Agreed. I clicked the links, looking for a "Download now" link. No release version. No beta version. No alpha version. Nothing. Heck, give me a PREalpha, alright? I'll make a windows VM, and browse all the worst sites I've ever heard of, and search out more, to see what happens. I'll even use Ye Olde Internet Exploder version 6 to test it with.
Alas - my competence with vaporware is sadly lacking.
People persons are highly over rated, IMO. Of course, I'm somewhat asocial, and a lot of people will discount my opinion.
I say, if you're doing your job right, you don't need to worry about the people. Joke 'em if they can't take a fuck.
Open Synaptic. Find settings, software sources, updates. Look down near the bottom for "show distribution releases". See what that says. The Maverick isn't an LTS version. If you have LTS option showing, then you'll wait til about April for update manager to tell you that an update is availabe.
HOWEVER - I don't personally recommend upgrading your distribution. Nuke from space and reinstall. Or, install to another hard drive. Or, install to a VM. Or, install to a new machine. Those upgrades can cause strange things to happen. I've a hard drive in this machine with the MOST god-awful graphics, because it's been upgraded through three incarnations of Ubuntu. I've tried, but I can't get it sorted out, so I just started all over on another hard drive. Or, actually, on a RAID array - it amounts to the same thing, except it's a bit faster.
Errrr - wait one. Just how do you get 69 upside down? I've always found that it's a nice round number, and you can roll it over and over and over again, kinda like a wheel. Upside down? Hmmmmmm.......
The real conundrum is deciding how much of a bribe to offer. To little, and it's a short trip behind the barn, or to the latrine, and you don't come back.
"has the human brain changed in the last 100 years?"
I've asked almost the same question, from a different perspective. I took my EMT training in 1980. I've never held a paying job as an EMT, nor have I ever recertified. It was a one-time thing, in an effort to learn how to help people who needed help in an emergency.
The "real" EMT's have changed a lot since then. First priority has always been, self preservation and self protection - you can't help anyone else if you allow yourself to get hurt in the middle of a bad traffic accident. But, the focus has changed - you can't do your job anymore, unless you're all decked out in costume - gloves, safety glasses, etc, and a cop is there to direct traffic, and more.
I found myself wondering if my training was still pertinent. Until, of course, your question ran through my mind.
The human body hasn't changed. My training - and yours - are just as pertinent today, as it was all those decades ago.
And, Laura Ingalls could teach the subject matter with which she is familiar just as effectively today as she could have 100 years ago.
Of course, she couldn't teach second year chemistry or biology - assuming she could get by with the first year courses. Science has changed. But, readin' ritin' and 'rithmetic haven't changed at all for elementary school, and not much for the slow track people in high school.
All right, Laura isn't ready to teach the kids on the fast track to college - but that is probably true of a lot of teachers who are teaching TODAY!
A word about the groundbreaking photo-op ceremonies. I've worked a lot of construction. I have nothing but contempt for the office prissies who come out to the job site, with their little golden shovels, and "break the ground".
If they want a photo session, let them gather at a local ballroom with a stupid model, and let the camera zoom in on the finer details in the model. Or, just drawings.
Few things look stupider than a bunch of office pukes who don't even know how to hold a shovel, trying to look convincing while poking their spades into some topsoil that was turned up by a backhoe. The least they could do is to borrow some old boots and jean, instead of prissing around the job site in spit shined $300 shoes.
You exaggerate, of course - but there is truth in your statement. I can see someone being shut off the internet for the 4th (or more) time in a year, asking people how they manage to avoid being disconnected. Great sales opportunity for *nix fans.
But, the fact is, Windows can be made pretty damned secure. A default install of Win7 is fairly decent. It's the USER who defeats security on Win7 - and that same user isn't going to be much more secure on Linux.
After reading about recent Geeksquad history, I wouldn't hold them out as any sort of example of IT service. Geeksquad are salesmen primarily, and IT people secondarily, if at all.
"how the hell do you fix the problem with no internet access?"
Nuke from orbit, of course.
As for your other objections - some mechanism would have to be worked out. The point is, if/when it becomes obvious that one or more machines is part of a botnet, I thnk the ISP should take SOME ACTION. If I ran the ISP, I'd shut it down, and only allow that IP address to connect via a redirect to customer support. I don't even know how I would do that, but I'd turn it over to my IT staff.
SOMETHING needs be done.
Do you not expect an unsafe automobile to be stopped and taken out of service when it becomes obvious that it is unsafe? Why not computers?
The battle is lost. Lost long ago. In this article, they are discussing targeted behavioural advertising like it's "normal" and "acceptable". I guess there are only a few of us freaks left who object to being tracked all over the internet.
Sorry - but it's NO ONE's business where I go, or what I look at, or what I click on.
Thank all the nerds and the gods of anonymity for the blocking tools available on Firefox. I can browse the web, knowing that only the MOST determined, and somewhat sophisticated people can track my habits.
I like that. At first, it looked as preposterous as my own post. Then, it looked even more preposterous. But, a second or two of thought shows that it's at least as preposterous as the idea that banning guns would make society safer. Yep, I like it. I think you win for the day.;^)
From the command line interface, I've told Wondershaper to intercept traffic on ethernet card 1, and to allow traffic at 300 kb down, and 90 kb up - all my high priority traffic goes to the head of the queues, and no one gets all the bandwidth for their downloads.
Again, traffic shaping. I use Wondershaper, from the Ubuntu repositories.
# wondershaper eth1 300 90
Problems solved. Of course, you have to determine your total available bandwidth so that you can determine what speeds will work best for your network. (real speeds, not advertised speeds) You'll likely spend 15 to 30 minutes getting is set up, unless you already know what you are doing. Once done, you'll never have to worry about choking your internet connection again.
That's why you use a traffic shaper on your own network. With Wondershaper, I find my real available bandwidth, subtract a small percentage from the available bandwidth, and throttle everything to that speed. With short queues, everything just moves along nicely, and high priority packets are moved to the front of queues. If you allow the queues to get long, with no prioritization, bandwidth comes to a crawl.
Now, don't get me wrong here - I am not advocating that ISP's do traffic shaping. They will do it all wrong, for all the wrong reasons. If most people did the traffic shaping on their own networks, it would relieve the load on the ISP, and the ISP would have less justification for traffic shaping THEIR WAY.
So - what does traffic shaping mean, in real life, on my own network?
Without traffic shaping, any person can start a download from his desktop (or laptop), or watch a Youtube video, and bring everyone in the house to a crawl. Pages may not load at all for other people.
With traffic shaping, I can start huge downloads from all five machines on the network, but all five machines can still browse. Those downloads run somewhat slower than they would have - but no one is screaming, "WHY CAN'T I LOAD MY EMAIL?? WHO IS DOWNLOADING THE ENTIRE INTERNET?"
Try it. Put a traffic shaper on your gateway machine, or at least set up QOS on your router. The internet will never look the same again.
And, I think we're almost in agreement. Win7 is a little better OS than XP - with the real improvements being in the security model. Everything else is *mostly* subjective. There's no compelling reason to choose one over the other - except COST. And, really, that was my point.
Those 5 to 10 year old computers sitting in people's homes that came with XP pre-installed may or may not run equally well with Win7. The most critical factors in the dicision will be the video, and the amount of memory. Few people can justify the cost of upgrading the video, plus upgrading the memory, so that they can spend MORE money on a new version of Windows.
Let's bear in mind that while memory is very cheap for today's more modern computers, it can still be pretty expensive to buy a gig or two of PC-2100 or PC-2700 memory. It can actually be cheaper to just buy a new computer with Win7 installed!
Sound completely ignorant? Did you ASK if I've run it?
No need for you to exercise, right? You get plenty, jumping to conclusions.
If Win7 runs BETTER on old hardware, then you most likely found an isolated instance in which XP wasn't properly installed in the first place, using the wrong drivers. If, indeed, XP was properly installed and configured with all the right drivers, then you got lucky, in that Win7 had an even better driver for some key component.
As I stated, Win7's resource requirements are bit higher than XP. It isn't going to run as well as XP on systems that are short on resources.
Better security model? Yeah - I like that.
Better interfaces? Subjective opinion.
Not a decade old? XP SP3 isn't a decade old, nor are the updates being pulled off the web when you update today.
The banter goes back and forth, and no one seems to note one important thing:
THERE IS NO COMPELLING REASON TO UPGRADE.
Many, many computers are 5 years old, or more. Those computers aren't going to run any faster with Win7. If you want a high user rating, or experience rating in 7, you'll have to upgrade the video, and that's going to cost almost as much as buying a new netbook. So, no Aero, slightly increased resources consumption, and you have to learn new interfaces on the same old hardware - why PAY for this aggravation?
Win7 just offers nothing that is worth paying for, if you already have XP on old hardware.
People who are upgrading hardware are much more likely to pay for Win7. Unless they own an installation disk for XP, AND they have all the drivers they need, they almost have to pay for 7.
I was searching for the word ACTA. Yes, that is a prime example of the summary. An outdated, corrupt incumbent power base is busily writing a treaty, global in nature, that will make an end run around many nation's constitutional protections. Awesome, isn't it?
Careful - don't lump all the military together. It's the ARMY under discussion. My navy has problems, to be sure, but my navy can keep a server up and running. Not to mention, the navy wrote the book on repetitive redundancy. I think congress should take the server away from the army, and give to the navy. Overall security should improve, and physical security will most certainly improve. Our marines haven't lost a server yet!
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Agreed. I clicked the links, looking for a "Download now" link. No release version. No beta version. No alpha version. Nothing. Heck, give me a PREalpha, alright? I'll make a windows VM, and browse all the worst sites I've ever heard of, and search out more, to see what happens. I'll even use Ye Olde Internet Exploder version 6 to test it with. Alas - my competence with vaporware is sadly lacking.
People persons are highly over rated, IMO. Of course, I'm somewhat asocial, and a lot of people will discount my opinion. I say, if you're doing your job right, you don't need to worry about the people. Joke 'em if they can't take a fuck.
Open Synaptic. Find settings, software sources, updates. Look down near the bottom for "show distribution releases". See what that says. The Maverick isn't an LTS version. If you have LTS option showing, then you'll wait til about April for update manager to tell you that an update is availabe. HOWEVER - I don't personally recommend upgrading your distribution. Nuke from space and reinstall. Or, install to another hard drive. Or, install to a VM. Or, install to a new machine. Those upgrades can cause strange things to happen. I've a hard drive in this machine with the MOST god-awful graphics, because it's been upgraded through three incarnations of Ubuntu. I've tried, but I can't get it sorted out, so I just started all over on another hard drive. Or, actually, on a RAID array - it amounts to the same thing, except it's a bit faster.
Errrr - wait one. Just how do you get 69 upside down? I've always found that it's a nice round number, and you can roll it over and over and over again, kinda like a wheel. Upside down? Hmmmmmm.......
The real conundrum is deciding how much of a bribe to offer. To little, and it's a short trip behind the barn, or to the latrine, and you don't come back.
"has the human brain changed in the last 100 years?" I've asked almost the same question, from a different perspective. I took my EMT training in 1980. I've never held a paying job as an EMT, nor have I ever recertified. It was a one-time thing, in an effort to learn how to help people who needed help in an emergency. The "real" EMT's have changed a lot since then. First priority has always been, self preservation and self protection - you can't help anyone else if you allow yourself to get hurt in the middle of a bad traffic accident. But, the focus has changed - you can't do your job anymore, unless you're all decked out in costume - gloves, safety glasses, etc, and a cop is there to direct traffic, and more. I found myself wondering if my training was still pertinent. Until, of course, your question ran through my mind. The human body hasn't changed. My training - and yours - are just as pertinent today, as it was all those decades ago. And, Laura Ingalls could teach the subject matter with which she is familiar just as effectively today as she could have 100 years ago. Of course, she couldn't teach second year chemistry or biology - assuming she could get by with the first year courses. Science has changed. But, readin' ritin' and 'rithmetic haven't changed at all for elementary school, and not much for the slow track people in high school. All right, Laura isn't ready to teach the kids on the fast track to college - but that is probably true of a lot of teachers who are teaching TODAY!
A word about the groundbreaking photo-op ceremonies. I've worked a lot of construction. I have nothing but contempt for the office prissies who come out to the job site, with their little golden shovels, and "break the ground". If they want a photo session, let them gather at a local ballroom with a stupid model, and let the camera zoom in on the finer details in the model. Or, just drawings. Few things look stupider than a bunch of office pukes who don't even know how to hold a shovel, trying to look convincing while poking their spades into some topsoil that was turned up by a backhoe. The least they could do is to borrow some old boots and jean, instead of prissing around the job site in spit shined $300 shoes.
http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/89q2/fish.443.html There are several versions of that old story online - that was the best I could do with a quick google.
You exaggerate, of course - but there is truth in your statement. I can see someone being shut off the internet for the 4th (or more) time in a year, asking people how they manage to avoid being disconnected. Great sales opportunity for *nix fans. But, the fact is, Windows can be made pretty damned secure. A default install of Win7 is fairly decent. It's the USER who defeats security on Win7 - and that same user isn't going to be much more secure on Linux.
After reading about recent Geeksquad history, I wouldn't hold them out as any sort of example of IT service. Geeksquad are salesmen primarily, and IT people secondarily, if at all.
Would a Linux distro be considered "security software"?
"how the hell do you fix the problem with no internet access?" Nuke from orbit, of course. As for your other objections - some mechanism would have to be worked out. The point is, if/when it becomes obvious that one or more machines is part of a botnet, I thnk the ISP should take SOME ACTION. If I ran the ISP, I'd shut it down, and only allow that IP address to connect via a redirect to customer support. I don't even know how I would do that, but I'd turn it over to my IT staff. SOMETHING needs be done. Do you not expect an unsafe automobile to be stopped and taken out of service when it becomes obvious that it is unsafe? Why not computers?
The battle is lost. Lost long ago. In this article, they are discussing targeted behavioural advertising like it's "normal" and "acceptable". I guess there are only a few of us freaks left who object to being tracked all over the internet. Sorry - but it's NO ONE's business where I go, or what I look at, or what I click on. Thank all the nerds and the gods of anonymity for the blocking tools available on Firefox. I can browse the web, knowing that only the MOST determined, and somewhat sophisticated people can track my habits.
I like that. At first, it looked as preposterous as my own post. Then, it looked even more preposterous. But, a second or two of thought shows that it's at least as preposterous as the idea that banning guns would make society safer. Yep, I like it. I think you win for the day. ;^)
From the command line interface, I've told Wondershaper to intercept traffic on ethernet card 1, and to allow traffic at 300 kb down, and 90 kb up - all my high priority traffic goes to the head of the queues, and no one gets all the bandwidth for their downloads.
Debtorrent still seems to be "alive". At least, more alive than apt-torrent. Google returns hits from 2009 and 2010, anyway.
Again, traffic shaping. I use Wondershaper, from the Ubuntu repositories. # wondershaper eth1 300 90 Problems solved. Of course, you have to determine your total available bandwidth so that you can determine what speeds will work best for your network. (real speeds, not advertised speeds) You'll likely spend 15 to 30 minutes getting is set up, unless you already know what you are doing. Once done, you'll never have to worry about choking your internet connection again.
That's why you use a traffic shaper on your own network. With Wondershaper, I find my real available bandwidth, subtract a small percentage from the available bandwidth, and throttle everything to that speed. With short queues, everything just moves along nicely, and high priority packets are moved to the front of queues. If you allow the queues to get long, with no prioritization, bandwidth comes to a crawl. Now, don't get me wrong here - I am not advocating that ISP's do traffic shaping. They will do it all wrong, for all the wrong reasons. If most people did the traffic shaping on their own networks, it would relieve the load on the ISP, and the ISP would have less justification for traffic shaping THEIR WAY. So - what does traffic shaping mean, in real life, on my own network? Without traffic shaping, any person can start a download from his desktop (or laptop), or watch a Youtube video, and bring everyone in the house to a crawl. Pages may not load at all for other people. With traffic shaping, I can start huge downloads from all five machines on the network, but all five machines can still browse. Those downloads run somewhat slower than they would have - but no one is screaming, "WHY CAN'T I LOAD MY EMAIL?? WHO IS DOWNLOADING THE ENTIRE INTERNET?" Try it. Put a traffic shaper on your gateway machine, or at least set up QOS on your router. The internet will never look the same again.
And, I think we're almost in agreement. Win7 is a little better OS than XP - with the real improvements being in the security model. Everything else is *mostly* subjective. There's no compelling reason to choose one over the other - except COST. And, really, that was my point. Those 5 to 10 year old computers sitting in people's homes that came with XP pre-installed may or may not run equally well with Win7. The most critical factors in the dicision will be the video, and the amount of memory. Few people can justify the cost of upgrading the video, plus upgrading the memory, so that they can spend MORE money on a new version of Windows. Let's bear in mind that while memory is very cheap for today's more modern computers, it can still be pretty expensive to buy a gig or two of PC-2100 or PC-2700 memory. It can actually be cheaper to just buy a new computer with Win7 installed!
Why not just ban airplanes? If there are no planes in the sky, they can't be shot down!
Sound completely ignorant? Did you ASK if I've run it? No need for you to exercise, right? You get plenty, jumping to conclusions. If Win7 runs BETTER on old hardware, then you most likely found an isolated instance in which XP wasn't properly installed in the first place, using the wrong drivers. If, indeed, XP was properly installed and configured with all the right drivers, then you got lucky, in that Win7 had an even better driver for some key component. As I stated, Win7's resource requirements are bit higher than XP. It isn't going to run as well as XP on systems that are short on resources. Better security model? Yeah - I like that. Better interfaces? Subjective opinion. Not a decade old? XP SP3 isn't a decade old, nor are the updates being pulled off the web when you update today.
The banter goes back and forth, and no one seems to note one important thing: THERE IS NO COMPELLING REASON TO UPGRADE. Many, many computers are 5 years old, or more. Those computers aren't going to run any faster with Win7. If you want a high user rating, or experience rating in 7, you'll have to upgrade the video, and that's going to cost almost as much as buying a new netbook. So, no Aero, slightly increased resources consumption, and you have to learn new interfaces on the same old hardware - why PAY for this aggravation? Win7 just offers nothing that is worth paying for, if you already have XP on old hardware. People who are upgrading hardware are much more likely to pay for Win7. Unless they own an installation disk for XP, AND they have all the drivers they need, they almost have to pay for 7.
So - Midget - are you the receiver?
I was searching for the word ACTA. Yes, that is a prime example of the summary. An outdated, corrupt incumbent power base is busily writing a treaty, global in nature, that will make an end run around many nation's constitutional protections. Awesome, isn't it?
Careful - don't lump all the military together. It's the ARMY under discussion. My navy has problems, to be sure, but my navy can keep a server up and running. Not to mention, the navy wrote the book on repetitive redundancy. I think congress should take the server away from the army, and give to the navy. Overall security should improve, and physical security will most certainly improve. Our marines haven't lost a server yet!