Why would you let anyone use your account? That's also why you lock your screen when you leave your desk. Yes, I also do this at home. There is no reason for anyone to use my account. They have their own and if they have not, they have no business on my machine.
I'm not sure if it's a safety design, but I had the auto-levelling system completely fail on my (now 11 year old) Audi TT. By default, it seems to level completely downwards and that's how I noticed that something was wrong. I basically didn't see the road ahead any more, but the lights were clearly on. From afar it most likely looked as if I had my parking lights on.
It wasn't an appeal to authority. Not in the typical sense because he actually did think his repairing computers and helping people out was already an appeal to authority by himself. Let's just say that I "overtrumped" him, is that acceptable? I stopped being a teacher, because I realized I suck at it. Mainly because I'm of the stance "You don't want to learn, I'm not going to care... you should be old enough by now to make your own choices". That's not an acceptable philosophy for a high school teacher. So instead of accusing me of doing an appeal to authority, look at the original poster first.
I don't buy your story. I've seen 50+ people learn basic computer usage. It cost effort, but they did it. I'm talking about people with no prior knowledge of computers at all. Persistence pays. I also said in my post that I do understand people who do not want to put effort in it any more. It's a trade off, like any choice in life.
Also, do note that we already were talking about a subset of people, being the so called "smart and well-rounded" people. I'm not saying everyone can learn everything, sometimes it's beyond the capacities of an individual. However, I'm pretty sure that the basics of everything should be attainable by "smart and well-rounded" people. I think, for example (Not computer oriented), every "well rounded" person should at least have basic grasp of Menelevian heredity. The basics, I don't ask them to sequence a genome. If they don't know it, I do expect them to pick that knowledge up quickly. For me this is within the definition of being well-rounded. If you can't do that, you're simply not well rounded....
that is like saying because i can play a bass I can trivially learn to play the Oboe.
I expect someone with solfége to be able to play a tune on an Oboe after an introduction on the instrument, yes. Immediately? No... Will they need to put an effort in it? Yes!
You see as someone who actually builds and repairs PCs
That's a reference? I'm a years long dumpster diver, I help people for free, I fix old computers, refurbish them, etc.... On top of that I have actually been a high school teacher (IT). You didn't expect that, now did you?
have found many VERY damned smart people that you might as well be speaking Chinese when it comes to PCs. they simply can not get their head around many of the concepts
Yes, and that is why I put two conditions to the learning process... The "well-rounded" means be able to learn, let's assume those well-rounded people have that ability. Now the second part is that they need to "want to learn". These smart "well-rounded" people will need to put an effort into it. I've seen people like that too, they want to know the computer basics, but when they realize it means time and effort, they stop listening. I understand, they have better things to do, family, friends, other intellectually stimulating activities.... but don't tell me they want to learn. They don't. That is exactly why I gave my mom as an example. For years and years and years she didn't touch that buzzing machine in the corner and made jokes about it ("If it can't do my laundry, it's useless to me".), but then she saw what it could do for her and her interest was piqued. She sat down, put some effort in it and learned it.
You want another example and you like musical instruments, right? Well, I can't play a musical instrument. I'm convinced I can learn to play a simple instrument if I'm willing to put in the effort to do so. Of course, not concert-quality, but a tune should be doable? Right? Right? Well, no... because frankly, I have no interest whatsoever in playing a musical instrument. I know it will take a lot of effort, and I'm simply not willing to learn it. Could I? I'm sure... (I mean, we're talking something like a recorder (English is not my native language, I wouldn't have guessed that was called a "recorder"...)
The rest of your post, while interesting, doesn't address anything in my comment. From your comment, I gather that your oldest is now something between 18 and 22 years old. Which makes me 8 to 12 years older. Guess, what? When I was in high school, I did the same. Typewriters? We had a computer since I was aged 12 and I got totally sucked up by it. I handed in typed assignments with graphs and whatnot. Not once did a teacher accuse me of cheating. Well, I did have to use the old fashioned dictionary as there was no Encarta, Wikipedia, and others...
"There's the jacket you wanted for 640 in the shop in the mall, you see it for 520 online, but the store at the mall has a sale where everything's slashed by 20%, is it worth heading down to the mall or is it still more expensive than online?"
That depends... Shipping and handling included in the online offer, and how much does it cost me to get to the mall? How about your ecological impact? Do you value being able to have the product in your hands before you buy, etc, etc, etc.... There is no 'right' answer to this question, one you really start to look at the big picture. A teen obviously won't do that, I'm just teasing you a bit.
I don't think fashion oriented questions like these would have motivated me when I was a kid;-)
Those people you mention, those well-rounded, etc... etc... should have no problem sitting down with an expert and listen and understand the fundamental concepts so that malware stops being a problem. Being "well-rounded" includes having learned how to learn.
My mom would qualify as one of those well-rounded people and she never had an interest in computers whatsoever even though her husband and all her children were into computers (everyone of her kids on a different level. My brother is a gamer, my sister a power user and I'm a computer scientist). Only when she discovered digital photography and email, she wanted to learn it and she grasped the concepts pretty quickly. She was in her early fifties then. Malware never was a problem, because I explained (duh!) basic Internet behaviour and risks to her. She's been migrated to Linux later, and the adaptation was no big deal.
The key factors here are "wanting to learn" and "having access to someone who can explain".
I still have my EEE 701 4G in active use (has 2GB RAM, though). It runs Debian Squeeze with LXDE and iceweasel as a browser.
I think those small netbooks make nifty home servers, but I do have to say that I'm very happy with my Soekris net5501-70 as a home server. The only moving part is the 1TB 2.5" SATA disk and the machine is inaudible, which is important as I live in an apartment and a noisy computer on all the time is a no-no with the wife. Those netbooks fans sometimes make a lot of noise, but you might be lucky.
Why didn't you just go base Debian installation, which would have given you a machine without X in the first place? My server runs OpenBSD, which simply doesn't come with X unless you explicitly install it,
In June I got a brand new Dell XPS L502x with 4GB RAM, 500GB RAM and Quad Core i7 and a 15" 1080p screen (NVidia graphics, but of the "bad" Optimus kind).... For 525€ (Always count 1$=1€ when the dollar is weak). How did I do it? Pure luck. I've been subscribed to their newsletter for ages as you pretty much always can get 5% off. If you need a computer, that 5% is at least 5%. Sometimes they do this action "scratch ticket style". You get a code, and this code will give you 5%, 10%, 25% or 50% off. I never expected they would actually give anyone 50%, but I amused myself setting together a laptop I'd think would be nice, but for which I would never have paid full price. I entered my code and to my astonishment, I got the 50% off.
I bought 3 machines. One for my sister, one for my brother and one for me. I could have ordered up to 5, but my credit card wouldn't have let me. (Max 2000€/month)
Now, I agree you had a good deal, but you can get nifty *new* stuff cheap too...
35€ USB optical drive covers all my needs. I can use it on all machines I own (and those that I don't own) and it rarely to never gets any use. The last time I used it, I think was to burn a Ubuntu ISO for a machine that didn't support PXE boot.
Nope... The D4nn is a single core CPU, with Hyperthreading. The dual core version is the D5nn, also with Hyperthreading, I'm typing this on one (Atom D525, 199€ nettop with 2GB RAM and 320GB HDD). It's a fine little machine, but don't expect too much of it. I'm running Ubuntu on it and Flash games are unbearable. Flash video seems to be fine though. Of course, Adobe is to blame as my Core2Duo at work has the same troubles, except the problems are fewer, or more quickly resolved. (Browser locking for several seconds. Killing the plugin makes it run again, so it definitely is the plugin) While Linux can make weaker hardware function fine, once Flash is involved, performance goes through the drain. The same machine running Windows XP with the Flash plugin would run the same games fine. I have tested this myself.
Anyway, the Atom is a fine choice for basic web surfing, and office tasks. It's also a nice choice for a home server. They are best coupled with Windows (XP) due to the Flash performance issue. If Flash on Linux were better, I'd say they make perfect "daily use" machines.
These Atoms sometimes can surprise with what they can do. I have VirtualBox running on my D525 with an XP Pro guest machine. Works just fine... (Well, okay, it's for occasional tests... nothing fancy or heavy use) I was surprised to find out that that CPU doesn't have hardware virtualization, yet it works.
Not really, when running Limited User, then there is basically not big deal about security. The solution 7 and Vista provide is not really a solution. Businesses who upgrade to 7 and Vista should have locked down desktops and... surprise, if XP is locked down, it is exactly as secure.
....and yet, I have managed for years to live with a Limited User account for day to day usage. Only logging in as Admin when administrative tasks were at hand. What Vista/7 offers isn't better anyway.
In fact, even with "modern" apps, you'll see plenty of them that expect to be Admin *if they are running on XP* because that's what everybody does on XP
Which also means they weren't certified as "Runs on XP", because those require you to run perfectly on Limited User. Oddly enough, open source applications seem to be work pretty well on XP/Limited User. Strange, isn't it?
Disable Internet Explorer 6 for the non-corporate users and tell the users to use Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari. Most using XP and having a clue do that anyway. This is one of the things I never understood: there is open source software that easily beats the pants off their own software. Notepad++ instead of Notepad, Paint.Net versus Paint, etc, etc, etc... Make it a base system with installable components, and be done with it. It is perfectly possible to keep XP alive, while disabling IE6 for general Internet access.
An operating systems task is to run programs and manage the resources of the machine. Basically, IE6 shouldn't even be in it. They did that to themselves.
XP really is the "good enough" for operating systems, and it shows.... That's why I said sell support subscriptions at 5€/year. Given the install base, that would be a highly profitable venture. (For basically keeping XP on life support and eventually all security issues will be fixed and then it will cost nothing to maintain, but bring in enormous amount of money)
Why would it kill their cash cow? Let's take for example Windows XP which is considered mature by now. Don't give me the "security" aspects, as I know it is perfectly possible with modern applications to run XP in Limited User. Software doesn't spoil. Set up a small maintenance team for XP to roll out security patches. Sell XP for 35€ per license and from 2014 on (when the official support stops), charge a 5€/year subscription to fund the maintenance team.
This would be an instant success, especially in the corporate world. Given the fact that end-user computing power needs have attained a plateau, a simple machine running XP with 2GB RAM is enough. So, I'm pretty sure such a plan would work perfectly well. Heck, if I would still be running Windows, I would have gone for a 5€/year subscription to have support indefinitely.
It wasn't until two years later, when his wife Bertha took one of them without telling him and went for a 120 mile round-trip to visit her mother that people actually realized "Hey, this funny thing seems to actually work" and started buying like crazy.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm, apparently it's 230V for my country. Anyway, most European countries seem to be between 220V and 240V at 50Hz.
Ah, yes... These days it's 240V... I always forget. You're right of course.
So, yahoo is up for sale? If everyone empties their pocket change and we pool together we can own a piece of Internet history... ;-)
Enjoy
Preferably something like lemonparty given the age of Fred Phelps... *grin*
Why would you let anyone use your account? That's also why you lock your screen when you leave your desk. Yes, I also do this at home. There is no reason for anyone to use my account. They have their own and if they have not, they have no business on my machine.
Which means, he's probably the one actually surfing the porn ;-)
....and dating sites are often operated by porn companies. I know, I work for one. Those dating sites are mostly scams in the first place.
Doesn't everyone have 220V outlets in their bedroom? I certainly have....
I'm not sure if it's a safety design, but I had the auto-levelling system completely fail on my (now 11 year old) Audi TT. By default, it seems to level completely downwards and that's how I noticed that something was wrong. I basically didn't see the road ahead any more, but the lights were clearly on. From afar it most likely looked as if I had my parking lights on.
It wasn't an appeal to authority. Not in the typical sense because he actually did think his repairing computers and helping people out was already an appeal to authority by himself. Let's just say that I "overtrumped" him, is that acceptable? I stopped being a teacher, because I realized I suck at it. Mainly because I'm of the stance "You don't want to learn, I'm not going to care... you should be old enough by now to make your own choices". That's not an acceptable philosophy for a high school teacher. So instead of accusing me of doing an appeal to authority, look at the original poster first.
I don't buy your story. I've seen 50+ people learn basic computer usage. It cost effort, but they did it. I'm talking about people with no prior knowledge of computers at all. Persistence pays. I also said in my post that I do understand people who do not want to put effort in it any more. It's a trade off, like any choice in life.
Also, do note that we already were talking about a subset of people, being the so called "smart and well-rounded" people. I'm not saying everyone can learn everything, sometimes it's beyond the capacities of an individual. However, I'm pretty sure that the basics of everything should be attainable by "smart and well-rounded" people. I think, for example (Not computer oriented), every "well rounded" person should at least have basic grasp of Menelevian heredity. The basics, I don't ask them to sequence a genome. If they don't know it, I do expect them to pick that knowledge up quickly. For me this is within the definition of being well-rounded. If you can't do that, you're simply not well rounded....
I expect someone with solfége to be able to play a tune on an Oboe after an introduction on the instrument, yes. Immediately? No... Will they need to put an effort in it? Yes!
That's a reference? I'm a years long dumpster diver, I help people for free, I fix old computers, refurbish them, etc.... On top of that I have actually been a high school teacher (IT). You didn't expect that, now did you?
Yes, and that is why I put two conditions to the learning process... The "well-rounded" means be able to learn, let's assume those well-rounded people have that ability. Now the second part is that they need to "want to learn". These smart "well-rounded" people will need to put an effort into it. I've seen people like that too, they want to know the computer basics, but when they realize it means time and effort, they stop listening. I understand, they have better things to do, family, friends, other intellectually stimulating activities.... but don't tell me they want to learn. They don't. That is exactly why I gave my mom as an example. For years and years and years she didn't touch that buzzing machine in the corner and made jokes about it ("If it can't do my laundry, it's useless to me".), but then she saw what it could do for her and her interest was piqued. She sat down, put some effort in it and learned it.
You want another example and you like musical instruments, right? Well, I can't play a musical instrument. I'm convinced I can learn to play a simple instrument if I'm willing to put in the effort to do so. Of course, not concert-quality, but a tune should be doable? Right? Right? Well, no... because frankly, I have no interest whatsoever in playing a musical instrument. I know it will take a lot of effort, and I'm simply not willing to learn it. Could I? I'm sure... (I mean, we're talking something like a recorder (English is not my native language, I wouldn't have guessed that was called a "recorder"...)
The rest of your post, while interesting, doesn't address anything in my comment. From your comment, I gather that your oldest is now something between 18 and 22 years old. Which makes me 8 to 12 years older. Guess, what? When I was in high school, I did the same. Typewriters? We had a computer since I was aged 12 and I got totally sucked up by it. I handed in typed assignments with graphs and whatnot. Not once did a teacher accuse me of cheating. Well, I did have to use the old fashioned dictionary as there was no Encarta, Wikipedia, and others...
That depends... Shipping and handling included in the online offer, and how much does it cost me to get to the mall? How about your ecological impact? Do you value being able to have the product in your hands before you buy, etc, etc, etc.... There is no 'right' answer to this question, one you really start to look at the big picture. A teen obviously won't do that, I'm just teasing you a bit.
I don't think fashion oriented questions like these would have motivated me when I was a kid ;-)
Did you do that on purpose?
Those people you mention, those well-rounded, etc... etc... should have no problem sitting down with an expert and listen and understand the fundamental concepts so that malware stops being a problem. Being "well-rounded" includes having learned how to learn.
My mom would qualify as one of those well-rounded people and she never had an interest in computers whatsoever even though her husband and all her children were into computers (everyone of her kids on a different level. My brother is a gamer, my sister a power user and I'm a computer scientist). Only when she discovered digital photography and email, she wanted to learn it and she grasped the concepts pretty quickly. She was in her early fifties then. Malware never was a problem, because I explained (duh!) basic Internet behaviour and risks to her. She's been migrated to Linux later, and the adaptation was no big deal.
The key factors here are "wanting to learn" and "having access to someone who can explain".
I still have my EEE 701 4G in active use (has 2GB RAM, though). It runs Debian Squeeze with LXDE and iceweasel as a browser.
I think those small netbooks make nifty home servers, but I do have to say that I'm very happy with my Soekris net5501-70 as a home server. The only moving part is the 1TB 2.5" SATA disk and the machine is inaudible, which is important as I live in an apartment and a noisy computer on all the time is a no-no with the wife. Those netbooks fans sometimes make a lot of noise, but you might be lucky.
Why didn't you just go base Debian installation, which would have given you a machine without X in the first place? My server runs OpenBSD, which simply doesn't come with X unless you explicitly install it,
In June I got a brand new Dell XPS L502x with 4GB RAM, 500GB RAM and Quad Core i7 and a 15" 1080p screen (NVidia graphics, but of the "bad" Optimus kind).... For 525€ (Always count 1$=1€ when the dollar is weak). How did I do it? Pure luck. I've been subscribed to their newsletter for ages as you pretty much always can get 5% off. If you need a computer, that 5% is at least 5%. Sometimes they do this action "scratch ticket style". You get a code, and this code will give you 5%, 10%, 25% or 50% off. I never expected they would actually give anyone 50%, but I amused myself setting together a laptop I'd think would be nice, but for which I would never have paid full price. I entered my code and to my astonishment, I got the 50% off.
I bought 3 machines. One for my sister, one for my brother and one for me. I could have ordered up to 5, but my credit card wouldn't have let me. (Max 2000€/month)
Now, I agree you had a good deal, but you can get nifty *new* stuff cheap too...
35€ USB optical drive covers all my needs. I can use it on all machines I own (and those that I don't own) and it rarely to never gets any use. The last time I used it, I think was to burn a Ubuntu ISO for a machine that didn't support PXE boot.
Nope... The D4nn is a single core CPU, with Hyperthreading. The dual core version is the D5nn, also with Hyperthreading, I'm typing this on one (Atom D525, 199€ nettop with 2GB RAM and 320GB HDD). It's a fine little machine, but don't expect too much of it. I'm running Ubuntu on it and Flash games are unbearable. Flash video seems to be fine though. Of course, Adobe is to blame as my Core2Duo at work has the same troubles, except the problems are fewer, or more quickly resolved. (Browser locking for several seconds. Killing the plugin makes it run again, so it definitely is the plugin) While Linux can make weaker hardware function fine, once Flash is involved, performance goes through the drain. The same machine running Windows XP with the Flash plugin would run the same games fine. I have tested this myself.
Anyway, the Atom is a fine choice for basic web surfing, and office tasks. It's also a nice choice for a home server. They are best coupled with Windows (XP) due to the Flash performance issue. If Flash on Linux were better, I'd say they make perfect "daily use" machines.
These Atoms sometimes can surprise with what they can do. I have VirtualBox running on my D525 with an XP Pro guest machine. Works just fine... (Well, okay, it's for occasional tests... nothing fancy or heavy use) I was surprised to find out that that CPU doesn't have hardware virtualization, yet it works.
Not really, when running Limited User, then there is basically not big deal about security. The solution 7 and Vista provide is not really a solution. Businesses who upgrade to 7 and Vista should have locked down desktops and ... surprise, if XP is locked down, it is exactly as secure.
I didn't set an upper bound in time ;-) Probably in 2167 or so.
....and yet, I have managed for years to live with a Limited User account for day to day usage. Only logging in as Admin when administrative tasks were at hand. What Vista/7 offers isn't better anyway.
Which also means they weren't certified as "Runs on XP", because those require you to run perfectly on Limited User. Oddly enough, open source applications seem to be work pretty well on XP/Limited User. Strange, isn't it?
Disable Internet Explorer 6 for the non-corporate users and tell the users to use Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari. Most using XP and having a clue do that anyway. This is one of the things I never understood: there is open source software that easily beats the pants off their own software. Notepad++ instead of Notepad, Paint.Net versus Paint, etc, etc, etc... Make it a base system with installable components, and be done with it. It is perfectly possible to keep XP alive, while disabling IE6 for general Internet access.
An operating systems task is to run programs and manage the resources of the machine. Basically, IE6 shouldn't even be in it. They did that to themselves.
XP really is the "good enough" for operating systems, and it shows.... That's why I said sell support subscriptions at 5€/year. Given the install base, that would be a highly profitable venture. (For basically keeping XP on life support and eventually all security issues will be fixed and then it will cost nothing to maintain, but bring in enormous amount of money)
Why would it kill their cash cow? Let's take for example Windows XP which is considered mature by now. Don't give me the "security" aspects, as I know it is perfectly possible with modern applications to run XP in Limited User. Software doesn't spoil. Set up a small maintenance team for XP to roll out security patches. Sell XP for 35€ per license and from 2014 on (when the official support stops), charge a 5€/year subscription to fund the maintenance team.
This would be an instant success, especially in the corporate world. Given the fact that end-user computing power needs have attained a plateau, a simple machine running XP with 2GB RAM is enough. So, I'm pretty sure such a plan would work perfectly well. Heck, if I would still be running Windows, I would have gone for a 5€/year subscription to have support indefinitely.
... and thus was the "Pit Babe" born.... ;-)