Ok so lots of valuable company data is moved from your facility to a bank by an employee on a weekly basis? I think the weakest link in the chain is you. I'm just saying what's to stop someone from taking the tapes from you in transit? Sure the bank has good security (cameras, security guards, a vault), and your company most likely has good security too but when your in transit couldn't someone stop you and take the tapes from you (by force if needed)? Just out of curiosity are there any backup software packages (like something made by Veritas or Computer Associates) that will not only compress data before backup but also encrypt it?
But with some patience and airsnort even "secured" (ie. encrypted) access points can be used without permission. And MAC address filtering is a joke since I can easily change the what MAC address my airport card uses under linux.
Maybe it's time for a new, and effective standard.
I have used every versions of Windows Media Player since version 6 and I can tell you Linux (running mplayer) is FAR better then ANY other OS/Media Player combo out there. Does Windows Media Player play Windows Media, Quicktime 6, Real Media 9, DivX, Xvid and mpeg1-4 video? No it doesn't. Heck mplayer even plays back DVDs flawlessly. Mplayer under linux gives you one piece of software that plays almost any video format you can find. That is what I call excellent multimedia support.
Here's my.02 $ as a recent college graduate (Got my BS in Computer Science about three weeks ago).
Get a decent upgradeable desktop (preferably custom built, but Dell will do) and a light, CHEAP, laptop. Trust me on this, laptops fail a lot more then desktop thanks to the regular use/abuse they take as portable machines and unlike a desktop when they break you or your local geek friends/campus computer store can't fix them. So you'll be stuck waiting for weeks for the manufacturer to fix and send back your laptop. And no matter what anyone says you will need to upgrade at least once through college, let's be honest, 4 years is a long time in the computer world. That's where the desktop comes in, cheap upgrades, and easy repairs.
For a PDA the best thing you can do is NOT buy a MS imbedded OS PDA. Those things are less personal digital assistants and more Game Boys on crack. Everyone I know uses them to play games/music/videos. Get a cheap low-end Palm device; it does all the important things like keep track of contacts and events with a simple interface and the unit costs hundreds less.
Oh and when it comes to the laptop brand, try to avoid the Apples. I know everyone now hates me but as an iBook owner I can tell you this, their overpriced and underpowered. You have one vendor for your software and hardware and their hell bent on charging you out the nose. Steve Jobs said it best when he was hawking MacOS 10.2: "It has 120 features, THAT'S LESS THEN 1 $ A FEATURE." Riiiiight....
Take it from someone who's been through it, there is a big difference between what everyone says you need and what you really need....
I have an ibook 2001 (the white 500 Mhz G3 model) and it redraws the screen just fine in X. The white ibooks use the Rage128 video chipset and the X drivers for the chipset work great.
Here's a nice kernel for these ibooks: http://www.ppckernel.org/kernel.php?id=21
With mplayer I play DivX DVD rips in full screen using XVideo with less then 50 % CPU usage. The video is flawless as best I can tell.
Now that the internal modem is working as far as I can tell EVERYHTING in the ibook 2001 is now supported by linux.
How will NOT making IE the default handler for URLS and HTML cripple the OS? How will NOT including MSN Messenger in the OS cripple it?
Microsoft is selling me an operating system, I have a fast connection and I can pull down the 2 - 3 MB install of MSN instant messenger if I want. If they want to integrate new features into their operating system maybe they should start with decent security features. Maybe switching encryption algorithms for the Remote Desktop Protocal (Win2k and WinXP Termianl Services), from RC4 to AES or Blowfish. Or maybe they should stop wasting time with IM integration and build a mildly decent firewall into Windows 2000 Server. But hey, that would be hard and probably doesn't meet some end goal involving eating another market.
1. Cable or DSL are NOT secure, unless you encrypt the traffic it's not secure PERIOD.
2. Hell with Cable modems you don't get "clean signal strength". My friend's cable connection was down for 3 weeks about 4 months ago.
3. You don't need to cram "fiber bandwidth" down a pipe. Right now I get 1.5 mbit/sec down (200 k/sec) with my cable modem thats not exactly "fiber bandwidth."
4. And we would have more bandwidth if the spectrums were better managed and more of it were released for commercial US.
Here's an open source alternative ...
on
DivX;) Goes Legit
·
· Score: 3, Informative
DivX as it stands has poor playback on Macs and at best decent playback on x86 Linux (people using Suns or LinuxPPC machines still have to wait). But there is a much better option, it's called VP3.2 and it was released last Friday (Sep 7) under a modified Mozilla Public License 1.1. Yes folks you read correctly, there is a decent video compression codec that is open source. Quicktime 5, Real Player and Windows Media Player can already read the movie files with the codec installed, and a Linux port is on the way. This codec beats the snot out of DivX in the streaming arena. Playback quality is good, and will get better with more work. Get it at:
http://www.vp3.com
I sold computer systems at a major retail outlet for nine months. I can't say which company but lets just say my store was store #297 (to give you an idea of how large this retail chain is). About a month after I started they began checking machines before finally giving them to a customer (a kind of last step in quality assurance). You know what's funny? Over 30% of the machines we sold would not boot up out of the box. These weren't no name junk, machines like HP, Compaq, Emachine and ofcource Packard Bell (which later merged their product line with NEC). These machine's died because of component failures. The most common were: Power Supply and Hard Drive failures. Simply put the manufacturers DO NOT CARE. They buy the cheapest Korean components, slap it together and hope the stores sell expensive service plans on the products. From my experiences over 60% of the machines we sold came back for repair within two years. And you know what? This makes perfect business sense. It's simple, Joe User doesn't have a clue. It goes like this: You buy the machine and no service plan, it fails in two years and you have to go out and buy a new machine (Manufacturers win). You buy the machine and an expensive ($200+) service plan, it fails in two years and you take it the store for repairs (Store still wins since parts cost them a small amount and at 11$ an hour technicians are dirt cheap). It's the perfect "You scratch my back I'll scratch your back" system. Maybe no one will believe this and I'll loose some Karma but after what I saw I build all my machines myself and maybe you guys should too.
This is going to kill my karma but there's no way I can keep quite....
Ok, if you're unhappy about Intel why sit there and whine about it? Do something that will make Intel think twice about pulling dumb shit like this. BUY A COMPETING CHIP! I know it's crazy but... I hear there's this company called AMD and they make decent CPUs that cost less and give comparable if not better performance to the Intel chips, but for hundreds less! I'm sick of this attitude that for stability and reliability you buy Intel. It's single minded purchasing like this that keeps innovation out of the marketplace.
Disclaimer: I run and AMD Athalon 800 / Soyo SY-K7VIA / Geforce256 / SB Live rock solid under both SuSE 6.3 and Win98SE. So I may be a bit biased:)
SuSE does put an ISO of their current release on their ftp site. *But* it's only an evalutaion version, which gives you most of SuSE but you don't get the commercial apps (like a full version of OSS). You can get the current (SuSE 6.3) Evaluation ISO from: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/evaluation-6.3.is o or the much faster mirror: ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/distributions/suse/su se/i386/evaluation-6.3.iso Keeps watching those sites, the SuSE 6.4 Evaluation ISO will be most likely be uploaded there soon. Most SuSE users will agree the evaluation ISO is very good, so give it a try.
Re:When it is finally out can I just download an I
on
SuSE 6.4 Announced
·
· Score: 1
SuSE does put an ISO of their current release on their ftp site. *But* it's only an evalutaion version, which gives you most of SuSE but you don't get the commercial apps (like a full version of OSS). You can get the current (SuSE 6.3) Evaluation ISO from: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/evaluation-6.3. iso or the much fa SuSE does put an ISO of their current release on their ftp site. But it's only an evalutaion version, which gives you most of SuSE but you don't get the commercial apps (like a full version of OSS). You can get the current (SuSE 6.3) Evaluation ISO from: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/evaluation-6.3. iso or the much faster mirror: ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/distributions/suse/ suse/i386/evaluation-6.3.iso
Keeps watching those sites, the SuSE 6.4 Evaluation ISO will be most likely be uploaded there soon. Most SuSE users will agree the evaluation ISO is very good, so give it a try.ster mirror: ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/distributions/suse/ suse/i386/evaluation-6.3.iso
Keeps watching those sites, the SuSE 6.4 Evaluation ISO will be most likely be uploaded there soon. Most SuSE users will agree the evaluation ISO is very good, so give it a try.
Slashdot Mirror
QWK :). Thank you for making that reference, ah, memories.
Ok so lots of valuable company data is moved from your facility to a bank by an employee on a weekly basis? I think the weakest link in the chain is you. I'm just saying what's to stop someone from taking the tapes from you in transit? Sure the bank has good security (cameras, security guards, a vault), and your company most likely has good security too but when your in transit couldn't someone stop you and take the tapes from you (by force if needed)? Just out of curiosity are there any backup software packages (like something made by Veritas or Computer Associates) that will not only compress data before backup but also encrypt it?
But with some patience and airsnort even "secured" (ie. encrypted) access points can be used without permission. And MAC address filtering is a joke since I can easily change the what MAC address my airport card uses under linux.
Maybe it's time for a new, and effective standard.
I could have moded but I'd rather speak my mind.
I have used every versions of Windows Media Player since version 6 and I can tell you Linux (running mplayer) is FAR better then ANY other OS/Media Player combo out there. Does Windows Media Player play Windows Media, Quicktime 6, Real Media 9, DivX, Xvid and mpeg1-4 video? No it doesn't. Heck mplayer even plays back DVDs flawlessly. Mplayer under linux gives you one piece of software that plays almost any video format you can find. That is what I call excellent multimedia support.
Here's my .02 $ as a recent college graduate (Got my BS in Computer Science about three weeks ago).
....
....
Get a decent upgradeable desktop (preferably custom built, but Dell will do) and a light, CHEAP, laptop. Trust me on this, laptops fail a lot more then desktop thanks to the regular use/abuse they take as portable machines and unlike a desktop when they break you or your local geek friends/campus computer store can't fix them. So you'll be stuck waiting for weeks for the manufacturer to fix and send back your laptop. And no matter what anyone says you will need to upgrade at least once through college, let's be honest, 4 years is a long time in the computer world. That's where the desktop comes in, cheap upgrades, and easy repairs.
For a PDA the best thing you can do is NOT buy a MS imbedded OS PDA. Those things are less personal digital assistants and more Game Boys on crack. Everyone I know uses them to play games/music/videos. Get a cheap low-end Palm device; it does all the important things like keep track of contacts and events with a simple interface and the unit costs hundreds less.
Oh and when it comes to the laptop brand, try to avoid the Apples. I know everyone now hates me but as an iBook owner I can tell you this, their overpriced and underpowered. You have one vendor for your software and hardware and their hell bent on charging you out the nose. Steve Jobs said it best when he was hawking MacOS 10.2: "It has 120 features, THAT'S LESS THEN 1 $ A FEATURE." Riiiiight
Take it from someone who's been through it, there is a big difference between what everyone says you need and what you really need
Um,
1
I have an ibook 2001 (the white 500 Mhz G3 model) and it redraws the screen just fine in X. The white ibooks use the Rage128 video chipset and the X drivers for the chipset work great.
Here's a nice kernel for these ibooks:
http://www.ppckernel.org/kernel.php?id=2
With mplayer I play DivX DVD rips in full screen using XVideo with less then 50 % CPU usage. The video is flawless as best I can tell.
Now that the internal modem is working as far as I can tell EVERYHTING in the ibook 2001 is now supported by linux.
I could have moded this, but I'd rather comment.
How will NOT making IE the default handler for URLS and HTML cripple the OS? How will NOT including MSN Messenger in the OS cripple it?
Microsoft is selling me an operating system, I have a fast connection and I can pull down the 2 - 3 MB install of MSN instant messenger if I want. If they want to integrate new features into their operating system maybe they should start with decent security features.
Maybe switching encryption algorithms for the Remote Desktop Protocal (Win2k and WinXP Termianl Services), from RC4 to AES or Blowfish. Or maybe they should stop wasting time with IM integration and build a mildly decent firewall into Windows 2000 Server. But hey, that would be hard and probably doesn't meet some end goal involving eating another market.
Not sure why I'm burning karma BUT
1. Cable or DSL are NOT secure, unless you encrypt the traffic it's not secure PERIOD.
2. Hell with Cable modems you don't get "clean signal strength". My friend's cable connection was down for 3 weeks about 4 months ago.
3. You don't need to cram "fiber bandwidth" down a pipe. Right now I get 1.5 mbit/sec down (200 k/sec) with my cable modem thats not exactly "fiber bandwidth."
4. And we would have more bandwidth if the spectrums were better managed and more of it were released for commercial US.
DivX as it stands has poor playback on Macs and at best decent playback on x86 Linux (people using Suns or LinuxPPC machines still have to wait). But there is a much better option, it's called VP3.2 and it was released last Friday (Sep 7) under a modified Mozilla Public License 1.1. Yes folks you read correctly, there is a decent video compression codec that is open source. Quicktime 5, Real Player and Windows Media Player can already read the movie files with the codec installed, and a Linux port is on the way. This codec beats the snot out of DivX in the streaming arena. Playback quality is good, and will get better with more work. Get it at:
http://www.vp3.com
I sold computer systems at a major retail outlet for nine months. I can't say which company but lets just say my store was store #297 (to give you an idea of how large this retail chain is). About a month after I started they began checking machines before finally giving them to a customer (a kind of last step in quality assurance). You know what's funny? Over 30% of the machines we sold would not boot up out of the box. These weren't no name junk, machines like HP, Compaq, Emachine and ofcource Packard Bell (which later merged their product line with NEC). These machine's died because of component failures. The most common were: Power Supply and Hard Drive failures. Simply put the manufacturers DO NOT CARE. They buy the cheapest Korean components, slap it together and hope the stores sell expensive service plans on the products. From my experiences over 60% of the machines we sold came back for repair within two years. And you know what? This makes perfect business sense. It's simple, Joe User doesn't have a clue. It goes like this: You buy the machine and no service plan, it fails in two years and you have to go out and buy a new machine (Manufacturers win). You buy the machine and an expensive ($200+) service plan, it fails in two years and you take it the store for repairs (Store still wins since parts cost them a small amount and at 11$ an hour technicians are dirt cheap). It's the perfect "You scratch my back I'll scratch your back" system. Maybe no one will believe this and I'll loose some Karma but after what I saw I build all my machines myself and maybe you guys should too.
This is going to kill my karma but there's no way I can keep quite ....
... I hear there's this company called AMD and they make decent CPUs that cost less and give comparable if not better performance to the Intel chips, but for hundreds less! I'm sick of this attitude that for stability and reliability you buy Intel. It's single minded purchasing like this that keeps innovation out of the marketplace.
:)
Ok, if you're unhappy about Intel why sit there and whine about it? Do something that will make Intel think twice about pulling dumb shit like this. BUY A COMPETING CHIP! I know it's crazy but
Disclaimer: I run and AMD Athalon 800 / Soyo SY-K7VIA / Geforce256 / SB Live rock solid under both SuSE 6.3 and Win98SE. So I may be a bit biased
SuSE does put an ISO of their current release on their ftp site. *But* it's only an evalutaion version, which gives you most of SuSE but you don't get the commercial apps (like a full version of OSS). You can get the current (SuSE 6.3) Evaluation ISO from: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/evaluation-6.3.is o or the much faster mirror: ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/distributions/suse/su se/i386/evaluation-6.3.iso Keeps watching those sites, the SuSE 6.4 Evaluation ISO will be most likely be uploaded there soon. Most SuSE users will agree the evaluation ISO is very good, so give it a try.
SuSE does put an ISO of their current release on their ftp site. *But* it's only an evalutaion version, which gives you most of SuSE but you don't get the commercial apps (like a full version of OSS). You can get the current (SuSE 6.3) Evaluation ISO from:. iso . iso / suse/i386/evaluation-6.3.iso
/ suse/i386/evaluation-6.3.iso
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/evaluation-6.3
or the much fa SuSE does put an ISO of their current release on their ftp site. But it's only an evalutaion version, which gives you most of SuSE but you don't get the commercial apps (like a full version of OSS). You can get the current (SuSE 6.3) Evaluation ISO from:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/evaluation-6.3
or the much faster mirror:
ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/distributions/suse
Keeps watching those sites, the SuSE 6.4 Evaluation ISO will be most likely be uploaded there soon. Most SuSE users will agree the evaluation ISO is very good, so give it a try.ster mirror:
ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/distributions/suse
Keeps watching those sites, the SuSE 6.4 Evaluation ISO will be most likely be uploaded there soon. Most SuSE users will agree the evaluation ISO is very good, so give it a try.