didn't age since Bilbo took the ring those decades ago. But Bilbo had aged considerably between leaving the ring for Frodo and setting out to the Grey Havens.
Gollum was so consumed with The Ring that he was like Sauron, only without all the cool powers. Basically, if the ring died, Gollum died. As long as it lived, he lived. As Gandalf said in the books, at least, Gollum's fate was tied to the ring for better or for worse.
Of course, falling headfirst into a pool of liquid hot magma (cue Dr. Evil finger to the mouth) is for worse...
Allrecipes is good, but come on, how about the red-headed stepchild of the Internet, Usenet?
rec.food.recipes is the logically starting point. It is moderated, and has quite a few good recipes. Google groups can turn up any number of personal recipes posted by ordinary people, not from cookbooks eminating from some faceless corporation.
I post to rec.food.cooking on a daily basis. Recipes are not the focus, but there are plenty there, along with cooking tips, friendly banter (i.e. flame wars), and discussions about anything dealing with cooking from nutrition to what pots and pans are best. If you decide to join the fray, I post with my real name and email, John Gaughan. Feel free to flame me on Usenet for being a Slashdot geek:-)
These guys have a bios based application called Computrace Plus. It performs the functions you described above.
Did it perform these functions back in 1996-1998? Looking at their web site I cannot tell for sure when they started up, but the time period the OP is talking about is pre-bubble. Not many tech companies were around back then.
1996-1998. This is about when I started college the first time, and I distinctly remember DSL beginning to roll in out select areas. It was not nearly as common as it is today, but it existed. So did cable modems. 1996 may be a stretch, but definitely not 1998.
Either way, I am skeptical about a company being able to pinpoint a DSL IP address to a physical address in a few minutes, and call the campus police. At that time this was unheard of. A static IP on a controlled network, yes; a dynamic IP on someone else's network? Doubtful.
Re:Forget the alarms -- my personal anti-theft dev
on
Stolen Laptop Alarms
·
· Score: 1
You have *no* idea how easy it is to track down something like that. It's possible for a thief to sand down the paint and repaint the whole thing, but I figure it's just easier to get one where such work isn't required.
Don't some types of engravers leave a permanent mark that shows up under a blacklight? I remember back in my high school days my school provided an engraver for our graphing calculators specifically because even if a thief sanded down our names, they would still show up under a blacklight. Of course, IANAP (I am not a physicist), but this sounds rather sketchy...
In theory, I know why this could happen, and actually thought it was pretty funny because it was a stupid thing to do. But obviously, there was some sort of "call home" software. Anyone know for sure?
I am curious how, 6-8 years ago, the university could convert an IP address into a physical address and get the campus rent-a-cops at the door in fifteen minutes. Even today it is not easy, especially with dynamic IPs.
Slashdot Mirror
I have procmail set up to delete certain attachments, although forcing it to run along with SpamAssassin on my web host is proving to turn more than a few hairs gray... but when I do, I swear, I will be an ubergeek, I swear! Qmail, procmail, et al are great tools to defang spam for family consumption, as well as reduce download times for myself. Even over cable, I spent way too long downloading "Microsoft fixes" from "Hotmail addresses."
Get mom an iMac. Install OS X if it doesn't have it already. You can pick up a decent iMac on eBay for around $300, but make sure it's at least 300Mhz. Enable auto-updates. Install Mozilla or Firefox, ensure popup blocking is turned on. Done. You will instantly become the favorite child.
:)
No thanks necessary, it's what I do.
(and yes, I know he said PC. I consider this a PC solution.)
What about a technophobe 62 year old mother? I want to email her but the most advanced electronics she has is her cordless telephone. That took my brother going over to her house and saying "you WILL use this, because I am throwing out your old phone."
I dearly want my mother to use a computer, even just for email and Google, but she refuses. How can I bring my 62 year old technophobe halfway into the information age? I do not know enough about Macs to set one up, and of course a Linux box would work, but what about internet access? Dialup is too complex for her, and she does not have cable (TV or anything).
Ideas? Slashdot, I beseach you, I need geek advice, and I am trolled out for today!
Try sitting in one of the meetings where my bosses have to justify spending millions of dollars per year on a Unisys mainframe... I do not have to go to those but I hear it is like trying to argue that castration is a painless, pleasant experience...
I mean the final version, the current one is just a RC. And my other gripe is that subscriptions are yearly -- I cannot afford a whole year right this minute. One month, yes, but twelve, no.
Anyway, I think the money is worth it assuming I had it at the moment. Linux software is full of innovation and worth paying for, despite being free.
I understand your point and realize that the monopolistic policies here limit peoples' choices, but the choices do exist - and the opportunity for consumers to educate themselves does as well.
A monopolist does not need 100% market share, and there can be viable alternatives. All a monopolist needs is enough market share that he can completely fux0r the market if need be, and destroy middlemen by denying them its product. Remember the UPS strike a few years ago? At the time UPS had about a 70% market share, and the strike decimated the package delivery industry while it was going on. Even with popular alternatives like the USPS and FedEx, they had massive market power.
I think that Linux in the news is a good thing. It gives us free exposure and the day may soon come when educated consumers demand PCs from retail outlets without the Microsoft tax. And I do not mean you or me doing it as a joke, but my grandma or brother.
Hi, my name is John Gaughan and you may remember me from such Linux Groups as MALU :-)
I was not able to make it to the Alabama Lugfest, unfortunately, but I hear it went well for the second year in a row. I second DesScorp's suggestion about trying to link together LUGs around the country. The Internet and the FS/OSS movements are all about democratizing software and communication -- and remember, democracy cannot work without involvement from the people. Make a difference -- join a LUG, get active, be noticed.
If consumers don't like paying for Windows they can buy a Mac, use Linux, or pirate it.
There are choices for consumers and if they refuse to vote with their wallets, I have little pity on them,.
Easy for you to say, but most people only know what is on display at CompUSA, Best Buy, Circuit City, WalMart, etc. As soon as the big OEMs with retail distribution stop giving in to Microsoft exclusion deals (I forget the economics term, when a monopolist refuses to sell its product to a middleman if he sells competitors' products too). Dell employees came out of the closet and told the world about these deals, we know it goes on. Do you really think any OEM will stand up to Microsoft and risk losing Windows? Only WalMart has been able to do this, one juggernaut battling another...
Windows may not be worth $45, but Linux is certainly not even worth $0.00.
Linux is worth $0? Tell that to Linus, a millionaire. Anyway, I think GNU/Linux (damn you RMS!) and its associated software is well worth a price similar to what Microsoft charges for Windows. In fact when Mandrake 10.0 comes out I plan on purchasing it, after being a freeloader for the last six years. Right now I can justify being a freeloader because I am broke, but I am about to get a promotion and finish my truck loan, so I cannot justify freeloading with an extra $550 a month ;-)
Fortunately even Microsoft is heading towards the single-directory install ideal with .NET. Application configuration info is once again recommended to be stored in the application directory rather than the registry. There's still the global assembly cache for shared and strongly named assemblies, but if it needs to be shared, it needs to be shared. It'd still be nice to have semi-strongly named assemblies located in the app directory that are still checked against the hash, but it's definitely a move in the right direction.
I read about this too, and while I distrust Microsoft, it looks like a decent idea. I still wonder how it will fare in a multi-user roaming environment, though.
I think this is actually a bad idea. I like the fact in linux or freebsd all the config files for all programs are in /etc or /usr/local/etc. This allows me to check the /etc into cvs and be able to revert my system into a known good state.
I agree. It is not one big file, like the Windows registry, but not in pieces all over the place, like MacOS. Every instance has its advantages and disadvantages.
Sir, I object to your characterisation of the /etc directory. It is there for a reason. What you describe is fine and dandy for games and assorted disposable desktop crapola but not so fine for most (serious) applications. Having a centralized (but easilly maintained and repaired) repository of configuration data, makes it easy to backup this critical part of the system and also allows for better control of access to it.
I agree -- etc is a good idea, but so is having a self-contained application directory. Each has its own merits.
You know, that vintage Penny-Arcade comic demonstrates why the other artists don't have nearly the traffic of PA. They haven't evolved as artists.
You are correct. If that comic appeared on Penny Arcade tomorrow it would have the new look, although I think the message would be the same. They are just as caustic and blunt as always. Penny Arcade and PVP are my favorite online comics, and in fact the only comics I read -- at all. If you do not read the artists' blog page you should -- they usually go in depth behind the comic and explain in no uncertain terms why the scapegoat of the week is a dumb fuck: for example, recently they went on a rant about Infinium Labs and the vaporware Phantom. Great reading!
Eep. Stop right there, you're standing on a landmine. INI files on a modern system should be put in the per-user "Application Data" folder. You can retrieve its path using SHGetSpecialFolderPath (95/IE 4.0 or 98+) or SHGetFolderPath (98/IE 5.0 or 98SE+) using the CSIDL_APPDATA constant. If you've fail to do this, your app is currently giving ulcers to some innocent admin of WinNT-family boxes who now has to manually add extra NTFS permissions for the Everyone group to your app's install folder. Your app also doesn't work correctly with multiple users (all users share the same settings), under roaming profiles (settings are per-machine, not per-user), or running off a network drive (Ha! Like *your* app deserves chmod a+w on the Samba server!). As an added bonus, your app may stop working under XP SP2 (or after some Critical Update in the unspecified future) and almost certainly will be b0rked by the time Longhorn comes out (if MS isn't a completely lost cause, they'll have stopped making users Admin by default by that timeframe).
You make excellent points, and I do agree with you. However, the apps I write (game editing utilities) are not used on "real" networks, and 90% of the time, not used except on my own computer.
This is halfway on topic, talking about crappy software. I hate it when software is not multi-user aware: it installs itself in my user's start menu, instead of for all users. It stores data in a way that does not work on a per-user basis. Stuff I write for myself works one way, but before I release software I will make sure it works the correct way. Right now I am working on one major program and I have not even started on the Windows GUI yet (backend cross-platform stuff is working, Linux GUI is almost there, but the Win32 GUI is basically a gray window and a menu), but when I do, trust me, it will work in a multi-user possibly roaming atmosphere. And in the case were configuration settings are not present, it will still work. Try deleting MS Word's registry settings and see what happens... my applications will not follow that example ;-)
This is really done in some company where they think data security and theft really matters. Burning old scratched tapes or crushing broken HD to pieces was mandatory in a firm worked in.
I used to work in a classified facility. We had hard drive shredders. Yep, you heard me right -- insert a hard drive in the top, metal powder came out the bottom. Even then we could not throw it away, it had to be degaussed first. "Paranoid" does not begin to describe it. We also had a tape shredder, same deal, but with plastic powder instead of metal powder :-)
In both cases, we had to drive bags of said powder, a team effort (just in case al Qaeda hijacked the truck and tried to glue the hard drive atoms back together, they would have two throats to slit instead of one), to a special government incinerator that got super hot (about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit) and the burning had to be witnessed by about five people with special gas masks to protect against the fumes.
We had sledge hammers located strategically throughout the building. In case of terrorist or Russian attack, we were supposed to smash our computers to bits on the way to the bomb shelter since we did not have time for proper disposal.
And just think, all of these security measures are ruined if a single numbnuts downloads spyware...
Did fdisk /mbr work?
I do not know... this was a while ago, and my friend is, sadly, dead. Turns out he had diabetes but never saw an MD about the symptoms until it was too late, collapsed on the emergency room floor. They found this out during the autopsy. Anyway, back on subject, I do not know. He did say that uninstalling it the "proper way" worked, it undid the changes to the boot sector. But it also made changes to the original 720k floppy (yep, back in the day) so it would not install on a different computer until uninstalled from the first one. It would remove the data from the boot sector and change a flag on the original floppy. The developers put a lot of effort into the copy protection system, my friend was unable to crack it and he was really good as far as hackers back then went. But he did not put all of his time and effort into it, after all, his company bought enough licenses for their (token ring) network ;-)
Stallman's software wasn't a 'myth' back in the BBS days. I have a printed GNU Emacs manual written by Stallman that was publised in 1986. The difference is, back in 'those days' the UNIX people lived apart from us 'mere home computer' folks from their expensive UNIX workstations. Stallman's culture just comes at the modern computing world from a different starting point than the BBS'n folks. It was around then.
I am not arguing that Stallman's free software and GNU in general did not exist, just that people did not know about it as a whole. Maybe a few home users had heard rumors, but that's it. My original point was that back in the day, most people did not know about GNU.
I wonder if the FSF is ever going to add a GNU media format to their toolset... They blunder forward with Hurd, they may as well add another shocking embarassment to the mix.
Not if you're using a Mac OS X, all you gotta do is delete the folder the player is installed in. This works for the free version anyways...It also (amazingly) works to copy a folder from one computer to another and it still functions.
This is one thing the Mac does right -- a program's binaries and configuration data are all self-contained. No registry, no /etc. This has advantages. Of course it makes it easier to pirate software. I read here on Slashdot a year or so ago about a guy in Texas who witnessed a man walking into a CompUSA, hooking up his iPod, and downloading Mac Office over Firewire. Because everything is self-contained, all he had to do was drag and drop the "Office" folder and he was done.
When I write software for Linux or for Windows, I try to do the same thing. My Windows software uses the "deprecated" INI files in the executable directory instead of the super-bloated registry, and I try to set up sensible defaults and make programs load from ~/etc if possible in Linux.
Wow, vintage Penny-Arcade :-)
I had a friend whose company contracted for some proprietary software (this was in the BBS days, Stallman's free software was still only a myth, if that even). This thing installed data in unused portions of the boot sector. Even formatting and repartitioning the hard disk would not remove its data, which was primitive copy-protection/license data.
So maybe the only way to uninstall this software was to burn the hard drive... who knows...
Although I found it weird in the movie that Gollum didn't age since Bilbo took the ring those decades ago. But Bilbo had aged considerably between leaving the ring for Frodo and setting out to the Grey Havens.
Gollum was so consumed with The Ring that he was like Sauron, only without all the cool powers. Basically, if the ring died, Gollum died. As long as it lived, he lived. As Gandalf said in the books, at least, Gollum's fate was tied to the ring for better or for worse.
Of course, falling headfirst into a pool of liquid hot magma (cue Dr. Evil finger to the mouth) is for worse...
Allrecipes is good, but come on, how about the red-headed stepchild of the Internet, Usenet?
rec.food.recipes is the logically starting point. It is moderated, and has quite a few good recipes. Google groups can turn up any number of personal recipes posted by ordinary people, not from cookbooks eminating from some faceless corporation.
I post to rec.food.cooking on a daily basis. Recipes are not the focus, but there are plenty there, along with cooking tips, friendly banter (i.e. flame wars), and discussions about anything dealing with cooking from nutrition to what pots and pans are best. If you decide to join the fray, I post with my real name and email, John Gaughan. Feel free to flame me on Usenet for being a Slashdot geekSpeaking of trash, I wonder how many end users contribute to television?
Maybe that is why I find the Internet much more interesting and useful...
These guys have a bios based application called Computrace Plus. It performs the functions you described above.
Did it perform these functions back in 1996-1998? Looking at their web site I cannot tell for sure when they started up, but the time period the OP is talking about is pre-bubble. Not many tech companies were around back then.
DSL 6-8 years ago?
1996-1998. This is about when I started college the first time, and I distinctly remember DSL beginning to roll in out select areas. It was not nearly as common as it is today, but it existed. So did cable modems. 1996 may be a stretch, but definitely not 1998.
Either way, I am skeptical about a company being able to pinpoint a DSL IP address to a physical address in a few minutes, and call the campus police. At that time this was unheard of. A static IP on a controlled network, yes; a dynamic IP on someone else's network? Doubtful.
You have *no* idea how easy it is to track down something like that. It's possible for a thief to sand down the paint and repaint the whole thing, but I figure it's just easier to get one where such work isn't required.
Don't some types of engravers leave a permanent mark that shows up under a blacklight? I remember back in my high school days my school provided an engraver for our graphing calculators specifically because even if a thief sanded down our names, they would still show up under a blacklight. Of course, IANAP (I am not a physicist), but this sounds rather sketchy...
In theory, I know why this could happen, and actually thought it was pretty funny because it was a stupid thing to do. But obviously, there was some sort of "call home" software. Anyone know for sure?
I am curious how, 6-8 years ago, the university could convert an IP address into a physical address and get the campus rent-a-cops at the door in fifteen minutes. Even today it is not easy, especially with dynamic IPs.