I'm a smart software developer, so I'm pretty sure my computer is not affected (secured hardware firewall, etc). But how can I be sure?
As a smart software developer, you know not to trust a box that may be untrustworthy. You packets leave the untrusted box and must pass elsewhere where they can be monitored. Do you monitor your router traffic? That's number 1. Windows Updates may cause unexpected traffic, but the addresses will let you know if it's outgoing spam or request for updates from Microsoft.
For example my recent URL's from my router log show the following.. 192.168.1.81 168.143.175.215 www 192.168.1.81 74.125.47.164 www Google 192.168.1.81 210.50.7.243 www Doubleclick --- I'm going to have to add this to my hosts file.. 192.168.1.81 8.14.216.9 www 192.168.1.81 74.125.47.164 www Google 192.168.1.81 203.34.47.165 www IDG publications 192.168.1.81 210.50.7.243 www Doubleclick 192.168.1.81 210.247.196.12 www www.facilitatedigital.com/ 192.168.1.81 217.20.16.80 www 192.168.1.81 209.27.52.115 www Doubleclick 192.168.1.81 66.35.250.151 www Slashdot 192.168.1.81 209.62.176.153 www Doubleclick 192.168.1.81 74.125.47.164 www Google 192.168.1.81 74.125.47.103 www Google
It's all WWW traffic and no unexpected port 25 traffic. A simple Linksys router can give you this information. Take the addresses given and plug them in to the URL bar in your browser to see if there is any unexpected traffic. Don't trust a possibly owned machine. Go upstream and look at the traffic. Most routers will log some incomming and outgoing traffic. Check it once in a while. You machine might be clean, but the kids may have problems. The kids are at school so all recent traffic is mine. If my wife's desktop was spewing traffic, I would see the traffic from another machine's IP address.
And yes, that is my real IP address for today. I'm glad media sentry isn't in the list.;-)
So as long as the alzheimers patients put their shoes on, they can't wander away? Or maybe the staff just ties the knots really tight so they can't get them off.
Many elderly patients have tender feet and don't make it past the parking lot. Most all always wear shoes. As part of my old tech job service calls was part of the job. I have seen it in action. The patients rarely venture off the carpet or tile without shoes. The hardier patients simply get the tags in other clothing items, walking aids, wheelchairs, or other essentials, but most monitoring can be done with the shoes and this reduces the tag inventory needed. It's very rare for patients to wander off without clothing or walking aids.
Just plug in the coordinates in the map search bar as "44.077967 -121.314898" using format Lat.XXXXXX in decimal and Lon.XXXXXX in decimal. Use a minus for South Latitudes an West Longitudes. The above example is in a golf course in Bend Oregon USA. You wouldn't see your pet from the nearest intersection the service would provide.
Finally, once you have a fix back at your server, you need to make it meaningful to the user. They do not generally want a bare latitude and longitude. They want to know what street their car is on.
Actually a good map with the real coordinates is much more useful than just an intersection. Interfacing with Google maps for example can pinpoint the stolen car in that 2 car garage, instead of just letting you know it's at 119th and Maple. Frustrated users who can't tell which backyard their pet is in will demand better resolution data. I hope raw data is an option. With a hand held GPS, I can punch in coordinates and locate a pet in the park or someone's backyard.
Favourite application: tracking sub-prime used cars so repo men can find them.
A fix to the nearest intersection is good enough for this. It's either an employer's parking lot, owner's home garage, or on nearby on street parking. A stolen jet ski or pet hidden in a garage is not as easy to find without a better GPS fix.
GPS wanders around enough from fix to fix, even with WAAS, that it can be tricky to compare fixes to detect movement, or to track movement of less than 50 meters. Oh, and the GPS needs to be able to hear satellite signals. Good luck on that.
Check out the demo of how it works. They only give a location to the nearest intersection. This isn't very useful if your kid was abducted and whisked away into a large apartment complex. You know he is around somewhere, but out of sight. These would be much more useful for recovery of stolen property if in addition to the intersection, it gave the last 100 actual GPS coordinates. From there, you may be able to trace the direction to one block of apartments prior to loss of signal from going indoors. The last 100 fixes before signal loss would be very useful in tracking a stolen pet, child, or BMW.
actually, the nursing home my grandma lives in uses this sort of thing for their advanced alzheimer's patients. they implemented it after one of them wandered out last winter and died from exposure.
Many nursing homes do that. Instead of the cost of a cell subscription and tracking, and recharging batteries, they typically simply use it for perimeter control. It works like store anti-shoplifting tags. They put them in the shoes, so if the shoes try to cross a mat at the door, the alarm at the door goes off notifying the staff.
Ok, say I'm paranoid. Is there anything on the market that can detect these devices?
Use anything that can detect a nearby cell signal. If you think your car is bugged, take it through a few tunnels or parking structures so it re-connects to a cell tower. (turn off you phone first) You can only detect these either by the GPS Local Oscillator (if you know the frequency) or detect them while they re-connect to a cell tower. Detecting the local oscillator of the GPS isn't easy as it isn't strong and is often well shielded. The cell module on the other hand is designed to transmit a signal to a cell tower, but it isn't on all the time. The trick is to make it turn on so you can find it. Causing a signal loss and then returning to cell tower range is a way to get these to announce to a tower, I am here. That's how you find them.
Hell, I got a new PC with Vista included (couldn't buy it without) and I got rid of it as soon as I could (well, I tried it for a weekend and decided it was crap).
Bare hard drives are cheap. Simply swap out the drive for a big drive. If you have hardware problems in warranty, swap it back for the vendor. Let them figure out why it hasn't been booted since you bought it and let them deal with all the factory installed crap nag screens. A recent HP laptop took over 20 minutes from initial power on to get to the point of creating a user account. I gave up. It's quicker to plug in another drive and install Ubuntu. When done, it works and is free of the cruft.
If you are watching a movie, or doing something full screen, why the hell would you want to see a dialog box? That's why you're in full screen; that's the modality of window that shows nothingbut that window. Why should an OS let a popup show up?
More important, why shoud a pop-up on the laptop screen stop the running full screen movie on the projection screen? This is just plain bad design.
And the AV is not necessarily 3rd party. Vista comes bundled with an AV. And, quite frankly, nobody loves those little popup windows like Microsoft.
How well do you think the software was designed when it askes to be upgraded online while threre is no connection? Again, poor design. How about checking for a working connection before stopping the movie to ask to upgrade? Better yet, how about waiting for the presentation to finish?
Not being able to log onto servers is a big bummer, too, especially if you need those servers to do work. I mean, if you can't log onto Samba shares, you might as well use a Mac.../sarcasm
I like their response when searching for a solution why one machne out of 10 can't log in.. Please upgrade everything else to use the new authentication.. Downgrading Vista is not recommended.. I'm logging into a network appliance.. The recommended soultion is to obsolete the Linux based servers and upgrade everyting from the Windows 95 laptop, to the Mac, Ubuntu, XP, ME, 98SE, Linspire, etc. The servers are my encrypted backup filesystem and media server. Excuse me while I downgrade Vista to fit in. Too bad it took a registery edit to change it.
I would point out that a few years ago Microsoft got a minor rap across the knuckles for refusing to allow OEMs to install non-Microsoft software.
Now vendors should get a rap on the knuckles for installing any software that isn't a full functioning product. You want to install a photo editor, fine, but it better not expire. Only subscription based services such as AV updates should require a payment to get the signature file updates. Nobody should have to sweep off all the declined offers. They should auto uninstall completely and restore the original file type associations on failure to accept the sales pitch.
A photo editor on my wife's machine broke the ability for the photocopier software to use the scanner. Attempting to photocopy something simply launched the expired trial editor. Uninstalling the editor left windows looking for the missing photo editor.. Umm how about letting the photocopier get the scan? The anti-consumer action should be banned. We use Ubuntu with the scanner now. Windows is broken by a trial software package.
The wrong default paper size is a minor annoyance, but fixable. I'll take a wrong default paper size over the inability to log in to my server or a really difficult obscure way to address a network printer using the Internet Printing Protocol.
Entering a device ID of lpd://192.168.1.105/lp1 is much easer in linux than putting that same information in Vista. I think it took 3 dialog pages to connect my Wife's Vista machine to the same printer. Try it sometime. What information goes where is not intuitive and the help file for connecting to a IPP printer isn't much help. Pick up one of the back of the printer USB or parallel port print server and connect your Vista machine to the LAN connected printer. It isn't easy. It took me about 2 hours to connect the first printer on my first try. Ubuntu on the other had took me about 3 minutes. I read the documentation that came with the print server and simply plugged in the value exactly as given above and it worked. Too bad Vista isn't nearly as easy to connect. With the Device ID of lpd://192.168.1.105/lp1 would you know what to enter in the Vista print server name dialog box? Me neither.
Essentially, what this 10% increase means is, that about half of the people who got new hardware also got Vista to it, and nobody switched "mid-life" for their hardware.
Many people getting new hardware, got an OS other than Vista. My dad got a Mac. My new Core 2 Duo machine runs Ubuntu Studio. To get it without an unwanted OS meant assembling it myself. Boot to login and login to homepage on screen on the Mac or Ubuntu machine is much faster than any of the Windows machines in the house.
Erm... that's not a problem with Vista. That's a problem with all the OEMs who put that crap on there. Indeed, that's why the DeCrapifier exists.
Erm... It's the way most people get a copy of Vista. The license permits this crap... So out of the box, it arrives very badly broken. This is Vista's fault. That crap should be on an included CD just in case you are interested in any special offers....
'm not so convinced you've even *used* Vista/Office 2007 (as is the case with so many who spew out the same garbage reasons why M$ is the suxorz). Nice rant/push of Ubuntu, though.
You got me there. It's my wife's new machine. She got it for school. She wanted to connecto to the home LAN. No prob, gave it what it needed to get on the web. Set it up to use our networked printers, and inkjet and laser. She wanted to transfers her stuff from her very old Win ME laptop. She transferred the files to the Simple Share NAS in her folder. She couldn't log in with the new Vista laptop to get her files...
My using Vista has only been a support nightmare. Ubuntu takes about 15 minutes to point to 2 HP printers on a LAN using CUPS. The Vista machine really tried to find the Windows IIS server. MS version of//192.168.19.106/lp1 covered 3 dialog pages with the names just enough diffrent so you needed a Google search to figure out how to enter the info. The naming conventions are much like Favorites vs Bookmarks. With a stand alone printserver with an IP address instead of a name, makes connecting a Vista machine a big task for a newbie to Vista. It took 2 hours to configure 2 printers, and another 4 hours to find why Vista couldn't log into a Simple Share NAS where everyting else including Windows 95, Mac, and Ubuntu. can do it easily. I have the username, Workgroup, password and had to make a registery change to fix it.
After blowing the day just to get it up to the bare minimum functionality (printing, backup/restore, WWW) she was ready to use it for her classes. She asked for help setting up the projector for the video clip, so I set it up in the presenter mode so the Windows icons didn't show on the big screen (dual monitor), started the show, dimmed the lights and took a seat. A few minutes into the clip, it simply vanished off screen leaving an empty desktop background. Brought up the lights to troubleshoot and went back to the laptop and found the dialog box...
You are right. I don't use Vista. I've seen it let us down. We use my laptop for video clips now. I don't have to wait for the FBI warning. The movie just starts and doesn't die unexpectedly for some random nag screen. Shhh.. With Acid Rip, clips can be simply saved on the hard drive and can become part of the slide show, but that's a DCMA violation.. Shhh... it works great, but not on Vista.
To get things done, I use something besides Vista.
too bad you posted AC. Most of your points are correct.
My point is a new Visya machine out of the box from most retailers is not production worthy. It needed an Office Application. Office 2007 has it's own issues. Sorry I mentioned it. My Linux machine came with an office application installed and it worked, was intuitive and the minor bugs were easy to figure out. The biggest annoyance was the default printer paper setting of A4 instead of Letter. It did not require a Google search to fix.
The stopped to ask, I do blame on Vista. When updates are available in Ubuntu for a background task, it simply winks the toolbar item, not stop the foreground task like it did in Vista. This is a Vista fault. I've seen the same task done much better elsewhere.
The Shareware requesting updates being installed by the computer manufacture is a problem with Vista. They should not need the DeCrapifier right out of the box to fix a new machine.
Here is an example; "Frankly, I think Windows Vista has gotten a bum rap, as I use it every day - even after having left MS - and I would have a hard time using anything else and still be as productive."
He gave the reason I gave up on Vista. I couldn't get anything done. In a meeting I tried to show a DVD. It started OK but stopped to ask if I wanted to upgrade my AV. The stupid computer asked me to upgrade now, even though we were doing a presentation and had no network connections at the time. I wounder if it would have crashed if I told it to upgrade.
We wrote documents and tried to send them to the laser instead of the default inkjet printer. Couldn't find any way to do it without changing the default printer. Later a Google search told me to use the big round logo. It's really a button. Who would of guessed?
The Ubuntu install went fine. I was able to log into my network, attach to printers, edit documents, burn CD's, edit photos, scan documents, etc. on the default setup. Vista was full of shareware requesting upgrades for everything. Almost nothing worked. It couldn't log into my servers, I couldn't select printers without a Google search, and movies stopped after playing for 15 minutes for a stupid dialog box.
With lots of training and system customization, I might be able to become productive on Vista, but the first attempts very poor.
Although I'm all for throwing out the old and starting new, the sheer fact that Windows has to support not just legacy software (which can be easy to emulate, sort of) but legacy hardware as well, probably means more people will have issues with this than not.
Unfortunately for Microsoft when people are ready to throw out the old and start new, they get a cool new Mac. It doesn't run legacy Windows malware. Instead of the flood of malware, Mac users are faced with news headlines like this.
it's highly unlikely they even approached the rights holders of the theme songs.
I would have thought they did approach the rights holder because the original music is on the public domain film. I would also guess they walked away from the table as the asking price was orders of magnitude above the target and the rights holder refused to negotiate anywhere close to what was required to close the sale.
Maybe.. I think that they noticed that the #1 seller of music is now by download. Apple has passed Wal * Mart as the number 1 music retailer. That only happened after Apple started offering DRM free tracks and still sold music.
They still hate high quality P-P distribution and they believe everyone should buy their own copy. Trying to sell it crippled at high prices is their problem that they haven't figured out yet.
The market is ripe for bulk (wholesale) prices. There are loads of 30 and 60 Gig devices. They are trying to trickle the product at a buck a drop. Nobody is saying fill-er-up. They go elsewhere for that. If they wanted to sell stuff, how about the entire Beatles catalog as a zip for $80. Aerosmith, Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, Styx, Abba, Slipknot, Atreyu, Prince, or just about anyone with a fan base could clean up with the right price of the package deal for the back catalog. They are stuck in the 8 track or LP mentality of providing only 20 minutes per side at a buck a track even for back catalog stuff.
This is readily apparent when you pick up some of the buck a DVD old TV shows. Someone had to go to the expense of creating a new theme song to put on these DVD's because the labels wouldn't release the rights to the original sound track. Is that stupid or what? They had an oppertunity to sell the music, but instead didn't because they were too stupid to negotiate a deal. They got $0 for 0 copies sold. How is that a deal for them. It was much cheaper for the TV content folks to simply create a new theme song.
Pick up a copy of any of the Andy Griffith, Beverly Hillbillies, Pettycoat Junction, or other oldie buck a DVD TV show for examples of this in action. Hit a torrent and find the original theme songs. They are not even close. I think the music folks wanted to charge more than the retail price of the DVD just for the rights to the songs. If anybody knows the details on this, let me know.
That being said, no way am I going to screw with drivers and mucking about with WINE when I can boot up XP and be playing in a minute. The right software for the right job.
I agree with that one entirely. It is the reason I ditched Windows 2K. Every borrowed flash drive wanted me to find drivers. Same with almost everything else I plugged in. I don't do games much, so I haven't bothered trying to get WINE to work. I do work with audio a lot. My USB capture device works out of the box. I can directly open Audacity, choose the USB audio and directly start a CD or DAT quality recording. I use the real time kernel so latency for multi-track playback while recording a new track is not a problem. The same thing on Windows, not only required a driver, has long buffers causing lots of latency, an upgrade, and a Direct X upgrade as well. There is a difference between a 500 mS delay in recording and an 8 mS delay. I'll take the real time kernel. Since you are a gamer, I'm sure you already have the Direct X thing covered.
Between buying Photoshop or Photoshop Elements or using The Gimp, The Gimp is free and does the job nicely. It doesn't require purchases of extra licenses to put it on my laptop, desktop, wife's laptop, and the kid's PC. The same is true for MS Office and other common applications. It's much cheaper to use a free software license instead of a $$$$$$ per copy, with many copies needed. There is no piracy, it's affordable, and legal.
I personally use a Linux/Windows combination...Linux for when I feel like messing around, Windows because it has far reaching hardware support and doesn't require nearly as much tweaking to get it how I want. Forgive me for blaspheming by not using Linux exclusively; just don't look down on people like me because we CHOOSE to use what works for us.
I agree with your dad. Find the hardware and software that does the job you need done and get it. The hardware support stuff is rapidly vanishing. Some DRM (anti-counterfit) scanners and printers are by nature very incompatible with free drivers. I don't need drivers that are a multi-Meg install. They tend to run slow and crash often. If it doesn't work with XSane or CUPS, I don't use it.
I found many people are hooked on Windows applications. The more I use the alternative, the more I find Windows badly missing essentials. Need to edit the hosts file.. Notpad can't handle the file size. Need to burn an ISO, Umm what application do you need to register to unlock the advanced feature? Need to open and edit MS Office documents, RTF, and Open Document Text files... Open Office works. Need to save photos, documents or other stuff to a PDF for posting online? Need to remove red eye and change the resolution of a photo for posting online?
I was at a retreat last weekend and took photos. They requested I show the photos on the projector. No prob. Plugged in the card reader and opened a photo on the presenter's Sony VIAO laptop. There is no next button... WTF??? Searched for a photo album program. Found one. Launched it. The options were Register now, Register later, or cancel. We had no network access at the retreat. Register later simply closed the program. I gave up on that shit long ago. I changed laptops to one that works. It doesn't have Windows and factory installed Shareware.
Most Windows factory installs are little more than shareware applications on a crippled OS. An Ubuntu install comes ready to use except for the non-free drivers that you need to install for free to watch DVD's, play MP3's, watch online video, etc. Installing the non-free flashplayer9, codecs, and such is free of extra charge.
By the end of the day, I find I almost never boot into the Windows partition because I have found the easy way to get things done. The 35 second boot and onto a web page isn't done in a Windows partition. There is no reason to leave the machine on 24/7 just so you don't have to wait to get online.
I too personally use a Linux/Windows combination, but unless I am changing the map in my GPS, doing piano lessons with MIDI, or using Turbo Tax once a year, the Windows partition is just about to the point of needing a new AV subscription renewal every other time I log in. Getting things done in Windows has just become too difficult.
The default install of Ubunto 10.whatever-it-is fails on VMware Fusion because Fusion presents the virtual disk as scsi and the front-end to Grub in the installer doesn't get it.
For a non-standard install, download and install from the Alternate ISO. It fits nicely on a bootable DVD. You can skip Grub if needed. The live install CD was not intended for power users.
Truecrypt the drive as well, for extra safety. There are no hidden partitions, that's just my porn/bank records/grades folder.
I've never tried to Truecrypt my CD ROM drive.. Oh, I get it.. the hard drive.. Umm, no encryption and no fingerprints = no probable cause. They have no case. Any signs of encrypted when the forensic guys borrow the drive will be frowned upon and won't help your defense. No sign of hiding, tampering or file sharing is a great defense. Judge waves hand "This is not the computer you are looking for. Move along." RIAA, "This is not the computer we are looking for. Move along."
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I'm a smart software developer, so I'm pretty sure my computer is not affected (secured hardware firewall, etc). But how can I be sure?
;-)
As a smart software developer, you know not to trust a box that may be untrustworthy. You packets leave the untrusted box and must pass elsewhere where they can be monitored. Do you monitor your router traffic? That's number 1. Windows Updates may cause unexpected traffic, but the addresses will let you know if it's outgoing spam or request for updates from Microsoft.
For example my recent URL's from my router log show the following..
192.168.1.81 168.143.175.215 www
192.168.1.81 74.125.47.164 www Google
192.168.1.81 210.50.7.243 www Doubleclick --- I'm going to have to add this to my hosts file..
192.168.1.81 8.14.216.9 www
192.168.1.81 74.125.47.164 www Google
192.168.1.81 203.34.47.165 www IDG publications
192.168.1.81 210.50.7.243 www Doubleclick
192.168.1.81 210.247.196.12 www www.facilitatedigital.com/
192.168.1.81 217.20.16.80 www
192.168.1.81 209.27.52.115 www Doubleclick
192.168.1.81 66.35.250.151 www Slashdot
192.168.1.81 209.62.176.153 www Doubleclick
192.168.1.81 74.125.47.164 www Google
192.168.1.81 74.125.47.103 www Google
It's all WWW traffic and no unexpected port 25 traffic. A simple Linksys router can give you this information. Take the addresses given and plug them in to the URL bar in your browser to see if there is any unexpected traffic. Don't trust a possibly owned machine. Go upstream and look at the traffic. Most routers will log some incomming and outgoing traffic. Check it once in a while. You machine might be clean, but the kids may have problems. The kids are at school so all recent traffic is mine. If my wife's desktop was spewing traffic, I would see the traffic from another machine's IP address.
And yes, that is my real IP address for today. I'm glad media sentry isn't in the list.
So as long as the alzheimers patients put their shoes on, they can't wander away? Or maybe the staff just ties the knots really tight so they can't get them off.
Many elderly patients have tender feet and don't make it past the parking lot. Most all always wear shoes. As part of my old tech job service calls was part of the job. I have seen it in action. The patients rarely venture off the carpet or tile without shoes. The hardier patients simply get the tags in other clothing items, walking aids, wheelchairs, or other essentials, but most monitoring can be done with the shoes and this reduces the tag inventory needed. It's very rare for patients to wander off without clothing or walking aids.
If you just used an intersection, you might not be able to find you pet here. With Lat and Lon, Google maps can show you your pet is here;
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&safe=off&q=Finding+lat+lon+on+google+maps&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl
Just plug in the coordinates in the map search bar as "44.077967 -121.314898" using format Lat.XXXXXX in decimal and Lon.XXXXXX in decimal. Use a minus for South Latitudes an West Longitudes. The above example is in a golf course in Bend Oregon USA. You wouldn't see your pet from the nearest intersection the service would provide.
Finally, once you have a fix back at your server, you need to make it meaningful to the user. They do not generally want a bare latitude and longitude. They want to know what street their car is on.
Actually a good map with the real coordinates is much more useful than just an intersection. Interfacing with Google maps for example can pinpoint the stolen car in that 2 car garage, instead of just letting you know it's at 119th and Maple. Frustrated users who can't tell which backyard their pet is in will demand better resolution data. I hope raw data is an option. With a hand held GPS, I can punch in coordinates and locate a pet in the park or someone's backyard.
Favourite application: tracking sub-prime used cars so repo men can find them.
A fix to the nearest intersection is good enough for this. It's either an employer's parking lot, owner's home garage, or on nearby on street parking. A stolen jet ski or pet hidden in a garage is not as easy to find without a better GPS fix.
GPS wanders around enough from fix to fix, even with WAAS, that it can be tricky to compare fixes to detect movement, or to track movement of less than 50 meters. Oh, and the GPS needs to be able to hear satellite signals. Good luck on that.
Check out the demo of how it works. They only give a location to the nearest intersection. This isn't very useful if your kid was abducted and whisked away into a large apartment complex. You know he is around somewhere, but out of sight. These would be much more useful for recovery of stolen property if in addition to the intersection, it gave the last 100 actual GPS coordinates. From there, you may be able to trace the direction to one block of apartments prior to loss of signal from going indoors. The last 100 fixes before signal loss would be very useful in tracking a stolen pet, child, or BMW.
actually, the nursing home my grandma lives in uses this sort of thing for their advanced alzheimer's patients. they implemented it after one of them wandered out last winter and died from exposure.
Many nursing homes do that. Instead of the cost of a cell subscription and tracking, and recharging batteries, they typically simply use it for perimeter control. It works like store anti-shoplifting tags. They put them in the shoes, so if the shoes try to cross a mat at the door, the alarm at the door goes off notifying the staff.
Ok, say I'm paranoid. Is there anything on the market that can detect these devices?
Use anything that can detect a nearby cell signal. If you think your car is bugged, take it through a few tunnels or parking structures so it re-connects to a cell tower. (turn off you phone first) You can only detect these either by the GPS Local Oscillator (if you know the frequency) or detect them while they re-connect to a cell tower. Detecting the local oscillator of the GPS isn't easy as it isn't strong and is often well shielded. The cell module on the other hand is designed to transmit a signal to a cell tower, but it isn't on all the time. The trick is to make it turn on so you can find it. Causing a signal loss and then returning to cell tower range is a way to get these to announce to a tower, I am here. That's how you find them.
How does this converter box work with the battery-powered TV I used during the last blackout to get the latest news and information?
Do you have a car? Does it have a battery? If so, any inexpensive inverter should be able to power the box.
http://www.xantrex.com/ Pick one. I have the 1KW unit. It runs my computer, lights, fridge and TV. Keep a full spare can of gas handy.
Hell, I got a new PC with Vista included (couldn't buy it without) and I got rid of it as soon as I could (well, I tried it for a weekend and decided it was crap).
Bare hard drives are cheap. Simply swap out the drive for a big drive. If you have hardware problems in warranty, swap it back for the vendor. Let them figure out why it hasn't been booted since you bought it and let them deal with all the factory installed crap nag screens. A recent HP laptop took over 20 minutes from initial power on to get to the point of creating a user account. I gave up. It's quicker to plug in another drive and install Ubuntu. When done, it works and is free of the cruft.
If you are watching a movie, or doing something full screen, why the hell would you want to see a dialog box? That's why you're in full screen; that's the modality of window that shows nothingbut that window. Why should an OS let a popup show up?
More important, why shoud a pop-up on the laptop screen stop the running full screen movie on the projection screen? This is just plain bad design.
And the AV is not necessarily 3rd party. Vista comes bundled with an AV. And, quite frankly, nobody loves those little popup windows like Microsoft.
How well do you think the software was designed when it askes to be upgraded online while threre is no connection? Again, poor design. How about checking for a working connection before stopping the movie to ask to upgrade? Better yet, how about waiting for the presentation to finish?
Not being able to log onto servers is a big bummer, too, especially if you need those servers to do work. I mean, if you can't log onto Samba shares, you might as well use a Mac.../sarcasm
I like their response when searching for a solution why one machne out of 10 can't log in.. Please upgrade everything else to use the new authentication.. Downgrading Vista is not recommended.. I'm logging into a network appliance.. The recommended soultion is to obsolete the Linux based servers and upgrade everyting from the Windows 95 laptop, to the Mac, Ubuntu, XP, ME, 98SE, Linspire, etc. The servers are my encrypted backup filesystem and media server. Excuse me while I downgrade Vista to fit in. Too bad it took a registery edit to change it.
I would point out that a few years ago Microsoft got a minor rap across the knuckles for refusing to allow OEMs to install non-Microsoft software.
Now vendors should get a rap on the knuckles for installing any software that isn't a full functioning product. You want to install a photo editor, fine, but it better not expire. Only subscription based services such as AV updates should require a payment to get the signature file updates. Nobody should have to sweep off all the declined offers. They should auto uninstall completely and restore the original file type associations on failure to accept the sales pitch.
A photo editor on my wife's machine broke the ability for the photocopier software to use the scanner. Attempting to photocopy something simply launched the expired trial editor. Uninstalling the editor left windows looking for the missing photo editor.. Umm how about letting the photocopier get the scan? The anti-consumer action should be banned. We use Ubuntu with the scanner now. Windows is broken by a trial software package.
The wrong default paper size is a minor annoyance, but fixable. I'll take a wrong default paper size over the inability to log in to my server or a really difficult obscure way to address a network printer using the Internet Printing Protocol.
Entering a device ID of lpd://192.168.1.105/lp1 is much easer in linux than putting that same information in Vista. I think it took 3 dialog pages to connect my Wife's Vista machine to the same printer. Try it sometime. What information goes where is not intuitive and the help file for connecting to a IPP printer isn't much help. Pick up one of the back of the printer USB or parallel port print server and connect your Vista machine to the LAN connected printer. It isn't easy. It took me about 2 hours to connect the first printer on my first try. Ubuntu on the other had took me about 3 minutes. I read the documentation that came with the print server and simply plugged in the value exactly as given above and it worked. Too bad Vista isn't nearly as easy to connect. With the Device ID of lpd://192.168.1.105/lp1 would you know what to enter in the Vista print server name dialog box? Me neither.
Essentially, what this 10% increase means is, that about half of the people who got new hardware also got Vista to it, and nobody switched "mid-life" for their hardware.
Many people getting new hardware, got an OS other than Vista. My dad got a Mac. My new Core 2 Duo machine runs Ubuntu Studio. To get it without an unwanted OS meant assembling it myself. Boot to login and login to homepage on screen on the Mac or Ubuntu machine is much faster than any of the Windows machines in the house.
Erm... that's not a problem with Vista. That's a problem with all the OEMs who put that crap on there. Indeed, that's why the DeCrapifier exists.
Erm... It's the way most people get a copy of Vista. The license permits this crap... So out of the box, it arrives very badly broken. This is Vista's fault. That crap should be on an included CD just in case you are interested in any special offers....
'm not so convinced you've even *used* Vista/Office 2007 (as is the case with so many who spew out the same garbage reasons why M$ is the suxorz). Nice rant/push of Ubuntu, though.
//192.168.19.106/lp1 covered 3 dialog pages with the names just enough diffrent so you needed a Google search to figure out how to enter the info. The naming conventions are much like Favorites vs Bookmarks. With a stand alone printserver with an IP address instead of a name, makes connecting a Vista machine a big task for a newbie to Vista. It took 2 hours to configure 2 printers, and another 4 hours to find why Vista couldn't log into a Simple Share NAS where everyting else including Windows 95, Mac, and Ubuntu. can do it easily. I have the username, Workgroup, password and had to make a registery change to fix it.
You got me there. It's my wife's new machine. She got it for school. She wanted to connecto to the home LAN. No prob, gave it what it needed to get on the web. Set it up to use our networked printers, and inkjet and laser. She wanted to transfers her stuff from her very old Win ME laptop. She transferred the files to the Simple Share NAS in her folder. She couldn't log in with the new Vista laptop to get her files...
My using Vista has only been a support nightmare. Ubuntu takes about 15 minutes to point to 2 HP printers on a LAN using CUPS. The Vista machine really tried to find the Windows IIS server. MS version of
After blowing the day just to get it up to the bare minimum functionality (printing, backup/restore, WWW) she was ready to use it for her classes. She asked for help setting up the projector for the video clip, so I set it up in the presenter mode so the Windows icons didn't show on the big screen (dual monitor), started the show, dimmed the lights and took a seat. A few minutes into the clip, it simply vanished off screen leaving an empty desktop background. Brought up the lights to troubleshoot and went back to the laptop and found the dialog box...
You are right. I don't use Vista. I've seen it let us down. We use my laptop for video clips now. I don't have to wait for the FBI warning. The movie just starts and doesn't die unexpectedly for some random nag screen.
Shhh.. With Acid Rip, clips can be simply saved on the hard drive and can become part of the slide show, but that's a DCMA violation.. Shhh... it works great, but not on Vista.
To get things done, I use something besides Vista.
too bad you posted AC. Most of your points are correct.
My point is a new Visya machine out of the box from most retailers is not production worthy. It needed an Office Application. Office 2007 has it's own issues. Sorry I mentioned it. My Linux machine came with an office application installed and it worked, was intuitive and the minor bugs were easy to figure out. The biggest annoyance was the default printer paper setting of A4 instead of Letter. It did not require a Google search to fix.
The stopped to ask, I do blame on Vista. When updates are available in Ubuntu for a background task, it simply winks the toolbar item, not stop the foreground task like it did in Vista. This is a Vista fault. I've seen the same task done much better elsewhere.
The Shareware requesting updates being installed by the computer manufacture is a problem with Vista. They should not need the DeCrapifier right out of the box to fix a new machine.
The fix is here;
http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/home
I can't believe the propaganda is so blatant!
I'm glad you brought that up.
Here is an example;
"Frankly, I think Windows Vista has gotten a bum rap, as I use it every day - even after having left MS - and I would have a hard time using anything else and still be as productive."
He gave the reason I gave up on Vista. I couldn't get anything done. In a meeting I tried to show a DVD. It started OK but stopped to ask if I wanted to upgrade my AV. The stupid computer asked me to upgrade now, even though we were doing a presentation and had no network connections at the time. I wounder if it would have crashed if I told it to upgrade.
We wrote documents and tried to send them to the laser instead of the default inkjet printer. Couldn't find any way to do it without changing the default printer. Later a Google search told me to use the big round logo. It's really a button. Who would of guessed?
The Ubuntu install went fine. I was able to log into my network, attach to printers, edit documents, burn CD's, edit photos, scan documents, etc. on the default setup. Vista was full of shareware requesting upgrades for everything. Almost nothing worked. It couldn't log into my servers, I couldn't select printers without a Google search, and movies stopped after playing for 15 minutes for a stupid dialog box.
With lots of training and system customization, I might be able to become productive on Vista, but the first attempts very poor.
Although I'm all for throwing out the old and starting new, the sheer fact that Windows has to support not just legacy software (which can be easy to emulate, sort of) but legacy hardware as well, probably means more people will have issues with this than not.
Unfortunately for Microsoft when people are ready to throw out the old and start new, they get a cool new Mac. It doesn't run legacy Windows malware.
Instead of the flood of malware, Mac users are faced with news headlines like this.
http://www.news.com/Mac-malware-door-creaks-open/2100-7349_3-5700982.html
"Mac malware door creaks open"
it's highly unlikely they even approached the rights holders of the theme songs.
I would have thought they did approach the rights holder because the original music is on the public domain film. I would also guess they walked away from the table as the asking price was orders of magnitude above the target and the rights holder refused to negotiate anywhere close to what was required to close the sale.
Thanks for the compliment. The writers were on strike, but now it's over. I work for free. I'll be here all week. Thank You.
I'll add it to my Sig line. It fits.
Suddenoutbreakofcommonsense?
Maybe.. I think that they noticed that the #1 seller of music is now by download. Apple has passed Wal * Mart as the number 1 music retailer. That only happened after Apple started offering DRM free tracks and still sold music.
They still hate high quality P-P distribution and they believe everyone should buy their own copy. Trying to sell it crippled at high prices is their problem that they haven't figured out yet.
The market is ripe for bulk (wholesale) prices. There are loads of 30 and 60 Gig devices. They are trying to trickle the product at a buck a drop. Nobody is saying fill-er-up. They go elsewhere for that. If they wanted to sell stuff, how about the entire Beatles catalog as a zip for $80. Aerosmith, Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd, Styx, Abba, Slipknot, Atreyu, Prince, or just about anyone with a fan base could clean up with the right price of the package deal for the back catalog. They are stuck in the 8 track or LP mentality of providing only 20 minutes per side at a buck a track even for back catalog stuff.
This is readily apparent when you pick up some of the buck a DVD old TV shows. Someone had to go to the expense of creating a new theme song to put on these DVD's because the labels wouldn't release the rights to the original sound track. Is that stupid or what? They had an oppertunity to sell the music, but instead didn't because they were too stupid to negotiate a deal. They got $0 for 0 copies sold. How is that a deal for them. It was much cheaper for the TV content folks to simply create a new theme song.
Pick up a copy of any of the Andy Griffith, Beverly Hillbillies, Pettycoat Junction, or other oldie buck a DVD TV show for examples of this in action. Hit a torrent and find the original theme songs. They are not even close. I think the music folks wanted to charge more than the retail price of the DVD just for the rights to the songs. If anybody knows the details on this, let me know.
That being said, no way am I going to screw with drivers and mucking about with WINE when I can boot up XP and be playing in a minute. The right software for the right job.
I agree with that one entirely. It is the reason I ditched Windows 2K. Every borrowed flash drive wanted me to find drivers. Same with almost everything else I plugged in. I don't do games much, so I haven't bothered trying to get WINE to work. I do work with audio a lot. My USB capture device works out of the box. I can directly open Audacity, choose the USB audio and directly start a CD or DAT quality recording. I use the real time kernel so latency for multi-track playback while recording a new track is not a problem. The same thing on Windows, not only required a driver, has long buffers causing lots of latency, an upgrade, and a Direct X upgrade as well. There is a difference between a 500 mS delay in recording and an 8 mS delay. I'll take the real time kernel. Since you are a gamer, I'm sure you already have the Direct X thing covered.
Between buying Photoshop or Photoshop Elements or using The Gimp, The Gimp is free and does the job nicely. It doesn't require purchases of extra licenses to put it on my laptop, desktop, wife's laptop, and the kid's PC. The same is true for MS Office and other common applications. It's much cheaper to use a free software license instead of a $$$$$$ per copy, with many copies needed. There is no piracy, it's affordable, and legal.
As a bonus, Microsoft hates it.
I personally use a Linux/Windows combination...Linux for when I feel like messing around, Windows because it has far reaching hardware support and doesn't require nearly as much tweaking to get it how I want. Forgive me for blaspheming by not using Linux exclusively; just don't look down on people like me because we CHOOSE to use what works for us.
I agree with your dad. Find the hardware and software that does the job you need done and get it. The hardware support stuff is rapidly vanishing. Some DRM (anti-counterfit) scanners and printers are by nature very incompatible with free drivers. I don't need drivers that are a multi-Meg install. They tend to run slow and crash often. If it doesn't work with XSane or CUPS, I don't use it.
I found many people are hooked on Windows applications. The more I use the alternative, the more I find Windows badly missing essentials. Need to edit the hosts file.. Notpad can't handle the file size. Need to burn an ISO, Umm what application do you need to register to unlock the advanced feature? Need to open and edit MS Office documents, RTF, and Open Document Text files... Open Office works. Need to save photos, documents or other stuff to a PDF for posting online? Need to remove red eye and change the resolution of a photo for posting online?
I was at a retreat last weekend and took photos. They requested I show the photos on the projector. No prob. Plugged in the card reader and opened a photo on the presenter's Sony VIAO laptop. There is no next button... WTF??? Searched for a photo album program. Found one. Launched it. The options were Register now, Register later, or cancel. We had no network access at the retreat. Register later simply closed the program. I gave up on that shit long ago. I changed laptops to one that works. It doesn't have Windows and factory installed Shareware.
Most Windows factory installs are little more than shareware applications on a crippled OS. An Ubuntu install comes ready to use except for the non-free drivers that you need to install for free to watch DVD's, play MP3's, watch online video, etc. Installing the non-free flashplayer9, codecs, and such is free of extra charge.
By the end of the day, I find I almost never boot into the Windows partition because I have found the easy way to get things done. The 35 second boot and onto a web page isn't done in a Windows partition. There is no reason to leave the machine on 24/7 just so you don't have to wait to get online.
I too personally use a Linux/Windows combination, but unless I am changing the map in my GPS, doing piano lessons with MIDI, or using Turbo Tax once a year, the Windows partition is just about to the point of needing a new AV subscription renewal every other time I log in. Getting things done in Windows has just become too difficult.
The default install of Ubunto 10.whatever-it-is fails on VMware Fusion because Fusion presents the virtual disk as scsi and the front-end to Grub in the installer doesn't get it.
For a non-standard install, download and install from the Alternate ISO. It fits nicely on a bootable DVD. You can skip Grub if needed. The live install CD was not intended for power users.
Truecrypt the drive as well, for extra safety. There are no hidden partitions, that's just my porn/bank records/grades folder.
I've never tried to Truecrypt my CD ROM drive.. Oh, I get it.. the hard drive.. Umm, no encryption and no fingerprints = no probable cause. They have no case. Any signs of encrypted when the forensic guys borrow the drive will be frowned upon and won't help your defense. No sign of hiding, tampering or file sharing is a great defense. Judge waves hand "This is not the computer you are looking for. Move along." RIAA, "This is not the computer we are looking for. Move along."