while we're on the subject- anyone run a network and successfully automate spybot s&d ?
On my systems at work and home, I have Spybot set up to automatically check for updates, run a full scan and fix anything it finds when it is launched. When it's done, it quits. I have Windows' Task Scheduler launch it weekly.
You can change one of the TiVo remote buttons to do 30-second skip with a short key sequence. This only needs to be done when the TiVo is rebooted, i.e. extremely seldom.
You can opt out of the aggregate data collection by calling TiVo. TiVo hackers have examined data from the TiVo's phone calls home before and after the opt-out procedure and confirmed that once you opt out, the data is indeed no longer sent.
And if a small, animated image drives you into a rage, you need help. There's a support group for that sort of thing.
Sure, the "burly guys tossing the network programmer out the window" ad from a few years ago was funny, but how about some ads that lay out what the TiVo can do, and more importantly, what the cablecos' TiVo-wannabes don't do?
They need a whole series of ads that directly address the cable companies in certain markets. Something like, "Think you've got a TiVo(TM)? Well if it came from your cable company, you don't..."
Satisfied customers' word of mouth is a great way to advertise, but it can't compare to the reach that the cable companies have, unless TiVo does something like hiring a network of their customers to work in Best Buy and Circuit City part time as evangelists-- who else would be better suited to explain exactly what it does?
Posting to and searching through discussion boards in the hopes someone who knows the right answer reads and posts is not good enough. I'm talking about a definitive, authoritative source that I *know* I can always turn to.
I am waiting for the Mac OS X server administration book. The PDFs at the apple web site are lame and only walk you through the GUI.
Panther Server is sweet, but I certainly agree that Apple seriously needs to get on the stick and produce some decent documentation, not to mention training materials for their certification tests. Punch in pretty much any Microsoft exam number in the search field at Amazon and it takes a day to go through all the results. Try that with an Apple exam... nothing.
There are so many questions I have about things I want to do with OS X Server, and there's really no place to ask them.
Hopefully things will improve soon, now that OS X is fairly mature and in less of a state of flux.
I think this Delorean might be more in line with the average/.er's budget.
I just used mine to compare with the photos of the real thing, and the attention to detail is astonishing. Whoever built that did an amazing job. I don't know about "chick magnet," but I'd say it would turn the head of any child of the 80's you'd drive by on a given street.
One of my co-workers still uses Emailer, running in Classic. It still works great. I also used it for years, but migrated to Microsoft Entourage when I was going to move to OS X. I no longer use mail through my AOL account. Emailer was such a great app, while Entourage was importing the mail from it I felt like I was watching my faithful old dog being put to sleep.
Back in the mid-90's, I believe AOL was going to license their mail protocol to anyone who wanted to make an e-mail client and wanted it to be able to connect to the AOL mail system. Claris got onboard with Emailer, but then AOL changed their mind about the licensing stuff and didn't accept any new licensees.
The only other 3rd-party AOL mail client I know of was an app for the Newton, called "Aloha," which I used back in 1996 when I was traveling to avoid taking a laptop.
The 15" and 17" PowerBooks include a single Type I & II PC Card slot, and always have. The iBooks don't have it as a means of feature differentiation from the PowerBook line. The 12" PowerBook doesn't have it for obvious reasons.
Of all the people I know with PowerBooks, absolutely none of them have ever used a PC Card in one. Why would you, when every PowerBook since about 1998 has had everything you'd add via PC Card already built-in?
The only thing I can think of anymore that someone might have a use for is a memory card reader-- but why buy a PC Card one and limit yourself when you can use a USB one on any computer?
I don't know about the iPod mini dock, but the iPod dock has a minijack for line-out output. The mini can use the full-size iPod dock, because it uses the same connector.
I have a slightly similar setup in my car. but I currently only route the audio signal into the stereo via the iPod's headphone jack. I keep the iPod in a closed storage compartment and control it via an RF remote. I do plan to run power into the compartment as well, to keep the iPod charged. All I really want is a backlit remote display that I can mount somewhere that displays the track info, etc.
I do agree with your criticism that this guy's mini looks to be in an awkward place to safely control while driving.
And it's not gonna happen - Macs are too expensive,
Well, people are short-sighted morons. They love the false economy of buying a $499 computer that will be replaced by two more $499 computers in the same span of time that their original $1299 Mac would continue to serve their needs (gamer d00dz excepted, of course).
too different from what people already know
Yes, it's very jarring to use a computer that doesn't shit the bed at every opportunity, where getting owned within seconds of plugging into a cable modem isn't a concern, and on which you don't have to be apprehensive about merely trying to read the wrong e-mail in your inbox.
b) given the option of disabling it for their device if they sign a usage agreement dictating that they will not annoy others with it.
This will never work. If you make exceptions, then the system will be abused by the self-important-- the way perfectly healthy people who "know someone" can get license plates or a placard enabling them to park in handicap spaces.
The solution is not to completely jam... they need to make devices that can force phones into silent/vibrate mode and then put the call directly into voicemail. Also, the system should prevent the phone from being able to initiate calls while it's in a 'silent/vibrate zone'.
This way, people watching a movie or dining at a nice restaurant could get the silent notification of an incoming call and see who called via CallerID, but would have to, say, go into the lobby or outside to check their voicemail and/or return the call.
Of course, phones would have to be developed with support for the 'silent zone' technology. But this would be a great marketing thing for the cell phone companies. I could see older phones without silent zone support being completely jammed inside of silent zones, as an inducement to upgrade to a new phone that does have silent zone support.
Why the hell do you want to reward the greed of some washed up voice actors (Let's face it Simpsons ain't what they used to be).
So, wait, you're blaming the voice actors for the quality of the writing? And you got modded Insightful for it?
Shit, the Friends cast went from $125K each per episode a few years ago to $1M each per episode-- both shows are the cornerstones of their respective nights for their respective networks, and what the Friends cast is getting makes the raise the Simpsons cast wants look like chump change.
I say, give them what they want. FOX rakes in dump trucks full of money from the Simpsons, and the voice actors' pay should reflect exactly how much they've been making for their employer for the last decade and a half.
...this should make some of us pause and think about what could have been...
Indeed. I was only 5 when TMI happened, and while I don't remember hearing about it from my parents back then, I do remember hearing about it in 1986, when news reports of Chernobyl got them talking about the TMI incident and how worried they were in '79. Thanks to the west-to-east weather patterns, a meltdown at TMI would very probably have affected Philadelphia, 90 miles away. It would definitely have obliterated the state government, as Harrisburg is only 10 miles from the plant. I've had to go to Harrisburg a few times on business, and you can see the TMI cooling towers from the Turnpike. Even 20+ years later, the sight of them made me shudder a little.
If you want to see one author's take on what might have been, there's an old sci-fi novel called "In the Drift," set in an alternate Philadelphia of ~2079-- 100 years after the meltdown at Three Mile Island.
You can still place bets for a brief period after the ball is in motion-- until I read the article I didn't know it was until the ball went around the wheel three times. I've never been to a casino except the ones in Atlantic City, NJ, and there the croupier verbally announces when no more bets can be placed for the current spin and sweeps his/her arm over the table for the hearing impaired (and probably for the security cams, too). If anybody tosses a chip on the table after that, it doesn't count.
When the ball comes to rest on a number, the croupier places a marker on the chips resting on that number to prevent anyone from placing more chips on the winner.
In 1991, the hardware for portable computing just wasn't there. It.. just... WASN'T. I mean, where did PenWindows go? Yep, right into the dumpster.
Here's a loose quote (I don't remember it exactly) from Marlin Eller's book referenced at the end of the article: "This wasn't about 'grow the market,' it was about 'block that kick.' Go Corp spent $(millions) creating their product, we spent $4 million shooting them down. They'll never sell their shit again." That's not the exact quote, but it's pretty close. I remember it so clearly because I was completely shocked to read such a thing.
IIRC, this was said in response to Eller expressing his opinion that Pen Windows was a failure because it didn't take off, and the person who spoke the words above explained that Pen Windows was a success because all it was supposed to do was cock-block Go Corp from building a presence in the market.
You should read the books mentioned at the end of the article to see just how blatant it was. Microsoft sent people to a PenPoint demo given for the Boston Computer Society. They brought a video camera and taped the presentation and analyzed it when they got back to Redmond. Anytime a PenPoint feature drew a positive crowd reaction, that feature was on the 'must add' list for Pen Windows.
Yes, the argument can be made that it was dumb to allow anyone to bring a video camera into that presentation, but still-- this is complete and total thievery, perpetrated by Microsoft. I got angry just reading about it, more than a decade after the fact. Go had some neat stuff back in 1989-- I can only imagine how technological advances between then and how would have improved their product, had Microsoft allowed the company to exist.
In this day and age, I don't see how any company with a promising new product doesn't take great pains to hide the thing's existence from Microsoft to keep from getting ripped off. After all these years it's clear they had and still have absolutely no shame about it.
Actually, I haven't got the Power Mac yet-- I'm waiting for the updated G5s. And I had planned to buy one of those regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit.
The only thing better than a new Mac is a new, free Mac.:-)
Apple's a hardware and software company. The tight integration between their hardware and their software is one of the Mac's prime selling points.
They could never hope to achieve that level of integration on garden-variety commodity PC hardware, even if they cose to support only a subset of what's available (a la NeXTStep for Intel). How do I know they can't pull it off? Because Microsoft has thrown untold billions of dollars over the last 20 years at the problem, and they haven't been successful.
Also, Apple uses the high margins from their hardware sales to subsidize their R&D. OS X for Intel would have to cost quite a bit more than the $129 Mac users pay for retail copies of OS X. Otherwise, Apple would go into a death spiral (a real one, not the bullshit ones all the tech pundits write about).
...Apple is nothing without the iPod, and the cash iPod sales bring in.
To which I say, where's the companion article about Microsoft's dire financial situation? I mean, if they didn't have Windows and Office income subsidizing all their money-losing products (which is almost everything else they make), they'd be hemmorhaging money in a way that would shame the Pentagon.
By the way, Apple's computer sales are down because the models are stale and a refresh is due (or overdue, in the case of the G5). I've got several thousand dollars sitting in the bank, just waiting for the new G5s to be announced, and I am far from alone. And the iMac and eMac lines were very recently EOL'd and should get updated soon as well.
Marge: So... you want to go on tour with a traveling freak show. Homer: I don't think I have a choice, Marge. Marge: Of course you have a choice. Homer: How do you figure? Marge: You don't have to join a freak show just because the opportunity came along. Homer: You know, Marge, in some ways, you and I are very different people.
Slashdot Mirror
while we're on the subject- anyone run a network and successfully automate spybot s&d ?
On my systems at work and home, I have Spybot set up to automatically check for updates, run a full scan and fix anything it finds when it is launched. When it's done, it quits. I have Windows' Task Scheduler launch it weekly.
~Philly
You can change one of the TiVo remote buttons to do 30-second skip with a short key sequence. This only needs to be done when the TiVo is rebooted, i.e. extremely seldom.
You can opt out of the aggregate data collection by calling TiVo. TiVo hackers have examined data from the TiVo's phone calls home before and after the opt-out procedure and confirmed that once you opt out, the data is indeed no longer sent.
And if a small, animated image drives you into a rage, you need help. There's a support group for that sort of thing.
~Philly
Sure, the "burly guys tossing the network programmer out the window" ad from a few years ago was funny, but how about some ads that lay out what the TiVo can do, and more importantly, what the cablecos' TiVo-wannabes don't do?
They need a whole series of ads that directly address the cable companies in certain markets. Something like, "Think you've got a TiVo(TM)? Well if it came from your cable company, you don't..."
Satisfied customers' word of mouth is a great way to advertise, but it can't compare to the reach that the cable companies have, unless TiVo does something like hiring a network of their customers to work in Best Buy and Circuit City part time as evangelists-- who else would be better suited to explain exactly what it does?
~Philly
Posting to and searching through discussion boards in the hopes someone who knows the right answer reads and posts is not good enough. I'm talking about a definitive, authoritative source that I *know* I can always turn to.
I am waiting for the Mac OS X server administration book. The PDFs at the apple web site are lame and only walk you through the GUI.
Panther Server is sweet, but I certainly agree that Apple seriously needs to get on the stick and produce some decent documentation, not to mention training materials for their certification tests. Punch in pretty much any Microsoft exam number in the search field at Amazon and it takes a day to go through all the results. Try that with an Apple exam... nothing.
There are so many questions I have about things I want to do with OS X Server, and there's really no place to ask them.
Hopefully things will improve soon, now that OS X is fairly mature and in less of a state of flux.
~Philly
Cool links
I think this Delorean might be more in line with the average /.er's budget.
I just used mine to compare with the photos of the real thing, and the attention to detail is astonishing. Whoever built that did an amazing job. I don't know about "chick magnet," but I'd say it would turn the head of any child of the 80's you'd drive by on a given street.
~Philly
One of my co-workers still uses Emailer, running in Classic. It still works great. I also used it for years, but migrated to Microsoft Entourage when I was going to move to OS X. I no longer use mail through my AOL account. Emailer was such a great app, while Entourage was importing the mail from it I felt like I was watching my faithful old dog being put to sleep.
Back in the mid-90's, I believe AOL was going to license their mail protocol to anyone who wanted to make an e-mail client and wanted it to be able to connect to the AOL mail system. Claris got onboard with Emailer, but then AOL changed their mind about the licensing stuff and didn't accept any new licensees.
The only other 3rd-party AOL mail client I know of was an app for the Newton, called "Aloha," which I used back in 1996 when I was traveling to avoid taking a laptop.
~Philly
There are plenty of machines smaller than a 12" that have PCMCIA. Hell, my Newton MessagePad has TWO PCMCIA slots.
Yeah, but your Newton 2x00 series *doesn't* have a full complement of external ports, an internal hard drive or CD drive.
~Philly
SS = "spec sheet"
The 15" and 17" PowerBooks include a single Type I & II PC Card slot, and always have. The iBooks don't have it as a means of feature differentiation from the PowerBook line. The 12" PowerBook doesn't have it for obvious reasons.
Of all the people I know with PowerBooks, absolutely none of them have ever used a PC Card in one. Why would you, when every PowerBook since about 1998 has had everything you'd add via PC Card already built-in?
The only thing I can think of anymore that someone might have a use for is a memory card reader-- but why buy a PC Card one and limit yourself when you can use a USB one on any computer?
~Philly
I don't know about the iPod mini dock, but the iPod dock has a minijack for line-out output. The mini can use the full-size iPod dock, because it uses the same connector.
If the stereo in the Explorer has an aux input or this guy got a cable that turns the CD changer connection into RCA L & R audio-in jacks, he could easily have the iPod tied into the stereo.
I have a slightly similar setup in my car. but I currently only route the audio signal into the stereo via the iPod's headphone jack. I keep the iPod in a closed storage compartment and control it via an RF remote. I do plan to run power into the compartment as well, to keep the iPod charged. All I really want is a backlit remote display that I can mount somewhere that displays the track info, etc.
I do agree with your criticism that this guy's mini looks to be in an awkward place to safely control while driving.
~Philly
And it's not gonna happen - Macs are too expensive,
Well, people are short-sighted morons. They love the false economy of buying a $499 computer that will be replaced by two more $499 computers in the same span of time that their original $1299 Mac would continue to serve their needs (gamer d00dz excepted, of course).
too different from what people already know
Yes, it's very jarring to use a computer that doesn't shit the bed at every opportunity, where getting owned within seconds of plugging into a cable modem isn't a concern, and on which you don't have to be apprehensive about merely trying to read the wrong e-mail in your inbox.
~Philly
b) given the option of disabling it for their device if they sign a usage agreement dictating that they will not annoy others with it.
This will never work. If you make exceptions, then the system will be abused by the self-important-- the way perfectly healthy people who "know someone" can get license plates or a placard enabling them to park in handicap spaces.
The solution is not to completely jam... they need to make devices that can force phones into silent/vibrate mode and then put the call directly into voicemail. Also, the system should prevent the phone from being able to initiate calls while it's in a 'silent/vibrate zone'.
This way, people watching a movie or dining at a nice restaurant could get the silent notification of an incoming call and see who called via CallerID, but would have to, say, go into the lobby or outside to check their voicemail and/or return the call.
Of course, phones would have to be developed with support for the 'silent zone' technology. But this would be a great marketing thing for the cell phone companies. I could see older phones without silent zone support being completely jammed inside of silent zones, as an inducement to upgrade to a new phone that does have silent zone support.
~Philly
Why the hell do you want to reward the greed of some washed up voice actors (Let's face it Simpsons ain't what they used to be).
So, wait, you're blaming the voice actors for the quality of the writing? And you got modded Insightful for it?
Shit, the Friends cast went from $125K each per episode a few years ago to $1M each per episode-- both shows are the cornerstones of their respective nights for their respective networks, and what the Friends cast is getting makes the raise the Simpsons cast wants look like chump change.
I say, give them what they want. FOX rakes in dump trucks full of money from the Simpsons, and the voice actors' pay should reflect exactly how much they've been making for their employer for the last decade and a half.
~Philly
...will disgruntled customers take their lemon Gateway PCs to smash them?
~Philly
And what onerous restrictions will I have to agree to to receive and use said free hardware?
How many laws will be purchased be the large companies so Cuecat-esque hardware EULAs will actually have teeth and be enforceable?
~Philly
...this should make some of us pause and think about what could have been...
Indeed. I was only 5 when TMI happened, and while I don't remember hearing about it from my parents back then, I do remember hearing about it in 1986, when news reports of Chernobyl got them talking about the TMI incident and how worried they were in '79. Thanks to the west-to-east weather patterns, a meltdown at TMI would very probably have affected Philadelphia, 90 miles away. It would definitely have obliterated the state government, as Harrisburg is only 10 miles from the plant. I've had to go to Harrisburg a few times on business, and you can see the TMI cooling towers from the Turnpike. Even 20+ years later, the sight of them made me shudder a little.
If you want to see one author's take on what might have been, there's an old sci-fi novel called "In the Drift," set in an alternate Philadelphia of ~2079-- 100 years after the meltdown at Three Mile Island.
If you'd rather stay with this reality, PBS put out an interesting documentary on TMI.
~Philly
Link
This incident was also covered on a documentary that occasionally gets aired on Discovery or The Learning Channel.
~Philly
You can still place bets for a brief period after the ball is in motion-- until I read the article I didn't know it was until the ball went around the wheel three times. I've never been to a casino except the ones in Atlantic City, NJ, and there the croupier verbally announces when no more bets can be placed for the current spin and sweeps his/her arm over the table for the hearing impaired (and probably for the security cams, too). If anybody tosses a chip on the table after that, it doesn't count.
When the ball comes to rest on a number, the croupier places a marker on the chips resting on that number to prevent anyone from placing more chips on the winner.
~Philly
In 1991, the hardware for portable computing just wasn't there. It.. just... WASN'T. I mean, where did PenWindows go? Yep, right into the dumpster.
Here's a loose quote (I don't remember it exactly) from Marlin Eller's book referenced at the end of the article: "This wasn't about 'grow the market,' it was about 'block that kick.' Go Corp spent $(millions) creating their product, we spent $4 million shooting them down. They'll never sell their shit again." That's not the exact quote, but it's pretty close. I remember it so clearly because I was completely shocked to read such a thing.
IIRC, this was said in response to Eller expressing his opinion that Pen Windows was a failure because it didn't take off, and the person who spoke the words above explained that Pen Windows was a success because all it was supposed to do was cock-block Go Corp from building a presence in the market.
~Philly
You should read the books mentioned at the end of the article to see just how blatant it was. Microsoft sent people to a PenPoint demo given for the Boston Computer Society. They brought a video camera and taped the presentation and analyzed it when they got back to Redmond. Anytime a PenPoint feature drew a positive crowd reaction, that feature was on the 'must add' list for Pen Windows.
Yes, the argument can be made that it was dumb to allow anyone to bring a video camera into that presentation, but still-- this is complete and total thievery, perpetrated by Microsoft. I got angry just reading about it, more than a decade after the fact. Go had some neat stuff back in 1989-- I can only imagine how technological advances between then and how would have improved their product, had Microsoft allowed the company to exist.
In this day and age, I don't see how any company with a promising new product doesn't take great pains to hide the thing's existence from Microsoft to keep from getting ripped off. After all these years it's clear they had and still have absolutely no shame about it.
~Philly
Actually, I haven't got the Power Mac yet-- I'm waiting for the updated G5s. And I had planned to buy one of those regardless of the outcome of the lawsuit.
:-)
The only thing better than a new Mac is a new, free Mac.
~Philly
No.
Apple's a hardware and software company. The tight integration between their hardware and their software is one of the Mac's prime selling points.
They could never hope to achieve that level of integration on garden-variety commodity PC hardware, even if they cose to support only a subset of what's available (a la NeXTStep for Intel). How do I know they can't pull it off? Because Microsoft has thrown untold billions of dollars over the last 20 years at the problem, and they haven't been successful.
Also, Apple uses the high margins from their hardware sales to subsidize their R&D. OS X for Intel would have to cost quite a bit more than the $129 Mac users pay for retail copies of OS X. Otherwise, Apple would go into a death spiral (a real one, not the bullshit ones all the tech pundits write about).
~Philly
...Apple is nothing without the iPod, and the cash iPod sales bring in.
To which I say, where's the companion article about Microsoft's dire financial situation? I mean, if they didn't have Windows and Office income subsidizing all their money-losing products (which is almost everything else they make), they'd be hemmorhaging money in a way that would shame the Pentagon.
By the way, Apple's computer sales are down because the models are stale and a refresh is due (or overdue, in the case of the G5). I've got several thousand dollars sitting in the bank, just waiting for the new G5s to be announced, and I am far from alone. And the iMac and eMac lines were very recently EOL'd and should get updated soon as well.
~Philly
Marge: So... you want to go on tour with a traveling freak show.
Homer: I don't think I have a choice, Marge.
Marge: Of course you have a choice.
Homer: How do you figure?
Marge: You don't have to join a freak show just because the opportunity came along.
Homer: You know, Marge, in some ways, you and I are very different people.
Episode 3F21, "Homerpalooza"
~Philly