For example: Zip up your stuff (or tar.bz2, whatever...) gpg -c --cipher-algo AES256 Stuff.zip
Copy Stuff.gpg to your flash media.
To decrypt, copy Stuff.gpg to your computer and run: gpg -d Stuff.gpg > Stuff.zip
Don't forget your password. Make sure you use a trustworthy GPG binary, and the unencrypted archive should never be stored on your flash media!. The unencrypted version could be easily recovered using undelete software.
Now if it was me doing this, and I had some time on my hands, I'd look into the Linux crypto loop stuff. But that doesn't work all that well if nobody in your family runs Linux. So, I would have to opt for True Crypt on a Windows machine, create an encrypted volume on my flash drive, copy over the improtant files, unmount and run for it. At my parents/grandparents/whatever, it would be trivial to download and intall true crypt again and get access to my files.
The first use that came to my mind was a telecommuting employee. Send them home with this little device loaded up with the corporate VPN client so the can securely open a terminal services session, and you don't have to drop $1,000-2,500 on a laptop for your employee who is just sitting around the house answering the phone in their underwear anyway. If it breaks, FexEx a new one.
It's really not. I had to fill out the requisition paperwork for a new office laptop this week. I did something wrong, and got a message something along the lines of:
This needs to be coded for GL 2.5.38392, NAA, with the proper vendor code.
GL codes, NAA, and whatever other jargon appeared nowhere on the electronic form, so I e-mailed back:
Hi,
I'm sure this all makes perfect sense to you, but I speak IT not Accounting. Could you clarify please?
And if you think IT jargon is bad, try working with Quality Assurance people for a week.
Anarchy Online only forces Massive's advertising on you if you have a free account. Funcom's current offering is a free account that lets you play "AO Classic," but you can't play any of the expansions until you upgrade to a paid account.
Paid accounts default to advertision off, but you can configure the ads on or off if you really want.
This keyboard will be great for mapping keys for games =)
Games? Forget games! It looks like it will be great for a KVM user. I switch between a Windows machine, a Linux machine, and a Mac machine. It would be great if the layout would change between computers.;)
Digital is not HDTV, though HDTV is a digital signal. Digital Broadcasting uses the radio spectrum more efficiently, so by mandating that broadcasters change over to digital now freed spectrum can be auctioned off at insane costs for other forms of wireless communication.
This mandated switch is more motivated by money than it is superior technology. The US wants the billions in revenue that the auctions will bring in.
AdBlock and similar products exist because advertising has become so obtrusive that it prevents the software installed on your computer as well as the content on websites from being useful.
The worst offender I've seen lately was a new "punch the monkey" style add. It was flash based of course. Normally these ads are just animated banners, but the designer of this one got the clever idea of putting sound into the ad. The chosen sound was quite possibly the most obnoxious sound possible. It sounded like my speakers were pumping out radio static.
Now this is a flash ad right, so you should be able to right click on it and stop it from playing, and stop the flash from looping. Nope. The creator of the flash disabled all controls. The location of this advertising wasn't bad, it wasn't obtrusive, it wasn't in the way, but it was still noticeable. The problem was, I was jamming to my iTunes library at the time, something totally unrelated to web browsing.
Advertisers: This is your problem. You removed all control. My only options were to not read the content at all or block your ad. Seeing as the content was important to me, the only option left to me was to install AdBlock. And as you had just royally pissed me off, I didn't just block the one ad that was annoying me, I blocked all the advertising from your domain(s). If you've let one obnoxious ad get out to the internet, I'm sure it's not the only one.
Go out there and learn some principles of user interface design. One of them is that the user should feel in control. As soon as you remove control, the user is going to take action to regain control. Pop-Ups and Pop-Unders are other good examples. You're creating new windows that I didn't ask for! Not only are they getting in the way of my web browsing, they are getting in the way of other things I'm doing on my computer. Again, my options are to block advertising or close my web browser. Both are options you don't want, so don't force me to take these actions in the first place.
I do not mind ads on web pages myself. I don't even mind transition advertising where you click a link, and instead of getting the next page of an article you are reading you get a full page advertisement, and another link to continue to your article. Where web pages use these "transition" ads I've felt they were relevant to the content was viewing, and felt no need to block them.
Any time I'm not in control of what my computer is up to, you've gone too far and you have left me with no choice but to install ad blocking software. If you had left the user in control of their computer, you would have had much less to worry about. Now though, your practices have spawned countless pieces of ad blocking software. The software was made to block the obnoxious ads that should never have existed, but now that it's out there, there is no stopping it from blocking everything your industry does. You left us users with no other choice, and now you will feel the consequences of your actions.
You forgot to mention that Farscape was cancelled by Sci-Fi itself. Bad example.
After how many seasons of get Crichton, sexual tension, we're so screwed (x3), narrow escape, it was quite possibly time for Farscape to end. Going from weekly to ocasional mini series was quite possibly a very good idea.
Now if only you could get Sci-Fi to stop spending their money making "original" pictures and stick to what they do well...
Out of the ~200 Windows XP machines I manage, I've only seen SP2 "uck up a PC to the extent that it wouldn't even boot." once, and that was because the user power cycled the machine durring the installation because the machine was unresponsive.
From what I've gathered, Service Pack 2 is prone to really messing up a windows installation where there is lots of spyware/adware/whatever installed.
Any and all patches are applied quickly and easily with no input needed from me.
Is that a good thing?
Yes. After putting in a full days work plus overtime, it's great to come home to my computer which has been running all day and see that things like Counter-Strike and CS: Source are patched and ready to go. For the multiplayer aspect of the games, it's a good thing (for me anyway.)
I'm happy with Steam myself. I downloaded and installed the client before HL2 was out in order to patch up Counter-Strike after a Windows reinstall. Keep in mind, that before Steam, Valve's patches were distributed via File Planet. When Valve released a patch, you could wait 4 - 12 hours in a File Planet queue unless you paid File Planet for prenium access. In other works, it sucked. Steam is a huge improvment over the way it used to be done.
I pre-ordered Half-Life 2 via Steam. Again, slick as could be. Steam sat there, did the preloading and all that, and on release day it automatically unlocked Half-Life 2 and everything was ready to play when I got home from work. Again, sliiiick.
Steam does have it's issues. The servers can get overloaded. Requiring a phone home every few days to keep your games active, other little annoyances. Overall, a very good product, and Valve has been listening to customer feedback and has been making improvments.
Some people have issues with Steam. I'm not one of them.
"What do you mean you installed SP2?!!? Our company policy specifically prohibits that Service Pack because of incompatibility X"
A competent windows administrator would have setup MS Software Update Services which allows you control patch deployment. Setting up SUS is not hard, any administrator who hasn't truly deserves to have SP2 forced on them, it will at least provide some security to those windows clients. And it's not really being forced on them. You can simply turn off automatic updates on every single machine.
Predictions of TiVo's death are greatly exaggerated, in my opinion. In my opinion, the banner adds while fast forwarding are a great idea.
Think about it, advertisers want a captive audience for their advertising. They pay for product placement in movies and TV shows because they know the audience is watching attentively. Not true for running commercials on radio and TV. People walk away for a bathroom break, to grab a snack, or any number of other things.
But if someone fast forwards through a commercial, advertisers know that you will be looking at the screen, because you want to stop fast forwarding before the show starts. You are a very captive audience, and you will be looking right at the advertising.
Users may not like the banner ads, especially as TiVo is currently testing them and working out any bugs. In the end though, the ads are an incredibly good thing for TiVo (the company.) As long as TiVo services, TiVo subscription service will continue, and new TiVo models and features will be introduced. Good for TiVo.
There is definitely more positive than negative with the new banner ads.
Politics are funny things...maybe the charter singed at the end of Enterprise was rewritten and resigned later, this time with more races, better support, etc. as a result of the war.
After playing GTA in various flavors myself, it occasionally pops in my head while driving around to go into GTA mode. Then reality sets in, and I know I don't want to deal with the car insurance, jail time, lawsuits, guilty conscience, etc. The kid had issues before he played the game, but based on my experience with the game, it sure didn't help any. The main problem is the person who committed the act, not the
So do video games have an impact? Yes definitely. Are the makers of the video game responsible? Lets see, they voluntary gave their game a Mature rating. (Ages 17 and up.) Thompson was under when he purchased the GTA games, Wal-Mart and Game Stop sold to him without checking his age.
Odds are, this isn't illegal in the state of Alabama, though it seems like it would be something against Wal-Mart policy. I surprised Wal-Mart even carries M rated games honestly. There are plenty of proposals out there requiring age verification when purchasing games with the M rating, which in my opinion is just fine. The goal of the lawsuit could be to draw the public's attention to the issue, get them to call their representatives, and try to pass legislation requiring age verification on such purchases. Actually a very positive goal.
In reality, it is just a blame shifting and money making strategy. You can tell by what the lawyer says. "What has happened in Alabama is that four companies participated in the training of Devin... to kill three men," attorney Jack Thompson told. Yeah right, a video game trained him how in techniques for disarming a police officer, turning off the safety of the officer's weapon, and then using said weapon to shoot three people. That is a very complex series of events that is not simulated by GTA.
As much as I respect the police officers involved, there is something wrong in the way the officer handled the situation if the suspect was able to get the officer's gun. I would guess that the suspect wasn't cuffed and that the gun wasn't secured in the officer's holster, but I'm only guessing.
At a December hearing, authorities said Devin Thompson, when he was apprehended, told officers, "Life is a video game. You've got to die sometime."
Hello, this kid has issues. What were the parents doing? Where is the responsibility for parents in what their minors do? Where is the lawsuit from the dead officers vs. the parents of this kid? Even if it were filed, you won't find coverage on FOX news. Not in there interests. And personally, I would wait until this suit was settled and the parents/caretakers of the suspect have money.
EverQuest, for example, doesn't even require you to buy the game in stores anymore. They'll let you purchase it at a reduced price and download the whole thing with a fresh key.
FunCom has let you download the client since I started playing Anarchy-Online. You did pay a bit more for your first paid month, but gotta pay for that bandwidth somehow.
Currently, you can download the client for [b]free[/b], and play [b]for free[/b] until 2006. The catch? You don't get any the three expansions. Still a good deal.
Slashdot Mirror
For example:
Zip up your stuff (or tar.bz2, whatever...)
gpg -c --cipher-algo AES256 Stuff.zip
Copy Stuff.gpg to your flash media.
To decrypt, copy Stuff.gpg to your computer and run:
gpg -d Stuff.gpg > Stuff.zip
Don't forget your password. Make sure you use a trustworthy GPG binary, and the unencrypted archive should never be stored on your flash media!. The unencrypted version could be easily recovered using undelete software.
Now if it was me doing this, and I had some time on my hands, I'd look into the Linux crypto loop stuff. But that doesn't work all that well if nobody in your family runs Linux. So, I would have to opt for True Crypt on a Windows machine, create an encrypted volume on my flash drive, copy over the improtant files, unmount and run for it. At my parents/grandparents/whatever, it would be trivial to download and intall true crypt again and get access to my files.
Anonymous Coward writes to tell us that GenUX with an e-mail address of hparker@gen-ux.com?
The first use that came to my mind was a telecommuting employee. Send them home with this little device loaded up with the corporate VPN client so the can securely open a terminal services session, and you don't have to drop $1,000-2,500 on a laptop for your employee who is just sitting around the house answering the phone in their underwear anyway. If it breaks, FexEx a new one.
It's really not. I had to fill out the requisition paperwork for a new office laptop this week. I did something wrong, and got a message something along the lines of:
This needs to be coded for GL 2.5.38392, NAA, with the proper vendor code.
GL codes, NAA, and whatever other jargon appeared nowhere on the electronic form, so I e-mailed back:
Hi,
I'm sure this all makes perfect sense to you, but I speak IT not Accounting. Could you clarify please?
And if you think IT jargon is bad, try working with Quality Assurance people for a week.
Anarchy Online only forces Massive's advertising on you if you have a free account. Funcom's current offering is a free account that lets you play "AO Classic," but you can't play any of the expansions until you upgrade to a paid account.
Paid accounts default to advertision off, but you can configure the ads on or off if you really want.
Better yet, why run explorer.exe in the first place?
From memory (haven't done this for some time, so I could be a bit off...)
Start Regedit, find HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ Winlogon, Change the value of Shell from Explorer.exe to cmd.exe.
IT Managers get zero chicks. Lifeguards get tons of chicks. What happens when then two are combined in the same person?
Zero mutiplied by any number is still zero.
This keyboard will be great for mapping keys for games =)
;)
Games? Forget games! It looks like it will be great for a KVM user. I switch between a Windows machine, a Linux machine, and a Mac machine. It would be great if the layout would change between computers.
Look up ttyquake or aaquake2 if you like aalib. :)
Absolutely. I mean look what happened to the Romans. They had no television. Where are they now?
On the History Channel, duh.
Digital is not HDTV, though HDTV is a digital signal. Digital Broadcasting uses the radio spectrum more efficiently, so by mandating that broadcasters change over to digital now freed spectrum can be auctioned off at insane costs for other forms of wireless communication.
This mandated switch is more motivated by money than it is superior technology. The US wants the billions in revenue that the auctions will bring in.
NPR Science Friday recently started Podcasting, which is great as I'm always working during one of my favorite radio programs.
Perhaps now that Apple is supporting Podcasting, Podcasts will stop getting randomly selected when I shuffle my library...
AdBlock and similar products exist because advertising has become so obtrusive that it prevents the software installed on your computer as well as the content on websites from being useful.
The worst offender I've seen lately was a new "punch the monkey" style add. It was flash based of course. Normally these ads are just animated banners, but the designer of this one got the clever idea of putting sound into the ad. The chosen sound was quite possibly the most obnoxious sound possible. It sounded like my speakers were pumping out radio static.
Now this is a flash ad right, so you should be able to right click on it and stop it from playing, and stop the flash from looping. Nope. The creator of the flash disabled all controls. The location of this advertising wasn't bad, it wasn't obtrusive, it wasn't in the way, but it was still noticeable. The problem was, I was jamming to my iTunes library at the time, something totally unrelated to web browsing.
Advertisers: This is your problem. You removed all control. My only options were to not read the content at all or block your ad. Seeing as the content was important to me, the only option left to me was to install AdBlock. And as you had just royally pissed me off, I didn't just block the one ad that was annoying me, I blocked all the advertising from your domain(s). If you've let one obnoxious ad get out to the internet, I'm sure it's not the only one.
Go out there and learn some principles of user interface design. One of them is that the user should feel in control. As soon as you remove control, the user is going to take action to regain control. Pop-Ups and Pop-Unders are other good examples. You're creating new windows that I didn't ask for! Not only are they getting in the way of my web browsing, they are getting in the way of other things I'm doing on my computer. Again, my options are to block advertising or close my web browser. Both are options you don't want, so don't force me to take these actions in the first place.
I do not mind ads on web pages myself. I don't even mind transition advertising where you click a link, and instead of getting the next page of an article you are reading you get a full page advertisement, and another link to continue to your article. Where web pages use these "transition" ads I've felt they were relevant to the content was viewing, and felt no need to block them.
Any time I'm not in control of what my computer is up to, you've gone too far and you have left me with no choice but to install ad blocking software. If you had left the user in control of their computer, you would have had much less to worry about. Now though, your practices have spawned countless pieces of ad blocking software. The software was made to block the obnoxious ads that should never have existed, but now that it's out there, there is no stopping it from blocking everything your industry does. You left us users with no other choice, and now you will feel the consequences of your actions.
I use Audible myself, and play my audio books on my iPod mini. Syncs right up with the rest of my iTunes music.
:)
Right now I've got about 3 days worth of audio books on my iPod.
I perfer it to CDs/Tapes, etc. The audio books take up so much less physical space.
You forgot to mention that Farscape was cancelled by Sci-Fi itself. Bad example.
After how many seasons of get Crichton, sexual tension, we're so screwed (x3), narrow escape, it was quite possibly time for Farscape to end. Going from weekly to ocasional mini series was quite possibly a very good idea.
Now if only you could get Sci-Fi to stop spending their money making "original" pictures and stick to what they do well...
Out of the ~200 Windows XP machines I manage, I've only seen SP2 "uck up a PC to the extent that it wouldn't even boot." once, and that was because the user power cycled the machine durring the installation because the machine was unresponsive.
From what I've gathered, Service Pack 2 is prone to really messing up a windows installation where there is lots of spyware/adware/whatever installed.
How does it go? Any landing you can walk (or in this case, swim) away from?
:)
Landing with your gear up or in the water isn't plan A, but it's usually better than the alternatives such as crashing into the ground or the water.
Any and all patches are applied quickly and easily with no input needed from me.
Is that a good thing?
Yes. After putting in a full days work plus overtime, it's great to come home to my computer which has been running all day and see that things like Counter-Strike and CS: Source are patched and ready to go. For the multiplayer aspect of the games, it's a good thing (for me anyway.)
I'm happy with Steam myself. I downloaded and installed the client before HL2 was out in order to patch up Counter-Strike after a Windows reinstall. Keep in mind, that before Steam, Valve's patches were distributed via File Planet. When Valve released a patch, you could wait 4 - 12 hours in a File Planet queue unless you paid File Planet for prenium access. In other works, it sucked. Steam is a huge improvment over the way it used to be done.
I pre-ordered Half-Life 2 via Steam. Again, slick as could be. Steam sat there, did the preloading and all that, and on release day it automatically unlocked Half-Life 2 and everything was ready to play when I got home from work. Again, sliiiick.
Steam does have it's issues. The servers can get overloaded. Requiring a phone home every few days to keep your games active, other little annoyances. Overall, a very good product, and Valve has been listening to customer feedback and has been making improvments.
Some people have issues with Steam. I'm not one of them.
"What do you mean you installed SP2?!!? Our company policy specifically prohibits that Service Pack because of incompatibility X"
A competent windows administrator would have setup MS Software Update Services which allows you control patch deployment. Setting up SUS is not hard, any administrator who hasn't truly deserves to have SP2 forced on them, it will at least provide some security to those windows clients. And it's not really being forced on them. You can simply turn off automatic updates on every single machine.
Predictions of TiVo's death are greatly exaggerated, in my opinion. In my opinion, the banner adds while fast forwarding are a great idea.
Think about it, advertisers want a captive audience for their advertising. They pay for product placement in movies and TV shows because they know the audience is watching attentively. Not true for running commercials on radio and TV. People walk away for a bathroom break, to grab a snack, or any number of other things.
But if someone fast forwards through a commercial, advertisers know that you will be looking at the screen, because you want to stop fast forwarding before the show starts. You are a very captive audience, and you will be looking right at the advertising.
Users may not like the banner ads, especially as TiVo is currently testing them and working out any bugs. In the end though, the ads are an incredibly good thing for TiVo (the company.) As long as TiVo services, TiVo subscription service will continue, and new TiVo models and features will be introduced. Good for TiVo.
There is definitely more positive than negative with the new banner ads.
Politics are funny things...maybe the charter singed at the end of Enterprise was rewritten and resigned later, this time with more races, better support, etc. as a result of the war.
FunCom seems to agree with you. Bronto Burgers and Hides are staple items in Anarchy-Online. :)
So the law allows the Attorney General of Utah to surf porn sites and get paid for it? I predict an intern incident within four years.
No, he'd run over them instead.
Solve the problem, not the symptom.
After playing GTA in various flavors myself, it occasionally pops in my head while driving around to go into GTA mode. Then reality sets in, and I know I don't want to deal with the car insurance, jail time, lawsuits, guilty conscience, etc. The kid had issues before he played the game, but based on my experience with the game, it sure didn't help any. The main problem is the person who committed the act, not the
So do video games have an impact? Yes definitely. Are the makers of the video game responsible? Lets see, they voluntary gave their game a Mature rating. (Ages 17 and up.) Thompson was under when he purchased the GTA games, Wal-Mart and Game Stop sold to him without checking his age.
Odds are, this isn't illegal in the state of Alabama, though it seems like it would be something against Wal-Mart policy. I surprised Wal-Mart even carries M rated games honestly. There are plenty of proposals out there requiring age verification when purchasing games with the M rating, which in my opinion is just fine. The goal of the lawsuit could be to draw the public's attention to the issue, get them to call their representatives, and try to pass legislation requiring age verification on such purchases. Actually a very positive goal.
In reality, it is just a blame shifting and money making strategy. You can tell by what the lawyer says. "What has happened in Alabama is that four companies participated in the training of Devin
As much as I respect the police officers involved, there is something wrong in the way the officer handled the situation if the suspect was able to get the officer's gun. I would guess that the suspect wasn't cuffed and that the gun wasn't secured in the officer's holster, but I'm only guessing.
At a December hearing, authorities said Devin Thompson, when he was apprehended, told officers, "Life is a video game. You've got to die sometime."
Hello, this kid has issues. What were the parents doing? Where is the responsibility for parents in what their minors do? Where is the lawsuit from the dead officers vs. the parents of this kid? Even if it were filed, you won't find coverage on FOX news. Not in there interests. And personally, I would wait until this suit was settled and the parents/caretakers of the suspect have money.
EverQuest, for example, doesn't even require you to buy the game in stores anymore. They'll let you purchase it at a reduced price and download the whole thing with a fresh key.
FunCom has let you download the client since I started playing Anarchy-Online. You did pay a bit more for your first paid month, but gotta pay for that bandwidth somehow.
Currently, you can download the client for [b]free[/b], and play [b]for free[/b] until 2006. The catch? You don't get any the three expansions. Still a good deal.