Not to say that AVG and Clam aren't great, but the average user wants to set it up and never look at it again, which is what Norton can give you that AVG and Clam can't.
Except, of course, that Symantec/Norton will attempt to trick you into manually paying for a subscription renewal, when you are being auto-billed...which is another thing Norton can give you that free AV can't.
Because it doesn't hurt to have a reminder that the people we deal with on a regular basis don't think the way we do, and don't necessarily have even the most basic knowledge we take for granted.
"Is this "Foxfire" thing the Internet Service Provider y'all use here?"---actual quote from today.
Yeah--you unplug if there's lightning: that "should be" common sense. Here, though, not so much lightning as "sweet raccoon love" on the transformer. Or big surges after blackouts, or golf ball size hail, or drunken accidents.
For not-worst-case-scenarios, I tell my patrons to get the highest rated surge protector available locally and to put an in-line protector on the adapter cable, and to change them out after any major surge, or annually, if they didn't notice a surge, as we usually get one major electronics-frying surge a year. The ones who listen don't come in with that kind of problem. The ones who come in with fried components are either new in the area or are the ones who didn't get the message the first time.
Not only that, if you live in a rural area (or anywhere with poor infrastructure), surge protectors are essential. In my town, a high-rated wall-plug surge protector combined with an in-line protector, changed out annually, prevents disasters.
I learned about the relationship between surges and fried motherboards the hard way.
Thanks (I had seen the restricted repositories page, but not the one-click page) --I tried it, but my favorite media players (VLC and SMplayer) will play mp4 and and some avi, but not play mp3, flv or other avi. Kaffiene plays all of 'em now, but doesn't have the controls I like. I guess I'm gonna have to play around with some CLI troubleshooting.
...I am wondering how long it'll stay 'pure' before the user realizes "hey, I can't run $favorite_item, even though it normally runs fine on Linux!"
This.
...although the philosophy is admirable, this is often a problem on any free/libre-based system. I am still trying to track down proprietary drivers/codecs/packages after my 13.1 openSUSE upgrade. It frustrates me no end, because the packages "just work" on the Ubuntu and Mint test partitions.
Not to go off-topic, but sometimes I wonder if we in the F/LOSS community really want people using our products...
Having a huge religion is probably not enough to get you a part in a porn movie, though.
Have you seen religious films?--Sub-par acting, minimal plots, stories subordinate to the religious/doctrinal content and leading to unmistakeable climaxes--
When my town finally upgraded its water/sewer, they found that they were still using the wooden lines that my 104-year-old grandfather watched them put in when he was seven. Apparently, water swells the wood to keep it from leaking. It worked as long as it was undisturbed in the ground, but was mostly destroyed in removal.
Parent was using "stand-alone" in the sense that, even if the power goes you could still dial 911 and get your local emergency services. With "modern" telecommunication, if you interrupt the infrastructure, you truly "stand alone."
In the county where I live, there are large areas with no radio or cell reception. Law enforcement and emergency services must find someone's house and make a landline call to keep in touch with County Dispatch in those areas. Even the county seat has no radio reception and only has cell coverage because Homeland Security forced them to install a tower.
Our telco has installed fibre in the official communities and is slowly expanding, but when we lose power (which happens at least 2-3 times a year, sometimes more), we have no communications whatsoever. Once this year, our town's Maintenance Director had to drive out to another town in order to inform our telco that we had no service (Part of their network had gone down, and they hadn't realized we had gone down as well).
We just have to hope that we don't suffer an actual disaster, because we no longer have POTS as a a backup infrastructure.
I sometimes go to client's houses or places of business. It helps to have an option you can just plug into their PC to demonstrate why the print won't come out the same as it appears on their mis-calibrated monitors.
I liked Ender's Game, but didn't care for books two to four. My mom, on the other hand disliked EG but enjoyed the other three and thought they "made up for" the first. Takes all kinds.
Yah, but there is a difference between "protect[ing] humanity at the expense of the individual" in pursuit of the Zeroth law by allowing human injury or death to happen, and arming a robot army to send out against humanity. That is why it failed as a film adaptation of I, Robot specifically.
I might've been OK with it had it been called Isaac Asimov's Robots or Three Laws and had it been set in the Lucky Starr period or set as a prequel to the Bailey/Olivaw novels, where it could have effectively set up the robot hatred in The Caves of Steel society.
We don't use IE6, but when the library I run applies for E-rate funding (a thrice-annual ordeal for the smallest of libraries), the company that handles the applications uses IE6 and only offers an IE6-compliant website, despite years of complaints. Their site will only work with IE, 6 preferred; though modern versions of IE or Firefox with IE Tab will make it through a form, albeit usually with a page load error or two, which require you to clear the cache and log in again before you can finish.
So, even though we don't directly use IE6, and thus are not counted in the statistics, we and the hundreds of other libraries using the application process, have to deal with it several times a year.
As a rural librarian, I have seen patrons that use Win95 (actually, I haven't seen them in about a year--they may have passed away), Win98 (saw that one last month), Win XP, Vista and Win7. I haven't seen ME or 2000, but I would bet they are out there. I keep a small library of obsolete basic software so I can handle corrupted installs or such like, but...
,,,some folks can't afford to upgrade.
Hell, I have patrons who can't afford electricity or indoor plumbing!
Thanks for the recommendation--it sounds like something i'll enjoy. I had to pre-order it, though, as all the e-copies seem to have been removed in anticipation of the hardcover release next February. *scowl*
Well, ya know, when we actually routinely put people on Mars, we are going to see many spacesuits made of "overalls, old backpack[s], PVC plumbing elements and silver duct-tape." Supply lines will be tenuous and we need to start now figuring out how to DIY suits from old rover parts and low-temperature duct tape.
Yeah, well--ain't no "parks, trails, beaches and even bicycle lanes" in my town. Actually there is a "park" which is about the size of a largish back yard. The places to run are along the highway or other similar roads without bike lanes or sidewalks, or going 2-4 miles out of town to the forest service roads with the added hazards of rattlesnake, cougar, moose and, this past month, grizzly.
I guess you take your life in your hands regardless; but in my town, you have a 0.5% chance of dying in a vehicle annually, about half that of having a serious horse-related injury, and about a 15-20% chance of injuring yourself on rough terrain or on ice; but, despite the idiots, teens and drunks (not mutually exclusive categories) behind the wheel, no pedestrian's been hit by a motor vehicle in the last ten years.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to say that AVG and Clam aren't great, but the average user wants to set it up and never look at it again, which is what Norton can give you that AVG and Clam can't.
Except, of course, that Symantec/Norton will attempt to trick you into manually paying for a subscription renewal, when you are being auto-billed...which is another thing Norton can give you that free AV can't.
Any operating system that requires anti-virus software to be safe should be avoided at all costs.
...except for the three times a year that you have to do paperwork/reports on a G--d--'d IE6-compliant website.
Because it doesn't hurt to have a reminder that the people we deal with on a regular basis don't think the way we do, and don't necessarily have even the most basic knowledge we take for granted.
"Is this "Foxfire" thing the Internet Service Provider y'all use here?"---actual quote from today.
Yeah--you unplug if there's lightning: that "should be" common sense. Here, though, not so much lightning as "sweet raccoon love" on the transformer. Or big surges after blackouts, or golf ball size hail, or drunken accidents.
For not-worst-case-scenarios, I tell my patrons to get the highest rated surge protector available locally and to put an in-line protector on the adapter cable, and to change them out after any major surge, or annually, if they didn't notice a surge, as we usually get one major electronics-frying surge a year. The ones who listen don't come in with that kind of problem. The ones who come in with fried components are either new in the area or are the ones who didn't get the message the first time.
Not only that, if you live in a rural area (or anywhere with poor infrastructure), surge protectors are essential. In my town, a high-rated wall-plug surge protector combined with an in-line protector, changed out annually, prevents disasters.
I learned about the relationship between surges and fried motherboards the hard way.
Oh for a mod point.
Thanks (I had seen the restricted repositories page, but not the one-click page) --I tried it, but my favorite media players (VLC and SMplayer) will play mp4 and and some avi, but not play mp3, flv or other avi. Kaffiene plays all of 'em now, but doesn't have the controls I like. I guess I'm gonna have to play around with some CLI troubleshooting.
...I am wondering how long it'll stay 'pure' before the user realizes "hey, I can't run $favorite_item, even though it normally runs fine on Linux!"
This.
...although the philosophy is admirable, this is often a problem on any free/libre-based system. I am still trying to track down proprietary drivers/codecs/packages after my 13.1 openSUSE upgrade. It frustrates me no end, because the packages "just work" on the Ubuntu and Mint test partitions.
Not to go off-topic, but sometimes I wonder if we in the F/LOSS community really want people using our products...
Having a huge religion is probably not enough to get you a part in a porn movie, though.
Have you seen religious films?--Sub-par acting, minimal plots, stories subordinate to the religious/doctrinal content and leading to unmistakeable climaxes--
When my town finally upgraded its water/sewer, they found that they were still using the wooden lines that my 104-year-old grandfather watched them put in when he was seven. Apparently, water swells the wood to keep it from leaking. It worked as long as it was undisturbed in the ground, but was mostly destroyed in removal.
Parent was using "stand-alone" in the sense that, even if the power goes you could still dial 911 and get your local emergency services. With "modern" telecommunication, if you interrupt the infrastructure, you truly "stand alone."
In the county where I live, there are large areas with no radio or cell reception. Law enforcement and emergency services must find someone's house and make a landline call to keep in touch with County Dispatch in those areas. Even the county seat has no radio reception and only has cell coverage because Homeland Security forced them to install a tower.
Our telco has installed fibre in the official communities and is slowly expanding, but when we lose power (which happens at least 2-3 times a year, sometimes more), we have no communications whatsoever. Once this year, our town's Maintenance Director had to drive out to another town in order to inform our telco that we had no service (Part of their network had gone down, and they hadn't realized we had gone down as well).
We just have to hope that we don't suffer an actual disaster, because we no longer have POTS as a a backup infrastructure.
I sometimes go to client's houses or places of business. It helps to have an option you can just plug into their PC to demonstrate why the print won't come out the same as it appears on their mis-calibrated monitors.
Try allowing the healthsherpa and the cloudfront scripts. That should allow you to get to the next step.
That was part of the idea.
It's a shame Flight 93 didn't drill Congress while it was in session.
If that had happened, Jack Ryan would have become president, and then where would we be?
It's on the US Marine Corps Professional Reading List, according to the Wikipedia.
I liked Ender's Game, but didn't care for books two to four. My mom, on the other hand disliked EG but enjoyed the other three and thought they "made up for" the first. Takes all kinds.
Aw, cool--I, for some reason, had never heard of the Ellison screenplay. Ordering it now.
Thanks a million!
Yah, but there is a difference between "protect[ing] humanity at the expense of the individual" in pursuit of the Zeroth law by allowing human injury or death to happen, and arming a robot army to send out against humanity. That is why it failed as a film adaptation of I, Robot specifically.
I might've been OK with it had it been called Isaac Asimov's Robots or Three Laws and had it been set in the Lucky Starr period or set as a prequel to the Bailey/Olivaw novels, where it could have effectively set up the robot hatred in The Caves of Steel society.
It was just not I, Robot.
Not really [statcounter.com].
We don't use IE6, but when the library I run applies for E-rate funding (a thrice-annual ordeal for the smallest of libraries), the company that handles the applications uses IE6 and only offers an IE6-compliant website, despite years of complaints. Their site will only work with IE, 6 preferred; though modern versions of IE or Firefox with IE Tab will make it through a form, albeit usually with a page load error or two, which require you to clear the cache and log in again before you can finish.
So, even though we don't directly use IE6, and thus are not counted in the statistics, we and the hundreds of other libraries using the application process, have to deal with it several times a year.
Vista?
As a rural librarian, I have seen patrons that use Win95 (actually, I haven't seen them in about a year--they may have passed away), Win98 (saw that one last month), Win XP, Vista and Win7. I haven't seen ME or 2000, but I would bet they are out there. I keep a small library of obsolete basic software so I can handle corrupted installs or such like, but...
,,,some folks can't afford to upgrade.
Hell, I have patrons who can't afford electricity or indoor plumbing!
Thanks for the recommendation--it sounds like something i'll enjoy. I had to pre-order it, though, as all the e-copies seem to have been removed in anticipation of the hardcover release next February. *scowl*
Well, ya know, when we actually routinely put people on Mars, we are going to see many spacesuits made of "overalls, old backpack[s], PVC plumbing elements and silver duct-tape." Supply lines will be tenuous and we need to start now figuring out how to DIY suits from old rover parts and low-temperature duct tape.
Yeah, well--ain't no "parks, trails, beaches and even bicycle lanes" in my town. Actually there is a "park" which is about the size of a largish back yard. The places to run are along the highway or other similar roads without bike lanes or sidewalks, or going 2-4 miles out of town to the forest service roads with the added hazards of rattlesnake, cougar, moose and, this past month, grizzly.
I guess you take your life in your hands regardless; but in my town, you have a 0.5% chance of dying in a vehicle annually, about half that of having a serious horse-related injury, and about a 15-20% chance of injuring yourself on rough terrain or on ice; but, despite the idiots, teens and drunks (not mutually exclusive categories) behind the wheel, no pedestrian's been hit by a motor vehicle in the last ten years.